Lam-rim 42: Three Phases of an Action

What I’d like to do is to go on and present Vasubandhu’s analysis of the three phases of a physical or verbal action from his Treasure House of Special Topics of Knowledge, Abhidharmakosha. Each phase has its individual motivating intention and motivating emotion. The pathways of the karmic impulse for all three phases need to be complete for the fullest karmic consequences to follow. 

(1) Preliminary Actions, (2) Actual Action, (3) Follow-up Actions

These three phases are the preliminary actions (nyer-bsdogs), the actual action (dngos-gzhi), and the follow-up actions (mjug) that are involved in any physical or verbal karmic action. Mental karmic actions only have the actual action; they do not have preliminary or follow-up actions.

Killing

The example in the commentaries is the destructive action of hunting and killing a deer. Preliminary actions would include going to the forest where the deer lives and prowling around, hunting for the deer, and shooting it but only wounding it. That preliminary act is, in itself, destructive. Then the actual action is inflicting the fatal shot. The action reaches its finale when the deer dies. The follow-up actions occur after the finale. They would include things like taking the body home, skinning it, butchering it, and then eating or selling the meat or even giving it away as a present. We can be generous with the meat. A lot of people do that when they go on a hunt. They can’t eat all the meat themselves. 

Inappropriate Sexual Behavior

In the case of indulging in inappropriate sexual behavior, such as adultery or having sex with somebody else’s partner, the preliminary actions would, for example, be going to meet the person for the sexual liaison and engaging in foreplay. 

The actual action is engaging in sexual intercourse. The finale of that action is reached with the experience of physical pleasure from the contact between the two sexual organs. I had always thought that one had to reach orgasm, but I asked specifically about that and was told that one doesn’t have to reach orgasm; one just needs to experience intense physical pleasure. The physical pleasure has to be experienced by the one who actually performed the inappropriate sexual behavior. If you send somebody else to do it for you, like sending someone out to rape someone, you as the person who sends them don’t experience that pleasure; so, the action of indulging in inappropriate sexual behavior would not be complete from your side. Follow-up actions would include lying in bed together afterwards, caressing each other, and so on. 

Do you get this analysis of what’s involved?

Stealing

Let’s analyze another type of action. What about stealing?  What would a preliminary action be?

Participant: You go to the place where you plan to steal something.

Dr. Berzin: That’s right, preliminary actions would involve actually going to the place you’re going to rob, putting on a mask, whatever.

Participant: Coveting or desiring the object does not count?

Dr. Berzin: The destructive mental action of covetous thinking could come prior to taking the preliminary actions for committing a robbery. But now, we’re talking about the three phases of the physical action itself. Of course, the disturbing emotion of longing desire and greed for the object you plan to steal could accompany all three phases of the physical action.

So, you drive to the bank. You buy a mask and these sorts of things. What would the actual action be?

Participant: Taking the money.

Dr. Berzin: Right. What would follow-up actions be?

Participant: Spending the money.

Dr. Berzin: Right. Follow-up actions are not the same as the finale of action. How does the action of stealing reach its finale?

Participant: When you’ve got the money.

Dr. Berzin: It’s not simply getting the money. Once you’ve gotten the money, you have to consider it’s yours. 

Participant: Isn’t that a mental act?

Dr. Berzin: No, it’s a mental factor, incorrect consideration, that accompanies having the money now in your hands. The finale of the act of stealing occurs when you consider the object that did not belong to you now is yours. With lying, the finale of the action occurs when the other person believes what you said, when the person is fooled.

Participant: But what if you were to steal something Robin Hood style? You don’t think it’s yours; instead, you think you will give it to the poor.

Dr. Berzin: That’s a very good example. At the moment Robin Hood takes something, he thinks the object is his to give to the poor; he doesn’t think it now belongs to him to keep. I wonder if the destructive action of stealing here is a complete pathway of karma. Does the finale need to be thinking what you stole was yours to keep or could it be thinking it is yours to do with whatever you want – for instance, give away? I don’t know. 

Here, stealing the money would be a preliminary action for the constructive action of giving to the poor, and giving to the poor is the follow-up action of stealing. So, giving to the poor and stealing are two different karmic acts.

Now it becomes very interesting. Is giving something that was stolen destructive? The action of giving is itself constructive, but the object is problematic. Remember, accepting something that was stolen from the Triple Gems is breaking one of the major bodhisattva vows. I wonder. Giving something that was stolen certainly involves naivety as well as generosity.

Participant: I think it depends on what I have stolen, from whom, and what I do with it.

Dr. Berzin: Let’s say you go out and kill a deer in order to give the meat away to people who are hungry.

Participant: Let’s say my kids are starving and I take some bread from the bakery.

Dr. Berzin: Right. You’re a mother. Your kids are starving, and you steal some bread from the bakery. Is that a destructive action?

Participant: Well, it is, but it is also constructive.

Dr. Berzin: You’ve done something destructive in that you’ve stolen. The follow-up is giving the bread to your children to feed them, which is constructive from the point of view of the action. It’s interesting. I don’t really know. 

Participant: Vasubandhu doesn’t specify?

Dr. Berzin: No, he didn’t specify. It’s not an example of what is known as a mixed white and black karmic impulse (dkar-gnag ‘dres-pa’i las). For Vasubandhu, on the plane of desirable sense objects, which is the plane we exist on, white and black mixed karmic impulses refer to all constructive actions. That doesn’t mean that any one karmic action by nature is both constructive and destructive. It means that on the mental continuum of someone on this plane of existence, there have been both constructive and destructive actions and so any result of a constructive action will be mixed with the result of some negative action. So, for instance, any happiness experienced will never satisfy. There is some unpleasantness accompanying the happiness. On the other hand, any result of a destructive action will be purely unpleasant; there won’t be anything pleasant about it.

When Asanga discusses white and black mixed karmic impulses, he is referring to a situation in which the intention is constructive and the simultaneous implementation of a method to carry it out is destructive, like while wishing to benefit a student, scolding them with harsh words. Or the opposite: the intention is destructive, and the implementation of a method is constructive, like while wishing to deceive someone into believing that you are a kind person, giving them a present. 

So, this example of stealing in order to feed your hungry children doesn’t fit into either Vasubandhu’s or Asanga’s definition of a karmic impulse that is mixed white and black. But let’s stick to Vasubandhu’s Vaibhashika system. 

Stealing in order to feed your children when there’s no other means to feed them is a difficult example to analyze. I think we need to differentiate two different physical actions: feeding your children and stealing, along with the mental actions of thinking about and deciding to do these two. The causal motivating emotion for thinking about feeding your children could be compassion, but the causal motivating emotion for thinking about and deciding to steal in order to get the food to feed them is longing desire for the food. 

Vasubandhu also differentiates the emotion with which you initiate a physical or verbal karmic action from the emotion with which you accomplish, or complete, the action. The actual karmic action of stealing is always accomplished with longing desire, but it could be initiated by any of the three poisonous emotions – longing desire for the food, anger at the store owner, or naivety, thinking there is nothing improper about stealing. And then there are also the emotions with which you initiate and accomplish the other two phases of the action of stealing – the preliminary actions and the follow-up actions. The motivating emotions at each of those times could be quite different.

Participant: I could have entered the shop with the intention to buy something, but then I could have stolen something instead.

Dr. Berzin: Right. You could enter the shop without the intention to steal something.

Participant: So, then there is no preliminary action.

Dr. Berzin: Well, you actually entered the shop. You didn’t enter the shop in order to steal, but while you were there, you saw that you didn’t have enough money to pay for everything. You really wanted this other item, so you just put it in your pocket. So, entering the shop was, in fact, a preliminary action for both buying some food and stealing some food. The actual action, however, was not buying the food, but stealing it. I think you begin to see how complicated the analysis becomes when we add in the mental factor of intention into the presentation of the three phases of a physical or verbal action. 

So, that brings us back to our discussion of all the factors that need to be present for the consequences of a karmic action to be the fullest. 

When Does the First Moment of Stealing Actually Occur?

Participant: But it’s just mental labeling. I steal the food. I have it in my hand, and I think, “That’s mine now,” and then I go off. But at what point is the food actually stolen?

Dr. Berzin: Very, very good! When is it actually stolen? Is it stolen in the first moment when you move it one centimeter from the shelf? Is it when you move it two centimeters? Three centimeters? When does the stealing occur? 

Obviously, the action of stealing is mentally labeled onto the whole sequence of events involved in the actual action of taking something that was not given. That sequence, which is a continuity of moments, has a moment when it begins and a moment when it ends. As I just explained, there can be a different motivating emotion with which the actual action is initiated and when it is accomplished. It is accomplished when the finale occurs.

In some cases, the finale is marked by something from your side. For instance, with stealing, the finale occurs when you think it’s yours. In other cases, it occurs from the side of the other person: When you lie, the other person has to believe what you said. In the case of breaking an object, the finale occurs when the object actually breaks. So, there are many ways in which the finale can occur.

Participant: In the example of stealing, does going to the shop count as the preliminary action even though you didn’t plan to steal anything?

Dr. Berzin: We’re not talking about the mental actions of thinking about and deciding to steal. We’re talking about the preliminary physical actions, the physical actions that you do to get you into the actual action, which would be walking to the shop, for instance. It is the preliminary action both for buying something and for stealing something, depending on your intention. Thinking about doing something and deciding to do it is a mental action. Walking to the shop is a preliminary physical action for the physical action of either buying food or stealing it.

Participant: I think there’s a difference between going from my home to the shop with the intention to steal something – so, the whole time I’m walking, I have that intention on my mind – and going to the shop with the intention to buy something and only deciding to steal something when I’m there.

Dr. Berzin: Right. That’s what we’re saying. There’s a difference. But, still, in both cases, there was a preliminary action of going to the shop, wasn’t there? 

Participant: I think that if you only decide to steal something when you get to the shop that it’s only then that you have the preliminary action: you look around to see if somebody’s looking.

Dr. Berzin: Very good. With the change of intention, now you’ve added an additional preliminary action to stealing besides walking to the shop. You’ve added looking around to see if anyone is watching you. Walking to the shop was a preliminary action for both buying something and stealing something. But looking around to see if someone is looking at you is a preliminary action only for stealing. 

Anyway, first, there is a preliminary action that gets you into the action of stealing. Then, there is the actual action of stealing, of grabbing that thing off the shelf and taking it. The action reaches its finale when you feel it’s yours. The follow-up action would be going home with it and doing whatever it is that you’re going to do with it, which could include giving it away to somebody else.

Participant: One could also steal by mistake.

Dr. Berzin: Well, remember, there needs to be an unmistaken distinguishing of the item that you’re taking.

Participant: I only realized when I got back home that I had taken an item extra.

Dr. Berzin: Right. I took an item extra. I didn’t do it intentionally. I made a mistake. 

Participant: Isn’t this like the example of killing mosquitoes without wanting to kill them?

Dr. Berzin: Now we’re getting into the whole discussion of intention and stuff like that. The whole point here is just to distinguish the three phases that constitute an action – the preliminary action, the actual action, and the follow-up action. 

Let’s go ahead.

In the Case of Mental Actions, There Are No Preliminary or Follow-up Actions

Mental actions consist only of one phase, that of the mental action itself since they involve merely thinking something. Thinking about going and deciding to go doesn’t have a build-up: “Now I’m going to think about thinking about it.”  

What about meditation? That’s a mental action. Could setting the motivation be the preliminary action, then could the concentration, the shamatha meditation, be the actual action itself and the follow-up action be the dedication? That is the way they are explained in the lam-rim literature. And even if meditation is for building up a positive habit, meditating does not fall in the category of mental actions that are included in the discussion of karma. The mental actions that are included in that discussion are primarily thinking about and deciding to commit a physical or verbal action.  

Nonetheless, the actual action of meditating, like all mental actions, has no preliminary or follow-up actions. It doesn’t need to have another mental action, either as a preliminary to it or as a follow-up, in order for it to happen. And we’re not talking about any actions we would do beforehand, like setting up the altar, sitting down, and so on. Those are there as well, but they’re physical actions, not mental ones. 

What are the three destructive mental actions? 

Participant: Naivety, hostility, and having an antagonistic attitude?

Dr. Berzin: No, those are mental factors, not mental actions. There’s thinking covetously, thinking about and deciding to get what another person has. There’s thinking with malice, thinking about and deciding to how hurt someone. Then there’s thinking distortedly with antagonism, thinking about and deciding to refute someone’s correct view. Whether or not you actually do what you decide to do comes later. Circumstances might not permit it, like the person not being home when you go to hurt them. Also, please remember, the destructive mental action is deliberating whether or not to commit the physical or verbal action and then deciding to do it. It is not deliberating how to do it. That’s supplementary to the destructive mental action, but it’s not a follow-up action. 

In each of these three cases of destructive mental actions, there’s no preliminary action and no follow-up action.

Participant: Say I am thinking covetous thoughts. I feel greed.

Dr. Berzin: Right. So, the first thing that happens is that, based on feeling greed, you think about getting what the other person has and decide to do it. Is there a preliminary mental action?

Participant: Well, quite often I first see or smell something that someone else is eating.

Dr. Berzin: That’s a physical action.

Participant: Then I think, “Oh, I want to have the same thing.”

Dr. Berzin: Right. But we were talking about preliminary, actual, and follow-up actions. Do all three actions have to be in the same category? What about physical and verbal actions?

Participant: Could we just stick with the mental actions first?

Participant: What you mentioned, seeing or smelling something someone else is eating, is a trigger. It can initiate a mental action, but mental actions do not have preliminary or follow-up mental actions. 

Participant: I think there has to be a physical or even another mental action first.

Dr. Berzin: Does there have to be a physical or mental action before the mental action? Perhaps there is a physical action before thinking about something, like sitting down, but that would not be considered a preliminary action in Vasubandhu’s system of the three phases of an action. And in any case, as I just said, mental actions do not have preliminary or follow-up actions. 

But what I’m asking is, do the preliminary, actual, and follow-up actions for physical actions all have to be physical actions and for verbal actions all have to be verbal actions? Let’s analyze. Do you have to enter into a conversation with somebody before you start screaming at them? Not necessarily. But you would have to go and meet the person. The first thing that you do could be to scream at them, couldn’t it? Then do you have to say something afterwards?

Participant: Usually, you get into a fight gradually.

Dr. Berzin: Right. Usually, you get into a fight gradually, as part of a conversation. 

Say your partner or child is watching television. You want them to take out the garbage, and they’re not taking out the garbage. You walk into the room, and you scream at them, “You lazy bum! Get up and take out the garbage.” You didn’t enter into a conversation before. So, is the preliminary, here, walking into the room? 

Participant: I think so.

Dr. Berzin: I don’t think so. Walking into the room is a physical action, not a verbal one. When the texts say that mental actions have only the phase, that of the actual action, they’re saying that there’s no preliminary phase of thinking. But can there be a verbal action, like my example, that only has an actual action and no preliminary or follow-up actions? I don’t know.

In any case, for mental actions, what would you be thinking before you think about and decide to hurt somebody? Of course, your mind is thinking all the time, so of course, you’re thinking something beforehand. But thinking something irrelevant doesn’t count as a preliminary mental action. 

Participant: It’s not that I think to think about hurting somebody.

Dr. Berzin: Right. You don’t say, “Now I’m going to decide to think about it.” Well, you could. “I’m going to take some time off from my busy day and sit down and think about how to rob a bank. I’ve been so busy with other things; I didn’t have time.” 

Participant: I might think about my colleague at work who made me angry yesterday. He just pops into my mind, and I start thinking about what happened. Then I get angry all over again.

Dr. Berzin: True. You could then start thinking about saying something nasty to this person when you see them tomorrow and decide to do that. What would be the follow-up mental action? Would it be actually going and doing it? No, that is a physical action, not a mental action.

Participant: I’m a little bit confused. Am I right that Vasubandhu says that the three steps need to be there?

Dr. Berzin: Vasubandhu says the three steps – the preliminary, actual, and follow-up actions – all constitute the physical or verbal action. They’re three phases of one physical or verbal action. But he doesn’t say that they have to be there in all actions.

Participant: And they have to be in the same category, no? They have to all be physical or all verbal actions, no?

Dr. Berzin: This is what we’re analyzing. For instance, an army general orders a soldier to go out and kill the enemy. Giving the order is a verbal action. It initiates the soldier’s preliminary action of going out to the battleground. But I don’t think it could be considered part of the preliminary action of killing.  

Participant: But what Vasubandhu is saying is that somehow these phases are separate. That doesn’t make much sense to me.

Dr. Berzin: What do you mean it doesn’t make sense? They are connected, individual actions, not totally unrelated, separate actions. Use the example of killing a deer.

Participant: The first thing is that I think about doing it.

Dr. Berzin: Thinking about it and deciding to do it. That’s a mental action. It would come before going hunting. But then actually going to the woods, walking around looking for the deer are the preliminary actions. Shooting it is the actual action. Taking it home and eating it is the follow-up. Each one is a phase. In other words, that destructive action entails all three phases, and each is a physical action.

Participant: But that wouldn’t be the case if you, for instance, regret stealing and then give away what you stole. Then the last part, the follow-up, is changed.

Dr. Berzin: Still, you’re giving it away. You’re doing something physical with it. 

When you give away stolen goods, even if it’s for a good intention, you’re giving away something that you know was stolen. There’s a difference between knowing that something was stolen and not knowing that it was stolen. This point is analogous to the analysis of having sex with somebody else and not knowing that the person already has a partner. 

Anyway, these are some of the parameters that affect karma. Examining them in detail, as we’ve been doing, can help us to deconstruct karmic actions and to come to a better understanding of what’s involved. So, not only is there the implementation of a method to cause an action to occur and the finale of that action, the third and fourth factors determining the completeness of a pathway of karma, there are also the three phases of the implementation of a method. The last of the three phases, the follow-up actions, occur after the finale of the second phase, the actual action. To analyze clearly, we need to keep all this straight.

We can initiate the actual physical or verbal action in several ways. The initiating of the action is not considered to be a preliminary action. Also, it does not need to be of the same type of phenomenon – physical, verbal or mental – as the action itself is. It is the action that causes the implementation of a method for carrying out the actual action to occur. There are also various ways in which the finale of the actual action can be reached. Let’s look at some examples.

[1] Actively Initiating the Action

We can actively do something to cause the action to happen. For instance, we may try to kill somebody by shooting them with a gun. The action is initiated by pulling the trigger. For physical actions such as taking someone’s life, however, the method we use to initiate an action need not involve an action of body; it could instead involve an action of speech or mind. We could, for example, say a curse out loud, “I put a spell on you,” to initiate the action of killing. We could also recite the curse in our minds. All are methods we might implement to kill someone – assuming, of course, that somebody could die as a result of our cursing them. 

[2] Refraining from Doing Something to Prevent the Action from Occurring

We may refrain from doing anything to prevent the action from occurring, thereby allowing the action to occur.

Can you think of an example? How could you kill somebody by not doing anything?

Participant: Letting somebody choke.

Dr. Berzin: Somebody is choking, and we just stand by. We do nothing when we could do something. Yeah, that’s very good. Or somebody could be drowning, and we don’t try to help, even though we can swim. Or we could intentionally not cooperate with the rescue team. In English, this type of wrongdoing is referred to as a “sin of omission.” So, these also are actions of killing.

[3] Engaging Someone Else to Carry Out the Action

Furthermore, we can have somebody else carry out the action instead as a method for accomplishing it. In other words, we can cause somebody else to do it for us. For example, we could hire somebody to kill somebody that we hate. We could force someone, say, in a concentration camp, to execute somebody. Or we could hint to somebody desperate to get our favor that we would be so happy if they could eliminate this other person. 

In all these three examples, we cause an action to occur by implementing a method and, therefore, bear the karmic consequences. The method that we implement could be an active method, a passive method of not doing nothing, or an indirect method of asking somebody else to do it for us. Although the method we implement may be for causing our own verbal action to occur – as in the example of ordering a soldier to execute a prisoner – it initiates the soldier’s physical action of shooting the person.

The finale of the action is a man-made result. A man-made result is one that occurs almost mechanically. It can be a physical or a mental experience produced by the action or in response to it. For instance, immediately after you bang your foot, the man-made result is that you get a bruise, and it hurts. This is in contrast to a karmic result that ripens after some time from karmic aftermath built up by the act. 

Note that feeling pain in this example is both a man-made result of banging your foot and a ripened result of the karmic aftermath of some previous destructive action you committed. In other words, banging your foot was both the direct cause of your experiencing pain and the circumstance for the ripening of that karmic aftermath in the form of pain. 

[1] By Way of the Victim of the Action

Any action initiated in one of the above three manners can reach its finale by a physical or mental experience of the victim. For example, with killing, the victim dies as a direct result of the action we initiated; with lying, the person lied to believes and is fooled by the deception; with harsh language, the person feels suffering – gets hurt by what we say.

[2] By Way of the Person Who Carries Out the Action 

Others can reach their finale by an experience of the person who actually does the action. For example, with the inappropriate sexual activity of having sex with somebody else’s partner – which, by definition, has to be contemporaneously motivated by desire and attachment – the action reaches its finale when the person who engages in the action experiences physical pleasure. So, if someone asks somebody else to rape another person (like in the army, the generals might have the soldiers rape the women in the village), the action of raping reaches its finale when the one who commits the action experiences the physical pleasure. For the person who asked to have it done, the action of rape would not be complete.

Participant: Rape has a violent part to it.

Dr. Berzin: That’s something else. Here, we’re just talking about the ways in which an action reaches its finale.

[3] By Way of the Initiator of an Action Done by Another Person

Others can reach their finale with an experience of the initiator of an action carried out by someone else. Let’s say I hire somebody to steal something for me. The action of stealing reaches its finale when I feel that the object belongs to me, not when the person who does the stealing takes the object.

[4] By Way of the Object toward Which the Action Is Directed

Others can reach their finale when something happens to the object toward which the action is directed. For example, when the action is to destroy something that belongs to somebody else, the finale is reached when the thing actually gets destroyed.

Participant: Just to make sure that I got these three points correctly, when I’m not actually the one who’s doing the action, then the ways in which I could cause it to happen it are hiring somebody to do it, forcing somebody to do it, and the third was something that sounded pretty indirect. 

Dr. Berzin: The third one was hinting to someone to do it. 

Participant: But isn’t that passive?

Dr. Berzin: No. You’re thinking of the second manner of implementing a method, which is not doing anything when you could do something. 

Participant: I’m sorry, but I keep coming back to the to the point about eating meat discussed in prior lectures. If I get the karma of killing by hinting to somebody to kill, why don’t I get the karma of killing by eating meat? By eating meat, I am hinting to some slaughterer that I want him to kill.

Dr. Berzin: OK. So, this is very good. She’s saying that by buying meat, I’m hinting to the slaughterers to kill the animals. In that case, wouldn’t I build up the karma of killing? That’s a good point. Would I be indirectly initiating the killing? It is not the same as directly ordering the slaughter, saying, “If you kill this, I will pay you money and buy the meat.” This is different. Hinting to someone to kill for us, like saying to someone who raises chickens, “I’d love to have some chicken,” directly communicates the message. But what about indirectly communicating the message by eating meat? Doesn’t that also cause the slaughter of animals? That’s a good question to analyze. I hadn’t heard it expressed that way before.

Participant: By buying, I am hinting that I will buy another one.

Dr. Berzin: Well, we would have to analyze that further. Is it like boycotting: “I’m not going to buy products that are made in factories that have horrible conditions”? In that way, you indirectly cause them to stop doing that. So, that could be seen as a constructive action. Buying products that you know are made by slave labor could encourage the manufacturer to continue using slave labor. I suppose. I’m not really sure. But this is exactly what is helpful here – using these classifications to analyze our actions.

Participant: Refraining from buying products does actually help.

Dr. Berzin: Refraining from buying products – in other words, boycotting – does actually help. Sure. And buying products, on the other hand, encourages the manufacturers to produce more. 

What about driving your car and using a lot of gas and oil – using a tremendous amount of energy and causing some global warming? It makes one think that, actually, there are things that one could do that would indirectly be constructive or destructive. That’s very good.

Taking the Life of Others, Speaking Harshly, and Thinking with Malice: Hostility 

Vasubandhu says that no matter which of the three poisonous disturbing emotions or attitudes might be part of the causal motivating emotion, taking a life, speaking harshly, and thinking with malice always reach their finale with hostility as their contemporaneous motivating emotion. In other words, in order to get the action to reach its finale, you need hostility. You need hostility to actually make it happen. With killing, your intention is the wish for them really to die. To bring that about, you need the hostility of wanting to harm or get rid of a person whose bad qualities or bad situation you exaggerate. With speaking harshly, you really want to hurt the person by insulting, criticizing or making fun of them, whether what you say is true or not. 

What if you don’t have the intention to hurt anybody? Some people use very foul language, but they don’t have the intention to hurt anybody. Is that harsh language? Speaking harshly reaches its finale when another person gets hurt by it. If the other person doesn’t get hurt, the action doesn’t reach its finale. But even if you don’t intend to hurt anybody by swearing (so, there’s just naivety, not hostility), others could still be hurt or offended by it.

For instance, could you say that Buddha offended Devadatta? Or His Holiness the Dalai Lama – he makes a trip to some country, and the Chinese get offended. Is it destructive of His Holiness to go?

Participant: This is a difficult question.

Dr. Berzin: It is a difficult question.

Participant: But it is quite clear, I think.

Dr. Berzin: What is quite clear? There’s a man-made result: China cuts off some trade agreement with the country or something like that. That’s a man-made result. Does His Holiness accumulate negative karmic aftermath as a result of that?

Participant: Did he do it out of unawareness?

Dr. Berzin: “I want to offend the Chinese; therefore, I’m going to go”?

Participant: I meant whether he did it not knowing what was going to happen.

Dr. Berzin: Not knowing? He knows perfectly well that the Chinese are going to get upset. He’s not naive.

Let’s say you do well at your job and get a promotion, which makes the other workers jealous. So, you cause pain to others by doing your job well. Is it destructive to do your job well?

Participant: In India, yes, it would be.

Dr. Berzin: In India, yes. 

Participant: It’s like working in a field: you cannot do other than to kill. I think that when you live a normal life, you’re always going to offend people.

Dr. Berzin: Right. No matter what, you’re going to offend somebody by what you do. Somebody could not like the shirt that you’re wearing. Somebody could not like the perfume that you’re wearing.

Participant: And they say, “Too much perfume!”

Dr. Berzin: Right. “Too much perfume! You’re bothering my allergies,” and stuff like that.

Participant: I think it’s always so. You can’t do it right for everybody.

Dr. Berzin: Right. It’s impossible. Shantideva said, speaking of infantile people, that it’s impossible to please everybody. 

Does that mean that you don’t try? If you go to a Muslim country, and you know that it’s going to offend others if you wear a mini-skirt or kiss your boyfriend in public, do you do it or not?

Participant: You refrain.

Dr. Berzin: You refrain because you know that it’s going to offend everybody.

Participant: Also, it depends. Forty years ago in Germany, it was a problem if you kissed a boy on the street. Nowadays, nobody cares. 

Dr. Berzin: Right. Nowadays, couples kissing on the street wouldn’t offend anyone because values have changed. Well, of course, values change, but if you know what the values are, you can avoid offending others.

So, these examples that we’re discussing here are of actions that reach their finale but where there was no intention to bring about the results that ensued. But, as I said, we’ll get to these types of actions.

Anyway, the action of thinking with malice always reaches its finale with hostility as its motivating emotion: you want to hurt the person.

Taking What Was Not Given, Engaging in Inappropriate Sexual Behavior, and Thinking Covetously: Longing Desire 

Taking what is not given, indulging in inappropriate sexual behavior, and thinking covetously reach their finale with longing desire, attachment, or greed.

Thinking Distortedly with Antagonism: Naivety 

Thinking distortedly with antagonism reaches its finale with naivety. 

Lying, Speaking Divisively, and Chattering Meaninglessly: Any One of the Three Disturbing Emotions 

Lying, speaking divisively, and chattering meaninglessly can reach their finale with any of the three disturbing emotions or attitudes: You can lie out of anger; you can lie out of attachment – wanting to get something; you can lie out of naivety – thinking that it’s amusing to lie or something like that.

With any of the above-named actions, the causal motivating emotion that gets you to think to do the action can be different from the contemporaneous motivating emotion that brings that action to its finale. For example, you could steal a book from a store out of a constructive causal motivation to help somebody with the information in it or out of an unspecified motivation to learn how to fix a leaky faucet in the kitchen. The causal motivating emotion could also be destructive; it could be hatred for the store owner, longing desire to accumulate books, or confusion due to not understanding cause and effect, as in thinking that stealing is going to prove that you’re a man or that there’s nothing wrong with stealing. Nevertheless, to actually lift your hand to take the book and to put it into your bag so that the act reaches its finale of thinking that the book is now yours – even if you’re stealing it to give it to somebody else – the action has to be contemporaneously motivated by longing desire for the book; otherwise, you wouldn’t want to make it your own by stealing it. 

And, again, the contemporaneous motivating emotion can change during the course of the action. Also, there can be a delay between when the actual action has been committed and when it reaches its finale. For instance, a hunter could fatally wound a deer, but it might take a while before the animal dies. The act only reaches its finale when the animal dies. During this period, the hunter might feel regret and strong compassion for the animal as it suffers and passes away. What Vasubandhu is specifying here, however, is not the emotion that occurs at the moment immediately preceding the action reaching its finale – the death of the deer. Instead, he’s specifying the contemporaneous motivating emotion with which one carries out the actual action – in this case, the hostility, wishing harm to the deer – that causes the action to reach its finale. So, here’s a good example of regretting before the action reaches its finale. But, still, to actually shoot it, the hunter had to have the contemporaneous motivating emotion of wishing it harm.

Only the Actions of Killing and Speaking Harshly Reach Their Finale When the Object of the Action Experiences Suffering

So, of the ways in which the seven destructive actions of body and speech reach their finale, only taking the life of another and speaking harshly and abusively reach their finale with the object of the action experiencing suffering. With killing, the victim has to die. With speaking harshly and abusively, the other person has to be hurt by what we’ve said. With the other five actions of body and speech, it’s not necessary that the object of the action experience any suffering in order for the destructive action to reach its finale. With lying, for instance, the other person merely has to believe our lie. Whether believing it will eventually cause that person harm is not the issue here. 

Usually, especially according to humanitarian types of ethics, we think that as long as the action didn’t hurt anybody, it doesn’t matter. But, here, what’s being said is that these other five actions are destructive even if the other person doesn’t get hurt. So, it doesn’t matter when you steal, for example, whether or not the owner discovers the loss, or when you commit adultery, whether or not the partner of the one you have sex with finds out and is hurt by it. That doesn’t matter. 

That’s interesting, isn’t it? In a sense, this thing of having sex with somebody else’s partner is basically using something that doesn’t belong to you. I think it has something to do with the rather ancient Indian belief that the wife belongs to the husband or to the father and stuff like that.

Participant: But even over here, in Europe, such a thing usually ends with pain.

Dr. Berzin: But what’s being said here is that it doesn’t matter whether that person’s partner finds out or not. Even if nobody finds out, it’s still destructive.

So long as the person who initiates the theft feels that the stolen object now belongs to them, or the person who commits adultery experiences pleasure at sexual union, the action is still destructive. Why is this? It’s because, according to Vasubandhu, the defining characteristic of a destructive action – what makes an action destructive – is its being contemporaneously motivated by a disturbing emotion or attitude. What makes it destructive is not whether it causes suffering to somebody else. 

So, this is really very interesting in terms of our analysis of karma. The main thing is not so much the intention, nor is it so much the suffering experienced by somebody else: it’s the disturbing emotion. That’s what you want to really work on, to focus on. What’s crucial, from the point of view of Buddhist ethics, is the state of mind, especially the motivating emotion, with which you do an action. It’s not whether the person you steal from, for instance, really needs that object, misses the object, or takes any legal action. That’s not what matters.

Euthanasia – Is the Contemporaneous Motivation Compassion or Hostility?

Participant: What about killing somebody out of compassion?

Dr. Berzin: Killing somebody out of compassion? Well, we just analyzed that. Compassion is the causal motivation when you are thinking about taking their life and deciding to do it. But for the actual action of taking their life to reach its finale, you have to do something that will really make the person die. And whether they die instantly or a day later doesn’t matter. 

But what is the emotion with which you give the person a fatal injection? Is it hostility? The intention is that you want the person’s life to end. Hostility implies exaggerating the negative qualities of something and wishing to get rid of it or do it harm. When you give the injection, are you exaggerating the negative qualities of the pain the sick person is in and so want to end it? Is there naivety also present? Actually, the naivety of not knowing the effect of your behavior, especially the long-term effect on yourself, is always present. So, this is a difficult issue to settle. However, to intentionally end their life, you have to have the motivating emotion of hostility, and you really want to do it. 

Participant: But what was the other point, the one having to do with the suffering of the person who dies?

Dr. Berzin: Well, it depends on what you mean by suffering. Suffering doesn’t necessarily mean pain. The suffering of the person who dies is that they get a “disadvantage” from the whole thing: they die.

What about when somebody wants you to kill them? Say the person is terminally ill with very painful cancer, and they say, “Please, please! Give me an injection.”

Participant: I don’t think they suffer that much.

Dr. Berzin: Do they suffer? Well, again, it depends on your definition of suffering. Birth, sickness, old age, and death are called “sufferings.” They happen whether we want them to happen or not.

Participant: Killing could then really be a pure act of giving relief to the person.

Dr. Berzin: So, it could be a pure act of compassion, you’re saying. However, when you give them that injection, you really want their life to end. But it’s not that you hate the person or that you’re angry with the person.

Participant: I think one could really have the motivation of wanting to end their suffering rather than the motivation of wanting to end their life.

Dr. Berzin: But to do that, you have to kill them, which is causing them harm.

Participant: But the motivation is ending the suffering, not ending the life of this person.

Dr. Berzin: But then you’re being naive because, of course, to accomplish that, you have to end their life, and there is no telling what kind of suffering they may experience in the bardo and their next life. It’s not a very strong destructive action, by any means – not compared to killing somebody that you hate. The causal motivation of compassion being so strong will weaken very, very much the karmic consequences of the action of taking a life. But in order to give a strong enough injection for them to die and not to do a halfway job, what does your state of mind have to be? You have to really want them to die, don’t you?

Participant: But it wouldn’t be malicious. It wouldn’t be like killing an animal or an enemy.

Dr. Berzin: Right. There’s no malicious intent. But then, again, it depends on what you mean by malicious. Wanting to cause pain? Is that what malicious is? Is it wanting to cause the other person to experience something that they don’t want? Well, they want to die.

Participant: I think that, in a way, you want to make the other person happy. When they are suffering so much and they beg you, “please, please, give me an injection,” you want to make them happy by doing what they ask.

Dr. Berzin: But we’re Buddhist here. Aren’t they going to have a next life? What if what we’re doing is speeding them to a hell, in which case, things are going to be worse when they die?

Participant: But the intention is to relieve them of their suffering.

Dr. Berzin: This is what I’m saying – that the intention is mixed with naivety. Here, it says the intention has to be mixed with hostility – that with the intention, really wanting the person to die, you have the hostility of wishing them harm. If you didn’t have that, you wouldn’t give a strong enough measure for them to die. You don’t just want to injure them. And ending someone’s life is causing harm to them.

Participant: But what I doubt is that it’s actually mixed with hostility.

Dr. Berzin: Well, is it actually mixed with hostility?

Participant: As you said, you can, say, kill someone by doing nothing. Take the case of my granny. She was eighty-five and didn’t want to live any longer. She started not eating and got weaker and weaker. Then she developed a fever and the physicians and nurses decided not to feed her, and then she died.

Dr. Berzin: OK. Here’s a good example. Somebody wants to die, and they have a living will with instructions not to put them on a life-support machine, not keep them artificially alive – so, not to feed them through a tube and so on. When you do nothing and just let them die like that, leaving them to die a natural death, are you passively causing them to die? 

Participant: There are people who say yes.

Dr. Berzin: There are people who say, yes, that is killing them because you could keep them artificially alive on a machine… which would cost a million euros a week.

Participant: It also causes the person to suffer longer.

Dr. Berzin: Well, they could be in a coma and not feeling anything. They’d be in a vegetative state. 

These are real ethical dilemmas. What do you do with your dog or cat? Do you put the dog or cat to sleep? With humans, the situation is a bit more dangerous, in a sense. But a lot of people put their pets to sleep when they get really old and sick. They give them to the vets – so, causing the veterinarian to kill. But is that what you should do? Should you just let the dog or cat die a natural death, even though it’s in a lot of pain? What’s the difference between a dog and a person? That’s a terrible dilemma that a lot of people face. They might not face the dilemma with their grandmothers, but they could certainly face it with their pets. So, what do you do?

Participant: I think that, again, it depends on whether you’re willing to take on whatever consequences.

Dr. Berzin: If your motivation is compassion, then you do it if you’re willing to take on the karmic consequences. Well, then, of course, the thing is that maybe the person or the animal could have recovered. There are cases like that. So, out naivety – idiot compassion – you killed them.

Participant: We try to limit this risk of cutting the life short.

Dr. Berzin: Right. We try to limit the risk. The whole point is that this is really a difficult situation.

Anyway, let’s end here because we’re a little bit past the time. But I think the finale of all of this – and we’ll go further next time – is that one really has to analyze. There are so many different factors involved in what makes our behavior destructive or constructive. And we try to minimize the destructiveness by seeing what factors are involved and which ones we can change.

Participant: Can I just add some medical information?

Dr. Berzin: Our doctor speaks.

Participant: Because of Western medicine, people who are dying don’t need to be in pain. The medication can be adjusted to prevent them from suffering, and it can be done without causing them to die.

Dr. Berzin: Right. When someone is in severe pain, the pain medication – morphine or whatever – can be adjusted in such a way that it isn’t a lethal dose. So, you would really have to want to kill the person to give them such a high dose.

Participant: No, what I wanted to say is that sometimes there’s a discussion about why one should allow people to die or even to help them to die. But I think that if the medication is good, people can live for a while without pain. 

Dr. Berzin: Basically, what she’s saying is that, from a medical point of view, because one can manage the pain so that the person doesn’t suffer, there’s no need for euthanasia.