Lam-rim 41: Contemporaneous Motivating Emotion, Implementation & Finale

Then we started looking at the second factor, the motivating mental framework. It has three components. We’ve gone over the first two: 

[1] An unmistaken distinguishing (‘du-shes) of whom it is that we want to kill or injure. When we kill somebody else by mistake, the action is still destructive, but it is not as destructive as when we kill the one we intended to kill or distinguished as being the one we were going to kill. 

[2] A motivating intention (’dun-pa). It is the wish to do something specific with regard to a specific object – in this case, to kill a specific person. 

Last time, we examined the role of intention and what it means to commit a destructive action unintentionally. Although it is still a destructive action to kill someone unintentionally, it is not as destructive as doing it intentionally. But we shouldn’t think that just because the action was unintentional, it is no longer destructive: we still took a life. 

Now we come to the third component.

[3] Motivating Emotion

There also needs to be a motivating emotion. In the case of  destructive actions, it’s one of the three poisonous disturbing emotions.  

We’ve seen that, in the case of physical and verbal actions, the motivating emotion can have two phases, causal and contemporaneous, and that what determines whether a physical or verbal action is constructive or destructive is the contemporaneous motivating emotion, not the causal one. This is because at the causal phase, when thinking about and deciding to commit the action, the action is a mental action; it’s not an actual physical or verbal action. Then, depending on whether the contemporaneous motivating emotion is destructive or constructive, the action as one of the body or speech becomes destructive or constructive.

In the case of destructive actions, the contemporaneous motivating emotion can be any of the three poisonous disturbing emotions: 

• Longing desire – when we don’t have something, we want to get it; attachment – when we have it, we don’t want to let go; greed – when we have it, we want more (so, we’re not satisfied with what we have).
• Hostility, which can also have different phases to it: wanting to repel something before we’ve encountered it or wanting to get rid of it or to hurt it when we have encountered it.
• Naivety, which is both naivety about cause and effect – feeling that what we do will not have any effect on us or on the other person (so, lack of consideration is there as well) – and naivety about how we and everything else exist.

Remember, the two mental factors that are, in Vasubandhu’s system, fundamental for making an action destructive are the two attitudes of: 

[1] Having no sense of values (ngo-tsha med-pa, Skt. ahrikya), which is a lack of respect for positive qualities or persons possessing them. In Asanga’s system, it is called “no moral self-dignity.” 

So, Vasubandhu’s way of defining this attitude is not respecting positive qualities or persons possessing them, whereas Asanga’s is not caring about ourselves, not having any sense of ethical self-dignity.

[2] Having no scruples (khrel med-pa, Skt. anapatrapya) means that we lack restraint. We don’t care if we act in negative ways. We don’t have any sense that it’s not right to act like that, so we don’t exercise any self-control. Asanga’s definition is not caring how our actions reflect on others. This is quite an Asian thing, but perhaps some of us in the West have this as well – not caring how, if we act negatively, our actions reflect on our family, our nationality, our religion, our gender, or whatever larger group we might belong to.

Those two attitudes, as defined by Vasubandhu, have to be part of the contemporaneous motivation for an action to be destructive. Asanga asserts the same in terms of his definitions.  

Although having one of the three disturbing emotions of longing desire, hostility or naivety as the contemporaneous motivation renders the action destructive, I wonder if there can be a destructive action that lacks any of them and just has the two attitudes that have to be present in all destructive actions. Let’s analyze a destructive action both with and without naivety, for example.

First, let’s think of an example where there is naivety. Naivety is not thinking about the fact that our actions will have any effect on anything. The example that I’m thinking of is burning leaves: You rake the grass and burn the leaves, and you’re naive in that you think that there are no insects there. So, the action of burning the leaves is a negative action due to naivety. It’s negative even though you’re not intentionally killing the insects and don’t have hostility toward them. 

An example where there would be no naivety but where there would be a lack of values, a lack of scruples, is knowing that there are insects there but just not caring that they would be killed. Do you follow that? I don’t care about the fact that there are insects there and that they’re going to be killed if I burn the leaves. I’m not naive about it, but I have no sense of what is positive, and I don’t restrain myself at all from acting negatively, etc. But if we examine more deeply, we’d have to say that, although we’re not naive about insects being killed by our burning the leaves, we’re naive about the karmic effects on ourselves. And if we say we don’t care about these effects, we’re still being naive because it means that we’re not taking these effects seriously.   

Participant: But for instance, there are these chestnut trees that are infested with moths that eat the leaves. You have to destroy these moths to save the trees. So, it’s really difficult. You have to burn the leaves when they fall off, and you know that it will burn the eggs of the moths.

Dr. Berzin: Well, there are several questions that are involved here. Which is more important, the life of a tree or the life of several thousand insects? A chestnut tree that just offers shade on the street and maybe gives some chestnuts – that’s one thing. If it’s your rice crop, and your livelihood and children are dependent on it for food – that’s slightly different, isn’t it? That’s the first thing that comes to mind.

Participant: But they’re contagious, so all chestnut trees will die.

Dr. Berzin: What’s so horrible about all the chestnut trees in Berlin dying? (For those who don’t live in Berlin, there are a lot of chestnut trees here, particularly on some of the streets.)

Participant: All the chestnut trees would be gone.

Dr. Berzin: Would people starve to death if there were no chestnuts here in Europe?

Participant: We would grow other trees then.

Dr. Berzin: We could grow other trees, other crops. So, I think there’s a difference in values here: valuing the beauty of the city versus the life of the insects.

That’s one point. 

A Constructive Causal Motivating Emotion Minimizes the Negative Karmic Results of a Destructive Action

If there’s a case in which you need to kill something – like having to kill insects in order to save your crop because people’s livelihood and food supply are being threatened – then you have to distinguish between the causal motivating emotion and the contemporaneous one. The causal one could be compassion – not necessarily for the insects but for all the people who would eat this food. You are concerned for them; you want them to avoid starvation. You also have love for them and, so, want them to be happy, etc. Wonderful motivation. That positive motivation will build up positive potentials and lead to its own consequences, independent of the consequences of killing. It will lead to experiencing a happy type of situation.

Now, at the time of the actual action of burning the leaves or applying the insecticide – if you’ve ever done it, (which I have; I had to fumigate my house because it was totally infested with bedbugs) – what really is strong in your mind is “die!” You really want them to die. So, there is hostility. You don’t want to be halfway. So, regardless of how nice your motivation was in the beginning, it’s very hard to carry out the action without feeling strong hostility as you’re actually killing the things. The action itself, the physical action, is destructive; however, the heaviness of it is going to be counterbalanced by the positive mental action that brought you into it. Therefore, the karmic consequences will be much, much less heavy. 

This is what the Jataka story of Buddha exemplifies. In a previous lifetime, he killed an oarsman who was going to kill all the merchants on a ship. As a bodhisattva, he acknowledged, “This is going to be a negative action. However, I’m willing to take on the negative consequences of it myself in order to save the others from being killed and to save the oarsman from some horrible rebirth as a result of killing.” So, if you’re willing to take on the negative consequences – so, not being naive about it – then, go ahead. The negative consequences will be less heavy because of the causal motivation.

Participant: For example, we do some gardening. It’s impossible to do gardening without killing. But we try to think of it the other way around – that when we grow the things in our garden, fewer insects die because we can be more careful than a big farmer who uses a big machine. When they farm, even more insects are killed. So, even if one has to kill, as long as one is not naive about the fact that one is killing, growing one’s own food is still better than buying food in a supermarket, because, in order to provide the food for the supermarket, even more are killed.

Dr. Berzin: Is there any chance of arrogance or pride coming in here – that I’m so much better than the commercial farmers because I kill fewer animals? 

Participant: It’s not pride. 

Dr. Berzin: I’m asking, is there a danger that there is pride there? I’m not accusing you of pride and arrogance.

Participant: It could be. One could be proud of anything.

Dr. Berzin: That’s true. However, one has to be a bit careful here about thinking that one is so much better: “I do this in a little bit safer way,” or “I do organic farming,” or something like that. It’s quite easy to look down on others and to have a critical view of them.

Participant: The point was not to say that I’m doing this farming because I want to be better. One has to kill when one does farming. So, one has to be mindful of that and somehow to make it less destructive.

Dr. Berzin: Minimizing the damage was your point. Absolutely, we try to minimize. That is the only way that we can survive as beings with this type of body. We try to minimize the amount of destructive behavior. But this is part of the general suffering of samsara: that because of having the bodies we have, if we walk anywhere, we’re going to step on something; if we eat anything, we’re going to swallow and kill something. 

So, how do we minimize the amount of destructiveness that we cause without being fanatics, without going to the extreme of asceticism, like just sitting, never eating, never moving, and dying like that? That, as far as I understand, is what one does on the final stage of the Jain path – not that very many people reach that stage. 

Overcoming Karma Means Eliminating What Activates the Karmic Potentials 

We want to avoid going to extremes by recognizing that the way to overcome karma is not to totally stop every destructive action. As long as we have the type of body we do, that’s going to be impossible. We try our best to stop acting destructively, but the way to overcome karma is to get rid of what causes the karmic potentials to ripen, what activates them. Two main causes are craving (sred-pa, thirsting) and an obtainer (len-pa), which are the eighth and ninth of the twelve links of dependent arising. 

Craving (thirsting) manifests as clinging. So, when a feeling of happiness comes up, we cling to it, thinking, “I want it to last; I don’t want it go away.” When a feeling of unhappiness comes up, we think, “Ah! I have to get rid of that!” It’s much stronger than the ordinary feelings of happiness and unhappiness, simply wanting the happiness to continue and the unhappiness to go away. Craving exaggerates the positive or negative qualities of the feeling on which it is focused and strongly desires either not to be parted or to be parted from it. That’s the eighth link. 

The ninth link is an obtainer. There are four obtainers – one is an obtainer disturbing emotion; the other three are obtainer disturbing attitudes. The most important one is the obtainer disturbing attitude of grasping for a solid “me”: “I want to be happy.” 

With craving, we cling to the feeling. With an obtainer, we cling to the “me” that’s involved with that feeling. Those are what activate the karmic potentials, particularly at the time of death, at which point they activate the karmic aftermath of throwing karma ('phen-byed-kyi las). Then we get rebirth. 

That, then, is the way to overcome karma. It’s not to stop doing anything, because we can’t just stop doing things. This is one of the things that Buddha realized. He realized the true cause of suffering. The true cause of suffering is not our actions. The true cause is unawareness, which gives rise to the craving and obtainer disturbing emotions and attitudes that activate the karma. If there’s nothing there to activate the karmic potentials, we can’t say that we have any potentials anymore. So, that’s the way to overcome karma. In the meantime, though, we try to minimize the destructive things we do. 

Bear in mind, too, what it is you are growing in your garden. Growing flowers just to make your house look pretty is very different from growing vegetables in order to feed yourself and your family, isn’t it? Growing flowers so that your place looks pretty is not a very good reason for killing things.

Not Caring How Our Actions Reflect on Others 

Participant: Is it only how my actions reflect on, say, my teachers or parents that’s important and not how they reflect on people watching me? For example, my children might see me kill something and learn to do the same.

Dr. Berzin: That’s a very interesting point. Not caring how our actions reflect on others is Asanga’s definition. Vasubandhu’s is not having any restraint when it comes to acting negatively, not having any self-control. But, in any case, we can extend his definition. The usual explanation is that, because we care about the reputation of our families, etc., we refrain from acting destructively. Acting destructively would bring shame to the family. That is a very important thing in Asian communities, also Indian, Chinese, and Tibetan communities. But you’re asking about how our actions could influence others by the kinds of examples we set. For instance, if we kill something in front of our children, we could teach them, in a sense, to do the same. 

It’s impossible to guarantee what the effect of our behavior on others will be. I was thinking that you were going to ask, “How about consideration of our effect on others?” – for instance, hurting somebody’s feelings because we didn’t come on time, etc. To that, they always say that the strength of a karmic result of an action is going to be in proportion to the amount of suffering it causes the other person. So, that’s a factor. Also, one of the secondary bodhisattva vows is to avoid acting in a way that can cause others to lose respect for us, for Buddhism, etc. So, that’s also there. But influencing others, setting an example that would, say, cause children to imitate us – that’s something I’ve never heard explicitly said. Certainly, we couldn’t guarantee that we would have that effect on others. 

It is true that small children are impressionable. Here in Germany, people don’t cross the street when the light is red, especially when children are present, because they’re concerned that it will teach the children that they can do that. I suppose that’s a consideration. I’ve just never seen it mentioned anywhere. But, certainly, if there’s a possibility of being a bad influence on others due to our actions, we would need to take that into consideration.

Ah! Now I can think of a category that that falls into. If we cause another person to do an action, say killing – like the general who orders the army to fight – we build up as much negative karma as the person who does the killing. In that case, we would be directly asking them to do the negative action. Here, in the case of children learning to do something they’ve seen us do, we’re only indirectly teaching them to do the action. We didn’t intend to teach them how to hunt, for example, but they might learn to do it anyway. Probably, it could come into that category.

Participant: This criterion for a destructive action, the one of how our actions reflect on others, is quite subjective. To give an example, if somebody from an upscale family in Germany or elsewhere goes to an ashram in India for a month or something like that, their actions could reflect badly on the people from their social circle because those people might feel it’s a weird thing to do.

Dr. Berzin: That’s a very good point. If a child from a Western family goes off to India to join an ashram or a Buddhist monastery or becomes a monk or a nun in the Buddhist tradition, not only might the family disapprove, others from their social circle might disapprove and, so, think badly of the family. They might think that what the child did was not proper. They also might think that the child’s actions reflected badly on them.

Well, I don’t know. According to the monastic rules, one needs permission from the parents to join a monastery. Now, I don’t know if there’s an age restriction on that. If we’re forty years old when we join the monastery and our parents are quite old, I don’t know whether we would still need permission. Nonetheless, that’s one of the stipulations for becoming a monk – having the permission of the family. So, that would prevent that situation from arising. However, that becomes very difficult, because there are counter examples. It says in the Thirty-seven Bodhisattva Practices that if the family is causing our anger or attachment to increase, the correct thing to do as a bodhisattva is to leave. So, even if our families don’t want us to go to India to study or something like that, we go. 

It doesn’t have to be so extreme. It’s often the case that a husband objects to the wife going to a Buddhist center. People would think badly of the husband and the family if he allowed the woman to go to a Buddhist center. What about that? Does one go? Does one have to ask the husband for permission? This is very difficult, isn’t it?

Participant: It also gives the impression that when you get permission from some group, you’re acting rightfully and that without that permission, you’re not acting rightfully.

Dr. Berzin: But is that really what this is saying?

Participant: Also, it kind of means that the rules of society are good guidelines for constructive behavior.

Dr. Berzin: Right. Are the rules of society good guidelines for constructive behavior?

Participant: Not in general.

Participant: They vary so wildly from Turkey to Germany to Mexico. They can be so different.

Dr. Berzin: Right. The guidelines vary from country to country and from society to society. 

Well, look at what this point is saying. It’s saying that if I act destructively, my actions are going to reflect badly on my family. So, now we’re arguing by analogy. What about if I act constructively and my actions reflect badly on my family – badly according to society? Is that also part of the stipulation? I don’t know that it’s necessarily analogous. It’s not necessarily analogous. In the Buddhist system, arguing by analogy is not a valid way of knowing, although in some Indian philosophical systems it is. So, I think it’s referring just to destructive actions – destructive according to the way that it’s defined here in the Buddhist system.

Participant: And not by society.

Dr. Berzin: Right.

Participant: But Asanga’s criterion has to do with whether it reflects badly or not, right? 

Dr. Berzin: Right, but the question is whether it reflects badly on us and our family from the point of view of Buddhist values or of societal values? Does it reflect badly in the eyes of the Buddhas and the great teachers, or in the eyes of our neighbors? I think in the eyes of the Buddhas.   

Do Disturbing Emotions Necessarily Cause Us to Lose Self-Control?

In Asanga’s system, not caring for how our actions reflect on others is in his list of eleven disturbing emotions. So, then, one has to start to analyze why it is a disturbing emotion or attitude. Maybe I’m getting into dangerous territory here, one in which I don’t know how to answer the question, but one of the main points of this course was to learn to analyze. So, what’s the definition, and how do we analyze it? What’s the definition of a disturbing emotion and attitude?

Participant: It makes the mind shaky.

Dr. Berzin: It makes the mind uneasy. It makes us uncomfortable. The definition is “when it arises, it makes us lose mental calmness, our peace of mind, and lose self-control.”

Participant: Is it necessary to lose self-control?

Dr. Berzin: It says both. 

Participant: But I was wondering about the example we had of the woman going to the Buddhist class and the family and husband not liking it.

Dr. Berzin: Right. Is there a disturbing emotion there when she says, “I don’t care what my husband thinks and what people think of my husband. I’m going to go anyway,” chances are she is not very calm about it.

Participant: So, her emotions are kind of disturbed and, also, the relationship.

Dr. Berzin: But does she lose self-control?

Participant: But she might say, “I care, but I’m going to go anyway.”

Dr. Berzin: Right. So, what does it mean to lose self-control?

Participant: She can go without any disturbing emotion. She can go with a totally calm mind.

Dr. Berzin: But, usually, in an actual relationship, when, you know your husband’s going to yell at you and give you a hard time, it’s pretty hard to be calm. I think that you’d have to be a pretty advanced person not to be a little bit nervous about the whole thing. 

Participant: We’re talking about analyzing, right? But I was thinking that sometimes it’s really hard to analyze because we have to know the motivation. The motivation of the person is very important.

Dr. Berzin: Oh, very good point!

Participant: I say that because I was thinking about the example of having a garden and your saying that just growing flowers to make your house beautiful is not the same as growing something to eat. However, when you make things more beautiful – when life is more beautiful – people are happier. I think it can really help everybody to try to do better. 

Dr. Berzin: The motivation for growing flowers could be a very positive motivation and not just one of attachment to having your house look nice. It could be what, in Buddhism, we call an “offering.” It could be an offering to all the people around, wanting them to have a beautiful environment, or an offering to the Buddhas. It certainly could be that. So, again, one has to examine one’s motivation. You’re absolutely correct. 

Obviously, one could think of difficult examples: I’m going to go out and kill a thousand chickens so that I can offer a banquet of chickens to the whole neighborhood. Or to the Buddha – I’m going to offer Kentucky Fried Chicken to the Buddha.

Participant: That’s naivety.

Dr. Berzin: Very good. That is naivety.

Anyway, do you necessarily lose self-control?

Participant: You lose control over the emotion.

Dr. Berzin: That’s right. And we might be upset. According to the examples that are given, we lose self-control in the sense that we are quite likely to do or say something that, later, we would regret – like slam the door when we walk out. When our emotions are disturbed, we’re more likely to do something stupid. That, I think, we can all understand from our own experience. Why don’t we take a moment to recognize that in ourselves – that when we’re upset, we tend to say and do things that later, on reflection, we regret and think, “That was really stupid.”

When we’re upset, don’t we lose our patience much more easily, get annoyed much more easily, and say harsh things to other people much more easily or, at least, speak in a more aggressive tone of voice?

Participant: It could also be inverted: we could be very tough on ourselves.

Dr. Berzin: So, it could be turned inwards. Sure.

[meditation]

It is also very much the case that when we’re very attached to someone or overcome by desire, we often say and do things that are completely self-destructive – and naive.

The next factor that needs to be present for a karmic pathway to be complete and for a complete result to follow is the implementation of a method: “If we don’t implement a method, whether intentionally or unintentionally, that causes the action to take place, the action will not take place under our karmic responsibility.” So, we have to actually do something to cause the action to occur. 

Killing

The example is the action of killing somebody with our car. In order for that to occur, we have to run the person over with our car. Even if we unintentionally hit somebody, the action of hitting someone with our car has occurred. If we don’t hit anybody with our car, we haven’t done the action. I think that’s fairly obvious. 

If we think about and decide to kill somebody, but we don’t actually implement a method to carry out our intention, we haven’t committed the destructive physical action of taking a life; we’ve merely committed the destructive mental action of thinking to take a life. So, there’ll be an experience of suffering as a result, but that result will be from having committed a destructive mental action rather than a destructive physical action. 

Is there anything that needs to be discussed with that? I think that one’s fairly obvious.

Participant: What about negative thoughts that just come up? For example, you are looking at something, and the next thing you think of is smashing it. 

Dr. Berzin: We’ll be discussing that a little bit later.

Participant: And whether you do it.

Dr. Berzin: That’s another variable – whether you do the action after thinking about it and deciding do it or whether you do it on the spur of the moment. Smacking a mosquito on your arm without deliberating beforehand whether or not you’re going to smack it and deciding to do so is very different from deliberating and then smacking it on purpose. But we’ll get to that.

What about in a dream? Have you committed the action of killing if you’ve kill somebody in a dream? 

Participant: No, you haven’t.

Dr. Berzin: No, you haven’t. Actions done in dreams are mental actions, not physical ones. There wasn’t anybody that could have died. As we had mentioned before, according to His Holiness’s explanation, if, after we wake up, we relive the dream in our minds and feel that killing that person or being was the right thing to do, we have committed the mental action of thinking with malice.

“Lastly, a specific type of outcome is always stipulated,” in other words, specified, “as needing to occur as the intended finale of specific types of destructive actions for the pathway of its karmic impulse to be complete.”

Killing

For instance, with the action of killing, the person has to die, and they have to die before we do. So, the finale isn’t reached when we are committing the action of killing; the finale is reached when the person actually dies. 

Taking What Was Not Given

“With the action of taking what is not given, we must develop the attitude that what we’ve taken is now ours.” Which is interesting – if we’ve borrowed something without asking and then gave it back after we used it, did the action reach its finale? In other words, did we think it was ours?

Participant: No, I didn’t think it was mine, so the finale of taking what is not given was not reached. But I still might have done something that the other person didn’t like.

Dr. Berzin: Right. “I’m going to borrow your car without asking, but I’ll bring it back.” So, is there a difference between thinking that it’s mine for the time that I use it and thinking that it’s mine forever?

Participant: If I think, “It’s mine forever. I’m never going to give it back” – that’s one thing. If I think, “It’s not mine. I’ve just borrowed it; I’m going to bring it back” – that’s another thing.

Dr. Berzin: What there is, is naivety. 

What happens when you borrow a book from somebody and you forget to give it back? It sits on your shelf, and after a while, you think it’s now yours. 

Participant: We have a German word for that, where you don’t take something from somebody, but you’re in custody of it. If you don’t give it back, you can be penalized.

Dr. Berzin: I see. Our German lawyer here has pointed out the legal code is that, even if you don’t steal something – you borrow something, but you don’t give it back – you can be penalized under the law.

But this is interesting. Is it taking what was not given?

Participant: In a way it is.

Dr. Berzin: No, it isn’t because we were given it.

Participant: Yeah, but we were not given it to keep forever.

Participant: But that’s the funny thing. In the German code, they also make a division. It’s not exactly theft; it’s a lesser infraction.

Dr. Berzin: So, in the German legal code, not giving something back is not stealing; it is another type of infraction. But it’s still against the law, even if it has been loaned to you. Well, come on! When you borrow money from the bank, you know from the start that the bank isn’t giving it to you for free. You have to apply for it and so on. But let’s say that you don’t pay it back – what then?

Participant: Or where you work: You use the things in the office, and at some point, you take them home.

Participant: But if you take paper from your work and bring it home, it’s a little bit like taking what was not given.

Dr. Berzin: Right. How about using the Internet at work for your personal emails?

Participant: It’s stealing. You are paid for this time.

Dr. Berzin: Right. It’s taking what was not given. 

Obviously, there are many, many examples of taking things that are not given. And sometimes the matter is not very clear. 

What about taking home the towels from a hotel, the little bottles of shampoo, the ballpoint pen, or the stationary? 

Participant: The shampoo becomes your personal item because you use a little bit of it.

Dr. Berzin: Right. Then they throw it away and give you a new one in the morning. They do that with the soap, which is so shameful. You use a tiny piece of soap, and then they throw it away and give you a new one. Is taking it home stealing? Is that taking what was not given? Or is that part of what you paid for?

Participant: It was given.

Dr. Berzin: Well, was the bed given? Are you going to take the bed home with you?

Participant: Well, there’s a common agreement.

Participant: The shampoo is to use.

Dr. Berzin: Right. What about the ballpoint pen?

Participant: That’s publicity for them. It’s encouraged.

Dr. Berzin: OK, that’s encouraged.

Participant: But there is still greed.

Dr. Berzin: Right. Do you really need that little bottle of shampoo? Do you really need that little piece of soap?

Participant: It depends on your mind.

Participant: There’s the motivation to save the money at home.

Dr. Berzin: If you were that cheap, would you stay in a hotel? 

Participant: I really think about saving the environment. It’s such a waste when you use just a little bit, and then it gets thrown away. 

Dr. Berzin: Well, what all this is coming down to, in terms of taking what was not given, is the motivation. Using the telephone in somebody’s house without asking is the same thing… or not paying one’s taxes or the toll on the highway or not paying to go to a movie. One really has to analyze one’s motivation. The whole thing starts to become very difficult, doesn’t it? 

Saying What Is Untrue

Saying what is untrue – for the karmic pathway of that action to be complete, the other person has to understand and believe what we’ve said. They have to be fooled. If they think that what we said was just stupid and untrue, the action hasn’t reached its finale. We have to actually fool somebody with our lie. 

But do we always have to tell the truth? I’ve observed that the way that Tibetans follow these things is that they don’t lie, but they don’t necessarily tell everything. We don’t have to give more information than is necessary. 

What about “White Lies”?

So, what about what we call in English “white lies” – little lies, not big ones? Sometimes it’s necessary to tell them, or at least, we feel that it’s necessary. Again, I think that what is very important is the motivation because, in many cases, we might have to do that. The classic example is being in the woods and seeing a deer run in a certain direction. There are hunters running after it, and they ask, “Did you see the deer? Which way did it go?” Do we point in the direction the deer went, or do we point in another direction? Or do we say, “I don’t know. I didn’t see”?

Participant: We send them the wrong way.

Dr. Berzin: We send them the wrong way, but, like Buddha killing the oarsman, we do it without being naive – thinking that it’s not a destructive action, thinking that it’s not a lie. I accept that it’s a lie, and I accept that there may be some negative consequences from doing it. I did want to fool the hunters, but my motivation was one of compassion, both for the deer and the hunters. So, the negative action will be a very minor one. But don’t be naive about it. That, I think, is the point. 

What about feeling guilty about having deceived the hunters and sending them in the wrong direction. Do you feel guilty for having lied?

Participant: If you had a good motivation, feeling guilty wouldn’t help. Maybe you would feel guilty because you were afraid. But I think feeling guilty doesn’t really help.   

Dr. Berzin: Feeling guilty never helps. But if you did feel guilty about it, what would be the reason?

Participant: Because the hunters are wasting energy by going in the wrong direction, and I am aware of that. That could be a reason. They’ve been running around for two hours.  

Dr. Berzin: So, we could feel guilty that we caused the hunters a lot of trouble. We could also feel guilty because we think, “Oh, no! Now I’m going to go to hell for this. I’m so bad.”

Participant: I would feel happy if I saved the deer.  

Dr. Berzin: Or we could rejoice. Do we rejoice in having lied, or do we rejoice in having saved the deer?

Participant: We rejoice in having saved the deer.  

Dr. Berzin: Right. But it would be easy to rejoice in having fooled the other person, thinking, “I’m so clever; I fooled them.”

So, this has to do with what we would be feeling afterwards. We have to be really sure that we’re not feeling so clever because we fooled them. If we’re going to rejoice, then we rejoice because of having saved the deer. 

So, again, we need to analyze what’s going on and what our motivation is. We find this in all the Dharma teachings.

Participant: What, in that case, would the action be? 

Dr. Berzin: You could analyze it in two ways. One is that the intended action was saving a life, the method implemented was telling a lie and the intended finale reached was that the deer was saved. The result of telling the lie was that the hunter believed it and went the other way. The other way of looking at it is that the action was telling a lie, the finale was the hunter believed the lie, and the result was the deer’s life was saved. 

Participant: Then I rejoiced in saving a life.  

Dr. Berzin: So, you regret that you had to lie about it; however, it was necessary, and you are willing to accept the consequences. So, it’s not that you rejoice in having lied and fooled the other person.

Participant: Actually, that was also the reason why I brought up the example of gardening. This feeling of guilt over killing all these things comes up.

Dr. Berzin: Right. Well, as I said, one has to accept the fact that we are samsaric creatures with limited bodies; therefore, there’s no way of avoiding some level of destructive behavior. But we try to minimize that type of behavior and to have causal motivations that are positive.

Participant: What I notice is that very often I embellish a story. So, in a way, I tell little lies.  

Dr. Berzin: Oh! Now we get into the category of exaggeration. 

Participant: In a way, I don’t do any harm.  

Dr. Berzin: OK. This is the same type of example. If the other person understands what we’ve said and believes our exaggeration, then the destructive action is more like that of a lie. If they don’t understand or believe us, what destructive action has it deconstructed to?

Participant: Idle chatter.  

Dr. Berzin: Exactly. It’s idle chatter – basically, saying something stupid. 

Now, I don’t mean to malign Mexican culture, but in Mexico and in much of Latin America, people are really into exaggerating. Do people believe you when you say, “This is the most fantastic meal that I’ve ever had in my life,” every time that you eat what somebody has cooked?

Participant: You believe that what they’re actually saying is, “It was good.”  

Dr. Berzin: You don’t take it literally, so it’s just a convention.

Participant: It’s convention. And it is valid.

Dr. Berzin: Right. But what if somebody – for example, a gringo, an American – doesn’t know the convention?

Participant: They might believe it the first time.

Dr. Berzin: Right. So, there is also convention.

What about the convention we find in many cultures, particularly in Indian and Middle Eastern cultures, which is that when you ask somebody for directions, they give you some directions, even if they don’t actually know, because they don’t want to disappoint you?

Participant: I hate that! 

Dr. Berzin: But is that a lie?

Participant: It’s definitely a lie!  

Dr. Berzin: But is their motivation not to disappoint you?

Participant: Yes.  

Dr. Berzin: Right. Is it naive?

Participant: Yes.  

Dr. Berzin: But are they deliberately trying to deceive you? No.

Participant: I think they’re mostly concerned about themselves – about losing face. 

Dr. Berzin: For example, you ask, “Will you do this for me?” and the person says, “Yes, yes, I’ll do it,” when they have no intention of doing it.

Participant: It’s the same. 

Dr. Berzin: Is it that they don’t want to disappoint, or that they don’t want you to think badly of them?

Participant: I think it’s more the second one. 

Dr. Berzin: Now the question is, do we ever do that? If somebody asks you to do something and you know you really don’t have time to do it, do you sometimes say that you’ll do it, anyway?

Participant: If somebody asks your advice and you’re not completely sure what to say, you say something anyway. 

Dr. Berzin: Right. You don’t want to say, “I have no idea. Why are you asking me?” So, you give them some sort of advice, even though you really have no idea what you’re talking about.

Participant: You could say, “I’m sorry. Maybe you should ask someone more competent.” 

Dr. Berzin: Right. I’m just saying that if we examine ourselves, we’ll find that sometimes we say that we will do things that we really can’t do, because we find it too awkward to say no.

Participant: What if you’re visiting someone and they say, “Come back soon”? I sometimes say yes.  

Dr. Berzin: That’s a very good example. What if you have no intention of going back soon? What do you say?

I think that in those situations, you can say, “Yeah, I’ll see. I’ll see if I can.” It’s also a lie to say, “I’ll try,” when you have no intention of trying. But do you hurt the other persons feeling by saying, “No, I’m not going to come back”?

Participant: You can answer, “Thank you very much.” 

Dr. Berzin: Very good. That’s very diplomatic, isn’t it?  You can say, “Thank you very much,” without committing yourself to a “yes” or a “no.”

So, there are different ways of dealing with things when you don’t want to hurt the other person’s feelings. These are awkward things in life, aren’t they? 

In short, the main thing is to think about your motivation and not to be naive.