We’re studying this text which I’ve given the name A Letter of Practical Advice on Sutra and Tantra to. The actual Tibetan name for it means “A Brief Indication of the Graded Pathway Minds” (Lam-gyi rim-pa mdo-tsam-du bstan-pa). It is written by the great master Tsongkhapa, and it’s in answer to a letter of request from his friend, who was also both his teacher and student, a great meditator. The request in the letter was to write some practical advice on how to practice sutra and tantra, particularly the anuttarayoga tantra path, the highest class of tantra.
Reliance on a Qualified Spiritual Mentor
Tsongkhapa starts by apologizing that he doesn’t really know very much but he’ll try to answer. Then he says how we have the excellent basis for being able to practice sutra and tantra: we have a human rebirth with all the respites for Dharma study and practice, and we’ve met with the teachings, we have superb teachers, and we have the intelligence to discern what’s to be adopted and what’s to be rejected. In other words, we have the basis for practice, and so we have to engage ourselves with the teachings. To do that we have to rely on guidance from a proper spiritual master who is qualified. The qualifications Tsongkhapa gives just in general, which is that the teacher needs to know what are the states of mind that we need to develop, what are the ones that we need to get rid of; not add anything, not leave anything out; and also know the order in which to develop them and how to suit that to the level of each student. And the teacher needs to have gained certainty about all of this by having gone through a similar course of training and being led through the practices based on the great Buddhist classics.
The Motivating Mental Framework
As for how to begin our practice, we need to train our minds. For that we work on developing our motivating mental framework. The motivating mental framework has to do with what we are aiming for and what is the emotion behind us that drives us toward that. For this we have the graded levels as presented in lam-rim:
- First, we’re aiming for better and better precious human rebirths in the future, our future lives, so that we can continue to study, because we really don’t want to be reborn in worse states in which we have no opportunity to practice and to better our situation.
- The intermediate level: We work for complete liberation from uncontrollably recurring rebirth, based on renunciation, being completely fed up with all the different types of suffering that there is in any state of rebirth.
- On the advanced level we’re working for the fully enlightened state of a Buddha, being moved by love and compassion for all beings and the bodhichitta (Skt. bodhicitta) aim to achieve enlightenment in order to be able to benefit them as fully as it is possible.
How to Meditate
In order to really develop these motivating mental frameworks in a sincere, uncontrived manner, we need to meditate on them, which means to build them up as beneficial habits. Tsongkhapa gives all the instructions on how to do that, in terms of:
- We have to know what are the various states of mind that are the causes for developing these motivating mental frameworks (in other words, what is it based on?).
- What will be the effect of having this state of mind? What will it help us to achieve? What will it help us to get rid of?
- In order to develop this state of mind, what do we have to get rid of?
- We also need to know what to focus on when we’re developing this state of mind, all the different aspects that we have to be aware of, and how our mind relates to that focal object.
- We also need to know the benefits of achieving such a mind, the disadvantages of not achieving it.
- And in between sessions also read texts about it and build up a great deal of positive force and cleanse away obstacles.
All of this is extremely practical and excellent advice.
Then Tsongkhapa says we need to have these motivations all the time, not just at the beginning of the meditation session, not just throughout the session, but at all times. Then once we have this proper foundation — although he doesn’t mention it explicitly — we need to also have a very good understanding, at least on some level, of voidness in order to be able to practice tantra without taking everything too concretely as an ego practice.
The Ethical Self-Discipline of Keeping Vows
Then what he does emphasize is the necessity for ethical discipline as the foundation upon which all of tantra practice is based. For this he speaks about the vows for individual liberation, which are essential for any type of Mahayana (Skt. Mahāyāna) practice, either as a fully ordained monk or nun or as a lay person with the lay vows, and then bodhisattva vows and tantric vows — bodhisattva vows for all classes of tantra, and tantric vows for the two highest classes of tantra.
When we receive an empowerment, which is necessary for practicing tantra, then it’s absolutely mandatory that we keep the vows. Without the vows, there is no empowerment. When we receive empowerment, everything needs to be consciously done. It’s not sufficient to just sit there like a dog or a baby and be present. For tantra, Tsongkhapa emphasizes that best is if we have the vows of a full monk or nun, but at least we need to have the householder vows.
The Generation and Complete Stages of Anuttarayoga Tantra
Then for the actual practice of anuttarayoga tantra, there’s the generation and complete stage. The generation stage is when we generate ourselves in the form of a Buddha-figure as a cause for achieving the body of a Buddha simultaneously with working on the causes for the mind of a Buddha, and the manner in which we generate it is similar to the process of death, bardo, and rebirth. Then on the complete stage, based on our competency in the generation stage, we’re able to actually generate from the subtle energy-system something which is going to be the direct cause for achieving the physical bodies of a Buddha. For the practice of the highest class of tantra, the generation and the complete stages have to be done in their proper order. We can’t skip the generation stage in order to just go immediately to the complete stage, where we work with subtle energies and chakras and channels.
Then Tsongkhapa goes into a lengthy discussion of how to visualize ourselves as a Buddha-figure. There’s no need to go through all the details of that again; we’ve covered that quite extensively. We’ve also covered all the various instructions on how to gain perfect concentration on such a visualization.
Voidness
Then concerning the complete stage, Tsongkhapa just mentions that it has practices with the subtle energy-system and doesn’t go into great detail about it but rather focuses on the issue of voidness meditation. He emphasizes that the voidness that we understand and practice with is the same whether we’re talking about sutra, whether we’re talking about the generation stage or the complete stage of anuttarayoga tantra practice. In fact, Tsongkhapa is quite emphatic and quite revolutionary in his discussion of this. It’s not mentioned here in the text, but he says, “Even to achieve liberation from samsara (Skt. saṃsāra) as an arhat, the voidness that we understand is the same.” In the other schools that was not the case.
The Voidness of Cause and Effect (continued)
Then Tsongkhapa goes on to discuss voidness and says that we need to rely on the classical Indian treatises for this, particularly the works of Nagarjuna. In terms of this understanding of voidness, there are some persons who might have trained extensively in previous lifetimes so that in this lifetime, with very little training, they’re able to understand everything non-conceptually very quickly. But for most of us that will not be the case, and we need to rely on lines of reasoning such as parted from being either one or many, which we’ve discussed rather extensively in terms of how the basis for labeling and what the label refers to — if they had truly established existence on their own, and if there were such things as truly established existent phenomena, then these two would either have to be the same truly established phenomenon or two different truly established phenomena, each of them existing independently, by their own power; and since neither of those makes any logical sense, then there is no such thing as truly established phenomena, especially in terms of mental labeling. Anyway, that’s just in brief.
Then we started, last time, our discussion of Tsongkhapa’s point concerning some of the deviant or mistaken understandings that we might have. I’ll read the paragraph again that we were discussing last time:
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.
Tsongkhapa emphasizes in this sentence that we need to rely not just on lines of reasoning but also scriptural quotations, and vice versa (not just scriptural quotations but also lines of reasoning). These two are based on each other. Just as when he discussed the qualifications of a teacher and the type of training that one has in general — remember, Tsongkhapa said the teacher needs to have been led through the stages of development by relying on the great Buddhist classics — and so similarly when we are working with logic, that also needs to be logic which is based on what we find in the classics, particularly of Nagarjuna and the commentaries that are based on his works.
This is an interesting point actually, because what one finds is that if you have a very clever mind, a very clever mind can make sense of almost anything; and as we might know from modern practice of law, you can argue any position logically and then you can make a case for it. When we examine with logic, we have to find our guidelines from the scriptural texts and not just play games with logic. Logic is used for understanding what is given in the great texts. Likewise, when we study the texts, we don’t just accept them at face value, but we work with them with logic in order to be able to understand them.
In our understanding of these, Tsongkhapa says that we can understand these either in a deviant or a non-deviant manner (deviant means to go astray from the actual meaning).
Tsongkhapa continues:
Of these, the first might be (as follows).
In other words, an incorrect or deviant understanding.
Suppose we had analyzed from the viewpoint of many lines of reasoning the arising, ceasing and so forth of phenomena.
Remember, arising refers to the generation of things, and here Tsongkhapa is referring specifically to the twelve links of dependent arising — in other words, the discussion of what are the causes of samsara and how is samsara generated (in other words, the second noble truth). Ceasing is referring to the third noble truth, the true cessation or the true stopping of these causes, and the suffering that they generate, so that they never ever occur again.
We can analyze from the viewpoint of many lines of reasoning the arising, ceasing and so forth of phenomena. That’s very, very essential, to analyze these points, because our whole refuge (in other words, safe direction) and our whole confidence in the Dharma as a method for gaining liberation and enlightenment is based on our conviction that what Buddha taught about the arising of suffering and the possibility to stop it forever are logically correct. We don’t just accept it on blind faith. This is a very crucial point that Tsongkhapa is focusing on.
He says:
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.)
In other words, when we analyzed statements that you find in a lot of the Madhyamaka (Skt. Mādhyamaka) literature and Prajnaparamita literature (Heart Sutra and so on) — “There’s no arising. There’s no ceasing. There’s no nose. There’s no eyes. There are no ears,” etc. — then we thought that conventionally there was nothing that existed, and so everything fell apart, and we couldn’t find any way of taking anything as being conventionally this. In other words, normally in the tenet systems other than Prasangika (Skt. Prāsaṅgika), the way that Tsongkhapa presents it, there is something on the side of an object — a defining characteristic or something — findable, that establishes the identity of something as this or that or just establishes its identity as an existent phenomenon, a functional phenomenon. If there was nothing on the side of an object that established the identity of it, and there was no coming about of that object with that findable defining characteristic, and no ceasing of it, etc., then we might think that there’s no such thing as any conventionally existent this. Thus, we felt there was nothing conventionally true or real.
Tsongkhapa goes on:
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.
In other words, we think that we don’t exist, nothing exists, and so what are you talking about when you’re talking about the bondage in samsara of a limited being like myself and liberation of someone like myself, of all beings? I don’t exist and nobody else exists. What’s the point of talking about samsara and nirvana (Skt. nirvāṇa)? None of us exist. All we have to realize is that nobody exists, or nothing exists, and that’s it.
Tsongkhapa goes on:
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.
This has to do with all of ethical discipline and the basic teachings of the causes of suffering, at least the most basic level, that if we act in a constructive way it produces happiness, or the other way around: if we experience happiness, it’s the result of constructive behavior; if we experience suffering it’s the result of destructive behavior. Here we’re speaking about just our ordinary usage of [the word suffering], the suffering of suffering (sdug-bsngal-gyi sdug bsnal).
We would think that since cause and effect don’t really exist, since there’s so-called no arising and no ceasing, then what’s the point of acting constructively and avoiding acting destructively? Because the arising of suffering from destructive actions is like the arising of horns from a rabbit’s head, that it’s the arising of something that doesn’t exist, so what’s the point?
Then Tsongkhapa goes on:
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.
That is an important point that Tsongkhapa is making here. That has to do with, first of all, conventional truth and deepest truth. When we talk about conventional truth…
But I’m just wondering before we get into this, since this is a complicated point, if we need to discuss more about the voidness of cause and effect, which we had discussed quite a bit last week. Is there anything left over from that before we get into this whole discussion of conventional and deepest truth and the relationship of conceptual cognition in terms of that?
What is the general argument that’s used to refute truly established causality?
Participant: There’s one reason where you analyze whether the result’s already existent in the cause or whether the result can arise without a cause being present.
Dr. Berzin: OK, there’s two arguments that one is refuting, that things arise from no cause or that things are already existent in the cause.
Is there another argument that’s used? The other argument is born from neither self nor other. Born from self would be similar to this argument in terms of the result is already existent at the time of the cause. And born from others, that things are truly existent independently, so it could come from anything, cause can come from anything (there’s no relation between cause and effect).
How do we understand this? Remember, last time we were speaking about if the result is already present in the cause and just has to become manifest, then this is equivalent to predetermination, that once the cause has been set, has come into being, then that result is already predetermined — it’s already existent, in a sense, in the cause, and it’s just waiting to come out — which then would negate any possibility of changing things of what will happen or of the effect of various conditions or being to affect what comes about from a cause. Things happening from no cause or from an irrelevant cause — which would be the case of born from others — then anything could happen.
It’s important to connect this with something on a very practical level. If you remember, some years ago we had a whole weekend discussion on the issue of free will versus determination or predetermination. Free will would imply that you could do anything; and if you could do anything and anything could happen, that implies basically no cause. If I had free will, I could jump out the window and flap my arms and fly, or I could start speaking to you in Zulu, if I had free will, complete free will. That doesn’t make any sense. What we do has to be based on a cause, and the cause has to be relevant to the result — and we’ve spoken in terms of that last week, in terms of things being in the general class of phenomenon — so that it’s not that anything could happen from anything but that there are certain limitations of what could happen from what, and these are not fixed by something inside the object, but what actually will happen is affected very much by conditions.
Is that fairly clear about causation? I mean, it’s interesting when you think about it. Somebody asked last week: How has this actually affected your behavior, in terms of not only the voidness of causality but the voidness of the effect, that things don’t come from no cause whatsoever — the result arises from nothing, or the result already exists and is just waiting to happen — how does this affect our behavior? Do we really have confidence that if I want to achieve something, I need to build up the causes?
If I build up the causes, what I think are the causes, it’s not inevitable that the result that I imagine is going to happen from them will actually happen. Why is that the case? It’s the case because we’re not in control. This is the mistake that often can happen. We think “Ah, I’m so clever. I understand cause and effect. I’m going to manipulate and control what’s going to happen. All I have to do is give money to ten beggars, homeless people on the U-Bahn, the subway, and then I’m going to make a lot of money in my business.” We want to manipulate karma by cause and effect. Is that a correct understanding? No, not at all.
Now that might be a silly example that I’m using, but what about the example of “If I do a hundred thousand prostrations, then everything is going to go OK in my practice and I’m going to get insights.” If it’s done as a manipulative ego trip, you’re in trouble.
Participant: You’re talking about motivation?
Dr. Berzin: I’m talking about not only the motivation behind it; I’m talking about the understanding of the role of me in this whole process. Because when we do any actions, it’s not just the voidness of the cause and the effect; it’s also voidness of the agent, the voidness of the three spheres (’khor-gsum) that are involved (although there’s several ways of formulating the three, so actually you get four):
- the cause (cause can be motivation),
- the action,
- the me involved (the agent), and
- the result.
That’s also covered by what’s known as the three gateways to liberation (rnam-thar sgo-gsum), which are:
- no characteristic of a cause (the voidness of a cause),
- no hope of a truly existent result (the voidness of the result), and
- no truly existent identity of phenomenon in terms of the person that’s doing it.
Sometimes a fourth factor is added, which is in terms of the act as well, so it covers this whole area that I just mentioned, the voidness of the three spheres.
You can’t manipulate karma thinking that I can control it. Why can’t you? Not only because there’s no truly existent me that could be the controller — that’s obvious — but why not? Even if we understand there’s no truly existent me, why can’t I be in control of what happens?
Participant: Because of interconnectivity.
Dr. Berzin: Exactly. Because of interconnectivity. All the conditions which will arise for providing the circumstances in which whatever causes we have built up will ripen, and the form that that ripening will take, are under the influence of everybody else’s karma. Plus, the physical conditions of the universe. This is a very humbling understanding.
Participant: But can’t you control the direction which karma maybe goes?
Dr. Berzin: Can you control the direction in which karma goes? One needs to understand that to avoid the other extreme, which is that “It doesn’t matter what I do, because everything is influenced by other things and there is no me, so I can’t influence it at all.” Yes, we can influence it, but we can’t control it. Is there a me that is influencing it? How do we understand the me that is involved in building up causes for samsara or for liberation? I mean, that’s our topic here.
What’s important is to just do it. My mother always used to use this expression of do something straight up and down — just do it, just take out the garbage or whatever. Don’t make a big deal out of it: “Oh, I don’t want to do it,” like that, but just do it. It’s the same thing in terms of doing constructive things: you just do it without thinking so much in terms of me and “I’m doing it” and complaining or boasting or bragging. Conventionally, who has done it? Me. Nobody else has done it. But you’re not thinking in terms of me; you just sort of do it.
It’s the same thing with motivation. The motivation is there, but you’re not constantly making a concrete thing out of the motivation: “I’m doing this for all beings. Oh, poor beings,” and making a whole dramatic thing out of it. You just do it. You have to avoid the extreme of doing it mechanically, with no feeling whatsoever. But it’s not a concretized motivation. That’s again making a truly existent causal factor and thinking of it — “Oh, I’m so compassionate.”
Participant: [missing]
Dr. Berzin: What she’s saying is that we also need to be quite aware that the way that things ripen — I mean the specific thing or manner in which things ripen — is also not under our control, so we can’t guarantee that things are going to ripen in a certain way. If we have a conception beforehand that we want to obtain this specific ripening of karma by doing this specific action, we are fooling ourselves, because that’s not going to happen, that’s not under our control. If we give up that concept, that I’m doing this for this specific reason or goal, then we can just sort of do it. And what was the last part? But you just do it without having it being a conscious thought process.
Participant: Just even that little bit of thought can affect the outcome.
Dr. Berzin: Right. Even that little bit of thought — if we make it an ego trip, it will affect it. I mean, this gets into the sentence that we have put off discussing, which is the whole point about conceptual thought: Is all conceptual thought and thinking distorted and therefore going to negatively affect what’s going on? Tsongkhapa refutes that. He says no.
This is an interesting point, because now you have the whole issue of setting the intention before doing something and dedicating the positive force at the end. How do we do that without concretizing cause and effect? You see, because this is another issue, that he says, “You might think voidness, so what’s the point of setting an intention and doing a dedication?”
Participant: [inaudible]
Dr. Berzin: Right. If you set the intention, she says, and do the dedication at the end, then you don’t have to worry during the actual action; you just do it.
Participant: It’s not that you worry about it, and it’s not that you’re on autopilot or something, but by giving it that — that’s what those are for.
Dr. Berzin: Right. You give the thrust, she says. It’s not that you do things by autopilot or mechanically. But by giving the thrust with the intention beforehand and the dedication at the end, it sort of covers your action. I mean, Tsongkhapa said earlier in the text that the motivating mental framework, that motivation, needs to be sustained throughout the meditation and throughout the day, so that means throughout all of your activity.
But isn’t setting the intention and doing the dedication conceptual? I think it is. It’s usually done verbally in your mind or reciting out loud, and it is conceptual. “May this ripen in always being cared for by kind and qualified gurus in all my lifetimes. May I always have a precious human rebirth. May all beings become enlightened,” and so on. Is that concretizing the result? Because what you say is true: you can’t concretize a specific result.
It becomes very interesting. What about these tulkus who say, “In my next lifetime I’m going to be reborn in this and that family,” and so on. There are very few who do that, who are able to do that, but some do, like the Karmapas. That sounds pretty specific.
Participant: But they’re the Karmapas.
Dr. Berzin: But they are the Karmapas? That is a flimsy excuse.
Participant: That’s why we aren’t the Karmapa.
Participant: They understand the system from another level, right?
Dr. Berzin: You understand the system from another level? Yeah. I mean, it’s not done as an ego trip. But let’s look at it from our level.
Participant: [inaudible]
Dr. Berzin: Right. He’s saying that the activity of such beings as the Karmapa (and this is in general of enlightened beings) is that everything happens — it spontaneously accomplishes all is the technical term, lhundrub (lhun-grub, spontaneously establishing appearances) — without any conscious effort; it just sort of happens. And if they are omniscient, they will know the not-yet-happenings of various things. Now we go into our whole horribly long, complicated discussion of not-yet-happening phenomena and their existence and can we know them now or not. Let’s not go in the direction of that discussion, because that is not really the level at which we are at at this moment. Let’s talk about it from our own point of view.
If we are dealing with setting the intention and doing the dedication, we are very much thinking in terms of cause and effect, aren’t we? I mean, if we have gotten to that point at which we actually consciously make an effort to set our intention and dedicate, whether it’s just in terms of our meditation session or in terms of our entire day, how do we do that in a way that integrates our understanding of the voidness of cause and effect?
Participant: [missing]
Dr. Berzin: OK. One way of doing it, as Lama Zopa does, is that “I (who exists but not from my own side), may I attain enlightenment (which exists but not from its own side), and may all beings (who exist but don’t exist from their own side), etc., etc.” That becomes a bit wordy but makes a very good point if one can sincerely understand what you’re saying. “And may the Buddhas (who exist but not from their own side) assist in this matter,” and so on. I think that that’s very good if you can do that. It’s a very good way of integrating the understanding.
The thing that I wanted to point out, though, is that coming from our Western religions, it really is very difficult to avoid (even if it’s only on an unconscious level) the dedication turning into a prayer to Buddha or Buddhas: “Please grant me liberation and enlightenment and grant all living beings liberation and enlightenment.” Even if we don’t think it consciously, it often has this unconscious flavor of praying to God that it happens. At least that I’ve found in myself when I analyze what the unspoken feeling is that’s there.
Participant: [inaudible]
Dr. Berzin: Right. What she’s saying is that what we say is not important in terms of the intention and the dedication. It’s a mental process, and we have to get into a meditative state, which I will assume means some understanding of voidness.
Participant: But that’s what you were asking. You said: How do you do that?
Dr. Berzin: How do you do that?
Participant: [inaudible]
Dr. Berzin: Right. But the state of mind that you have to be in, in order to be doing that, is some understanding of voidness.
Participant: Yes, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t utter words.
Dr. Berzin: Oh, no, no. She’s saying, “How can you say these words and they’re just conceptual?” That is the fallacy that Tsongkhapa is going to point out, that just because it’s conceptual doesn’t mean that it’s distorted and false.
Participant: But you were asking how can we do that.
Dr. Berzin: How do we say, how do we understand — in other words, what would be a good way of integrating an understanding of voidness in terms of intention and dedication (which is cause and effect)? And can we actually sustain that so that we see that if we’re about to get angry and yell at somebody, or push ahead of everybody in order to be first in line or whatever, we don’t just do it on the basis of “I don’t want to be a bad boy or a bad girl” — and so we’re really just a policeman or policewoman with ourselves — but we’re doing it with an understanding of cause and effect? All these issues are there in terms of the application of the understanding of cause and effect.
I think that it’s a different matter which is our understanding of “From stealing, the result is poverty.” Are we actually convinced of that? That, I think, is a different level of conviction.
Participant: [missing]
Dr. Berzin: She’s saying that she understands this in terms of “If you act in a constructive way, it gives a positive state of mind.”
Participant: It’s not “If you do this, you’ll get rich.”
Dr. Berzin: Not “If you do this, you get rich” and so on. Positive state of mind.
I would qualify that a little bit. What it gives is a positive force, or positive potential, or positive energy in a state of mind. It doesn’t necessarily translate into a conscious state of mind, but the force is there; the energy is there.
Participant: Happy.
Dr. Berzin: Happy? That’s a difficult problem, because so many karmas are ripening every moment that our state of happy and unhappy is constantly going up and down. Happy about what? is another issue. I mean the circumstance in which we experience happiness is yet another factor.
Participant: [missing]
Dr. Berzin: Right. Now she’s pointing out something very important, which is that if we’re in line and we’re pushing and we’re very uptight and angry and clinging to our getting our turn first, then it’s a very uneasy and uncomfortable state of mind. Whereas if we’re relaxed, it’s a more comfortable state of mind. The classic explanation of what you’re describing is the effect of the disturbing emotion rather than the specific action of pushing. And of course, the disturbing emotion is what motivates you to push.
Participant: That’s the cause.
Dr. Berzin: Right. The cause can also be seen as disturbing emotion. And the effect is how you experience it. But there are many, many levels of result, and so this is an immediate way in which we experience something, which might not always be the case. For instance, you could have a great…If you really don’t have the disturbing emotion, then you would feel peaceful. But you could have the disturbing emotion — let’s say I want to yell at somebody or hit them, and I don’t; I control my anger. I’m still angry. I’m still upset. Just not acting out the disturbing emotion doesn’t necessarily make us feel at ease. But you are correct; we are talking about cause and result. But here in karma what we’re talking about is a result that’s going to happen way in the future. You don’t have instant karma. Things don’t work like that.
We need to understand cause and effect on both levels, both the level that you’re speaking about — the immediate result, which is on the level of “If I don’t drive carefully, I’m going to get into an accident,” and so I drive when I’m drunk and then I get into an accident. That’s what’s called a manmade result (skyes-bu byed-pa’i ’bras-bu). That’s sort of the immediate physical result. That we certainly have to understand in terms of voidness. But then there’s the type of result that ripens from a potential on your mental continuum way down in the future from various types of potentials and forces that you’ve built up, and that’s a whole different level and much more difficult to have confidence that there is such a thing, much more difficult, because the immediate results — you know, you stick your hand in fire and you get burned — that’s easier to understand; that’s quite obvious.
Participant: How can you say something happens suddenly?
Dr. Berzin: Ah, now you get to the heart of the matter. We could think in terms of “Maybe this lifetime,” but we might not see those results in this lifetime. But to think in terms of results in future lifetimes, then, we really have to believe in future lifetimes, which means belief in beginningless mind and endless mind, which is a tough one.
Participant: Then you never can say, “This is the cause, and this is the effect.”
Dr. Berzin: Right. Because then you could never say, “This is the cause, and this is the effect,” because the cause could be from something that was done a million eons ago.
Participant: How can you prove it?
Dr. Berzin: How can you prove it? That is why we’ve been saying that to think in terms of “This specific karmic action all by itself, not affected by anything else, has given, a million eons later, this specific result.” It doesn’t work like that. Everything is very cumulative, and everything’s affected by other things.
Participant: Tsongkhapa said, “Don’t think about the results.”
Dr. Berzin: Right. Shanti’s pointing out that Tsongkhapa — and Tsongkhapa is not alone here, but most great masters have said, “Give up all hopes.” I’m thinking of some horrible example of walking into a prison and “Give up all hopes.” But anyway, have no hopes, particularly hopes of some sort of effect in this lifetime, good results. But this is the general instruction that we always find in meditation. Don’t have any hopes or expectations or worries — hopes that it will go well or worries that it will go poorly, that it will go badly — because both of them are going to really destroy your meditation.
Participant: Really, we have to work on that.
Participant: Destroy what?
Dr. Berzin: Destroy the meditation from going well.
Participant: [missing]
Dr. Berzin: Right. He’s giving a very classic example, that he was in the forest in a very peaceful state of mind with his rosary, his mala, saying OM MANI PEME HUM — calm, peaceful, happy, wishing compassion to all beings, walking his dog — and some people came along and did something nasty to his dog, and instantly he wished them dead. Things like that are karmic habits. I mean, Tsongkhapa has said this — so many masters have said this — to work against the force of our negative potentials is like trying to roll a huge boulder uphill. There’s just so much heavy familiarity with negative states of mind that the slightest thing can trigger it, and it takes such an unbelievable amount of effort to overcome that strong tendency to think negatively. I’m sure we all have experienced that.
Participant: Then I did have to consciously think “No. Stop. Pull back from this emotional thought.”
Dr. Berzin: Right. Then you have to consciously pull back from it, which is exactly the instructions of meditation, that you try to become mindful as quickly as possible of when we have deviated (gone away) from the desired state of mind and correct it, bring ourselves back.
The trick, especially if we’re talking about coming under the influence of disturbing emotions — Shantideva has tons of verses about this — is that the longer you let it go, the more difficult it is to correct. Because anger just builds up and builds up and builds up, and then it’s very difficult to calm down. If you can catch it in the very beginning, it’s much easier. That requires recognizing the disadvantages. “This is my enemy,” Shantideva said, without making it into a concrete enemy and then we’re paranoid that these demons inside us are going to come up with these horrible thoughts. That also is quite a deviation of how you could — “I’m possessed by the Devil, and the Devil is making me have all these evil thoughts. I will punish myself to get the Devil out of me.” We could go on that trip, which is certainly not going to be a very happy trip.
Participant: Is that a Western approach, “The Devil made me do it”?
Dr. Berzin: Is that a Western approach, “The Devil made me do it”? Some fundamentalists think that way.
Participant: But Tibetans appropriate [propitiate] the local beings and spirits.
Dr. Berzin: Right. Tibetans do appropriate local beings and spirits. What’s that all about? That’s a very interesting issue.
Participant: They hire lamas to come do it for them.
Dr. Berzin: They hire lamas to come do it for them. Is that dealing with the Devil? Is that equivalent? That’s very interesting. How would we understand that? Do you think it’s the same?
Participant: No.
Dr. Berzin: You don’t think it’s the same. What’s the difference?
Participant: They’re working with a sentient being.
Dr. Berzin: They’re working with a sentient being.
Participant: They’re not trying to destroy it.
Dr. Berzin: Not trying to destroy it. Surely isn’t the Devil a sentient being?
Participant: Then there’s the concept of voidness.
Dr. Berzin: There’s the concept of voidness. That’s assuming that the lamas are well qualified.
Participant: Whereas the Christian idea of the Devil is that he’s truly existent, he is 100% evil, and isn’t worth having any compassion for, so he must be fought.
Dr. Berzin: The Western concept of Satan is that he’s truly existent from his own side, 100% evil, can’t be saved, and is the enemy, not an object of compassion.
Now the interesting question is: To think that problems come from a malevolent spirit, whether we call it the Devil or we call it harmful spirits or ghosts, is that saying that things come from an irrelevant cause? Are there such things as harmful spirits?
Participant: Djinn.
Dr. Berzin: There are djinn in the Islamic framework.
Participant: According to the Buddhist system, there are all kinds of beings.
Dr. Berzin: According to the Buddhist system, there are many beings who have harmful intentions toward others.
Participant: Including humans.
Dr. Berzin: Including humans. Now I’m asking on a personal level: How do you deal with this in your encounter with Tibetan Buddhism?
Participant: [inaudible]
Dr. Berzin: How do you deal with what?
Participant: With beings that you can see.
Dr. Berzin: With beings that you can see. That’s a very good way to start.
Participant: But there’s many different beings, beings that are in a revealing form or a nonrevealing form.
Dr. Berzin: Right. A being that’s in a revealing form or nonrevealing form. We have terrorists. Here we go.
Participant: You don’t need demons.
Dr. Berzin: We don’t need demons. Whether the terrorists are actually real people or imagined terrorists, that’s the same thing. The Devil is the supreme terrorist, isn’t he?
Participant: If people believe in these things, one has to deal with it.
Dr. Berzin: OK. If you believe in it, then you have to…
Participant: But there are lamas that don’t — they’re not just doing it because possession is a superstition.
Dr. Berzin: They really believe it. He’s saying that there are lamas who are not just playing…
Participant: [missing]
Dr. Berzin: Marianna’s pointing out her experience with one lama who, toward one person, gave him an amulet for protection from harmful spirits, and to another person (herself) said, “Why are you believing in all of this superstition?”
But what’s the relevance of this discussion? The relevance of this discussion is in terms of the voidness of cause and effect, and so are we going to a… Is harm from harmful spirits harm from the son of a barren woman, something that doesn’t exist, and so we don’t have to worry about that? Or is it something that, on the other hand, of course truly exists, that this harmful spirit is what’s causing all my problems? Or how can we put it together with our understanding of voidness of cause and effect?
Participant: It’s kind of like assuming because we don’t see them, there’s no bacteria. You don’t see the bacteria, but they have an effect.
Dr. Berzin: Right. We can understand it in terms of bacteria or viruses. “I don’t see them attacking me, so they’re not real,” but in fact they do affect us negatively. But we believe in bacteria and viruses. Do we believe in harmful spirits? That’s an interesting question. I think that if we’re going to accept the six realms in terms of the Buddhist presentation of hell beings and ghosts, etc., then we would have to accept that there are those in the ghost realms that are harmful, just as there are harmful humans.
Participant: [missing]
Dr. Berzin: What Manuel is pointing out is that there was an occasion when His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Václav Havel and other Nobel Peace Prize winners were speaking about going to Iraq to try to… This was right before the American invasion, when there was the possibility to see if they could convince Saddam Hussein to quiet down and not be so defiant. And what I heard from speeches of His Holiness was that he said, well, he didn’t know anybody in Iraq. Nobody invited him. They couldn’t just go there. Therefore, if they just went there, it would be suicidal, and this was the problem. You see, that fits into the thing of a Buddha has to be requested to help. You don’t push yourself on others. Others have to be receptive and open.
Let’s get back to our discussion of cause and effect. I think the point is that there are going to be many forces that affect what’s going to happen, both seen and unseen, and whether we call them harmful forces (global warming, pollution; we can call that a harmful force) or we actually conceive of it as a being with a mental continuum (which could be, if we accept the existence of these sort of life forms and so on), they’re just one factor.
And with the harmful beings, there are many different ways of dealing with them. You might remember in the lojong (blo-sbyong, attitude training) thing of a lot of obstacles and difficulties are happening to us, then we feed the demons — you say, “Take more. Bring on more. May you be happy,” make offerings to them, this type of thing — which changes very, very much the whole way of experiencing something, whether we actually believe in harmful spirits or not. At least this is my experience of it.
You might have remembered there was a period of time — I think I mentioned it — where so many of my computer things just broke. The computer crashed; the printer broke. I mean, so many things broke, and so all you could do was sort of laugh at it and say, “Come on, what else can happen? Bring on more, whatever things that you need to take. Let it all ripen.” Rather than getting upset and fighting against it, if you apply that advice in the lojong teachings it really does work.
There are ways of working with harmful spirits. But the point is to see that if we think in terms of cause and effect it’s all very fluid, and you can change conditions; you can change circumstances.
Participant: [missing]
Dr. Berzin: Well, yes. This is a very good point. He’s saying that if we — although I don’t see the connection — but if we compare harmful spirits with bacteria and viruses, then… I don’t know what the connection is with the next thing that you said.
Participant: I heard the teacher say that you could prove the contact with the HIV virus, and if you don’t have the contact…
Dr. Berzin: What does that have to do with harmful spirits?
Participant: Because you mentioned that you could see it a bit like a bacteria or a virus.
Dr. Berzin: OK. I see the connection. Geshe Khamlungpa was always crying out of compassion for the misery of the harmful spirits. This is somebody that lived back in the, I think, twelfth or thirteenth century. There was a place which was infested with harmful spirits and harmful ghosts, and anybody who went out there was just really harmed very badly. Geshe Khamlungpa went out there and he spent the night, and none of them harmed him. And when somebody asked the harmful spirits, “Why didn’t you harm him?” they said, “How can we harm somebody who has so much compassion for us?”
By that analogy, what Jorge is saying is that if you think in terms of HIV or these sort of things, you could say, “If I come in contact with HIV, if I don’t have the karma to be infected by it, I won’t get HIV.” I think that that is — it’s certainly part of the laws of karma, though. That says, “If you haven’t built up the cause, you will not experience the effect.” Why is it in a plane accident, or something like that, one or two people survive? They didn’t build up the cause to be killed in that type of situation.
The problem with thinking like that is the hubris, the false pride, that says beforehand, “I have so much good karma, I can’t get infected.” There’s a classic example of one very, very abusive teacher that had HIV and thought that he could have sex with — I mean, he was seducing students and thought that he could have sex with students and, because he was such a high being, he would not infect them with HIV. And in fact, he did, and there was a huge, horrible scandal about all of that.
There are these very false views, that “I’m so great that…” — you know, beforehand thinking. But here we’re thinking that the result already is there at the time of the cause that “I can have sex with anybody with HIV and I won’t get it” or “If I have HIV, I can have sex with anybody and not give it to them.” I think it’s only in retrospect that you could say that “I wasn’t infected. I didn’t have the karma to do that.” You could explain that in terms of “I have a very strong immune system,” or whatever.
Participant: Do you think there is such a thing as the karma not to get it?
Dr. Berzin: There is the karma not to get hurt. There could be people in wars: The bomb falls, and everybody gets killed, but they happen to have gone to the bathroom at that time and they didn’t get killed, because they were in a different room. Why? Luck? No. Buddhism doesn’t accept that things happen just for no cause or for an irrelevant cause.
Participant: This karma took them to the bathroom?
Dr. Berzin: This karma took them to the bathroom? This is an interesting question. There was an impulse that came to their mind to go to the toilet at that time. Where did that impulse come from? It had come from drinking a lot of water earlier in the day? Where did it come from? I mean you can’t say that it just came from the absence of the karma to be killed in the attack on the house. How can something be caused by the absence of something?
Participant: [missing]
Dr. Berzin: Right. Manuel has it exactly correctly, that there are many, many causes that are involved with why that person went to the toilet at just that time when the bomb fell on the other part of the house and this person wasn’t killed.
Cause and effect: The outcome of this whole discussion is that it’s very, very complex, many, many different factors, both seen and unseen, both in this lifetime and previous lifetimes. We have to differentiate karmic causes from conditions. There’s the condition of drinking a lot of water, which is a condition for going to the toilet more frequently than you might. There are many, many factors which are involved. What caused you to drink a lot of water that day? Could you say it was because you didn’t have the karma to be killed in the bomb? That doesn’t make any sense, because then the result of not being killed by the bomb is already there beforehand. Did it just happen coincidently, then, that you drank a lot of water that morning? That would be the extreme of no cause, no relation. It’s not so simple.
Participant: Are there any examples of how this might integrate?
Dr. Berzin: Are there examples, he asks, of how conditions integrate with karmic causes, of why certain conditions…
Participant: Because it’s always easy to say, “That was because of whatever.”
Dr. Berzin: Right. He says that it’s very easy in retrospect to say, “There was a karmic cause, and then there was this condition,” and so on, but is there any way to predict beforehand?
Participant: Is there a model of how this integrates with our normal, material-level causality?
Dr. Berzin: Right. Is there any way of integrating this with our normal sense of immediate causality? I don’t know that that’s so simple to say, because… Here’s a cheap answer, which is “Only a Buddha knows,” but that’s not a very good answer. The point being that absolutely everything in the universe is interrelated. It’s like being able to predict the weather: you have to know everything, because everything that’s happened in the past and happening now is going to affect the weather.
Similarly, in terms — I mean, this is why a Buddha, in order to be able to help all beings, needs to be omniscient, because they have to understand all the factors that are affecting why your situation is the way that it is now. That has to do with not only your karmic causes but all the conditions which affect it from other beings as well to affect what’s happening to you now. If a Buddha teaches you something, what will be the effect not just on you in isolation but in all the interaction that you have with everybody else? How will that affect the whole system of all beings? In order to really benefit everybody, you have to be omniscient, otherwise you don’t know — what’s going to happen if I do this? And yet it’s not predetermined. This is the thing that’s so difficult to understand, that it’s not predetermined that if I teach you this, it’s going to have this and that effect.
Participant: Is it already known?
Dr. Berzin: Is it already knowable? This gets into our not-yet-happenings, and that is a very complex thing. I mean, is it then a probability? Is it — what is it? Considering that it’s nine o’clock, this is not the time to go into that. Fortunately, I’m saved.
Participant: [missing]
Dr. Berzin: Manuel is pointing out a very good point. From first-hand experience, he knows: He was on a train. There were skinheads that were brutalizing people, and he jumped off a moving train and survived (and didn’t jump off and smack into a pole or something like that, which could have happened). If you start to question: Why did this happen? Why was I spared? and this or that, you could go into very disturbing, confused states of mind. And in many situations, it’s best not to question it and not to analyze too deeply, especially when you don’t have the tools, or you don’t have a teacher to guide you to make sure that you don’t go off into a potentially dangerous direction in your analysis. That’s very true. There are certain things that we just have to accept and go on with our lives. “I got off very easy that time. I must have done something in some past life or whatever that allowed for that to happen,” or whatever.
This is a very relevant point, that there are many levels of explanation of things, and we have to find the proper level of explanation that we can understand and work with and not try to go to a deeper level of explanation and understanding before we are ready to be able to digest that and comprehend it. This is why Tsongkhapa said in the very beginning of the text — the qualities of the teacher — that the teacher knows how to apply to each student the progressive levels of deeper and deeper understanding and not introduce something too deep before somebody can really understand it. I think if I’ve remembered Tsongkhapa’s line, it was that if a doctor has the strongest medicine, like penicillin, and he thinks that just because it’s the strongest medicine, it should be applied to everything, and if he applies it for a headache this can actually damage the person rather than help the person. Similarly, this stuff about cause and effect goes very, very deep.
I think that, at least on the basic, beginning level, we need to understand that it’s not so simple, that things happen for a multiplicity of causes and conditions that are not fixed, what’s going to happen. But on the other hand, it’s not totally arbitrary what’s going to happen. What we do affects what is going to happen, but we can’t control what’s going to happen. Start to work at least on that level with confidence that it does matter what I do. And even if I don’t see the results immediately, the connection between cause and effect is there.
That becomes a very… I mean, we’ve discussed this in the past, and that whole process of how what is the connection between a karmic cause and what ripens from it a million lifetimes from now — how is that continuity maintained? If you recall, Buddhism has a very, very complex analysis of that. But all these various forces and potentials and tendencies, and so on, on the mental continuum are going to constantly be affected by conditions, and it’s the conditions that will cause them to ripen. The deepest condition that causes them to ripen — we have the explanation in the twelve links of dependent arising — is craving (to not be parted from happiness, to be parted from unhappiness) and an obtainer attitude (which is an attitude of basically “Me, me, me”), which is going to obtain for us a result (more specifically, a future rebirth). If we can get rid of the unawareness of voidness, of grasping for solid existence — that on the deepest level is what causes the karma to ripen, because it underlies the surface level of the condition that will be there. We’re not talking here about the physical conditions for something to ripen, like somebody driving a car so that we get hit by the car, but the mental state of mind that causes the karma to ripen.
That’s very important to understand in terms of the twelve links. There are the conditions, the external conditions, and you need the external conditions, but if we have this grasping for solid existence, and if we have that all the time, then of course we just think in terms of the external conditions as what will affect the ripening of something and have it happen. But if there’s no grasping for a solid existence, then again, it’s stages: The circumstances may cause us to get hurt but we won’t suffer — we have to be hit, but we won’t get suffering — in the example of arhats. Or after that existence — this type of body — then with the type of body that one has after that, there are no ways in which one would be hurt.
Anyway, let’s end here with the dedication. We think whatever positive force and understanding has come from this, may it go deeper and deeper and act as a cause to reach enlightenment for the benefit of all.