OK, maybe we can get started. So tonight's talk is going to be
on the idea of karma. Karma, also known as Karma 1, is
a Poly word. The other one is a Sanskrit
word, and it's a very fundamental idea in the Buddhist
teachings. Yeah, really important, really
core idea. You find that when the Buddha
talks about karma, it is an aspect of right view.
Yeah. To think about the world in
terms of karma. And it's also part of what
awakening is about. Yeah.
When you come to the very end of the path and you have the deep
insights into the nature of the world, one of the insights you
have is the insight into karma. So this very fundamental part of
the correct understanding of how the world operates, The basic
meaning of comma is action. Yeah, it does not mean result.
Yeah, there's action and there's a result.
It does not mean the result and actually means the action
itself. I don't know if you have noticed
that very often when people talk about comma, they say that's my
comma. And very often they mean like,
oh, I'm experiencing this bad result and that's kind of comma.
That's not what it means according to the Buddha.
It means the actions that then lead to something later on.
It is not the result. It is the cause of something
that comes later on there. So comma means action there.
It's how we live our lives. It's all the activities that we
do. Body, speech and mind.
Also mind, right? Mind is also comma.
That's kind of really interesting because if comma is
very important, it means that we also have to deal with the mind
as well. This is part and parcel of the
Buddhist practice. And without that, you won't
actually really get anywhere on the Buddhist part.
That's why we meditate in all of these kind of things, because we
have to somehow deal with the mind.
So I'm going to talk about karma because it is quite a complex
topic. There's lots of
misunderstandings in the world, in the especially also in the
Buddhist world about what karma, how it really works.
And of course, very importantly, how can we make use of karma in
our practice to make it a powerful aspect of how we live
our lives, to actually increase. If you like the, you know, the
speed of the path and how to make the path work properly.
So this is kind of the idea behind this talk.
Clarify some of the issues, understand what is going on, and
then see how we can use that to actually improve our spiritual
practice if you like. Yeah.
So is that OK? Yeah.
If you're not OK, then it's going to be that anyway.
So you, you got to deal with that somehow.
So we'll see what happens if you're not OK.
Yeah. OK.
So this is the, this is what it's all about.
So I want to start to talk about karma a little bit from a
historical perspective because obviously the word karma existed
before the time of the Buddha. Yeah.
It's a kind of one of these ancient Indian words, karma or
karma. And the Buddha took it on and he
gave it kind of a new meaning. Yeah, often mentioned that here
when I come on this Friday night talks, that one of the kind of
revolutionary things about the Buddha, he took the Indian
culture at the time, which included a certain language and
certain ways of doing things, and then he kind of reinvented
it. He gave everything a new meaning
thing didn't have. After the Buddha came along,
everything changed in India. Buddhism became a very powerful
religion in India later on. It was probably the most
powerful religion in terms of numbers and effect on society
for hundreds of years until Hinduism or Brahmanism kind of
made its way back in again. And Buddhism got kind of a
little bit on the sidelines after that.
So it had a very, very powerful impact on Indian religion in
general and and and Indian society in general.
So what did it mean before Buddhism and before Buddhism
come up basically referred to ritual.
Yeah, the rituals or what the Brahmins did is what the
Brahmins are very famous for. When you go to the you know, you
want to get have a funeral rites or whatever, especially funeral
rides or married rides or any kind of passage in life.
Yeah, you have to go through, you will go to the Brahmins of
India, the kind of the priestly caste these days, they consider
that themselves the highest caste.
In those days they were kind of a little bit lower down, but
basically some of that on the top caste in India.
And so you go to the Brahmins, you ask for the funeral rights,
because if you do the funeral rights in the right way, then
your mum or dad is going to go to heaven.
Yeah. Then they go to the right place,
You get the funeral rights wrong, you may go down instead
of going up. Yeah.
You don't want your mum and dad to go down.
You want them to rise up. It's the Brahmins.
They had this monopoly on the right rituals.
They're doing the rituals in the right order, knowing the right
verses and spells to proclaim during the ritual.
And because they had a monopoly on that, yeah, they made a lot
of money that way. That's kind of how they live
their life. That's kind of how the Brahmins
survived. And I think many, even today,
they probably are Brahmins to survive in that part.
So they had the monopoly in rituals.
And that was the idea of kamma. Perform the ritual in the right
way. Your mum and dad goes to heaven,
get the dodgy priest. And your mum and dad are in
serious trouble. Yeah, that's kind of what what
how these things are here. And then.
So that was how it was. And then the Buddha comes along
here and the Buddha says, well, it's not really as simple as
that. It's not just really about
rituals. Yeah, OK, rituals may be nice.
And I would recommend all the way to do a little bit of
rituals. It's nice to do rituals.
Yeah. Rituals often give life meaning.
We do rituals anyway. Every society has its rituals.
You shake hands or whatever it is.
It's like a ritual. When you do small talk, it's a
bit like a ritual. And then the dummer, we also
have rituals, but rituals have to have meaning.
They have to be used in a positive way to be powerful.
And when you use them in a good way, they become really useful
part of the spiritual path. But it shouldn't be empty.
And this was the problems with his brahmatical rituals.
They weren't necessarily meaningful in that particular
way. And so the Buddha said rituals
is all kind of OK. But comma in the Buddhism,
actually it means something very different.
And what it means in Buddhism, it basically means the intention
that lies behind the action. Intention is what is important.
It is not whether you step on that Ant.
If you step on an Ant by accident, OK, it's not a big
deal. But if you deliberately step on
that Ant, well, then it is a problem.
Then you have done something bad.
Intention is a critical thing. Yeah, and the Buddha says in the
suit, as he says, Chaitana hang bikave kamang Vadami here.
Yeah, This is one of these polyphrases that you will hear
quite often because it kind of defines what kamma means.
Chaitana hang bikave kamang vadami.
It is intention, monks, that I call kamaha.
And this is straight out of the suit as out of the word of the
Buddha. And so this changes things.
Yeah. It kind of, instead of this
focus on rituals, it changes the whole idea of action to
morality. Instead, once we are dealing
with intention, we are dealing with morality.
Actions are either moral or immoral, depending on the
intention that drives that action.
This is what the Buddha is saying, going from ritual to an
ethical code that then the Buddha said was kind of the
core, one of the cores or part of the backbone of the Buddha's
teachings. So what then does that actually
mean? In what sense is intention an
ethical or intentional actions? In what sense are they ethical?
It depends on the quality of that intention he has.
So intentions can come from a good place or from a bad place.
And that place that we are coming from is usually called
motivation. You're motivated by something.
You can be motivated by positive things.
You can be motivated by compassion, by kindness, by
generosity, or you can be motivated by negative things.
Yeah, by ill will or greed or delusion or ang or fear or these
kind of things. And if it's motivated by
something negative, it's called bad comma.
And if it's motivated by something positive, it is called
good comma. And the point that the Buddha is
making is that these things have results in the future.
The comma is not the result, the comma is the cause.
But there will be future result of these things.
And those results are, if you're making bad comma, it will have a
negative result in the future. It will experience the result as
painful feelings, as negative mind states, some kind of
suffering in your life. Whereas if you live in the good
way, yeah, you will feel positive results from that
karma, from that volitional action.
That's the basic idea of karma is the relationship between your
intention and later how you feel.
Intention and feeling very closely related to each other.
That is the basic idea of karma. Yeah.
And can you know that people will sometimes say, oh, yeah,
OK, that sounds good. But, you know, do I have to
believe that? Maybe it's true?
Maybe not. But you can actually feel that
right here and now. This is one of the points I
often like to make about the idea of khamma.
The Buddha talks about khamma that ripens in your next life or
ripens in future lives. But he also says that to some
extent, the comma ripens right here and now in this very life.
Yeah. If you look at your mind, if you
feel what happens when you do something good or something bad,
straight away, there will be an emotional response or a feeling
response to what you're doing. Yeah, do something a bit not
very nice to somebody. Yeah, Tell someone off at the
wrong time or whatever. Yeah.
Or act in a way, even have a bad thought sometimes.
Yeah, I hate that person who are, they're always bad.
Wait. And then you feel what that
feels like. And actually, it doesn't feel
good. It drains your energy.
And afterwards, you might think, why did I think that's the silly
thought, and you feel kind of bad about it.
And so there is this immediate feeling.
Usually that is a immediate repercussion of how we live, how
we act, or how we think. And if you understand that
connection right here in this life, you also understand how
that connection works in the larger scope of things.
Yeah, even maybe from one life to the next one, or carrying on
for a long time into the future. Yeah.
It is not that hard to understand why your intention
must be related to how you feel about yourself.
Investigate that. Because when you investigate
that, you start to understand what these laws of karma really
are about, and you get motivated to be a better person.
Yeah. Would you like to feel more
happy feelings or would you like to have more suffering in your
life? This is your choice.
And usually when I ask this question, very few people raise
their hand if I cannot, please have some more suffering.
Yeah, usually plenty enough suffering already.
Most people want to be more happy.
And so if you can see that connection between your
intention and how you feel about yourself, it motivates you to
live better. And the more you accumulate
these negative intentions, building things up, it's like
you are accumulating suffering. And often it leads to very
painful results in the long run. This is what the Buddha really
is talking about. So this is the idea of karma in
Buddhism. But the Buddha had many reasons
for teaching this doctrine of kamma, and I want to go through
some of these reasons. Yeah.
So we can understand the kind of the broader idea of why this is
such an important teaching in the suitors in the world of the
Buddha. And one of the reasons why the
Buddha talks about kamma is, of course, because it's true.
Yeah, it is. According to the Buddha, this is
how the world works. And the Buddha always starts by
talking about things that relate to reality, relate to the way
the world works. So it has to be true.
Yeah, this is kind of the starting point.
So this is always the Buddha. Everything he says, he says for
himself is true. It is not otherwise.
Yeah. So this is kind of an important
point. But that is not enough for the
Buddha to teach. It also has to be useful there.
Truth is itself, there's not a sufficient reason for giving a
particular teaching. Yeah, it also has to be useful
there. So how is it useful there?
Now the obvious thing that many of you will kind of know
straight away, the very often the main reason why we talk
about karma in Buddhism and why many people understand it is
because it leads to a good rebirth.
Yeah. It leads to if you put together
a lot of good karma, it leads to a good future existence.
So is that a good reason to live well because you want to be have
a good rebirth? What if you can become a deva
Devas? Are these kind of Buddhist?
Kind of gods or godlings or spirits or angels or whatever
you want to call them. We don't really have a kind of
perfect English translation for these party words.
Yeah. But they're kind of higher kind
of beings. They're a bit like all of us
here. There's not very different from
us except that they have more happiness and they, you know,
they shine and they kind of have transparent bodies and have a
bit more power. And they come down sometimes to
help human beings. Would you like to have some help
from the day of ANSWER like, I'll tell you how.
Yeah, Be kind, be good. And then the devas might help
you sometimes. So yeah, most people would like
to have a good rebirth. Yeah.
To become a deva, Yeah. Wouldn't that be cool to be kind
of this kind of God? Yeah.
And you kind of fare around and you are happy and you enjoy
yourself. You have a lot of pleasures and
you have kind of all kind of things.
Yeah. Wouldn't that be fun sometimes?
One of the problems in Buddhism is that we think that having the
idea of being reborn as a Daver is somehow inferior here.
Yeah. I don't want to be a daver in my
next life. I've been told by my kind of
Buddhist group that being a daver is bad.
Yeah. You want to dream on as a human
being because then you can come back to Damaloa, can practice
more. Yeah, actually one lifetime in
the Amaloca is enough, right? You don't want to have to come
back to the Amaloca again. There's a limit how many times
you want to be at Amaloca Centre.
It's a great place, but still the other is a limit how often
you want to come back here. So and that is one of those kind
of strange legends and myths in Buddhism that somehow it is bad
to get reborn as a daver, but actually we should be reborn as
human beings because then we can practice better.
But there isn't really much evidence for that.
If you read the suit as the word of the Buddha, he doesn't say
that. Yeah, he says, OK, You know,
sometimes it teaches the gods and the gods become enlightened
because he teaches them. There are a few stories like
that in the suit as or he teaches the humans, and they
have really good results from that.
So there isn't really much reason to think that, you know,
we should. We have to come back as human
beings. Much better, I think, is just to
allow your coma to mature in its own way.
Don't try on your deathbed to kind of guide yourself in the
right direction. I want to be a human being.
Yeah. OK.
How can I be a human being? Human being.
Yeah.
And you kind of try to guide yourself and you mess it all up
and you end up kind of somewhere worse.
Yeah. Because you have no idea what
you're doing. You're kind of missing.
This is the problem of we have no idea what we're doing anyway.
We try to do something with. It becomes worse.
So enjoy your death, relax on your deathbed.
Yeah. Enjoy kind of the journey on
where there's a far better way of doing it.
Just be peaceful. Don't try too hard to be this or
to be that, because usually we don't know how to do these
things anyway. And then wherever you go, you
carry on practising in that particular place.
That's kind of the ideal way. And then you get reborn in
heaven. Yeah.
If that's your, if that's what happens to you.
And then what do you do once you're reborn in heaven?
But once you're there, you have to go to the Buddhist corner of
heaven. Right there.
So heaven has like, the Christian corner, the Muslim
corner, the atheist corner and the Buddhist corner.
You go to the Buddhist corner, and then you go there and you
listen to the gods. Yeah.
They're kind of talking to each other.
And then you hear, wow, what is this God saying?
Yeah. And then you recognise the
Buddhist teaching. Yeah.
Because lo and behold, they're teaching the Buddhist teaching
in heaven. Wow.
That's the Buddhist teaching. OK.
And then, you know, you're in the right corner of heaven, and
then you carry on there practising there.
That's kind of how it works. Do you believe me?
Yeah. Basically, that's what it says
in the suit is. Yeah.
I'm not claiming any supernormal powers, anything.
I'm just saying this is what the Buddha said, how it works.
If the Buddha said so, it must be true, right?
Why would the would I say it if it wasn't true?
So I reckon it must be true because I'm very kind of, I'm a
very see, very faithful disciple of the Buddha.
If the would I said so must be true.
Yeah. That's kind of how I look at
things. Why wouldn't it?
If the would, I really was enlightened the way we think it
was, obviously it would be true. So we shouldn't really, yeah,
kind of look upon the idea of wanting a good rebirth.
We shouldn't look down upon that idea.
Everyone of us probably wants that deep down.
If you enjoy the pleasures of the world, if you enjoy nice
food, if you enjoy occasional good entertainment, if you enjoy
a nice relationship with somebody here, if you enjoy
those things, you are already inclining towards heaven because
it is that kind of enjoyment which actually leads to heavenly
rebirth because you get more of those kind of enjoyments.
So we should never look down upon that.
It's a natural human desire to be reborn in these realms, but
still it is limited. This is not really ultimately
why the Buddha talks about Kama. Yeah, this is one kind of sub
aspect of why it talks about it, but far more important reason
why it talks about Kama is because it shows you the
mechanism of the idea of rebirth in the big scope of things.
And what I show is you that in the big scope of things, yeah,
you get reborn here, we get reborn there in various places.
Sometimes they go up because you have good comma, sometimes they
go down because you have bad comma.
This is like the large scope of existence, what it looks like
over numerous lifetimes. And when you see that, how
you're kind of like a yo-yo, yeah.
Ricocheting around Sangsara, going up this way, staying there
for a while, then going down. Yeah.
And this is driven by this force or by this law of comma.
That's what drives this kind of perpetual moving around for one
place, another one. You start to understand what
this idea of sansaric existence, Sansara is, the kind of round of
birth and death, what it really is about.
And this is really why the Buddha teachers come to
understand how this sansaric existence actually works.
So. And that is kind of off putting.
Yeah. When you see that, do you really
want to ricochet around Sangsara in this way, kind of moving back
and forth, seemingly largely out of control?
Because you might think that if there is coma and if I do good
things, I will have good results, and if I do bad things,
I will have bad results. You might think, well, in that
case, I will just make sure I always do good things, so no
worries. I would cheat the system.
It's like going to the casino. Yeah.
And all annoying. Yeah, I'm going to get the
better of the casino. Yeah, easy.
I just place my chips on red all the time.
And eventually it must land on red when the roulette wheel
turns. You can see I've been to casinos
before. Yeah, I know all these things.
Yeah. And eventually I will win.
It doesn't work like that. The casino always wins, right?
That's why they otherwise they wouldn't be in business.
So guaranteed casinos always win.
That's just the way it is. And in Sangsara is the same
thing. You can't cheat the system.
And the reason why you can't cheat the system is that whether
you do good comma or bad comma is not really in your control.
And this is the last idea on the Buddha's night of awakening is
understanding of how this whole system of comma making is
actually out of control. It depends on who your friends
are. It depends on how you've been
conditioned. If you come to the Buddha
Society and you have good spiritual friends, you have
Kaliana Mitas, then you're probably going to make good
comma and you're going to be heading in the right direction.
But your next life, you may have bad friends, Papa Mita, evil
friends that take you in the wrong direction.
Yeah. And it's not really under your
control. It depends which country you get
born into, depend what kind of family you have, depends on who
your friends are. Because we are conditioned human
beings. And ultimately, actually, not
even ultimately, really, we're not really in charge of these
things. And so you understand this
larger picture of things with how come a drives rebirth, how
it all ultimately is out of control and it changes your
attitude to the world. It is no longer enough for you
just to be reborn in heaven. But you understand the spiritual
path is about far more than that.
It is about understanding the nature of reality and eventually
escaping from this whole thing. Yeah, this whole up and down
movement in Sanghsaric existence.
That is ultimately what it is about.
And This is why far more important reason why the Buddha
taught the laws of karma. So that is the big picture.
Now, coming back to the small picture again, why the Buddha
taught karma is because karma, good karma is also part of the
spiritual path. Yeah.
So if you want to practice the spiritual path, well, part of
that is making good karma. Yeah.
There's a beautiful line in the Mahamangala Sutta, Pube Chakata
Punyata having previously made good merit or previously made
good coma. Yeah.
Previous coma is required for the spiritual path to work.
So if we want the spiritual path to work fast, the more good coma
you make, the more powerful is a spiritual path going to be here.
Yeah. So then it becomes really
important, this idea of comma. And now I want to move this talk
on to the ideas of comma, how we can make the most of comma, how
we can make the best possible comma to make the spiritual path
work better to our own advantage.
And so this is where I want to move on to next.
Now to start this, yeah, how we can kind of think about Khamma
to make the most of it. I want to just say one very kind
of interesting thing that the Buddha says in the suit is that
I'm not sure if you have heard before, maybe some of you have.
And the Buddha says in the this is in the Anguta Nikaya
somewhere, the Anguta Nikaya threes #60 Suta 61, I think it's
called the Tita Yatana Suta. And in that suta the Buddha says
that if everything in the world was due to karma, if all your
experiences you have now in terms of pleasure, pain and
neutral feeling were due to karma you have done in the past,
there would be no escape from sansaric existence.
We would be trapped. That's really interesting.
Yeah, yeah. If everything is due to come,
there is no escape. How can that be?
Why is there no escape? But the reason why there is no
escape is because if all your present experiences are because
of things in the past, then your reaction now, because we always
react to our experiences, we always react to our feelings.
We are trapped in the loop by these past actions and we will
react according to those past actions and we won't won't be
able to act according to anything else.
The past actions would trap us and they will always determine
our future. And so the word I say is, and
this is therefore very important to understand how the laws of
coma work. Everything is not due to past
coma. Coma is only one factor in what
determines how we experience the world and how we feel the world.
And this matters enormously here.
Yeah. Sometimes as Buddhists, we think
that everything is because of past coma.
Oh, it's not going well for me. This is happening in my life.
Please, Venerable, tell me that this was, you know, what kind of
bad coma did I do in the past to deserve this?
This is a kind of thing I hear all the time as a Buddhist monk.
People come to our monastery. Why do they come to us?
Because they suffer very often. Why do you all come here?
Probably because you have some suffering in your life.
Yeah. This is part of the reasons why
we seek out a spiritual power to overcome these things.
And then the question very often is, what did I do?
Yeah, people say, oh, what I may have done in the past, my
husband left me, or my wife is cheating on me, or I'd lost my
job and everything is going haywire and my kids are not
behaving properly and they are doing bad things.
Or why is everything going wrong?
I must have done some bad karma in the past, right?
Right. No, not necessarily.
And so when we talk about karma, we need to understand not
everything is karma. And this is a fundamental thing
to understand about how to understand our reality.
And it opens up possibilities for us to live in a different
way when karma does not determine all the outcomes in
our existence. And so one of the ways of
thinking about this, and one of the ways that the Buddha talks
about is in the suit is, is to say that karma is only one
factor. Many other things in our life
are things like are just accidents.
Yeah. Accidents just happen.
Yeah. You go out and a car hits you in
the street or you, you kind of you, you stumble over something
or whatever, and you kind of hit yourself against the ceiling or
whatever. Accidents just happen.
This is part of life. Sometimes you get sick, yeah,
the body doesn't function properly.
You get cancer. Whatever illnesses is just part
of being human. It is not necessarily a comma
from the past. And so a large number of things
that happened in our life are not necessarily related to
comma. They are related to the fact
that you are a human being. Yeah.
Being human is kind of tough. Yeah.
Human beings can expect illnesses every now and again.
Human beings can expect divorces every now and again.
Human beings can expect your children to misbehave.
That's what children do. They misbehave.
I know that from personal experience.
When I was a child, I misbehaved as well, Right.
So I know that's very close to home.
And so all of these things is what life really is about.
Yeah. It is not due necessarily to
pass comma. And so when people come to the
monastery and they say, oh, what comma did I do?
Very often the reason why they're asked that question is
because they want to be in control.
They want some kind of closure. They want some feeling that
there is a good explanation in the universe for why things are
happening. Because if there was a good
explanation, then maybe we can avoid the causes in the future
and we can do something to avoid the same problem in the future.
And that is a natural human feeling.
We want to be in charge. You want to feel that we are in
control. Yeah.
And so we ask these questions, and then the problem is that it
is often deluding. Yeah, the problem is that you
cannot just change the way you live and change the way you are
and then start to become a good person and avoid doing the same
mistakes and then you won't have the problem in the future.
Actually, you will still have the problem in the future.
And the reason is because if you get reborn as a human being,
this is what you can expect. And so it changes your attitude.
Instead of coming and saying what come did I do actually,
this is human existence, this is human experience.
Instead of thinking I just need to change this little habits.
No, it is much worse than that. It's a much more problematic.
I need to get out of this Sansaric existence.
Just as like I was saying before, because the problem is
not what you have done specifically.
The problem is that you got reborn in the 1st place.
That is the real problem. Yeah.
And it kind of sounds funny, but it's not really all that funny.
I shouldn't be laughing if it isn't funny.
So this is kind of the idea. You can see how little ways of
reframing, how what these things are about changes your entire
attitude. Yeah, to how we deal with these
kind of things. And this is one of those ways of
rethinking things, another very important way.
And I want to bring this in now before I forget about it.
One of the kind of dangers that sometimes, one of the mistakes
we sometimes make in the Buddhist world, we see someone
who is really unfortunate, who is suffering a lot.
Yeah. Maybe they are handicapped or
they are not very intelligent or they have a car accident.
Yeah. It's the bad Comer from the
past. And now they're reaping the
result. It's their own fault.
I'm not going to have any compassion there.
Does that sound like a Buddhist response?
No. Yeah.
No, you're quite right. You're shaking your head.
Well done. Yeah.
You have kind of got the right idea there.
It is not the Buddhist response at all, right?
It's a terrible response, but this is very common in kind of
Buddhist communities. People think in this particular
way. Yeah, They made a mistake in the
past. It's their problem.
So, you know, I'm not going to deal with it.
Yeah, They're going to have to sort it out themselves.
It's completely the way, wrong way to think about things.
If you think like that, you become become a hard hearted
human being. Yeah.
Because it means you will always say that it's people's own
fault, that they have misfortune.
But the problem is that maybe someone else's bad comma is
ripening right now. Or maybe it isn't even bad
comma, as I mentioned a minute ago.
Maybe it's just the fact that they are a human being.
Tomorrow, your bad comma may ripen there.
Tomorrow, your human nature is going to show itself because you
go to the wrong place at the wrong time.
You step in front of a car or whatever it is, and suddenly you
are going to be the one who suffers.
So it is completely misguided to think that these people are
somehow different from you. We're all in the same boat.
We have all made bad karma in the past.
We're all vulnerable human beings right now.
It can happen to any one of us. You.
We need to have compassion for everyone in the world who
suffers. And when you have compassion for
other people's, when they suffer, you will also be able to
have compassion for yourself when you fall into suffering,
which inevitably you will. Why?
Because you are a human being. Yeah, that is the right way to
think about things. These are not things that are in
our control. If they really were under your
control, well, then maybe we could blame other people for the
stupidity or whatever, but they are not really in under our
control. We all end do end up doing
stupid things. Why?
Because of conditioning, because of circumstances.
Not because we want to be evil. We want to do bad things.
So have compassion for goodness sake.
Yeah, when you see someone in the world, that one of the
things I always love to do when I see another person who is
different from me. Yeah.
And this is a very powerful reflection that I try to use all
the time. I see someone who is suffering
here. I see someone maybe in Perth who
is kind of sleeping rough, someone who was a drug addict,
someone who is mentally unstable, maybe suffering
psychologically in a very deep way.
I look at the person and I try to think that is me here.
I have been like that in the past.
I will be like that in the future unless I get out of this
whole idea of rebirth or suffering.
And when I see myself in that other person suddenly changes
things dramatically. Here then you make a human
connection with the other person.
You no longer dismiss them. You.
It's no longer possible not to have compassion, because if it
is you, you have to have compassion for that person.
Otherwise, you have no compassion for yourself.
And so you do that with everyone, regardless of which
country they come from, regardless of the culture,
regardless of the gender, regardless of whether they are
intelligent or stupid or whatever they are.
And it opens up the door of compassion in a very beautiful
way. And I try to the best of my
ability. Of course, I fail because I'm
human after all. So I felt that I try to look at
the world in this way and it creates much more connection in
the world than otherwise it would.
So always have compassion, always have understanding,
always have Meta and Karuna, this beautiful qualities.
So there is a third way I want to talk about the idea of how
come is not really deterministic.
Yeah. It is much more open to change
than what you may think. Yeah.
And one of the reasons why it is not deterministic is because
often we don't distinguish between, on the one hand, karma
and on the other hand, habits. Habits and karma are not the
same thing. Yeah.
So sometimes people come and they come and say, well, I have
been, you know, born in this family.
Why have I been reborn in this family?
And they will say, oh, must be my coma.
Yeah, maybe we did bad coma together in the past, and we did
bad coma together. It ripens.
Now we have to live together. But you will be surprised to
hear that the idea of making karma together is not a Buddhist
way of thinking about things. We don't make karma together.
Karma is individual. Intentions are within you.
You cannot make. You don't have a common
intention with someone else. They may happen to have the same
intention as you have right now, but maybe not.
It's very, very hard to know. Karma is individual.
We don't have karma that brings us together in that way.
However, we have habits, we have attachments to people.
Because you have attachments to people in one life, when you get
reborn, quite possibly you get reborn in that same family in
the future, because attachments bring us together.
Yeah. People we feel something in
common with, we tend to hang out with.
And that's why Buddhists hang out with Buddhists and etcetera,
etcetera. We hang out with the kind of
people we are like that are similar to us.
And so karma and habit are quite different.
So even though you cannot change your karma from the past, yeah,
you can always change your habits.
And this is one of the most important things that we do in
Buddhism is changing our habits, because sometimes our habits are
a wholesome. Sometimes we have been brought
up to kind of think in a certain stupid way.
Yeah. Sometimes we have been brought
up to have anger towards certain people.
Sometimes we have been brought up to be greedy because we all
know that greed is good, right? You know, those kind of silly
kind of ideas they sometimes have.
Greed is good. That was a movie called Wall
Street. Yeah.
Gordon Gekko or something like that, who said greed is good?
It was actually based apparently on the real life example.
It was a fellow called Ivan Boesky.
I think it was kind of one of these Wall Street traders back
in the 1980s. This shows you how old I am.
Yeah, and he apparently coined this phrase.
Greed is good. He toured around the American
University polluting the young American minds.
That's bad, right? Polluting the young minds.
He were trying to, he were trying to detoxify.
Yeah. The the all minds actually,
young and old and middle age or whatever.
He was going around doing the opposite, polluting the mind.
Greed is good. This was kind of the idea.
Greed is bad. Yeah.
It's a really bad idea. And it's kind of hard to imagine
how people can say this kind of things and how deluded that
actually is. So these are the habits we need
to change. Greed is very unhelpful.
Greed is small. It leads to a small mind.
It leads to fear, it leads to me against others.
That's what greeds lead to. If you want to have a broad mind
where it encompasses other people around you, greed is your
enemy. Greed is a very negative thing.
Anger is a negative thing. So we need to change these
habits. It's a fundamental thing and
they can be changed. They are not the result of coma
in the past. They are just a result of
conditioning. And conditioning can always be
changed. It is hard work.
You need to exert yourself again and again and again to able to
do that, but it can be done down the line if you do it.
That is the good news about overcoming habits.
So distinction between habit and coma is actually very useful
because it allows you to change. It allows you to become a
different kind of person. So these are some of the ideas.
They're some of the distinctions, some of the
different ways of thinking about things.
I'm not sure what that is. Maybe a ghost.
I'm not sure. Anyway, so how what can we do
then? The last thing the Buddha said,
remember I mentioned before, yeah, about Khamma, is that it
helps us on the spiritual path there and not talked about some
of the misconceptions of karma, some of the dangers we fall
into. It is not deterministic.
There's a lot of things that we can do to dilute that karma to
move forward in various ways. So how can we really move
forward in the best possible way?
How can we make use of that? Buddha's last argument, the idea
make good karma to enable the spiritual path to enhance your
spiritual practice. How can we do that?
Well, obviously we want to do good things by body, speech and
mind, right? As I mentioned before, it is the
intention that matters. It is not do.
It's not just doing the right thing, but your intention is
very important. And so that means that if you
make those intentions more clear in your mind, more powerful, it
will also increase the amount of good karma that you're making.
And if you reduce the intentions behind any bad acts, it means
even your bad actions won't be as powerful.
So how can we do that? Well, come back to the idea of
what motivates you, what drives the intention, which then in
turn drives the action. So purify those motivations.
And as you purify your motivations in life, you will
purify your intentions, which then will purify your actions.
So whatever you do in life, when you do an act of kindness, when
you say something beautiful to someone else, if you do an act
of generosity to someone, put more love into it.
Put more compassion into it. Put more kindness into it.
Yeah, I really want to give this.
Understand that the recipient you're giving to is worthy of
your kindness. Why are they worthy of a kind?
Because everyone is worthy of your kindness.
Everyone wants to have a better life.
Everyone wants to be happy. Put a lot of kindness into it,
and the more meta and corona and kindness and compassion you put
into your actions, the more you imbue them with these beautiful
qualities, the more powerful is your good karma because you're
purifying the motivation, which is at the very source of what
good karma is about. So imbue all your life with
these qualities. Make your life into a path of
kindness. Meta Meta is really mean
something like kindness or friendliness or love.
All of these words are really translations of the word meta.
Make that the mainstay of your life.
Imbue everything you do with that.
Ultimately, you want to imbue your thoughts and with these
things so that when you think about other people, you're
coming from a sense that you want to be kind towards others.
And if you cannot be kind because someone is really
difficult, at least you can have compassion for them.
Kindness and compassion should ideally be the only motivating
forces in your life. Never coming from greed, never
coming from ill will, always some kindness and compassion.
And the more you imbue your life with these beautiful qualities,
the more powerful your coma is going to be here.
So when you come here to Dama Loca, learn to imbue your life
with these beautiful qualities. And part of that can be to do
some meditation, some meta meditation.
Sometimes people find it very hard to do ordinary breath
meditation because the breath is very subtle, can be very hard to
follow, and you may end up falling asleep.
Or you meant end up thinking about all kind of things.
Before you know it, you're all over the world except for here
in Tamaloca. Even though this is where you
actually are. Yeah.
Your mind is kind of. Who knows where your mind is.
Have you ever had that experience before?
Probably. If you haven't.
Wow. Miracle.
Yeah. Well done.
That would be really impressive. Actually it is impossible, so I
wouldn't even probably wouldn't believe you if you said that.
So. So do some of that meta
meditation. Learn the idea of wishing
everyone in the world happiness and well-being.
Sit down, close your eyes, wish everyone in the world.
May everyone in the world. May all beings be happier.
May all beings be well. Allow that to come from your
heart. And when you turn your mind in
this direction, actually wishing all beings happiness and
well-being, it is something transformative happens inside of
you. You understand you can't really
have any enemies anymore, because if you have enemies,
it's impossible to wish everyone well-being.
It transforms your attitude to the world.
You understand that all beings are worthy of this well wishing
because everyone in the world wants to be happy.
And if someone is living in a stupid way, it's because they
don't understand, not because they want to suffer or because
they are deliberately stupid. They're just deluded, just
stupid. And so they still deserve our
compassion for that reason. And so this is kind of the final
idea. Yeah, of comma, imbue it with as
many powerful and beautiful motivations as you can, moment
after moment, hour to hour, day after day, year after year.
And if you get reborn lifetime after lifetime, and as you do
that, then you are really purifying the spiritual path to
the maximum. So remember why it is that you
should take the idea of karma very seriously in your life.
First of all, because the Buddha says it is a description of
reality. This is what the world actually
looks like from the viewpoint of an enlightened mind.
Secondly, it will lead to a good rebirth.
Don't dismiss the idea of a good rebirth as some kind of lesser
desire. It's OK.
It is human to want a good rebirth, and because you're
human, it's perfectly acceptable.
Thirdly, it explains to you how the larger cycle of death and
rebirth functions in the long run, and how is a system that is
largely out of control. And comma shows you how the
system actually works. And finally, living in a good
way, producing good karma is a very important aspect of the
spiritual path. So please take it really, really
seriously in your life. And if you do that, it will be a
great blessing for you and also a great blessing for all the
people around you. So that is my little talk on
karma this evening. Yeah.
OK, everyone. So if you wish to ask any
questions, anything, now is the time now.
Good evening, Venerable. OK, where are you?
I can't see anyone over there. OK, good.
Yeah, please. Great.
Hi. When it comes to.
Thank you. Karma and this idea of purifying
your motivations when you were training and learning as a monk
and learning these definition of karma and noticing the wrong
view that you had, was it more of the process of going through
your motivation? So for example, like why you go
to work, why you do things and then looking at how how that was
ripening, creating fruit, where the question essentially I'm
trying to get to is that how did you begin to start noticing your
karma and your and your personal ripening of good and bad in this
purifying process? Right.
Yeah. So that was basically what I was
talking about fairly early on in the talk.
And this is this idea that if you, you can almost feel that
when you have a negative thought or negative do something else,
you can feel that there's a bad feeling that goes with that.
Yeah. And when you do something truly
kind, actually it's really uplifting.
Yeah. You tend to feel, have a good
feeling when you do something kind towards someone else.
And so it's noticed in that correlation right in the
present. Yeah.
Between how you think now, how you intend now and the effect it
has on you. That I think is more from the
most transformative kind of thing.
Yeah. I so to me that became very
obvious very quickly that that's actually how it works when you
when you sometimes you can do an act of kindness towards
somebody, like giving someone a gift and they can feel
incredibly uplifting, something very simple.
And you think, wow, this is the power of these things.
And then you start reading the suit is you start to see how the
Buddha connects these things. Yeah, your actions with your
meditation practice. There's a direct link there.
And then you start to understand the connection between karma and
your meditation. This is why the Buddha talks
about things like the recollection of your generosity
or the recollection of your virtue, because that then
becomes the engine which allows you to experience joy in
meditation, all the and peace and all the positive things in
your meditation practice. So you start to see this from
different angles. You see it in your meditation
because you can use the good karma in the meditation and you
see a direct connection in the here and now between your
intention and how you feel straight away here.
So as a practice, actually say recording or writing down or
noticing throughout your day those sort of positive thoughts
rightening into positive intentions you'd recommend?
I, I, you don't have to write it down.
I just just, you know, just I can if you want to, I suppose as
a kind of initial like up to you.
But yeah, just noticing it is what is the most important, OK?
Thank you very much. Great.
John Bromley, thanks for the wonderful deep talk, you know,
on karma. Yeah.
Just now you mentioned that our karma cannot be.
What cannot be. What is it?
You can't remove the karma. OK.
Yeah, Yeah. So that's what I, my
understanding is to learn. But John Bromley, you're saying
to this, if we keep doing good, you know, good thing, OK, can
we, we can delay the negative karma, isn't it?
Delay, push, push, push, push it back.
Is it right you? Can do better.
You can do better than delaying. You can dilute it.
This is what the Buddha says. You can dilute it and that's
what it says in the Zuta. So and it's you can dilute it
like a lot. Yeah, I forgot to mention that
actually. But and it has this beautiful
simile of the lump of salt. You know that.
I'm sure you know that simile because you've been, you've been
around for a while, and you put a lump of salt in a glass of
water and the water becomes undrinkable because it's so
incredibly salty. And of course, the bitterness of
the saltiness of the water that signifies the result of the
comma. The salt is the action, the
comma and the bitten or the saltiness is the result.
Yeah, very, very salty. Take the same lump of salt, the
same bad comma, and you Chuck it in the Swan River and you taste
it afterwards. Actually, Swan River isn't,
isn't really freshwater, is it? It's kind of, it doesn't really
work. Chuck it in the freshwater
somewhere. Yeah, I had never, I never
tasted the water from the Swan River, but I, I can imagine this
must be brackish. So but it put it in a, in a
freshwater large lake or pond and it can barely taste it.
Yeah. So it's actually, you can dilute
it enormously. And one of those kind of one of
the places it talks about that is in the development of Meta.
If you develop Meta all the way, the Buddha says that you
overcome all limited actions that were there beforehand.
Limited actions are actions that are related to the sense fear.
Yeah, actions that kind of ripen in some kind of pain or
suffering that is completely gone when you develop Meta all
the way. And so on.
In your next life, you will get reborn.
None of that will actually remain.
It may come back in later life. So.
But at least in that life it will be completely gone.
Yeah, I was just thinking of Angulimala.
Yeah, you know the bad hammer.
He killed people to get their fingers, and they're pushing
999. OK, Yeah.
And towards the end, he also gained enlightenment.
Yeah. You know, I was just thinking he
was pushing it back, this thing or maybe it dissolves in it.
Right, so he had he had the bad comma.
He also had very good comma. So he he was able to overcome
that very, very powerful suitor and very, very interesting.
It shows that you should never feel or think that you have made
so much bad camera that there's no way for.
There's always a way forward. And sometimes I hear people
despair. Oh, I've done so many bad
things. It's terrible.
I'm going to go get a bad rebirth.
Never think like that. You have to turn around.
And if you turn around, you can overcome that like Angulimala.
So thank you, Eddie. Yeah.
So it's important to build up the good karma banks.
Absolutely. Very, very important.
Yeah. So carry on with that, Eddie.
Yeah. Thank you very much.
You'll be OK. Yeah.
Thank you very much for this beautiful talk.
My question is, sometimes you take an action that the
intention is not to hurt anyone, but it still does hurt someone.
So I was wondering how do you navigate that?
OK, so, yeah, this is a, this is a good question.
And it's kind of thing that when the Buddha kind of lays out his
whole ethical scheme, it usually starts off by saying you
shouldn't do things that hurt others or yourself or both.
You should do things that are beneficial for all three, right?
This is kind of one of the things that he says.
But then, as you say, sometimes we don't know.
We do our very best. We have really good intentions.
Still, sometimes people get hurt.
And so then the Buddha has a second way of talking about
ethical conduct, and that is looking at your motivation.
The motivation is ultimately what what matters.
And so your job is really to know that you're coming from a
good place. And if you are coming from a
good place, it's really all you can do at the end of the day.
Sometimes it will still hurt other people, but in the main,
for the main part, it will be a good result for other people.
So I guess you do your very best.
Come from a pure as place as possible you can within.
Yeah, as much compassion and love that you can muster.
And at the same time, try to learn from those experience.
Or maybe you go wrong. So maybe you can also learn
something from those at the same time.
But in the end, you will always make those kind of mistakes.
It's impossible to avoid those kind of mistakes.
So don't be upset with yourself if you do that.
Have compassion for yourself as well.
Yeah, then you're going to be doing that the right thing, I
reckon. Thank you.
My question is when when you are
choosing or when you are acting kindly?
Sometimes it can become very difficult when you're in a place
where a lot of kindness is needed and you need to make a
choice about who you make kindness to.
For example, I worked in a developing community with some
women who had a great deal of suffering through the gender
inequality, and I could help some of them, but I didn't help
others. And I always feel like, how did
I choose who to help and why didn't I help?
How? Why couldn't I help everyone
with my kindness? So no matter how much how kind
you are, you're always left with a feeling that you haven't been
kind enough. Yeah.
So the so there is a way out of that dilemma.
Actually, you'd be surprised to hear that there is a way out and
the So you're right, in terms of actions and speech, we can only
be kind to some so many people. There's just a limit to what our
our human capabilities are limited.
However, what you can do is develop the meta as a mental
thing. Yeah.
And that can be unlimited. And if you have an unlimited
mind in terms of the meta, the kindness, the love within, then
all your actions and speech will come out in the right way.
As a consequence, you will still have to choose because you can
never reach out to everyone, but you will never feel inadequate
within. You will always feel fully
adequate because it is your mind is fully immersed in that
feeling of good qualities. That is the way forward.
OK here. Aditi, can you please, please
let other people get a chance first of all that.
Yeah, so. Thank you, Arjun.
I remember there, there's a statement in the sutras, I think
the Buddha has said rather than or better than giving a Dana to
the Buddha and 500 Dahan's, it's better to do a meta, send loving
kindness for a fraction of a second.
Yeah. Something like that, yeah.
Yeah, it's the Villama Suta and Gudonekai 920, I think.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. See, a normal suita is pretty
well. So anyway, please carry on just
showing off, that's all. Yeah, the general tendency in
the Buddhist community here as well as everywhere, is to offer
dhana to monks and all, everybody very, very well.
They do it so hard, work hard on it, and then do their best.
So can you give some advice to such people?
Can you also do some meta either before that or your focus on
your intention? So what is the intention of
that? Is it to fill?
The you mean? Yeah.
The monks and nuns? Or is it some meta that generate
that? What is the background?
Yeah. No, thank you for that question
there. How can?
They make better benefit out of. It, Yeah, yeah.
So that's what you're quoting, actually goes through a long
sequence of various kinds of gifts.
It starts off, I think, with an animal or maybe maybe just, I
can't remember exactly where it starts off.
It goes all the way to the Both Sangers headed by the Buddha,
and then higher than that is going for refuge.
That's actually the one that comes above that.
So if you go for refuge of the Triple Gem, it is better than
any kind of gift. So that's kind of sounds strange
because sometimes we come in here and we bow three times and
we think, yeah, now I've made more merit than.
But that's not also not how it works.
Going for refuge obviously means really going for refuge.
It means like in an emotional way where you really are
invested in the Buddha Dhammasanga.
It is not a superficial thing of just buying the buying, bowing
down like a ritual. It is a really meaningful actor.
And then higher than that is the five precepts.
Yeah. So that means keeping the five
precepts consistently all the time.
Yeah. Even more good come according to
this. Beyond that comes this what
you're saying, which is a practising meta for a finger
snapper. There is a higher one still than
that. Seeing impermanence.
Yeah, that's even higher because that, of course, is a deep
insight into the nature of reality.
But so when we talk about meta, practising meta for a finger
snap there, it doesn't just mean any old meta.
It doesn't just mean may all beings be happy and well, it
means like a deep state of samadhi.
That is why it is so powerful there, Yeah.
So it means a very, very deep thing.
Yeah. So, but you are quite right, it
obviously means something for how we should offer Dhana, Yeah,
how we should do, how we should live our life in general, in all
kind of things. If we can abuse all our actions
with more meta, with more kindness and more compassion,
our gifts, whatever we do, all of that, we would be empowered
through that. And so if you go to say you come
to the monastery and you offer something to the monks, it is
good to reflect about that in the right way.
OK, why am I doing this? Well, I'm doing it because when
I support the Sangha, I'm supporting Buddhism, I'm
supporting the spread of this amazing teachings by the
greatest spiritual master in human history.
I'm allowing that to continue on in the world.
I'm helping the Sasana, the Buddhist religion, to carry on
for longer by helping this. And if you look at, you know,
someone like Ajambram, his talks with millions of people around
the world, literally millions of people, he's one of the most
famous monks in the world, basically.
And you have a part in that. When those teachings reaches
those millions of people, they get alleviation from suffering.
They experience the thing on the Buddhist path, they become more
happy. Some of them may get into deep
meditation, some may get profound insights.
And by supporting the monastic community, by supporting
Ajambra, by supporting the Dhamma Osanga in general in the
whole world, you support in this enormous movement that is
creating so much happiness, so much goodness in the world.
Now you have a part in creating all that goodness in the world.
So build up this idea in your mind of compassion for the whole
world. That is really what you're doing
when you're giving an act of generosity like that.
Yeah. You're doing something really
beautiful. You're supporting, probably
supporting the areas. Yeah.
When you come sometimes when you support some of these people,
what an amazing thing that is. So this is a nice way of
thinking. Don't try too hard to think like
that, because if you try too hard, you kind of destroy it a
little bit as well. Yeah, I must think like this.
Must you know, it doesn't really work if you try too hard.
It has to come naturally, has to incline your mind gently in that
direction, and then you might be able to do it.
Thank. You.
All right, let us let us take some of the online questions
because maybe people online are waiting for for the answer.
So question #1 the Azam Mali, does one typically become less
able to enter Jana as they grow old and the body deteriorates,
becomes deceased? Also, how do animals make good
come out to be reborn as human hair?
Do you typically become less able to enter Jana as the body
grows old and the body deteriorates?
I would say the answer is yes because the body is gets in the
way. Yeah and the body makes life
difficult and the worse state you are in the harder it often
gets. So however, if you are a very
solid meditator and you know how to achieve these Jana states
because you've been doing it for a long time, you can bypass the
old age and the illness to a very large degree here, but
probably not totally. There will be some extent to
which it makes life more difficult for you.
How do animals make good karma to be reborn as humans?
That is a very good question and there I don't think there is any
answer. Very good question.
When I say that, it means I don't know what the answer is.
And basically the Buddha says that there is no making of good
karma in those realms. So once you are reborn as an
animal, you have a serious problem.
So please don't be reborn as an animal.
Can you promise not to be reborn as an animal?
You can't promise, right? It's very hard to know, but I
wouldn't recommend it. You may think that being reborn
as an animal is really nice. You get reborn as the dog or the
cat in a nice family and they will kind of pet you and look
after you all the time, but they don't count on it.
There's a lot of unhidden dukkha in those lives.
Question #2 from Germany de Arjan, please explain the
difference between nature and mind.
How do they relate to each other?
How can mind just set the conditions for nature to grow?
Is the mind nature? So not 100% sure what you are
what you are asking there. Because mind is an aspect of
nature. Yeah, mind is just nature in a
certain way. But maybe what you mean is
nature outside, like vegetation or whatever.
But there isn't any absolute distinction between nature and
mind. They're closely related to each
other. How do they relate to each
other? One way they relate to each
other is that if you practice the spiritual path really well,
nature becomes more beautiful. Yeah, if you purify your own
mind and then you go out into nature, nature looks more
beautiful because you are out in nature.
That is one way they relate to each other.
Another way that they relate to each other is that according to
some of the suitors, it is possible to get reborn in the
plant. Yeah, you can become some kind
of spirit, and spirits can be reborn in plants.
That means you start to look at nature a little bit different.
Yeah. It means you take a bit more
care. It means you don't chop down
those trees so fast because maybe there's a spirit living in
that tree here. And if that spirit sees you
chopping down the tree, it may not be happy here.
And the spirit may say, what what am I going to do with this
person chopping down my abode? I'm just repeating a story from
the suitors, by the way, here. So actually it is in the
suitors. So whether that is really
happening or not is a bit uncertain, but you can see how
there are all of these connections basically here.
Can the mind set the conditions for nature to grow?
So I guess what you're asking for here, can we make trees and
plants and things grow faster or better because of our mind?
And I think the answer is actually yes.
And there is more and more evidence I think these days that
we affected the plants in our life.
Yeah, there is the idea sometimes being done in
experiments whereby you say nice things to your plant where you
do kind things and the plant reacts in a positive way.
Here there's more and more of these kind of experiments coming
out. So I think you can so be kind to
nature, and maybe that will kind of help nature to grow a bit
better here. Question #3 Dean Arjen, how to
move forward if you're no longer happy in your job?
But another new job opportunity is in real estate that is
distracted to the environment and causes gentrification where
we live. Wow, so hard.
Yeah. How to make these choices?
So what do you have to ask yourself is the following
question. How can you make?
Which job can you make the most spiritual progress in your life?
That is what you should ask yourself.
So choose the job where you think you can make the most
spiritual progress. That is what the Buddha said is
the most important thing in life.
And so that should be the benchmark for how we make these
kind of choices. So you can become maybe you can
become a nice real estate agent or whatever it is.
It is. Yeah, that doesn't minimum
destruction and kind of you are just kind to the customers.
Yeah. And you do your little bit.
And so maybe it's just, you know, maybe that is the way
forward. If you're other job and you're
not happy in that job, then that can often be very destructive to
be in an unhappy job. It can lead to all kind of
problems. So I don't know the answer, but
ask yourself what is most likely to lead to spiritual progress
and that's where you should go. Question #4 Adrian, is it
correct to say karma is the way we condition our consciousness?
Absolutely. So karma, conditions of
consciousness, if you are motivated by positive things,
you're conditioning your consciousness to experience more
happiness, more joy, more good feelings, basically.
Question #5 Adam, how do we deal with serious illness on your own
when you are on your own without much support from people, job,
home and health issues coming up.
Can you please give some advice? Again, I think very often you
just have to have compassion for yourself.
You have to have a sense of meta and kindness for yourself.
This is one of the foundations for dealing with serious
illness, for dealing with anything in life, really.
Yeah. Because you understand that this
is human nature. This is the way you have to be.
This often. There is no way around this kind
of things. And so you have compassion for
yourself. It's also an opportunity when
you have these things to learn more about other people.
If you see the illness in your own life, It's also easier to
have compassion for others because you understand more
about human nature when you see these things in your own life.
So you can grow spiritual qualities out of this if you use
it wisely. It's about using it wisely.
The Buddha taught us to reflect on illness, all age and death.
And when you are ill, that is a usually a very good opportunity
because then you know what it actually means.
So make it into fuel for your spiritual path.
Make it into cause to make a spiritual path work even better.
And I think that is often the best way to use these things.
And as you do that, you will become more accepting of your
illness. When you become more accepting
of your illness, it becomes less of a problem.
When it becomes less of a problem, it may even start to
die down a little bit. So yeah, there you are.
OK everyone, nice to see you all tonight.
I wish you all a wonderful evening and a wonderful few days
ahead. And let us finish off, as we
always do, our paying homage to the Buddha, Dhamma, Sanga.