Understanding Karma

My most kind most dear most wish-fulfilling mother,
I hope you and your whole family are well. I hope many people didn’t die from COVID in the country you are in. I have not heard much about your country, but nowadays, people are dying daily. At the beginning [of the pandemic], of course, we didn’t know exactly how many had died, but I think it must have been a lot. So many people have died.

I understand people eat so many animals. It is really terrifying and there is so much suffering. They harm other beings who have a body and mind, who do not wish suffering but wish for happiness, exactly like human beings, like us, but they never realize that, or even if they do, they don’t care! What a terrible harm they are causing others. So of course, they will suffer from so many problems— floods, earthquakes, many things caused by nature, and diseases, viruses, then second and third viruses.

I thought in my mind that if people stopped eating meat, stopped harming animals—so terrible, terrible, so many creatures and sea creatures, and the animals living with people, wow wow!—only then can they stop the virus and other problems.

People are not surprised at all eating animals and giving harm to them, not surprised at all. They enjoy it and even make money from that, maybe there is even competition or success. But, you see, when they get the result of harming others—sickness and so forth—then they get surprised. Only when they get a problem, they get a surprise. They are not surprised when they create the cause. It is like that. Generally, the sentient beings are totally, totally, unbelievably, unbelievably, unbelievably ignorant.

Hopefully, the more they experience problems, I hope that they can realize [the cause of] all the suffering. Therefore, I hope it can stop the problems in the mind, the suffering to the mind, and that they can bring all the peace individually in their own life as well as in the world, to all the six realms—the hell beings, hungry ghosts, animals, humans, suras, asuras and intermediate state beings—to all the six realm beings. I hope it turns out this way, that the more suffering they experience, the more realizations they can develop. They can have more and more discoveries, realizations, then they will be able to stop the suffering in their mind, their own individual mind, as well as the suffering of the world, the suffering of the six realms’ sentient beings.

Also, Ama-la and the whole family, I hope you pray for this to happen in the whole world. If you want to do this, pray for this to happen.

It’s a little bit like the Tibetans. They lost Tibet to China, but because His Holiness the Dalai Lama and many Tibetan people were able to escape, they rebuilt and educated new boys and girls, nuns and monks. The knowledge of Buddhadharma, its practice, learning and realizations, developed year by year over a long time and produced so many learned meditators, so many teachers of the Buddha’s teachings—philosophy, sutra and tantra—who can now benefit the world.

Just in FPMT there are 166 or so centers, mostly meditation centers, and some schools, hospices, like that. We have, I think, around forty-six resident teachers, who came from these monasteries after so many years of study and practice. They can spread the light of the teachings, Buddhadharma, to the rest of the world and dispel the darkness of ignorance of sentient beings.

They show clearly the whole path to enlightenment—how to go to enlightenment, how to get free from samsara. Buddhadharma has spread in the Western countries, where there has never been Buddhadharma before. It’s unbelievable, the light of Dharma has spread in the world, in so many Western countries, unbelievable!

His Holiness the Dalai Lama has been able to travel to so many countries again and again. He is the best example of a practitioner, if we examine this. Every year in the world, like in America, the people learn more and more about what His Holiness is—that he is full of compassion and wisdom, not ignorant. Unbelievable! He not only communicates with high people, but also with lower people, with suffering people, with people who have no education, etc. He helps everyone. People throughout the world learn by seeing His Holiness, hearing His Holiness and especially by what His Holiness teaches.

Tibet was lost to China, but all these unbelievable teachings of the Buddha, their light spreads and shines in the world so much. If Tibet did not get lost to China, then spreading the light of Dharma, making it shine in the rest of the world, His Holiness traveling to many countries again and again, and enlightening the people more and more—all this would not have happened.

Similarly, people are experiencing more suffering due to earthquakes, floods, landslides, all these things—generally fire and water problems—tsunamis, wind, then disease, viruses, so many problems.

I hope this turns out in a correct way that benefits the mind to see the reality of life, from where all the suffering comes. It does not come from the outside, but from the mind. Sentient beings experience problems in this life and through that they can learn how to stop the suffering through the mind. They can learn how to achieve happiness, not only temporal but ultimate happiness forever, liberation from samsara forever and especially peerless happiness, enlightenment, the total cessation of obscurations and completion of realizations.

I hope everyone is well—you, your father and your sister, who I spent much time talking with when I was there, as well as your brother. I hope to see you soon.

My prayers are always with you. Love and greetings to you and to everybody. Thank you very, very much. You can use these cards to send to your friends and to your enemies as well, if you have any. It’s up to you, however you want.

Thank you very, very much! I hope I can make an apple strudel one day for the mother and family to taste, haha!

I hope the center is OK. That’s all.

With love and prayers ...

They don't know this at all, but those people who were killed had karma that they had not purified. They had killed other people [in a previous life], so now the karma has ripened this time and also the shooter is creating results similar to the cause. This is very, very, very important to remember, not only for others but also for ourselves. [Read more about karma here.]

If we don’t want to have enemies, Dharma practice becomes so important. It is of the utmost importance for that reason to learn Dharma, the correct Dharma taught by Buddha. That is why it is so important to have centers, where people can study well and learn correctly the Dharma taught by the Buddha,

My most dear, most kind, most precious, wish-fulfilling one,
Without harming others or mistreating others, this would never have happened. It’s not logical and there is no reason for this to happen at all, so the cause of what they did to you and to the family is totally dependent on what you caused them, by mistreating them in the beginning. So this harm you are experiencing now completely came from you. Originally the harm was done by you, it came from your self-cherishing thought, and now they are creating negative karma by harming you in this way. They will have to go to the lower realms, such as the hell realms and so forth, therefore you have to help them, to pray for them to not be reborn in hell and for the unbearable suffering to not happen. [Read more about karma here.] 

When you do purification, also think of them, for example, when you do Vajrasattva practice, visualize them in your heart and purify the negative karma like that. Any purification practice you do, think of them and purify together as much as possible, by praying to Guru, Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. Think it is your self-cherishing thought that is harming you, not them. You should understand this and look at it like this. If you go back to the origin, it is your self-cherishing thought, and the way you have treated others has caused this.

My own story is an example—I think you may have heard this already, but I am not sure. When I was in Tibet and saw the police, it was very scary. They are in the cities running around on motorbikes with nooses to catch people, so you never know what will happen. In India we are not aware of so much of the situation in Tibet and China, and we don’t have that fear, like what we would have in Tibet.

Anyway, I thought to really help His Holiness the Dalai Lama, so I wanted to build a statue, if possible one-story high and to build nine of them, but that was not possible, so then I tried to build just one statue which would be nine stories high. One man, a nomad in a very high position, said he knew the Tibetan people and would be able to help us buy the land to build the statue. His idea was that people could climb inside the statue and they would see the view from its heart, so it would be like a tourist attraction.

We bought the land, but what happened is that the Tibetan people who helped us—I’m sorry to say this, to explain this—we found out that the land we had bought did not cost even half of what we had paid, and they used the other half [of the funds] themselves and bought more land to build a hotel. I only found this out much later. One big businessperson, who was Buddhist, accepted to help us, so he sent his manager to check the land. The manager saw the cost of the land was half of what we paid and he saw in the Chinese office a lot of false letters. He told the businessman, who got very angry because he thought the Tibetan man had cheated me. He thought “How is it possible?” and he wanted to put the Tibetan man in prison.

But I said we could not do this; we could not put him in prison, we could not. This was not to just to save their reputation, but just generally as a practice we can’t do that, we can’t send him in prison. Of course, we are born as human beings, and we can’t do that. We need to give special meaning for this human life, so we can’t do that harm to others. Of course now, being Buddhist, there is no way to do that, because that means to harm others. When we harm others we are not thinking about the result karma; we are only thinking about harming them back, but that is creating the karma to receive harm again in the future.

The reality is that, for example, young Tibetan people want to fight China, but His Holiness the Dalai Lama often says “The truth will win,” so peace will solve this, not violence. The whole issue is that if we harm back, like the rest of the world, then we create the karma to receive harm from others for many hundreds of thousands of lifetimes, again and again. We have to go through so much suffering not just one time—the result from just one negative karma is suffering for many hundreds and thousands of lifetimes, depending on how it is done. It is said that if we cheat one sentient being, from that one karma, the result in future lives is that we will be cheated by sentient beings for thousands of lifetimes.

So we officially lost all the money we paid for the land, because the man didn’t build a school or a hospital and he didn’t even go to the office to try to save the land, as you need to do something on the land before starting to build the statue. If you don’t do anything, then you lose the land, but another statue was still built in another place. I think it has been less than fifteen years since it was started.

Not only that, a long, long, long time ago, there was a lady who said she had so much money and could definitely pay for one of our main projects, but in the end we found out she had lied to us so much. She didn’t have the money and ended up taking money from us. This is also karma that I, myself, created in the past, from harming others, cheating others, so the result is that. Even the observation that we have karma to lose, to not win, even that observation goes under the karma. For three years we took care of this lady, helping her, paying for her, but it seems in reality maybe there was nothing and she was lying. We spent money looking after her, then we found out it was all a lie. So I sent a message to her to not act like this from now on.

In reality, this lady and the Tibetan man are so kind, so precious, so kind, so precious. They are helping us to purify our negative karma; they are showing us our past negative karma and helping to purify that, so in reality they are an unbelievable, unbearable object of compassion. They are the object of our compassion.

Instead of putting them through a court case, with so many expenses that go into that, we should be making offerings to the Guru, Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, and collecting so much merit, or using the money to make charity to sentient beings, especially if it is done with bodhicitta. We should offer charity to sentient beings instead of bringing a court case with so many expenses, where all that money is totally wasted.

Our life is very short; we can die at any time and then we go to the next life. This life is not the only one, it is endless and it depends on karma, what we created before.

For you specifically, you should do Vajrasattva or any purification practice with that person in your heart, to purify them and pray that they generate bodhicitta realizations and the path to enlightenment. Pray for that.

So please think about this.

I’m very, very, sorry about what happened to the family and to you.

With much love and prayers ...

I am sure the government also makes mistakes, for example, they often don’t know feng shui at all, but [the government officials] experience so much merit. At that time things are in right place so they become very successful and have an easygoing life. There are many people in the world like this.

There are people who have very little merit or who don’t collect merit at all, and only collect heavy, heavy negative karma. Even though they are successful now, soon it will run out and for so many lifetimes, for many hundreds of lifetimes (that is short) and even longer, they will have so much poverty, so much suffering, and difficult lives. Besides being born as a human, they will also be reborn in the lower realms.

That person who creates the most unbelievable bad karma may have success now, but that is the result of past good karma. Soon that will run out and then they will have the most unbelievable suffering. This is due to a lack of understanding of holy Dharma and practice of the holy Dharma.

Generally sentient beings want happiness, but due to ignorance we distort the cause of happiness or by being afraid we run away from happiness. We don’t want suffering, but we always create the cause of suffering, day and night, like rain showers, by strongly believing this is real and that this is the only method to bring happiness.

A good example is the person who is a monk living in pure, holy Dharma practice, but experiencing many problems, sickness and so forth. The wealthy person looks like they have a long life with lots of people coming and so much money coming, so for the people who think and work only for one life, it seems that the wealthy person is very successful and the best. We do not see that they will still have to suffer for eons in the lower realms, besides even the upper realms.

However, the meditator, a very pure holy Dharma practitioner, experiences many problems in this life, such as sickness. This is because of strong Dharma practice and all those things are signs of unbelievable purification. Their future will be like the sun shining in the world, from happiness to happiness to inconceivable happiness, up to full enlightenment. Each life is more and more beneficial for sentient beings.

This is important to understand. It helps to generate so much compassion for sentient beings and it helps us to achieve full enlightenment for sentient beings.

Maybe the hotel man has to order so many chickens to be killed day and night, and also pigs and sheep and many other animals every day, for the hotel kitchen. So even though that person is very rich now, their future lives have so much suffering. The simple monk, who is pure in strong, holy Dharma practice, purifies all the past lives’ heavy negative karma. Then when the monk dies, he will go to pure land or achieve a perfect human rebirth. However, this wealthy hotel man will experience extremely heavy suffering in their next life and may even be reborn in the lower realms and experience eons there.

My most dear one,
Please put the eight auspicious signs around your house, to have success, all the success, to stop the bad and inauspicious things and bring all the auspicious things. Decorate around your house as much as possible—in your room and around like that. I am sending you many of these in order to decrease the bad signs and increase the good things.

The most important thing, as experienced in my own case also, is that nobody wants suffering and everyone wants only happiness, hence we don’t give harm to others, even insects. Everyone wants happiness and not suffering, just like oneself. The mind of everyone is the same, hence we don’t harm any being—animals, humans, and up to worldly gods—and we benefit sentient beings as much as possible. For example, if there are insects on the road we put them away on the roadside; we can blow them away or set them aside. This is just an example. We should help others as much as possible. Toward humans, to those who have no food, we can give bread, and if they have no money, we can give them one rupee, like that. This is what the Buddha explained and it is also my experience. If we help others, then we don’t receive harm from them.

Karma is like that. The evolution of problems is that actions done with attachment to the happiness of this life are nonvirtuous. Also, actions done with anger and ignorance (not knowing) are the same, nonvirtuous. Some religions have beliefs opposite to Buddhism and instead of benefiting they are harming, for example, by performing animal sacrifice, (though it is less than before). There are many so-called religious practices that harm others. If the actions that are done harm others, then sickness and problems result. We receive the harm. Also, by harming others, from life to life, we receive harm from others. Every time we don’t harm but benefit others, we receive benefit 500 times. By giving benefit and not harm, we get benefit for 500 lives. The benefit lasts from life to life—happiness, wealth and long life, up to buddhahood, the total cessation of problems and the completion of all the realizations.

The whole thing is karma. It depends on that. From virtue, non-attachment to this life, benefit and happiness comes. It is said by Nagarjuna, the Indian omniscient one, the pandit from Nalanda in India, who propagated the teachings of wisdom in the world, “Actions born from anger, attachment and ignorance are nonvirtuous, and from that all the suffering arises.” From non-attachment, non-anger and non-ignorance, which are positive and pure, virtue comes. All the happiness of humans and devas is born from that.

The Buddha said in the Dharmapada, “All phenomena are created by the mind.” The world, which we use and enjoy, comes from our karma, and as it is used together with others, it is our collective karma. By utilizing objects, happiness and suffering arises. All that comes from our mind. The Buddha said, “Mind is the principal and goes preliminarily,” which means before the actions of body and speech. Also, our motivation is an action of the mind. For example, if by taking or generating a good heart, we give a talk to someone, what comes from that is happiness, just as the shadow follows the body. Hence, by creating good karma, there’s always happiness. Phenomena are created by the mind. The mind is the principal.

Accordingly, by generating a bad mind, then what comes from that is suffering. Take the example of the ox—after the ox comes the cart. The ox has to pull a heavy cart and it can’t express its feelings except by not walking. Then it is beaten until it is made to walk again. It is unbelievable suffering. That is the example. These points above explain the most important thing concerning our happiness and suffering.

The next thing, the most important thing, the greatest thing, beneficial and urgent, is that we should do everything to cause the temporal and ultimate happiness, great liberation, peerless enlightenment, for numberless sentient beings, in whatever we do—sleeping, walking, as well as studying Dharma, whatever we do. This is the best and happiest life. Whatever we do is for the happiness of sentient beings.

There’s a story I want to tell you. One student who was very devoted to me donated land to start a center. His family was rich and all their responsibilities came onto him. He had an expensive house, however the family’s business only went down and he lost millions of dollars, but his mind didn’t go down. His mind maintained virtuous thoughts, devotion to the guru and renunciation of samsara, which is in the nature of suffering. Externally he lost the business, but in reality he gained in life, merit and the development of the mind to enlightenment, guru devotion and renunciation of samsara. These basic virtuous thoughts developed and increased, leading not only to liberation from samsara, but to great enlightenment. So he didn’t lose, he gained. He lost only outside money, which was nothing compared to what he gained.

The most important thing is not to harm sentient beings but to cause happiness, temporal and ultimate, peerless enlightenment, for all sentient beings. Therefore, cherish them like we cherish ourselves. Suffering comes from cherishing the I while happiness comes from cherishing others. Do everything for sentient beings, for their ultimate happiness, peerless enlightenment.

I will stop here. I’m sorry this became long, but since you are new it took time to explain.

There is a mantra to recite if you can:

OM HRI YA DHE SARVA TATHAGATHA HRIDAYA GARBE / ZOLA DHARMA DHATU GARBE / SANGHA HARANA AYU SANGSHODHAYA / PAPAM SARVA TATHAGATA SAMENDRA AUSHNI KHA VIMALE BISHUDE SVAHA

The first benefit, if we recite this mantra a few times and then print Buddha’s holy text or make tsa tsas, images of the Buddha’s holy body—by reciting the mantra a few times before making tsa tsas or printing a text—then the result becomes millions. Even if we make just one tsa tsa, it becomes the same merit as having made ten million.

The second benefit is that by making a stupa, which represents the Buddha’s holy mind, just by seeing a stupa, the sufferings of the three lower realms—animals, pretas and hell beings—are purified and it plants the seeds of enlightenment, buddhahood. The stupa becomes meaningful to behold, and anyone who goes around the stupa, even dogs or other animals, becomes free from the three lower realms—the hot hells and the surrounding hells, etc. It is unbelievable like that.

It also blesses our body, so that when others see us or touch us, there’s double benefit. It frees them from the five heinous crimes (of killing one’s father, killing one’s mother, killing an arhat, drawing blood from a buddha, and causing a schism amongst the Sangha). These heavy negative karmas are purified. We get a higher caste, like in India where people respect those who are from a higher caste, and then we are able to benefit them.

As well, there are the benefits of wealth, long life, protection from harm, liberation and enlightenment. Recite this mantra as much as possible, either seven or twenty-one times, half a mala or one mala. It is so good and has so much power.

[See also the Mantra Taught by Buddha Droden Gyalwa Chhö to read more about the benefits of this mantra.]

Thank you very much to you, from my heart, for understanding all this.

With love and prayer ...

P.S. Please read the back of the elephant card, so then you can understand its benefits. It comes from a Dharma text. It also has my signature on it. The small one you can put in your top pocket. It’s for success.

My very dear, most precious, most kind, wish-fulfilling one,
Thank you very much for your report and for all that you're doing, that is very good. Regarding tonglen, it is incredible that you are doing that, it is fantastic, it is better than giving me a billion, trillion dollars, so thank you for doing tonglen. If you miss a day, you don't have to start again, this practice is not like that, you just do it when you can. It’s most important to do it well, with meditation.

Yes, the swift path is the Red Commentary, which was the basis of Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand.

Our aim is to achieve enlightenment in order to free the numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samaric sufferings and bring them to enlightenment. While we are listening, reflecting and meditating on the path to enlightenment, because we are not out of samsara, we are in samsara, therefore we experience the shortcomings of samsara. We experience old age, sickness, suffering and death, and that includes cancer, so that is a sign that we are in samsara, therefore that happens, all those things happen.

Don't worry so much, the main thing is to achieve enlightenment and to free sentient beings from samsara, so if we practice Dharma then those sicknesses can be stopped by the power of Dharma practice, by purification and collecting merits and especially bodhicitta. It is said in the teachings that when we are practicing Dharma, many obstacles happen, so that is good, that is a sign, proof we are purifying negative karma and collecting merits, so that is very positive.

I often mention the example of somebody who runs a five-star hotel, where lots of people are coming so that person makes a lot of money every day, but they have to kill thousands of fish and chickens. They have to kill so many animals every day for the restaurant in the five-star hotel, and a lot of money comes in from that. It looks like this person is doing well, making a lot of money, and for people in the world who don't know Dharma, this is what they call success, but that person is creating so much negative karma each day by killing thousands, even tens of thousands, maybe even millions of animals—chickens, fish, shrimp—every day. Can you imagine? Every single action of that person’s body, speech and mind is negative karma, and most of them are not even doing one minute of confessing negative karma, because they don't know, they have no opportunity in life, and they are only creating rainfalls of negative karma, day and night.

Then the next person is a Dharma practitioner who has renounced this life; the ordained person who has nothing and who gets very sick, time after time. This goes on in their life and they almost die many times. For ordinary people who don't know Dharma, it looks like that Dharma practitioner has so many problems, one after another. The other person who owns the five-star hotel, it looks like their life is very good because they are healthy. But in reality, all the negative karma collected by the five-star hotel owner is not experienced in this life; it is all collected and will be experienced in hell for eons and eons and eons of suffering, where they cannot hear Dharma and in the next life cannot meet the guru.

The renounced person has nothing and is always sick, but this is positive because of their pure Dharma practice. All their past heavy negative karma is ripening in this life, so instead of being born in hell and suffering for eons, the negative karma is ripening now, in this life, instead of in future lives. Even if they are always sick in this life, at the time of death, even then, they will have so much happiness and in the next life they will be reborn in the pure land or in the higher realms where they will always meet Dharma and be able to practice Dharma.

Their future lives are much better and they are like the sun shining in the world. In their future lives beyond this life, they are like the sun shining, bringing so much happiness and so much merit, and then being able to go to enlightenment.

So in reality there is a huge difference between those two people. There are many examples like this. Worldly people think that when someone makes a lot of money and is very successful, then that one is good, whereas the monk or nun who has renounced this life and lives very simply, but is sick all the time, is so bad.

With much love and prayers, and thank you for your understanding ...