Karma

Review We have been analyzing the various causal connections between clear-light mind, the winds of karma, the creative energy-drops and everything that’s involved in our experience of these mental holograms. We proposed that the winds of karma are the mounts of the mental...

Difficulties with Terminology When Studying Karma One of the difficulties in studying karma is that the Tibetan terminology has many different meanings. For example, in Tibetan, the potentials and tendencies can also be called habits. It’s very confusing that the Tibetan terms...

Brief Review In our last session, we discussed death, impermanence, and the suffering of the three lower realms. These unfortunate states of rebirth are as a hell creature, a hungry ghost or an animal. The suffering of each of these three rebirth states can be explained...

The Connection between Karmic Aftermath and Karmic Results What connects the different kinds of karmic aftermath and the karmic results? This is an issue that is much debated and each of the Indian Buddhist tenet systems has a different explanation. All the tenet systems...

Karmic impulses of the body and speech include both revealing forms and nonrevealing forms. What are nonrevealing forms and what are their characteristic properties? Nonrevealing Forms Are Exclusively Constructive or Destructive  Vasubandhu affirms in A Treasure House of...

How Vowed Restraints Prevent the Commitment of Actions One Has Pledged to Abstain From In An Extensive Commentary on (Vasubandhu’s “Treasure of Special Topics of Knowledge”): Illuminating the Path to Liberation (mDzod-ṭik thar-lam gsal-byed) (Varanasi ed. 208), the First Dalai...

The Self in Relationship to Our Discussion of Karma Defining the Self or “Me” Now, we can begin our discussion of the self, “me,” and the relation of the self with what we have been discussing. We’ve seen that all the various components of karmic cause and effect during an...

In the previous part of this series, we saw that: Unlike revealing forms, nonrevealing forms are not made of particles and so do not depend for their existence on themselves having subparticles of the four types of great elements as their components.  Being nonmaterial,...

Refutation of Nonrevealing Forms as Being Responsible for an Increase in Positive Karmic Potential from Offering Material Items to the Monastic Community  Vasubandhu states in his Autocommentary to “A Treasure House of Special Topics of Knowledge” (Skt....

What are further properties of nonrevealing forms? Nonrevealing Forms Are Not Conjoined with the Great Elements of the Body Vasubandhu states in A Treasure House of Special Topics of Knowledge, Put in Verses (Chos mngon-pa’i mdzod-kyi tshig-le’ur byas-pa, Skt....