Review
We’ve been going through the various aspects of the graded stages, trying to analyze on a deeper level the various points that are covered in this material.
Just to recapitulate very briefly, we’ve gone through the precious human rebirth with all its opportunities and freedoms and how that will be lost when we die. We’re certainly going to die, and we don’t know when. After we die, nothing is going to be of help unless we’ve built up some preventive measures to avoid worse rebirths. That means integrating the Dharma methods into our lives.
We looked at the rebirth states that would follow if we haven’t done that and if our lives have instead been filled with destructive ways of thinking, speaking, and acting, being under the influence of disturbing emotions, like anger, jealousy, greed, attachment, desire, naivety, and arrogance. Surely, what would follow is a worse state of rebirth, because those destructive types of behavior just bring on more and more suffering, more and more difficulty.
There’s certainly no guarantee that we will be reborn as humans, let alone humans with precious human rebirths with all its opportunities and freedoms. So, we looked at the non-human rebirth states that we could be born into: as a trapped being in one of these so-called hells, these joyless realms, as a clutching ghost, a so-called hungry ghost, and as a creeping creature, an animal. That would be quite awful, especially if we take such rebirths quite seriously. Even having a human rebirth without all the opportunities to study and practice and to progress spiritually – like if we were in a war zone, or in a very primitive place where everybody is really violent toward each other, or in some sort of dictatorship where spiritual things are forbidden, or being seriously handicapped – would be quite awful. We certainly want to avoid that, and we see that there is a way to avoid that in terms of a safe direction, what’s called refuge.
We saw that what will enable us to avoid that is getting rid of the disturbing emotions and the confusion and ignorance that dominate our mental continuums now, which would thus enable us to get rid of any destructive behavior, any sort of syndrome that perpetuates this type of rebirth cycle. In other words, what we’re talking about is attaining a true stopping of all of these things and attaining the states of mind, the true pathway minds, that bring that stopping about and that result from having eliminated all these troublemakers from our mental continuums completely and forever. That is what really will enable us to get out of this syndrome, this so-called samsara, and to avoid suffering. That’s the third and fourth noble truths and the deepest Dharma Gem. Those who have achieved these true stoppings and true pathway minds in full are the Buddhas. Those who have achieved them in part are the Arya Sangha.
The Real Refuge Is the Dharma
Look at what Buddha himself advised. He said that the real refuge is the Dharma – “After I pass away, let the Dharma be your guide” – not a specific leader, not the community itself. Although the Buddhas, teachers, and community are obviously very, very essential, Buddha emphasized the Dharma, the teachings themselves, as our refuge. Elsewhere, in other texts, the Buddha is emphasized as the main refuge, the very source of direction, because the Buddha is the source of the Dharma teachings. From that point of view, yes, the Buddha is the most important. But in terms of what we have to actually rely on in our daily lives, it’s the Dharma itself, actually taking these preventive measures. We get inspiration from the Buddhas, we gain support from the Arya Sangha, we even gain support from our fellow practitioners, but, in the end, it’s up to us to really do things.
And inevitably people let us down. We get disappointed in others, and those that we thought were great teachers are sometimes involved in scandals and so on. This is something very important never to get discouraged by. We have to remember what Buddha said: the ultimate refuge is the Dharma itself. “Let my teachings be your guide.” That’s very important to realize; otherwise, we can easily get discouraged when things go poorly with those that we looked up to.
Then we looked at what the first step of going in that direction actually means on a practical level. It is to exercise self-control, to avoid destructive behavior.
Second step, of course, would be to rid ourselves of the disturbing emotions that bring on our destructive behavior. But before we can work to get rid of those, we need to work on exercising self-control, to refrain from acting in a destructive way. If we can discipline our bodies and our speech, we will have the strength to discipline our minds – and not just in terms of concentration, of staying single-pointedly on an object. That’s part of concentration. But this term that I like to translate as mental stability (dhyana), is, as Shantideva points out, not just concentration; it’s also avoiding all the emotional ups and downs, all the distractions that keep us from focusing on the object. We’re not just talking about mental wandering, which keeps us from being focused, but about desire, anger and these sorts of things that drive mental wandering. So, that requires a great deal of discipline. And it doesn’t mean just blocking all emotion. There are positive emotions and negative emotions. What we want to get rid of are the negative emotions, not the positive ones, like love, patience, kindness, affection, compassion, and generosity.
Then we started our discussion of karma, analyzing all the various aspects involved with our behavior in terms of destructive types of acting, speaking, thinking. We’ve gone through a tremendous amount of detail and discussion of that.
Before we move on to the intermediate scope, I wanted, as a way of concluding the discussion of karma, to go through a list of factors that can affect the intensity of either the suffering that we will experience as a result of destructive behavior or the happiness that we will experience as a result of constructive behavior. This is a list that I put together from Vasubandhu’s and Asanga’s presentations and the Tibetan commentaries. When we put all the factors together, we get one grand list of things that affect the intensity. This shows that there’s a great deal of variation in the strength of the results that we can experience from having committed a certain action. We saw this in terms of all the factors that are involved in making the pathway of karma complete. We looked at the motivating intention and emotion. We looked at whether the basis is complete, whether the action complete – does it reach its finale – and so on. The factors that we will be discussing here, though, are yet other aspects that affect the intensity of the results that we will experience. I think that this is very important for understanding more fully what is involved with cause and effect.
Karma Is a Dependent Arising
We tend to think in a very simplistic way that one action produces one effect and that that’s it: “I hurt somebody, and as a result, I’m going to be hurt back.” However, it’s not so simple. There are so many different causal factors that affect what we experience. They affect it in terms of what we’ve done in the past. They affect what is occurring while we are engaged in some sort of karmic action. And they continue to affect the result that will ripen from that karmic action in terms of affecting the strength and certainty of ripening of the potentials left on our mental continuums after we’ve committed the action. When we start to think about all the causal factors, such as our intention, our motivation, and so on, we start to see that there is an enormous nexus or network of causal factors involved.
The more that we are able to see all the factors, the better able we are to deconstruct what’s going on and to see the voidness of karma in terms of dependent arising – this level of dependent arising, which is the conventional level: dependent arising in terms of causes and conditions. We’re not talking here about the deepest level of dependent arising, which is in terms of mental labeling. That’s in addition. Do you follow what I’m saying? I think that’s the point that is really essential to realize as we wind up our discussion of karma. It is not so simplistic. There are so many factors that influence what we do and what we will experience as a result.
Also, we don’t exist in a vacuum: we’re always interacting with others, and all the same number of factors are affecting them as well. Everything interacts with everything else – not, however, according to some grand plan that someone outside of the system designed. Everything just somehow functions. That, I think, is what is really important to understand when it comes to the discussion of voidness – that despite nothing having solid, independent existence, things work. In fact, things work because nothing has a solid, independent existence (this is skipping ahead to what we eventually want to understand). We can see very well how that’s the case, here, in our discussion of karma. As Tsongkhapa says, when we’ve seen voidness in terms of dependent arising, then we’ve really understood it.
Let’s just take a moment to think about that, to digest that point.
[meditation]
An example came up in my mind just now. Here we are in Berlin. In the room, are two people from East Germany, one person from another part of West Germany, one person from Brazil, and one person from Mexico. I’m from the United States. We’re all here, interacting in a class. The number of causal factors that have influenced each of us in our lives and that have brought us here today is enormous. There’s nothing solid or concrete about “here we just are.” So, when we start to think in terms of this larger scope of causal factors and all the things that influence what each of us says, what each of us brings to a class, we see that there’s nothing solid there at all.
The Twelve Factors
So, we have this list of factors that affect the intensity of unhappiness or happiness that we experience as a result of our behavior. Here, we’ll speak in terms of destructive behavior (we can just substitute the constructive ones by changing certain variables). The first one:
[1] The strength of the disturbing emotions that causally and contemporaneously motivate the action as well as bring it to its finale
So, here, we’re talking about the motivating emotions.
There are several phases of the motivating emotion. There’s the causal motivating emotion that accompanies the urge to think about doing or saying something and deciding to do it. That phase could go on for quite a while. Then there is the contemporaneous emotion that accompanies the urge to actually initiate the action, which could change during the course of doing or saying something. Then there’s the motivating emotion that accompanies the urge that brings the action to its finale, which can be a very different emotion from the one that we started with. So, this variable is talking about the strength of these disturbing emotions.
[2] The length of time the causal motivation has been held
Let’s say I am really angry with somebody and for several days I keep on thinking about yelling at them when I see them the next time. That’s much heavier than if I get angry and yell at them on the spot.
Then,
[3] Whether or not a distorted outlook is part of the motivation
For instance, we could think that what we do has no effect. Here’s a good example: We’re in a relationship with someone who is not paying much attention to us; they have been ignoring us. We feel that they don’t love us strongly enough, so we yell at them, “You should pay more attention to me! You should love me more!” – which usually backfires, doesn’t it? That is a distorted view – thinking that acting like that is going to get them to like us better. It’s funny how we often get into that syndrome.
Then,
[4] The nature of the act
This refers to how much suffering the act is capable of causing the being who’s the object of the action as compared to other types of destructive acts. Killing someone produces more suffering than stealing from them. Stealing from someone produces more suffering than having inappropriate sex with them or lying to them. When it comes to constructive acts, the nature of the act has to do with how much happiness the act is capable of causing. Saving someone’s life, for example, has the potential to cause more happiness than simply being honest with that person.
Participant: Is this more or less independent of your causal motivation? For instance, what if you say something to someone that you know is destructive, but you have no idea that it is going to destroy their self-esteem and rob them forever of all motivation to work on a project? You have no idea that what you say could do that, but it does.
Dr. Berzin: Well, this is bringing in another factor. In other words, suppose your causal motivation to scold an employee who has been making lots of mistakes is the wish to help them and then you scold them with harsh words. You don’t know what the long-term effect will be, but your causal motivation was good. This is the whole point – that there are all these variables and that each one of them affects the short-term man-made results and the long-term karmic results. Now, is there a mathematical formula? I know you are Mr. Science, but there is no mathematical formula that we can use to compute what the actual result will be – that it’ll be 0.73% of this and 72% of that. It’s not like that. When we look at all the variables that are involved, we can see that the formula (if you want to look at it as an equation) is very, very complex.
The next one:
[5] The actual method used to carry the action out (in terms of the amount of suffering it’s capable of inflicting on the being who’s the object of the action compared to other methods that could be used to carry out the same action)
We have to say “capable of inflicting” because we don’t actually know what the effect on the other person will be. For instance, killing somebody by torture, as opposed to killing them instantly, is likely to cause more suffering.
Then the next one:
[6] The item involved in carrying out the action – for instance, the value, whether financial and/or emotional, of an item stolen
Stealing something that the person stolen from doesn’t care about is less heavy than stealing something that they are really attached to. Stealing something that isn’t worth much is less heavy than stealing something really valuable. It depends, though. Some people are very rich and don’t care if an item is stolen, even if it’s valuable. In many ways, it is the emotional value that is the strongest. Once, in India, a thief came to my house. The guy stole a number of things, but the thing that I was most upset about was a sweater that my mother had knitted for me. It was the only item that I had left of what my mother had knitted, so it had a lot of emotional value. It was certainly not valuable monetarily, especially compared to other things that the guy stole. Anyway, it’s due to this factor that it’s important to try to minimize any anger and so on when somebody steals something from you.
I remember, also, somebody once took money from me. I’d given him money for something, and he never paid it back. He just ran away with the money, rather than using it for what I had asked him to use it for. I liked this person. It was a real loss of trust. What I tried hard to do was to minimize my feelings of anger and of being upset about it by thinking of the consequences for him. If I were really, really angry and upset and kept on being angry and upset, the karmic consequences for him would be much greater. So, by saying, “OK, you enjoy the money. My life will go on without it. It’s not the end of the world,” I could help this so-called friend of mine. These things are important if you want to help minimize the negative karmic consequences that the person who has committed a negative action toward you will have.
The next one is:
[7] The frequency with which the action has been committed in the past
The next one is:
[8] The frequency with which it is committed again afterwards
The more an action is repeated, the stronger the consequences. That we can understand – that the tendency to commit that action just gets stronger and stronger through repetition.
Then,
[9] The good qualities, accomplishments, and situation of, as well as respect paid to, the object of the action
I remember that when we brought this up before, some people objected – that stealing from someone who has a lot of good qualities versus stealing from someone who has none is a heavier karmic action. This is a very difficult one, I must say, to really understand and to accept. We could, for instance, think that stealing from a poor person is worse than stealing from a rich person. If so, what would the good quality be? Would it be being poor?
Participant: That doesn’t sound right.
Dr. Berzin: So, what could this be referring to?
Participant: It makes sense in a way that one has no respect for someone’s good qualities and that that’s the reason one steals from someone who has good qualities.
Dr. Berzin: Very good. Remember, according to Vasubandhu, one of the mental factors that is always present with a destructive action is having no sense of values, not respecting good qualities or those that have them. This is exactly what’s involved here. We have no respect for good qualities. Now, does that mean that it’s OK to steal from somebody who doesn’t have good qualities? It doesn’t mean that. But I think what you’re getting at is probably the way to understand this.
Participant: I was thinking that if you steal from someone with a lot of good qualities, you lessen their ability to act constructively.
Dr. Berzin: Right. But that’s the next factor:
[10] The amount of benefit the initiator of the action and/or others have derived from the being who is the object of the action
Obviously, it’s heavier to hurt a person who does a lot of good than someone who does a lot of harm. I think the factor before has to do with the extent to which one lacks a sense of values. This doesn’t mean, though, that it’s OK to steal from somebody who has no good qualities.
Participant: Or that it’s OK to exercise the death penalty.
Dr. Berzin: That’s a very good example. This factor isn’t indicating that it’s good to execute criminals.
Well, what’s the difference between killing all the intellectuals, the professors, and doctors in a country – like they did in Cambodia under Pol Pot – and executing all the criminals? Is there a difference between executing a great intellectual or a doctor and a criminal? If there is, why is there a difference? From the point of view of the nature of the act, killing is killing. The nature of the act is not a relevant variable here.
This, I think, we have to remember: We’re not saying that any of these variables acts independently of all the other variables. Each one is just an additional factor. So, in addition to these other variables – how much suffering the act can cause the other person, the method we implement, the strength of the disturbing attitudes and emotions that motivate us, the frequency with which we’ve committed the action in the past, etc. – there is the variable of whether or not we have the state of mind of respecting good qualities and those who have them. I think that’s the point.
Participant: What’s always mentioned – and what falls in this category – is that stealing from the sangha is especially heavy.
Dr. Berzin: Yes. But that has to do with not respecting good qualities and the people who possess them. But, again, what’s the difference between stealing from a rich person and stealing from a poor person. Does a rich person have good qualities? Just being rich is not a good quality and doesn’t, all by itself, elicit respect for the person. So, what’s a good quality? What are we talking about here? Is it that one person is educated and the other person isn’t? That can’t be the case, because a lot of people don’t have the opportunity to be educated. So what are the qualities that we talking about here that would be worthy of respect?
Participant: Being constructive, being helpful.
Dr. Berzin: It’s being a constructive, kind person, not necessarily a creative person. I remember that, back in the old hippy days, I visited a community that only wanted creative people there – artists, writers, poets, and so on. If you weren’t creative, you weren’t considered the proper type of person to be in the community. So, is being creative a good quality? I think, from the Buddhist point of view, good qualities are being kind, patient, and generous and having the far-reaching attitudes.
Participant: Having these wholesome mental factors.
Dr. Berzin: Right, having these positive mental factors. We haven’t gone through all of the ones listed in the abhidharma (we can get to those later in the intermediate scope), but there’s being respectful and gentle… there are all sorts of good qualities that we could add. So, a person who has these kinds of qualities is the type of person that would elicit respect if we valued these positive things ourselves. In a sense, the qualities that we would respect are positive, so-called spiritual qualities that we are aiming to achieve ourselves, as opposed to worldly qualities, like being very wealthy or powerful.
So, one might consider that there are two different kinds of respect here: respect for so-called spiritual good qualities, such as being kind, generous, and patient, and respect for so-called worldly good qualities, such as being young, good looking, wealthy, powerful, sexy – which a lot of people on a worldly level respect, don’t they? Are those worldly qualities worthy of respect? Well, not from a Buddhist point of view. It’s an interesting topic, respect. What are good qualities and what would we respect?
Serkong Rinpoche explained that the word “good quality” in Tibetan (yon-tan) is a helpful aspect or beneficial talent of a person that is a correction of some deficiency or inadequacy. We’re not talking here about a worldly deficiency, like being poor. I don’t know. Good quality – that’s a difficult thing to define.
What I’m reminded of is the list of eight qualities that make a precious human rebirth even more effective. These eight qualities are unspecified phenomena: they’re neither constructive nor destructive; they can go either way. One of them is being wealthy, one is being from a good family; another is having a strong influence on others. These are things that could be used for good or for bad (to use these Western categories). So, are these good qualities? In a sense, I think we need to speak of a good quality as being something that is used for positive, constructive purposes. For instance, someone who has a lot of money and uses it in a philanthropic way to support all sorts of positive causes is worthy of respect, as opposed to somebody who has a huge amount of money and uses it in a selfish way to buy things just for themselves.
This ninth one said, “good qualities, accomplishments, situation of, and respect paid to the object of the action. ” “Accomplishments,” I think, also refers to spiritual accomplishments, various attainments. But I suppose it could also refer to what has been accomplished to benefit others. I’m not sure what “situation” refers to, but perhaps it could mean an elderly person. In Asian society, elders are treated with great respect.
Anyway, the amount of benefit that the initiator of the action or others have received from the object of the action is a factor that’s clear. Preventing such a person from helping others is pretty heavy.
And then,
[11] The strength of reliance of the initiator of the action
That has to do with a person’s level of respectful belief and commitment regarding, for instance, vows. In other words, doing a destructive action after having taken a vow not to do it has heavier karmic consequences than doing it without having taken a vow not to do it. “I took the layperson’s vow not to steal, and yet I stole.” That’s heavier than doing it without having taken the vow. Now, this could go the other way around as well. Let’s say I took a bodhisattva vow – a general bodhisattva vow, not the specific ones – to help others, and I do it. That’s stronger than helping others without having taken a vow.
What I’m thinking of is an issue that comes up with the layperson’s vows, especially the vow to avoid inappropriate sexual behavior. This vow covers a very large range of sexual behavior. A lot of people might not be willing to give up all the things that are included in the vow. I might be willing to give up raping somebody, forcing myself on somebody, or having sex in a way that is painful to the other person but not be willing to give up oral sex, masturbation, or something like that. In this case, one doesn’t take the vow. As various geshes have explained to me, the vow is the vow. It’s either the whole thing or nothing. However, one can take on a so-called intermediate nonrevealing form, which is not quite the layman’s vow. It’s a promise not to do certain aspects of the vow. That’s not as strong as taking the full vow, but it’s more beneficial than doing nothing. This, I thought, was very, very helpful.
This intermediate nonrevealing form is especially helpful with alcohol. The layman’s vow is not to drink even a drop of alcohol. Buddha said, “Not even the amount of alcohol that could fit on the tip of a blade of grass.” That’s clear: no alcohol means no alcohol. There are some exceptions when it comes to medicinal substances. Homoeopathic medicine, for example, has some alcohol in it. Some cough syrups have alcohol in them (we’re not talking about it being OK to drink a whole bottle of cough syrup in order to get high). So, either you take the vow, or you don’t take the vow.
There are many people, however, who would say, “Well, I will control my drinking and not get drunk.” A social glass of wine or beer, particularly in European society, is hard to avoid – or in Russia, vodka. “Are you my friend? If you don’t drink vodka with me, you’re not my friend.” That’s a very, very awkward situation that one can find oneself in, in Russia. We could, then, take on this intermediate nonrevealing form: “I’m going to set a certain limit on my drinking. This is what I promise.” That’s more beneficial – if we really stick to it – than not restricting oneself at all. That, I think, is quite helpful to keep in mind.
It’s important not to compromise the vows, thinking, “Well, what the vow actually means is not to get drunk. It’s not really a vow not to drink.” This, I think, is not being fair to the tradition. There are various Dharma teachers who interpret it that way, but I don’t think that’s so helpful. It all depends, though. If what they’re doing is advocating this halfway measure, that’s fine. However, if they’re leading others to believe that that was what Buddha said the vow really was, then that’s a bit strange.
Then the last one is:
[12] The number of constructive actions done by the initiator of a destructive action that would counterbalance the destructive one
If we are involved in doing a lot of positive things and then tell a lie, our lying is less heavy than if we were not involved in doing anything positive.
That, then, is the list that I wanted to go through. Let’s take a few minutes to digest that.
[meditation]
What I would suggest is that we review some of the destructive things that we’ve done and consider these twelve factors in terms of all the various things that we’ve covered in our discussion of karma. This is our last session on karma. How often have I done the act? What was my emotional state leading up to it? What was my emotional state when I was actually doing it? What was my emotional state afterwards? Was there any regret? Am I counterbalancing these negative aspects of my life with anything positive? Who are the people I have acted negatively towards? What level of respect have I had for others’ good qualities? When I’ve acted destructively, did I plan it beforehand, or did I do it on a whim? Sometimes I do things by accident. Sometimes I’m very conscious of what I do.
It’s very important, by the way, when we’re doing Vajrasattva purification practice, to review these sorts of things and also to make some sort of resolution as to how we’re going to try to behave in the future. This, I think, would be quite helpful to do in our remaining minutes.
[meditation]
Final Points
Taking the Initial Scope Motivation Seriously
To wrap up this initial scope of motivation, I will remind you that the motivation for avoiding destructive behavior, here, on the initial level of motivation, is to avoid the consequences of destructive behavior, which is worse rebirths. I think it’s very easy to lose sight of that when working with this material. We think we want to avoid destructive behavior just in general because, for whatever reasons, it just doesn’t feel right to act destructively. But in order to be someone who really has the initial scope motivation, we need to take very seriously the whole issue of rebirth and be very seriously interested in continuing to have precious human rebirths in future lives and want not to mess it up.
If we are serious about gaining liberation and enlightenment, we’re going to have to have precious human rebirths all the way up until we gain that liberation. The primary way to ensure that is to avoid destructive behavior. In addition, we need to practice the far-reaching attitudes (even if we don’t have the motivation of liberation or enlightenment), wanting to be generous, patient, etc., and to make prayers for a precious human rebirth. These things, particularly ethical self-discipline, restraining from destructive behavior, are the causes for a precious human rebirth.
A question we need to ask ourselves, then, is how seriously do we take this whole issue of future lives and the importance of doing something to ensure that we don’t mess it up? I think that if we don’t take future lives seriously, what we have, really, is the Dharma-lite version of the initial scope. Sure, we want to go in this safe direction and to avoid destructive behavior, but we want to do it just in terms of this lifetime – because it seems the right thing to do.
So, again, let’s reflect on how seriously we are thinking in terms of future lives and what preventive measures we are taking to avoid our future lives getting worse. Without appreciating the precious lives that we have, without taking seriously that we’re going to die and that we could be facing worse rebirths – and doing something about it – we don’t have the Real Thing initial scope motivation. And let’s not kid ourselves: to actually have this motivation on a very deep, sincere, heart level is very, very difficult, especially for us Westerners – unless we’ve been brought up with some sort of belief in and fear of hells and so on. Then, maybe, we take it seriously, though within a different context. But this isn’t just about being afraid of going to hell. What we’re afraid of is losing the opportunity to continue on the spiritual path. That’s what we’re afraid of. So, let’s reflect on that for the last two minutes.
[meditation]
And it’s not enough just to engage in constructive behavior, thinking, “Well, I’m doing a lot of constructive things, so I can do some destructive things. I don’t really want to exercise self-control over this destructive thing. But that’s OK. I’ll just do more constructive things.” That’s not good enough.