Purifying Negative Karma

I had earlier written about karma and rebirth. These concepts in Vajrayana Buddhism are very much connected. In my opinion, we cannot understand, no less accept, karma without understanding rebirth.

Karma is cause and effect. Nothing mysterious or strange. It is just simply the word used in Sanskrit to explain the direct connection between the what we do, say, and think to the results. Helpful actions result in creating positive karma. Harmful actions result in creating negative karma

Rebirth is critical because karma with us to future lives. Its not over when we die. Whatever we have done, said and thought not only has an impact on this lifetime but also our future lifetimes.

When we are born, we carry the karma from past lives. So even if we live a pure life from this birth, we can still have unfortunate circumstances arise. These are the result of karmic seeds planted from past lives.

So the question always comes up. Do we have any choice? Will we ultimately suffer the consequences of every harmful act, word, and thought we have ever had from this life as well as all past lives? Fortunately, the answer we can delete negative karma before it sprouts. Yes we do have a choice.

We can purify negative karma. Either karma is purified or it will come to fruition. The same is true when it comes to positive karma as well. Good deeds always have positive results.

Khenpo Choga Rinpoche teaches that the best way to purify negative karma is through our positive thinking, positive words, and positive actions. He is always emphasizing the positive thinking as the start. “Positive thinking” is a tricky matter because there has been so much overuse of the concept by many self-help gurus. When we say it, it has a little different meaning.

First, we need to explain what is meant by thinking. In any situation, we can choose how we think. This moment to moment thinking is to which Khenpo Choga speaks. He says every fraction of a second, we have new thought. We cannot have two thoughts at the same moment. Only one. So in each moment the choice is to maintain positive/beneficial thinking.

Positive thinking from a Buddhist perspective can be summarize into 5 kinds:

Renunciation – Renouncing our self directed, self-focused desires and aversions to the material world.
Compassion – Wish for all sentient being to be free from suffering
Faith – Faith in teachings that lead to awakening
Love – Wish for all sentient beings to be happy.
Wisdom – Awareness with egoless effort to beneficial activity in every situation.

All starts with our thinking and our intentions. The focus of Buddha’s teachings are always place on our intentions and what we are thinking.

Traditionally, a formal way to delete negative karma is with purification practices such as that of Vajrasattva. Simply stated there are 4 “powers” to be applied. First, we call on the power of support from deity or deities manifesting positive attributes. Second, we use the power of regret – regret of the negative actions, words, and thinking we have done in the past. Third, we apply the power of promise – promise to never do such again. Finally, we apply the power of practice – The practice of positive, helpful and beneficial deeds with our body, our speech, and our minds (thinking).

Khenpo Choga Rinpoche’s teachings on deleting negative karma (with positive thinking) goes to the heart of even a purification practice. We can sit down and follow steps 1,2, and 3, however, the real work comes when we get off our seat and set into the world of unpredictable situations. Can we really keep our promise to never do negative actions and have negative thinking? Can we maintain the intention to help all sentient beings be free from suffering and have happiness?

It all comes back to positive thinking…in any situation…in every situation….in every moment.

Many Dharma Blessings,

Geoff

Seeing Everything as Naturally Perfect

Within Vajrayana Buddhism, there are many interim steps to gaining confidence, knowledge and wisdom. They have been constructed by great masters and great centers of Buddhist learning in order to aid us in the development of the Ultimate View.

From what I have been told, it is within the Nyingma – Dzogchen Lineage that the masters provide a glimpse of this ultimate view. Not that we are prepared or capable of maintaining the view, but we are given a glimpse of the result.

Part of this View is to see everything as Perfect – to see the natural purity and perfection of all appearances. Within the Buddha Path Practice we find this View expounded in many places. Within the Concluding Practices, under the Thirteen Sign of a True Practicitioner we recite:

I will think of all situations positively
I will perceive all appearances purely
I will live my daily life joyfully

Rather than beating ourselves up for falling from this View, I try to recall these words often during the day. Combined with a one-minute meditation of letting everything be exactly how it is, I try to return to the spacious and open thinking mind.

Sometimes it remains for a while. Sometimes is vanishes with the next daily challenge. I still work to bring my mind back to this spacious mind and relaxed, pure, clear, and free.

Many Dharma Blessings,

Geoff

Karma and Past Lives

Recently I listened to a conversation about karma and how could a small child suffer injuries from the fall-out of a bombing.

I wanted to explain how my teachers have helped me with this question combined with some reflection on why this question (in varying ways) always seems to come up.

Karma is simply cause and effect. There is nothing cosmic or supernatural about the concept in Buddhism. For us Buddhist, to deny cause and effect is just as absurd as to deny gravity. Whether you acknowledge its existence or not, you are still subject to it.

A simple example: if we drop a large brick on our bare foot, we are going to experience pain! There is no supernatural force at hand: dropping a brick on one’s foot (the cause) results in pain (the effect). That’s karma!

The difficulty comes when we start working with the notion of karma (karmic imprints) from past lives. As Vajrayana Buddhist, we subscribe to the View that we have lived many lives. Karma – positive, neutral, and negative is what we get to carry from each life. Its our only baggage.

We do not carry our possessions, our bodies, or a soul from a past life, however, we do carry with us our karma. Karma may have immediate effects such as in the case of the pain from dropping the brick. Karma may have a slightly delayed effect such as failing to get a desire job as the result of having a criminal record. Karma may have a longer delayed effect such as being born in a wealthy family as the result of being extremely generous in a past life. It is all still just cause and effect.

The Buddhist View extends this cause and effect into future lives. We do not wipe the slate clean when we die. In fact it is our karma that propels us from one life to the next. This is the part that is difficult to accept as we begin to work with Buddhist teachings.

From a Buddhist perspective, the small child who gets caught in a war, carries karma from past lives. You might ask what did such a person do in a past life to have to face these painful consequences? You could likewise ask what a very fortunate child did in their past life to be so very fortunate?

Shakyamuni Buddha had repeated said that the karma which creates our current life and current situation is way too intertwined and interconnected for us to ever unravel and figure out. Besides, there is no value in trying to figure it out, anyway.

Shakyamuni Buddha likened the situation to someone being shot with an arrow. You come upon the injured person. You could spend your time trying to figure out what the arrow is made of, who shot it, why they shot it; etc. In the mean time the injured person may die. It is better to remove the arrow and attend the injured person. We should focus on helping.

Teachings on karma, I feel, are to remind us that you cannot get away with anything. Cause and effect are infallible - whether you like it or not! Second, we are reminded that no good deed is ever too small. No negative act is overlooked.

Why is karma so difficult to accept? I feel there are three main reason:

(1) We would like to think that we can sometimes get away with things. If you ever took a caramel candy out of one of those big candy bins when you were a child, you would like to think that you got away with it since you were not caught.

(2) We like the notion of an innocent baby at birth. To accept karma from past lives means that a newborn child carries with them karmic imprints from past lives. They are not, as many Western thinkers would contend, a “clean slate.”

(3) One needs to understand rebirth. We need to understand and accept that we have had many lives and will continue to be reborn in future lives (until we attain Enlightenment…but this is a whole different subject).

So karma for Buddhist is indisputable. We cannot avoid the direct connection between cause and effect. Even if the effect is delayed.

While we may not ever understand why certain things happen to us or others. We are well advised to know that it was not just “bad luck.” Then we need to focus on doing what we can to help.

There are other subtopics to this matter I would like to get into in the future including: Purifying Negative Karma, Creating Positive Karma, Moral Conduct, the path of a Bodhisattva, and the reason for practice and Enlightenment.

For now however, I will just conclude with the wish:

May you be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.
May you have happiness and the causes of happiness.
May you never be separated from the unchangeable happiness beyond delusion and illusion.
May you live in equanimity.

Many Dharma Blessings,

Geoff