WSW 24: Negative Responses to Positive Acts, Summary of Karmic Causes

[Verse 45, poetical version:

When no matter how well-meant our actions toward others, they always elicit a hostile response, this is the wheel of sharp weapons returning full circle upon us from wrongs we have done. Till now we’ve repaid loving-kindness with malice; hereafter let’s always accept others’ favors both graciously and with most humble respect.

Literal version:

When everything good that we’ve done has elicited a bad (response), this is the sharp weapon of negative karma circling back on us from having counterbalanced in an opposite manner all our repayments of kindness. Now, let’s accept on the crown of our heads repaying kindness.]

There are a lot of verses in the Eight Verse Lojong and in the Thirty-Seven Bodhisattva Practices about when we’re kind to others, and they mistreat us in return. We need to see them as our teacher, teaching us patience, or to have even more love for them, like a mother toward a sick child. How do you handle that when we’re kind to someone, and they’re just either using us, which means not repaying us at all, or if they are nasty in return? We have to watch that we’re not using other people – this is what we have to stop. We have to watch that we repay others’ kindness with kindness, with appreciation. The classic example, of course, is our parents. How much do we repay them, or do we just use them as slaves to wash our clothes and cook for us, and provide a house? We have to think of ourselves in our present situation not theoretical when you’re three years old; what are we doing now in respect to others who are kind to us?

I must say I haven’t taught it very often, but there is a wonderful exercise in which everybody sits by themselves, and you take a period of time and think about all the kindness that my mother has shown me between when I was born and when I was five years old, and then all the kindness between five and 10, and then between 10 and 15, and so on. Then you think about all the kindness that your father has shown you for each of these periods of time; and then any other people that might have been close with you. You try to actually remember what they have done for you: they washed your clothes, they took you to school, they helped teach you how to read – whatever it might have been. Then you also think in terms of the kind things that I did for them during those periods, and usually it’s not very balanced. The problem with that is not to go on a guilt trip.

Let’s think about this for a moment. We think in terms of when we’re kind to others and we get a negative response, and how this is the wheel of sharp weapons coming back to us from us giving a negative response or no response to others when they’re kind to us. We resolve that we will repay kindness or at least be appreciative of it. Then we think in terms of everybody who has this problem: “May everybody appreciate the kindness that they’ve received and, in some way, pay back that kindness.”

Verse 46 in the poetical version: 

In short then, whatever unfortunate sufferings we haven’t desired crash upon us like thunder, this is the same as the smith who had taken his life with a sword he has fashioned himself. Our suffering is the wheel of sharp weapons returning full circle upon us from wrongs we have done. Hereafter let’s always have care and awareness never to act in non-virtuous ways.

Literally, all that it says is: 

In short, the strikings, like lightning on our heads, of (disasters) never wished for are the sharp weapons of negative karma circling back on us, like the murder of a sword smith by his own (fashioned) sword. Now, let’s take care about our negative deeds.

The next three verses are all very similar. They’re basically summing up that whole first section. The image is that various disasters just strike us out of the sky like lightning on our heads, and this is “the sharp weapons of negative karma circling back on us,” and it’s just using the image of a sword smith who makes swords and then is killed by the sword that he has made. This is the case with things that we never wished for happening to us; it’s one of the basic sufferings of samsaric situations – these disasters that we never wished for. 

The next verses are pretty much similar. I’ll just read the literal version: 

Our experiences, as well, of sufferings in the worse rebirth states are the sharp weapons of negative karma circling back on us, like the murder of an arrow smith by his own (fashioned) arrow. Now, let’s take care about our negative deeds.

Whether it’s things in this lifetime that we don’t wish for or in terms of future lives – being reborn in the worse rebirth states – these are again something that is coming back to us from our own karma. We have built up the causes for this, and now it’s ripening on us. 

Then verse 48: 

And the strikings, too, like lightning on our heads, of the problems of family life are the sharp weapons of negative karma circling back on us, like the murder of parents by a son they have raised. Now, it would be fitting forever to go forth (as monastics).

This becomes a bit heavy. It is saying that not only do we have the terrible things happening to us that we don’t want in this lifetime from having done destructive actions, and worse rebirth states coming from negative actions, but it’s also the problems of family life. These are things that I think we’re all familiar with. It’s an interesting image that they use: the parents being killed by a son that they had raised. In other words, you could do something as a son to produce something like karma, and then it comes back and harms you, and so “it would be fitting forever to go forth (as monastics).” I think that the main emphasis is in terms of renunciation. When one looks in a classic sense at renunciation, renunciation is looking toward getting out of samsara, getting out of rebirth. When one becomes a monastic, one is taking the vows for individual liberation – the word “pratimoksha” means vows for individual liberation. One is so disgusted and so fed up with samsara and the whole scene that you just say, “I want out of that.” It seems to imply, of course, family life – a lot of people would object to this, but the view is that family life just brings further and further problems, and raising a family brings further and further problems. 

That would be a difficult issue: when you actually do have family, is it contradictory to the aims for liberation? Of course, there are householder bodhisattvas, the Vimalakīrti Nirdeśa Sutra, and Marpa was not a monastic, so there are these classic examples, but I think one would have to acknowledge that it’s more difficult when you have a family. The way that the monks live, many of them have a family anyway in the monastery. If I look at Serkong Rinpoche – there are attendants, there’s an old attendant who’s certainly a father figure, who’s the cook in the household. His brother lives with him; there are other attendants who take care of him – it’s a family. Even if it’s not your blood family, they tend to make family units – at least the Tibetans do. I don’t know about it in other traditions. 

Our question here with this verse is to look in terms of all the difficulties that we have, all the negative karma coming back. It seems to say that problems in family life are coming from leading a family life. I find this a very heavy thing in this verse; it’s recommending that therefore we should not pursue that, but we should pursue becoming a monk and nun. I think what we can do in the West is have a realistic view toward family life. I think there are different levels of this. There is, let’s say, living in the household of your parents and taking care of your parents when they get old, which is certainly an Indian thing, whether you’re married or not. So, keeping the householder responsibility is one thing; another thing is to have a partner but not have children; and the third thing is to have children. Of course, there is the Indian Hindu model, which is that you have your family, and then as an old person you go off and you renunciate. But that certainly wasn’t the Tibetan tradition. 

But here we’re talking about just ordinary people, and so I think that one has to be realistic and not have great expectations. If you’re going to raise a family, children, and so on, I think you have to take a realistic responsibility of what you’re doing. It is a tremendous undertaking of your time, and financial resources, and Dharma is going to have to take a secondary place, or at least studying is going to have to take a secondary place. Your field of practice is going to be generosity toward the children, and patience, and perseverance. You could make progress that way but it’s not the same as if you don’t have those responsibilities. But even if you don’t have those responsibilities, still we have to support ourselves: somehow you have to get money. This is not an easy situation. 

We’re talking about family here. If you have a partner, basically you have to deal with the karmic crap of the partner as well as your own karmic crap. It’s difficult enough overcoming your own karmic crap, but then all the obstacles that they have, and all the troubles that they have, and so on, become your troubles as well. Now, of course, you can do tonglen, you can do all sorts of Mahayana practices. One way of looking at it is that it’s more obstacles. So, one has to be realistic, I think. If you’re going to do it, do it. But being with a family, as I say, inevitably there are family problems. Your children never turn out the that way you want them to. Usually. they want to do something completely different; they rebel. It’s difficult with the wife and the husband: there are money issues, there are sex issues, there are power issues – all these sorts of things. You share your money, and then your partner uses more of the money than you want they would use or uses the money for something that you didn’t want them to use it for. This causes typical problems. I think it is just saying that it makes things more complicated, and it certainly does. 

I don’t think you have to necessarily become a monk or a nun. You can also do like I’ve done: I’ve never married but I haven’t been a monk either, because I see that being a monk in our present society – there’s no support for it. If you become a monk with the Tibetans, you’re never going to be accepted fully. And in the West, there is no structure. The biggest thing that you have to deal with as a monk or a nun would be that you’re walking around in red robes with a shaved head in the West, and everybody stares at you, and people give you dirty looks, and that really is something that you have to deal with. That’s one of the most difficult things: how are you going to deal with everybody looking at you like you were from Mars when you walk in the street? You feel self-conscious. There has to be a society for this; without a society, what you’re doing is having more suffering. Then of course you have to deal with loneliness. But in a monastery, there isn’t that loneliness, and the monks and nuns are affectionate with each other there.

Anyway, these three verses basically sum up the previous section. Renunciation is a difficult topic, I must say. 

[Final minutes missing]