Karma

We have been speaking about tonglen, giving and taking, as discussed and presented in lojong, the mind training teachings. We find this at the beginning of this text by Dharmarakshita, and also in the beginning of a later text, Seven Point Mind Training by Geshe Chekawa. In...

Review Just to clarify some points, a pathway of a karmic impulse is defined as what a primary consciousness having congruent with it the mental factor of an urge engages in. In Vasubandhu and Nagarjuna’s system, the mental factor of an urge is a karmic impulse of the mind....

The Fourth-Occasion Drop  We have covered now the first three creative energy-drops, the drops of the occasions when we are awake, when we are dreaming, and we are asleep with no dreams, which are also known as the body, speech and mind drops. Now we have left the fourth...

The Initial Level: Refraining from Destructive Behavior We have seen that karma and discipline are involved with each of the three graded levels of motivation and aim, as presented in the lam-rim graded stages. We’ve also seen the way that karma works and the way it functions...

Review  In our discussion about the issue of free will or choice versus predetermination or determinism, we saw that there are many, many factors that are involved and many pieces of the Buddhist teachings that we have to put together in order to understand what’s going...

Contemplation on the Rare Precious Human Life, Certainty of Death and Necessity of Dharma  We’ve been talking about the precious human rebirth that we have all achieved. This precious human rebirth has the eight respites and ten enrichments necessary for Dharma practice....

There are three types of karmic aftermath. The first is karmic force or karmic potential. These terms are two different ways of referring to the same thing. There are two types and they’re usually translated as “merit” (bsod-nams) and “sin” (sdig-pa) or something like that,...

Having refuted that revealing forms (rnam-par rig-byed-kyi gzugs, Skt. vijñaptirūpa) of the body are karmic impulses, Sautrantika nevertheless accepts the existence of revealing forms. However, it does not accept them as existing or as knowable in the same ways that...

The Basis for Valid Cognition of “Not-Yet-Happenings” As we have seen, one facet of a “karmic tendency for a result” is the karmic tendency’s “temporarily not-giving-rise to its result, so long as all the contributing circumstances for giving rise to it are incomplete.” That...

How Is It Possible to Make a Decision? We’ve gotten to the point of: How do we make a decision? How does a decision arise? We have two wishes, two feelings that arise from all sorts of circumstances – to yell or not to yell. It’s not free will, because there’s...