We’re studying this letter that Tsongkhapa wrote (and I’m happy to tell everybody that the translation of it is now finally online on my website; so, if you’d like to read the whole text, it’s there). Tsongkhapa is writing this letter in answer to a request by a great meditator, who was both Tsongkhapa’s student and teacher, to give some practical advice on how to practice the highest class of tantra, anuttarayoga. This is an opportunity to explain practical advice on both sutra and tantra, since sutra’s the basis for tantra practice.
Just in brief, let’s review.
Reliance on a Qualified Spiritual Mentor
Tsongkhapa says we have all the basic factors that we need to be able to practice — an excellent working basis of a precious human rebirth, we’ve met with the teachings, we have a teacher, we have power of mind and intelligence to differentiate between what to practice and what we need to get rid of — and so we need to then engage ourselves in the teachings. For that we need to rely on a spiritual master who’s well qualified: who knows what is to be practiced, what’s to be gotten rid of; doesn’t add anything, doesn’t leave anything out; and knows the proper order of how to develop them. The teacher needs to have gotten training himself or herself through a similar process with their own teacher and based on the great classics.
The Motivating Mental Framework
As for how to begin, we need to first of all get the proper motivating mental framework. This is discussed in the general sutra teachings as presented in the graded paths, or lam-rim. Having our interest being in improving future lives, then in gaining liberation, and then in gaining enlightenment for the benefit of all.
How to Meditate
Then to build up these motivating mental frameworks so that we have them all the time on a sincere level, we need to know how to meditate. Then Tsongkhapa goes into a great discussion about how to meditate — there’s no need to go through all the details of that again — how to generate a certain state of mind. We need to have this motivation throughout the practice.
The Ethical Self-Discipline of Keeping Vows
Then Tsongkhapa emphasizes the importance of ethical discipline in keeping vows for engaging in tantra, and this means the vows for individual liberation (the pratimoksha (Skt. prātimokṣa) vows), bodhisattva vows, and tantric vows. When we receive an empowerment it’s very important that we take these vows, and the basis for it needs to be some level of pratimoksha vow, either lay or for monks or nuns.
The Generation and Complete Stages of Anuttarayoga Tantra
Then in terms of the practice of anuttarayoga tantra, the highest class of tantra, there’s the generation and complete stages, and Tsongkhapa emphasizes the need to do these in their proper order. Then in terms of the generation stage, Tsongkhapa focuses his discussion on how to visualize, visualize ourselves as a Buddha-figure, and not only as an individual Buddha-figure but in a mandala (Skt. maṇḍala) with a great many other figures as well. Tsongkhapa goes into again great detail as to how to visualize. No need to repeat all of that.
Then concerning the complete stage, Tsongkhapa just mentions that the main part of it is the meditations on the energy-channels, energy-winds, and creative energy-drops, and says that we should get their individual guideline instructions from our teachers concerning that.
Voidness
Then he starts the discussion of voidness. Because in the non-Gelug traditions they always speak about the voidness, which is the absence of truly established existence, but then they speak of voidness beyond all words and concepts, which is the equivalent of the voidness of truly established existence, the voidness of voidness, the voidness of both, or neither. It’s just a different way of explaining the meditations on voidness. Tsongkhapa discusses this a little bit to say that the voidness that’s understood, whether on sutra or tantra, whether on the generation stage or the complete stage — all of that is exactly the same. It’s the absence of any impossible way of existing, whether that be truly established existence or nonexistence or non-truly established existence or whatever, all these various permutations.
Then Tsongkhapa goes into a discussion of voidness itself. He says that although there may be certain practitioners who, based on previous practice in former lifetimes, are able to gain realization all at once — meaning that when they gain a nonconceptual cognition of voidness, that immediately, all at once, gets rid of both the emotional and cognitive obscurations (they achieve both a seeing pathway of mind, liberation, and enlightenment all at once) — but this is an extremely tiny minority. For everybody else, we need to work in this lifetime as well with lines of reasoning. And for those for whom it happens all at once, they’ve worked with these lines of reasoning in previous lifetimes. No matter what, we need to do that type of logical study.
Tsongkhapa points out the most commonly studied line of reasoning, which is the line of reasoning of parted from being either one or many, which is referring to the basis for labeling and what the label is referring to. These are neither the same — if they were truly existent, they would have to be either the same or they would have to be many (in other words, they’d have to be either one truly existent thing or two or more), and if neither of those are the case, then there’s no such thing as truly established existence. We’ve discussed this at length in several classes, no need to discuss that any further.
The Voidness of Cause and Effect
That brings us to today’s section, today’s passage. Let me read. Tsongkhapa goes on; he says:
When we seek (our understanding of voidness) by training like this in (studying and thinking about) scriptural quotations and lines of reasoning, there are two ways in which such an understanding can be generated: a deviant and a non-deviant one. Of these, the first might be (as follows).
This is the deviant one. Now Tsongkhapa follows a method that he uses in so many of his texts. (Deviant means that it goes away from what is correct; it deviates. One which deviates, which goes away from what’s correct, and one which does not.) The method Tsongkhapa uses so frequently, and it goes back to Nagarjuna’s methodology as well, is to point out mistaken views and then to refute them. Tsongkhapa points out some very subtle mistaken views. He says:
Of these, the first might be (as follows).
This is the deviant way.
Suppose we had analyzed from the viewpoint of many lines of reasoning the arising, ceasing and so forth of phenomena. When (we had done so),
Remember when you read, for instance, the Root Verses on Madhyamaka (Skt. Mādhyamaka) by Nagarjuna, he says, “No arising, no ceasing, etc., no abiding”? You have a similar type of passage in the Heart Sutra.
Suppose we had analyzed from the viewpoint of many lines of reasoning the arising, ceasing and so forth of phenomena. When (we had done so), the entire presentation of conventional truth had fallen apart (for us) and thereby we could not find (any way of) taking anything as being (conventionally) “this”. (Thus, we felt there was nothing conventionally true or real.) Because (of that), we might come (to the wrong conclusion) that all bondages and liberations (from uncontrollably recurring samsaric existence) are in fact like all bondages and liberations of children of barren women. Then we would go on (to wrongly imagine) that the occurrence of happiness and suffering from constructive and destructive actions was in fact no different than the arising of horns from a rabbit’s head. Thereby, we would come to a (completely false) understanding that all of conventional truth is distorted conventional truth and that all conceptual cognitions are distorted cognitions that are deceived about their conceptualized objects.
OK, now we have to look at this in more detail. We need to analyze arising and ceasing. Ceasing (’gog-pa), by the way, is not the same word as perishing (’jig-pa). Ceasing means true cessation, true stopping, so that something never recurs again. The word that I would translate as perishing means just what happens when things are impermanent or non-static: they automatically end. It’s not talking about that. The word that’s being referred to here (and in all these discussions of no arising, no abiding, no ceasing) is the same word that’s used for the third noble truth, true stopping or true cessation (’gog-pa’i bden-pa).
What actually is the point of the whole analysis of arising and abiding and ceasing? His Holiness pointed this out, actually, in the teaching that was just a few weeks ago in Dharamsala (Skt. Dharamśālā), that all of this has to do with dependent arising. In other words, the arising of samsara (Skt. saṃsāra), the maintenance or continuation of samsara, and the ceasing of samsaric existence in terms of the twelve links of dependent arising in progressive order (which generates samsaric existence) and in reverse order (which causes samsaric existence to stop forever). That’s what this is all about.
Participant: I’m sorry, I’m not clear about the difference between ceasing and perishing.
Dr. Berzin: OK. Ceasing means that samsaric existence — let’s say suffering — ends forever, that it never continues. Perishing is the word that… everything perishes from moment to moment. One particular suffering — let’s say your toothache — will perish; it will come to an end naturally because of impermanence. But when we talk about ceasing, we’re talking about suffering never ever arising again. Of course, the same suffering that you had of the toothache is not going to arise again, but it’s not talking about that. It’s talking about a continuum’s continuation.
Participant: You would call it perishing if one moment of suffering gets replaced by the next moment of that continuum’s suffering?
Dr. Berzin: Right. Perishing is also when one moment of suffering ends and the next moment begins or arises from it. That’s also one form of subtle impermanence or non-staticness, that things change from moment to moment.
OK. When we’re talking about no arising, no abiding, no ceasing, we’re really talking about the whole samsaric existence within the context of the twelve links of dependent arising. The arising of suffering from unawareness (the first link), and its maintenance through the rest of the links, and its ceasing by means of getting rid of unawareness or ignorance so that suffering never arises again, rebirth never arises again.
Now it’s saying there are many lines of reasoning that we could use to analyze arising and ceasing, talking about the voidness of arising and ceasing. The voidness of arising, that has to do with the voidness of cause and effect. We have studied — those of you who were here for the ninth chapter of Shantideva’s text Engaging in Bodhisattva Behavior (Bodhicharyavatara), you’ll recall that there’s a big discussion in terms of voidness of the cause, the whole process of causality, refutation that things could arise from no cause or they arise from a cause that’s the same as the result (that means the result already exists in the cause). We had the discussion that if things — or the argument, the line of reasoning — that if things arose from no cause, then anything could happen at any time, and so that is ridiculous (then things could arise from totally irrelevant causes, etc.). This is one of the incorrect views of, generally, the cause of suffering, the second noble truth, that if you plant a chili seed, you’ll get a sugar bush or something like that, or that without planting a seed something is going to grow. This doesn’t make any sense.
Now the Samkhya (Skt. Sāṃkhya) view, which is that the result is already fixed and inherent in the cause… We didn’t really discuss it in terms of one further point when we had our discussion in our course on Shantideva that I’d like to bring up, which is a great misconception of karma, which is that it’s predetermined (in other words, already the result is fixed and exists within the cause). If you’ve built up a certain karmic potential, that the cause there is fixed in terms of what will happen, what will result from it. Although that’s not taking the same position as the Samkhya position (which is that the cloth exists already in the cotton, and it’s just a matter of manifesting), it’s a variation of that and really very similar and I think a type of misconception that many, many people have in terms of karma, that it’s a type of predetermination or fate or destiny that “I’ve done a certain action and for sure I’m going to suffer in a hell,” or something like that.
What is wrong with this? What’s wrong with this point of view?
Participant: You can purify.
Dr. Berzin: OK. We can purify negative karma. It can be affected. We can weaken positive karma. (I’m using karma in a loose way. I mean the karmic aftermath, the potentials.) We can weaken — like for instance through anger, through a lot of negative actions — you can weaken the force of the ripening. OK. But that’s a very gross level actually of the discussion. Think a little bit more deeply.
Participant: Also, because it would invalidate impermanence. If the result comes from the thing, that means it’s eternal, and that can’t be.
Dr. Berzin: Now he’s saying that if the result is already in the cause, then it is eternal; it can’t be changed. Right. It can’t be changed. That obviously is a summary of what we’ve just said. But here we’re just thinking in terms of getting rid of the results so that you don’t experience the result in the case of negative ones, or weakening it, or prolonging when the result will happen in terms of a positive karmic aftermath. But what about how something actually is going to ripen?
Participant: It also needs circumstances.
Dr. Berzin: It needs circumstances. Exactly. That’s a very, very important point. In other words: If I hit you, is it already predetermined that, as a result of that, in some future life you’re going to hit me? I hit you on the nose, so it’s predetermined that you’re going to hit me on the nose? This is, I think, a more subtle point in terms of how will karma ripen, in what form will it ripen, and that is dependent on circumstances.
Is it part of the ripening of our karma that the circumstances will happen? Let’s say in terms of I hit you with a car. Now is there the karmic result that I’m going to be hit by a car by you or by somebody else? No, because it could be affected by causes and conditions. But let’s say even if the ripening is going to happen — or does happen — in terms of being hit by a car by you in the future, did my karma cause you to drive the car at that time so that you hit me?
Participant: Obviously not.
Dr. Berzin: Obviously not, although we tend to think that don’t we? “It’s my fault,” in a sense. But no, it’s not. We have the karma to be hit by a car or hit by something else or whatever. I mean, it has to be in the same category. It’s not that just anything could happen from the karma. That would then be almost like no cause, wouldn’t it?
Participant: Can there be a negative influence if you think about karma too much? “I’ve done this, and so maybe this can happen to me.” Maybe you produce it by your own thoughts. Is it possible?
Dr. Berzin: He’s saying that if we have negative karma and we think about it and are very paranoid, for example…
Participant: We maybe think we’ll get punished.
Dr. Berzin: We feel guilty, and we think we’re going to get punished — would that affect the ripening of the karma? What do you think?
Participant: Yes.
Dr. Berzin: Yes. It acts as one of many, many circumstances or conditions.
Participant: I would think it would tend to ripen a potential that’s there, I would imagine.
Dr. Berzin: It would tend to ripen the potential that’s there. Why? Analyze.
Participant: Because if you can purify the negative potential that’s there, you can also intensify it.
Dr. Berzin: He says: If you can purify by your thoughts of regret and promise not to do it again, etc., then you could intensify the result. How?
Participant: You can purify your karma by those thoughts only?
Dr. Berzin: He’s saying: Can you purify your karma by thoughts only? You apply the opponent forces. To purify on the initial level, admit that what you’ve done was a mistake. Regret it, which means not feeling guilty but “I wish I hadn’t done that.” Then the promise that I’m going to try not to repeat it. Then reaffirming the direction that we’re going in life, of refuge and bodhichitta (Skt. bodhicitta), trying to become a Buddha to help everybody. And then applying some opponent force, which could be meditation like Vajrasattva purification, or the deepest method would be meditation on voidness.
Participant: But you could not do all of those things and then ripen the karma.
Dr. Berzin: You could do not all of those things and ripen. What is not doing that? I don’t admit that it was a mistake. “It was not a mistake. It was perfectly OK what I did. I don’t regret it. I feel happy about it, in fact. I’m going to certainly repeat it again, and life is just to get as much as you can and be as happy as you can. And I’m certainly not going to apply any opponent force. In fact, I’ll do the opposite.”
Participant: That would guarantee it.
Dr. Berzin: That would intensify it. But this is not the example that you gave. What’s your name, by the way?
Participant: Frank.
Dr. Berzin: It’s not the example that Frank said. Frank said the example is guilt. Why would that cause the karma to be heavier? What’s wrong with it?
Participant: One way of purification is that you meditate on the voidness of the actions that you’ve done (of course while acknowledging that it was destructive). On the other hand, if you are identifying with it, then your whole self-image is created as an identity that is like inseparably connected with that negative action. But we aren’t inseparably connected with that negative action, even if it’s a negative action and we have to change our ways.
Dr. Berzin: Right. What he’s saying is very correct. He’s saying that with guilt, this is the complete opposite of the understanding of voidness. The understanding of voidness — we can purify it in terms of understanding the voidness of cause and effect, and so on. We can purify it in the sense that we don’t create the conditions that would cause the karma to ripen, which — if we speak in terms of the twelve links of dependent arising — are craving (in terms of happiness not to be parted from it, unhappiness to be parted from it, neutral for to it just continue) and then some obtainer attitude, which was grasping for a solid me. If we don’t have a condition to ripen the karma, it won’t ripen.
Here, with guilt, we’re creating even more strongly the conditions that will ripen the karma, because we are holding on to this solid me, what I’ve done, and very, very strong grasping for truly established existence of “Me, the guilty one. How bad I am,” which of course is a suffering state of mind. We are creating and reinforcing more and more strongly the conditions that will ripen the karmic potentials and tendencies and so on. So yes.
Participant: Because that is what happens, I think, in the Church.
Dr. Berzin: Right. He says that’s what happens in the Church. Or it doesn’t necessarily have to be the Church. That happens in people who are very strongly influenced by the concept of guilt, regardless of how they might learn that concept.
Participant: But in that case, in the case of the Church, when they confess in church and then the priest says, “Now it’s good. It’s clean,” then, in a way, you don’t identify with this guilt anymore.
Dr. Berzin: OK. This is a very good example. She says: Look at practices of confession that we have in Catholicism, for example, that you confess to somebody, and you are forgiven.
Participant: You get rid of it.
Dr. Berzin: You get rid of it. And usually do an opponent force: you’ll say some Hail Mary’s or you’ll do something. What’s missing here? Is there a promise not to repeat it? For most people, no.
Participant: But I think it’s part of like what…
Dr. Berzin: It’s supposed to be there.
Participant: The reply you get is, I think, “You shouldn’t do it again.”
Dr. Berzin: Right. The reply is that you shouldn’t do it again. Do most people actually think like that? I mean, regardless of what it should be, the point is: What is the difference between this and the Buddhist purification practice?
Participant: I think that you really must have a strong wish to change your mind, not to do it again, and not only to promise it to some person and then forget about it — there must be some meaning behind that aim.
Dr. Berzin: Right. You have to have a very strong wish to change it, to change yourself, and not just rely on somebody else. This has to do with the concept of forgiveness. Does forgiveness have anything to do with the Buddhist way of thinking about this? Can somebody — can Buddha forgive us for our negative actions, and then we’re purified? It’s irrelevant. It has nothing to do with it.
Participant: But I wonder if the effect is similar.
Dr. Berzin: Is the effect similar? Look at the opponent forces:
Admitting that what you did was a mistake. OK. Now, there’s a difference between admitting that it was a mistake and admitting that it was bad. From a Buddhist point of view, you act negatively because you’re confused, because you don’t understand cause and effect — you don’t understand reality — therefore you’re an object of compassion. In other religions, some other religions, or ways of thinking, you act negatively because you’re bad. You disobeyed the rules, you disobeyed the laws, and you need to be punished.
Participant: Or an evil being made you do it.
Dr. Berzin: Or an evil being made you do that, the Devil made you do that, but you can be forgiven by the person who made the laws and then you’re excused.
Even that first step of admitting that what you did was incorrect — the whole basis for it is quite different. When somebody forgives you, in a sense it’s sort of mercy. It’s the mercy of whoever, that they forgive you. But what’s the basis for that mercy? What’s the basis for their love? It’s quite different. It’s a very different framework from you acting because of being confused and unaware of reality. Again, there’s sort of “I am truly a bad person, but now I’m forgiven, so it’s OK.”
Then regret. It’s not so much regret — it’s guilt, which is again the strong identification: “I’m not going to do it again.” How seriously is that done? Do you reaffirm the direction that you’re going in? I don’t know.
You do some opponent, you say some mantra or some prayers, but I don’t think the effect is exactly the same. It’s sort of like “Wow, I got off free from that sin,” whereas that’s not really the appropriate response from a Buddhist point of view. If you’ve done a purification, it’s not “Wow, I got out of that one. I escaped the law.”
Participant: Also, without even a notion of emptiness, you’re taking that sin or the blessing as an existent thing that’s permanent again.
Dr. Berzin: He’s saying: Without the understanding of voidness, you’re taking the so-called sin (what we call negative potential) as something solid and with its existence truly established as bad. But now you’ve gotten rid of it, so it is… I mean, it’s interesting — this is Tsongkhapa’s point here — it’s saying that then the causes of that sin become totally nonexistent. You have to think about that.
From what Christian said — this is very interesting — that in terms of voidness, you understand the voidness of cause and effect. But Tsongkhapa — what he’s pointing out is that you have to be careful when you negate truly existent cause and effect that you don’t negate causality altogether and say, “There’s no truly existent cause. There’s no truly existent result. Therefore, there’s no cause and effect, so nothing is going to happen.” (If I understand voidness, then there will be no result. I have negated the existence of the result.) This is called nihilism, the belief in nihil, in nothing, that nothing exists.
That’s not the case either. It’s not that the result was truly existent and now it’s become nothing. That’s not what our understanding of voidness does, does it?
Participant: As far as I understand, the function of karma is to change positions. When you have done something bad to somebody, or you cause some pain to somebody or any being, then you can experience the same pain yourself and know what it’s like, to help you not to do it again.
Dr. Berzin: He’s saying that his understanding of karma is that if you cause pain to somebody else, then you will experience pain back. You experience…
Participant: You learn something.
Dr. Berzin: You could learn something from it. Maybe you could learn something from it. In most cases, we never learn and just go on repeating forever. It’s possible to learn. It’s possible. It’s not inevitable that you will learn.
We’ve covered a few different strands, a few different arguments here.
Let’s get back to what I was pointing out originally, which was that what we do doesn’t cause the other person to hit us with a car. If we’ve hit somebody with a car, it doesn’t cause somebody else to hit us with a car. Their driving and hitting somebody with a car is a result of their own karmic potentials. Our karmic potential is just to meet with something like that, to experience it. We experience something similar to what we have created. Yes, what you said is correct. We experience something similar to what we have created. It has to be in the same category.
That’s another one of the misunderstandings of the second noble truth, that a cause can produce a dissimilar effect. The cause and effect have to be some sort of similar category, but what it will specifically ripen in will depend on so many other causes and circumstances. One will definitely be our state of mind, that we feel guilty, etc. Do we apply these opponent forces? Do we apply it with grasping for solid existence, which will just cause the karma to ripen even more, or do we actually understand voidness and what the understanding of voidness does? The understanding of voidness does not cause a truly existent result that was already predetermined to become totally nonexistent, which would be this concept of confession and “Now you’re purified of your sins.” But rather, what it does is —
Participant: It’s running on battery. I wonder why.
Dr. Berzin: Yeah, because the battery is in.
But rather, the understanding of voidness prevents you from generating the conditions which will cause the karma to ripen. We’re not negating cause and effect in this understanding. One’s view of cause and effect becomes very, very transparent, in a sense; it’s not a very solid view. Remember we had the same thing in terms of the voidness of the result, that a result can’t come from nothing, and nothing can’t turn into a something, and a something can’t turn into the same thing. If the result is totally nonexistent before, then it can’t become truly existent after, at a certain point. What could cause it to do that? If it already exists, then why would it come into existence again? There’s no need for it to come into existence again.
We have to think in terms of cause and effect — voidness of cause, voidness of effect. When you put that together, then you have an understanding of the voidness of cause and effect. What you’re left with then is dependent arising. Of course, what I just said is not easy, by any means, to understand. But slowly one has to deconstruct this idea of a true arising or a true ceasing. (A true ceasing would be a truly existent thing then becomes totally nonexistent.)
Participant: There’s one point in this, how the cause is connected to the effect in karma, that bothers me a bit. When you say that they have to be in the same category, category sounds like it’s conceptual, in a way. Also where do you draw the line of what falls in the same category?
Dr. Berzin: That’s an interesting question. He says that when we say that the cause and the effect have to be in the same category, category is a word that we’ve been using in connection with concepts, so maybe that wasn’t the best choice of words by me to explain this, because it’s certainly not the same word in Tibetan that’s being used here.
They have to be similar. They have to be in the same family (rigs) is literally the word that’s used in Tibetan — the same caste actually, caste or family. That’s the word that’s there. And then, the question is: What defines the caste or family? Analyze. Can there be a truly established defining characteristic on the side of this family that characterizes them? No, obviously not. The defining characteristic is just what a mind can label onto a sequence of cause and effect.
What would validate that two things are in the same family? Recall Chandrakirti’s three criteria for validating cognition:
[1] There has to be a convention.
The convention would be that there’s a family of similarity of cause and effect. OK, so there’s a convention.
[2] It has to be not contradicted by a mind that validly sees conventional truth.
Who would see the conventional truth of karmic cause and effect? Who?
Participant: The experiencer?
Dr. Berzin: No. Who? Not the experiencer. If we did something in a previous lifetime and it ripens now — we’d have no idea what we did in a previous lifetime. Buddha. Only a Buddha knows cause and effect fully. Only a Buddha understands karma. How do we know that what Buddha said about karma is correct? Why is Buddha a valid source of information about that?
Participant: Because he’s clear in what he’s saying about the things that we can experience as well, that they are true.
Dr. Berzin: Right. OK. That’s correct. She’s saying that if what a Buddha says about obscure phenomena like voidness or how to develop concentration can be validated by our own experience, and if the only reason why a Buddha was able to have enough force in his understanding of voidness that it got rid of all the obscurations and he was able to become a Buddha — if that force was compassion, which was to benefit others, then there’s no reason why a Buddha would lie and deceive us about extremely obscure phenomena like karma. Based on that line of reasoning — this is given in Dharmakirti’s Pramana-varttika (Commentary on Valid Ways of Knowing) — that therefore you can infer or conclude that Buddha is a valid source of information about extremely obscure phenomena.
Now you have to of course understand… Buddha might also have said that there’s Mount Meru and there’s the four continents and the earth is flat and square — is Buddha a valid source of information for that? — and the hells are a certain number of kilometers underneath the earth.
Participant: That wasn’t the teaching of Buddha.
Dr. Berzin: “That wasn’t the teaching of Buddha,” you could say, but what about other things?
Participant: The Dalai Lama said he wasn’t a geographer.
Dr. Berzin: Right. The Dalai Lama said he wasn’t a geographer; Buddha wasn’t a geographer. He was teaching us about how to get rid of suffering, how to gain liberation and enlightenment.
Participant: He was using the knowledge and symbolism of the time.
Dr. Berzin: Right. Using the knowledge and symbolism of the time as a device to be able to speak to people. But what Buddha was an expert in is liberation and enlightenment. Therefore, the topic of karma is completely relevant, so we can conclude that… Let’s get back to our topic, which is talking about things being in the family. It’s the same family. There’s a convention that there’s this family. It’s not contradicted by somebody who validly sees conventional truth. That’s Buddha. Buddha saw the conventional truth that this cause brings about that result. We wouldn’t be able to know that, but Buddha knew that.
Participant: We only speculate.
Dr. Berzin: We speculate. It’s called presumption. It’s not really even presumption. Presumption is when you assume that something’s correct without really being convinced by inference and logic. For most of us, if we’re not convinced of this argument of Dharmakirti (Skt. Dharmakīrti) that Buddha’s a valid source of information about karma, then that’s presumption; we presume that it’s correct: “I guess it’s correct.” But if we really think in terms of logic, then there’s no reason why Buddha would deceive us concerning this. Then you could take what Buddha said about conventional truth of karmic cause and effect as true. It’s not contradicted by what Buddha said.
[3] It’s not contradicted by a mind that validly cognizes deepest truth (in terms of voidness).
Based on that, then, there is this valid convention of a similar family of cause and effect. That’s, I think, the way that you would analyze it.
You hit somebody and, well, are you going to be hit? I mean, look at it. Go back to the examples. The classic example that — it’s always used as the example — that if you have committed a karmic cause, the effect will not be wasted (there will be some effect): Buddha, in a previous lifetime, killed the oarsman on a boat who was going to kill 499 merchants on the boat. But he did this in order to save these other people from being killed and to prevent this potential murderer from having such horrible consequences from it. And Buddha did this totally accepting on himself whatever suffering consequences would occur. What was the result? The result was that he was able to complete the first zillion eons of positive force in the way to become a Buddha and he experienced a headache. Is the Buddha’s experience of a headache as the result of killing the oarsman in the same category as the oarsman’s rebirth in a hell as the result of killing 499 people? What is the category that both are in?
Participant: Was it harm?
Dr. Berzin: Suffering. This is the category, the similar category.
Participant: The family, the caste, would be suffering.
Dr. Berzin: The caste would be suffering. Or the caste would be happiness.
Participant: That’s why it’s said: Even an arhat would still have physical pain because of karma.
Dr. Berzin: Right. An arhat would still have physical pain because of the past but wouldn’t suffer from it. The actual physical happening would occur without the suffering. We can differentiate more clearly between something similar happening to you, whether you experience it with happiness or unhappiness. Let’s not go in such detail.
Participant: These castes are extremely general.
Dr. Berzin: I think these castes or families are fairly general. But the less opponent forces you apply, probably the closer it is to what you did, closer the result would be to what you did. This I’m only guessing.
Participant: What other families can you think of?
Dr. Berzin: What other families? I would think happiness and unhappiness.
Participant: Suffering.
Dr. Berzin: Unhappiness is suffering, the same word.
Participant: Only these two?
Dr. Berzin: I would think so.
Participant: Constructive and destructive actions and neutral?
Dr. Berzin: Right. I mean, what are the laws of karma from… The law of certainty of karma: If you experience suffering and unhappiness, it is certain that it is the result of destructive behavior. If you experience happiness, it is certain that it is the result of constructive behavior.
Participant: But isn’t conventional happiness also part of suffering?
Dr. Berzin: Is conventional happiness part of suffering? Yes, but that’s taking it on a different level. We’re talking about conventional happiness: that feeling which when it ends, you would normally like for it to resume. And unhappiness: that feeling which when you experience it, you would like it to end. The definitions.
Participant: Why was this idea of castes introduced?
Dr. Berzin: Why was this idea of caste introduced? Because of the law of certainty of karma.
Participant: It’s just constructive or destructive. It’s as simple as that. But here they’re talking about castes of the cause and the result, and so maybe it can be more specific.
Participant: It makes it complicated.
Dr. Berzin: It would make it much more complicated if the caste or family, the similar family, was much, much more limited in its scope. If you look at the five… Maybe I don’t want to bring that in. That’ll just make things more complicated. Let’s leave that out. I was just thinking of another usage of the term things being in a similar family.
Participant: I think what you said are the most general families, but one can imagine within these families of suffering and happiness — one can imagine other, different families, but without a border line on the left and on the right.
Dr. Berzin: He’s saying: Within this larger caste, can we differentiate subcastes of similar things? Maybe. I don’t know. But I don’t think we need to analyze in such detail on this aspect. I don’t think it’s going to get us further in our understanding of voidness here.
Participant: Because Buddha was saying very specific things: if you practice patience, you become beautiful, and things like this. It’s not obvious that that will happen, but one can imagine that it’s like this. But that would be a subcategory.
Dr. Berzin: OK. Yes, this would be a subcategory. If you look at the ten destructive and the ten construction actions, they are quite specific in terms of what the results are. In terms of stealing, then you will be poor. In terms of killing, your life force will be weakened, or you will get sick. Yes, so I think there are subcategories here. I think you’re totally right, then. For instance, Buddha killed the oarsman and he experienced physical pain. From taking a life, you do experience some type of physical pain or unhappiness. Yes, there would be subcategories, subfamilies.
Participant: His motivation was completely different.
Dr. Berzin: His motivation was completely different. Right. That’s why, because Buddha’s motivation was so strong, that caused the karmic force to ripen in something very, very minor.
Participant: Because in general motivation is very destructive.
Dr. Berzin: Right. Normally if we kill, the motivation is quite negative. OK.
Voidness of cause and effect. Do a certain action; it will have a result. That result is not already existing and fixed in the cause. It’s not that the cause is totally irrelevant to the result. A result will arise dependent on many causes and circumstances — on many circumstances, I should say — which will all arise from their own causes. That result isn’t something that was totally nonexistent before it happened, nor was it totally existent before it happened. What was it? The cause ceases when the result occurs — how’s the connection made? Is there a time when the two exist at the same time, the cause and result, and something connects them?
Participant: Even saying “The cause ceases when the result occurs” is…
Dr. Berzin: The cause perishes when the result arises.
Participant: Even that is like a delineation which is, one could say, overly precise.
Dr. Berzin: Right. Is that overly precise? The point is that the cause and the result aren’t simultaneous. Is it that a truly existent cause perishes and then a truly existent result pops up? No.
Participant: The point being that we draw the line up to where we say, “That’s still the cause, and here is the result.” It is a continuous process.
Dr. Berzin: OK. It’s a continuous process, cause and result. Does that mean the cause changes into the result, like a continuum?
Participant: Conventionally, yes.
Dr. Berzin: Conventionally, yes. How?
Participant: Conventionally we’re transforming into the result.
Dr. Berzin: It transforms into the result. What does that mean?
Participant: You have the substantial cause for something. You would say that, conventionally, it transforms into the result. Not meaning that you still can find, in some way, the cause inside of the result.
Dr. Berzin: OK. We have an obtaining cause (nyer-len-gyi rgyu). Now we’re using an example, the seed and the sprout. The seed transforms into the sprout. Is transform a proper word? What does transform mean? How do you understand transform? How do you understand a continuum? What’s the connection between moment one and moment two?
Participant: A similarity that can define it?
Dr. Berzin: A similarity — same family — a similarity that can be labeled.
Participant: Some sort of similarity in structure.
Dr. Berzin: Some sort of similarity. And of course you can say, “Where do you draw the line between the cause and the result?” With the seed and the sprout, that’s not so clear. With a karmic cause and a result, a ripening of it, that becomes awkward because there are certain karmic potentials that will give many results, not just one. That becomes a little bit more complicated, doesn’t it? But this is where the analysis goes to, is the analysis of a continuum.
What does it mean that one thing transforms into something else? I don’t think transform — I mean, it’s not as though the next moment is already there in the previous moment, and it transforms into that, and it just becomes manifest. Certainly not that. It can’t be that there’s no connection between moment one and moment two. Then moment two arises out of nothing. This is what Nagarjuna, Tsongkhapa, everybody is saying. If you could acknowledge cause and effect while understanding voidness, then this is — Tsongkhapa will quote Nagarjuna — this is more wonderful than wonderful, more amazing than amazing.
Participant: I would say, in a way, it’s all merely labeled. You label this the cause, you label the sprout, and then you label this rice or something. This you label seed, and this you label sprout. But there’s no sprout and no seed. There is a dependent arising, that from this you can’t ripen a dog or something. There is a link. There’s some certainty, some connection, that this seed can’t become a dog. This is dependent arising. Otherwise, it’s only labeling, to label it seed and sprout.
Dr. Berzin: Right. She’s saying: To label seed and label sprout — that’s only mental labeling. Where you draw the line and so on — this is something which a mind has made up. Clearly it arises dependently on mental labeling. But nevertheless, from the seed you get a sprout. From the rice seed, you get a rice sprout; you don’t get from the rice seed a dog. It’s not completely chaotic, and yet it’s not completely fixed. OK. This we could say. Do we really understand it?
Participant: One could say the connection between them is a dependent arising.
Dr. Berzin: Right. The connection between it is dependent arising. Yeah, that’s true. In the case of the seed and the sprout, they’re both physical things, so that’s fairly clear, that the dividing line of when does the sprout first start to come out of the seed — this becomes a biological issue. But this is not the exact parallel here. What we’re talking about is a karmic potential:
- First of all, a karmic action — hitting somebody or something like that, a physical action.
- Then we’re talking about a karmic potential, which is neither a form of physical phenomenon nor a way of being aware of anything. It’s just what can be imputed to connect the action with the result in a sense, imputed on the mental continuum, that there’s something continuing, a potential (it’s not physical; it’s not mental).
- Then the result would be some type of experience of either again being hit or experience of unhappiness or something like that.
Clearly when we’re talking about same family, we’re not talking about a family of something being what we call noncongruent affecting variables (ldan-min ’du-byed), these sort of abstract things. One’s abstract. One is a way of being aware of something, suffering. That’s not the same type of thing. What the same category is, is that they’re coming from… That becomes awkward. It’s the karmic potential that’s destructive. So the action is destructive, the karmic potential is destructive, and then the suffering. If we talk about tendency (sa-bon), that’s neutral. But anyway, it goes like that.
I think it’s a fairly clear differentiation between when something is a potential and when something is an actual experience of unhappiness. It’s not quite the same as a seed and a sprout, is it? But your point about mental labeling is correct.
Participant: Then you get out of this fixed thing when you say, “At what exact point is it turning from a seed into a sprout?”
Dr. Berzin: What’s the exact point when it turns from a seed to a sprout? That’s more unclear than: When does it actually turn from a potential for being hit by a car and being hit by the car? There it’s quite clear.
Participant: This I don’t understand.
Dr. Berzin: There’s a karmic potential, and then there’s an experience of being hit by a car. Although the analogy that’s used is the seed and the sprout, it’s not a precise analogy. Cause and effect there is a little bit clearer, of what is what. The question is: How does it turn? What maintains the connection? What is the connection? That’s the difficult point.
Participant: What is responsible for the time from when they give the input — the cause — to the ripening?
Dr. Berzin: OK. What affects the timespan here? Many variables affect the timespan between the karmic cause and the effect. There are three categories. There are those actions that will ripen in this lifetime, those actions that will ripen in the immediately following lifetime, and those that will ripen any time after that.
Participant: If it’s not purified.
Dr. Berzin: There are two categories of certainty and uncertainty of the ripening. One is the category of certain that it will ripen or uncertain (in other words, it can be purified).
Participant: It’s determined in retrospect, isn’t it?
Dr. Berzin: Is it determined in retrospect? Yes, sure. It’s determined in retrospect if you’ve purified it or not.
There’s another category of certain and uncertain in terms of is it certain when it will ripen. It will ripen either:
- This lifetime.
- It will ripen definitely in the next lifetime (which is referring to karma of being reborn in Avichi (Skt. Avīci) Hell, which is definitely going to ripen in the next lifetime).
- Or an uncertain time of when it will ripen (it will ripen sometime, but it’s uncertain when).
This categorization of certainty and uncertainty of ripening of karma has two different meanings. That took a very, very long time for me to get that straight, asking over and over again and looking up various quotations to get that clear. But there are two distinct meanings if you look in some of the more minor texts of Asanga (Skt. Asaṅga), in the commentaries.
Participant: I’m wondering about the terminology — that it’s certain. What is certain?
Dr. Berzin: There are many uses of the word certain. There’s a law of karma: It’s certain that if it’s suffering, it came from destructive; if it’s happiness, it came from constructive. Then there’s certainty of time — it’s the same word — but certainty of time has to do with whether or not it will definitely ripen or can be purified, or certainty in terms of when it will ripen if it’s going to ripen.
Participant: But there are things that will definitely ripen and can’t be purified?
Dr. Berzin: There are things that definitely will ripen and can’t be purified? Not so much purified as referring to positive karma can’t be totally destroyed. If positive karma could be totally destroyed, then there would be those who — it would be impossible for them to become enlightened or liberated. That’s this whole issue of: Do they have cut so-called roots of virtue (dge-ba’i rtsa-ba)? Some schools in the Chittamatra (Skt. Cittamātra) say that yes, there are those whose so-called roots of virtue — in other words, the positive force that could act as a root for giving liberation and enlightenment — that that has been cut completely so that you don’t have it anymore. If that were the case, then there are certain beings who could not achieve enlightenment.
Participant: Why? They could get new.
Dr. Berzin: They could only get new on the basis of having something positive already there that would cause them to act constructively. Why would they act constructively?
Participant: By chance.
Dr. Berzin: By chance — thank you — by accident, by no cause. That doesn’t work. This is soundly refuted.
Participant: It’s like a tree without roots. It can’t grow, whatever you do.
Dr. Berzin: Tree without a root. Positive karma can only be severely, severely weakened. It can’t be totally eliminated.
Participant: But how do animals get positive potential?
Dr. Berzin: How do animals get positive potential? From previous lifetimes, unless they are a seeing-eye dog or Lassie, some sort of dog that saves others.
Participant: But if their roots are cut…
Dr. Berzin: They don’t have their roots cut. That’s the whole point. Only some schools assert that. Most of the schools refute that.
Participant: Then it’s asymmetric between positive and negative.
Dr. Berzin: Asymmetric? Symmetry is stupid. Why should it be the same in the case of constructive and destructive? Analyze. Analyze.
Destructive is based on misunderstanding. Misunderstanding, unawareness of reality, can be replaced by correct understanding, which has more of a backing (it can be validated). OK. Destructive has a weak basis, so it can be eliminated. Constructive is based at least on a correct understanding of cause and effect; and if you talk about the positive force that’s dedicated to liberation and enlightenment, it’s based on correct information as well, that it’s possible to achieve that. That can be reaffirmed.
Positive karma has a more firm… Positive actions. We’re not talking about the positive karma that keeps you in samsara, but even that at least has a correct understanding of cause and effect, so it’s stronger than the negative karma in terms of can it be totally gotten rid of. Negative can be totally gotten rid of. Positive can only be severely weakened.
In terms of your question, the stronger the negative force and the more that it’s reaffirmed and so on by circumstance, it will ripen more quickly (or the opposite: if it’s weakened by counteracting forces, it’ll ripen much, much later). In terms of this lifetime, there’s a whole list of things that will tend to ripen in this lifetime. It has to do basically with doing extremely positive or extremely negative things with very strong motivation toward those who have been the kindest to you (your parents, your gurus, etc.).
Participant: To be honest, I have a problem with this subject. Maybe I can ask you: Has understanding this whole philosophy helped you to stop doing destructive actions? What you’re talking about — the causes, how they develop, and all this stuff, the details of how karma works — knowing that, has it helped you to stop producing destructive actions?
Dr. Berzin: That’s a very, very good question. If we have understood, to a certain extent, the voidness of cause and effect, has it helped us to diminish or lessen our destructive behavior?
If we really understood it — now I’m not talking about on a personal level — but if we really, really understood it, then as Tsongkhapa says, the more you’re convinced of voidness, the more you’re convinced of cause and effect. You would be quite convinced that suffering consequences will come from acting destructively. Therefore, you would act less destructively.
Has my level personally of understanding this helped to diminish my acting destructively? That’s hard to say. That’s hard to say. I certainly personally try to lessen the force of the negative things that I do. I’ll give you an example: One person cheated me out of a lot of money, and I realized that if I got angry (and I was angry in the beginning)…
Participant: It really happened?
Dr. Berzin: Yes, absolutely. I was cheated out of a lot of money by somebody. I was angry at the beginning with this person, but then I very soon realized that being angry is not going to help the situation; it will only make me more unhappy, and it will increase the negative consequences on this person, whom I considered a very close friend but basically was deceiving me (I trusted this person with money, and then he kept it and ran away). I realized that if I continued to be angry with this person, it would cause that person more suffering as a result of… you know, the teaching that the more suffering that the action produces, that’s involved with the suffering, the more suffering the consequence will be. I think that my understanding of cause and effect and that things can be affected by lessening the conditions helped me very much not to be so angry. Then I stopped being angry with the person. That’s one example in which it helped.
You see, habits are very, very difficult to break. One shouldn’t think that just because you gain some level of understanding of voidness, your negative actions stop so quickly. The habits are very, very strongly ingrained. It’s only on the third of the four stages of the path of preparation, the applying pathway of mind — so you’ve already had combined shamatha (Skt. śamatha) and vipashyana (Skt. vipaśyanā) focused on voidness (it’s still conceptual, but I mean you’ve gotten that and you’re able to have this even in your dreams) — it’s only at that point that you stop creating the negative karma that would bring about one of the worse rebirths. Given that as sort of a marking line, at the poor level of understanding that we have now, or I have now, you can’t expect that the habits, these tendencies to act destructively, are going to stop. But what one can do with one’s understanding that things are affected by cause and effect — the understanding of voidness — is weaken the factors that would make it so heavy. That I certainly try to do. Regret, try to have as few disturbing emotions as possible with it, these types of things. These types of things.
Participant: If you only have an abstract, intellectual understanding of these ideas, it’s not going to be very easy to stop being angry, stop being destructive. If you don’t have a daily practice every morning — of doing the recitation, meditation, visualization — that seems to me personally what reminds me “Cut it out!” more than the intellectual understanding. The vows that I take, the promises you make in the meditation and recitation and mantras — remembering that seems to help more.
Dr. Berzin: Right. What he’s saying is that just to have an intellectual understanding doesn’t bring about so much transformation: one needs to meditate in a daily practice and so on. I don’t want to get very picky with you, but…
Participant: Saying the words, even.
Dr. Berzin: Saying the words and repeating, it reminds yourself that… You see, I don’t want to get picky with you, but what does it mean, an intellectual understanding? Because that can be certainly totally intellectual, that you are repeating the words every day. I think the point — let’s not bring in intellectual or nonintellectual or intuitive — the point is you have to familiarize yourself with this through a daily practice, which is repeating. This is what Tsongkhapa explains with meditation. You have to repeat it over and over again, so you build up a stronger habit, so that you remind yourself.
Now, is it sufficient to just remind yourself “Don’t be angry”? I think it’s a combination of many things. First of all, discipline, to be able to just go “Stop it!” At a certain point, you’re able to do that. It’s not based totally on discipline, but you have the discipline. There’s mindfulness as well. For instance, if I’m in a negative mood — I’m feeling blech, like that — first notice it. Mindfulness has to be there. The longer that you let it go, the more difficult it is to get out of it. Then just say, “I’m not going to be in this mood.” You don’t even have to say anything; you just stop it, like that. If you have enough familiarity with: “This negative mood is based on absolute garbage, of something ripening that’s making me experience unhappiness. There’s absolutely no reason why the circumstances that I’m experiencing now should cause that to continue.” And so, like that, you just stop it. I mean, it’s not as though it’s something that’s there, like a train, that you have to stop. You just go on to the next moment. It’s like reset — it’s just like you reset the computer. That comes only as a result of thinking about this, working with this, day after day, year after year after year, so that then the combination of mindfulness, discipline, concentration, understanding allows you to just change instantly.
You mentioned visualization and mantra practice. It’s exactly the same thing, just on a different level, of just instantaneously I arise as a Buddha-figure. Instantaneously you dissolve this appearance of ordinary appearance and grasping for solid reality. In instantaneously thinking in terms of Buddha-nature, you generate yourself in the form of a Buddha-figure with some understanding of its voidness. It’s exactly the same thing. It can either be done with form, which is then with this Buddha-figure thing, or without form, which is just to change and go on with your conventional life. Again, this comes undoubtedly from, as you say, from the tantra practice combined with all of this sutra practice of discipline, mindfulness, concentration, and so on.
So yes, it’s helped. But that doesn’t mean that I no longer act destructively. I certainly act destructively but probably far less. When I do act destructively it’s less heavy in terms of all the factors that would be there to make it heavy. OK?
That brings us to the end of the class, so we will continue this discussion, because Tsongkhapa goes on and on about further misunderstandings that arise from this issue here of does your understanding of voidness… Let me put it differently: An incorrect understanding of voidness would cause you to totally discard cause and effect, and the point is that it gives you more confidence in belief in cause and effect. That is a very, very difficult point, and Tsongkhapa always mentions that that’s the most difficult point.
That goes back to our discussion that we had. Remember our big discussion that we had when we discussed the different Buddhist tenets, the schools of philosophy, and what I call the trotzdem factor? Trotzdem is the German word which means “in spite of that,” “nevertheless.” Shantideva said this. The example that we used was “This chair is made of atoms and force fields, and there’s nothing solid about it. My body is exactly the same. Trotzdem — nevertheless — I don’t fall through the chair; the chair holds me up. Nevertheless, it functions.” Shantideva said, “If you could understand that and accept that although things are void of being solid, nevertheless they function and hold you up, then you’re ready to accept on a deeper level of things being void of an even more subtle impossible way of existing and nevertheless they still function.” That’s what all of this is about, is not to negate that nevertheless.
Participant: Or better: They can function only because they are void.
Dr. Berzin: And even stronger (this is using dependent arising as the line of reasoning for voidness): Because they dependently arise, they’re void of truly established existence; because they’re void of truly established existence, they dependently arise. Yes, that’s the second step. The first step is nevertheless; the second step is that one proves the other.
We will continue with this.
Let’s end with the dedication. We think whatever positive force, whatever understanding has come from this, may it go deeper and deeper and act as a cause for reaching enlightenment for the benefit of all.