This is a transcript of the original video available on YouTube: 7th Monthly Q&A Session – May 20th, 2022
DGL: I’m very excited to get into this topic of Karma and Rebirth since it’s a core theme in Buddhism and it always brings up lots of questions; it’s great to be able to ask these questions to somebody like yourself, Jetsunma-la, who can give us some clarity and insights about these topics and what Buddhism says about them particularly. We will be exploring all these topics mostly from the perspective of Tibetan Buddhism, but nevertheless it’s a very broad and interesting topic.
“What is karma according to Buddhism? How is it defined and how can it be understood by those who are not familiar with Eastern philosophy and thought?”
JTP: Basically, as it says in the Bible, “As you sow, so shall you reap.” This refers to the concept of karma which literally means action. How we act with our body, speech and mind plants seeds in our alaya-vijnana (store consciousness) which will sprout when the right causes and conditions are present.
In other words, the situations we experience today are the result of actions committed in this or past lifetimes; the fruit of those actions is now ripening. But I really do think it’s very important to recognise that how we respond to present events is what creates our future. In other words, from moment to moment we’re using up the past and planting fresh seeds for our future; it’s an ongoing process. Therefore, if our response to present situations is negative, we are planting poison seeds; if it’s positive, that will eventually result in a healthy outcome. That’s the idea behind it.
The Buddha also said that karma is intention. Therefore it’s not just what we do or say but the basic motivation behind that action. For example, say someone with ill intent picks up a scalpel and plunges it into the chest of someone and they die; that is a very negative action because the murderer intended the death of another being. On the other hand, a surgeon could pick up the same scalpel and likewise cut into the heart of a patient who unfortunately dies; the basic result looks the same, but the intention was so very different that the karmic results would be very different.
Do you understand? The intention is what counts, not merely the action. Picking up a scalpel, plunging it into somebody’s chest and that person dying is the same whether you’re a murderer or a skilled surgeon. However, the result of that action would be very different depending on the basic motivation. The murderer’s intention was to kill the person; the surgeon’s intention was to save them.
DGL: From that point of view, would the karma created depend most on the mental aspect? Even though an action is being committed, the mental intention is most important?
JTP: Yes, the mind creates the feeling tone of the speech and the action, in regards to the body, speech and mind. You could be speaking very sweetly but you might have a very bad motivation behind your speech, in which case that would be a negative action even though the speech sounds sweet. Or you could be saying something quite harsh, but if it’s in order to help people in some way, then that would be a beneficial action.
It’s all a matter of what our underlying motivation actually is, not what we think it is.
DGL: Jetsunma-la, what about when we’re not aware of our motivations? Usually we’re on autopilot, not thinking about our motivation and intention. We just do things, and most of the time we’re led by delusions or afflictions. What happens in this case?
JTP: We are led by delusions and afflictions, so it would still be a negative thing on top of our unconsciousness, which is ignorance. So you’re adding ignorance on top of whatever maliciousness, greed or jealousy or anything else which unconsciously motivated our action. The fact that we’re not aware is not a mitigating circumstance. This is why we’re trying to become more aware and clear of our underlying motivations, not just the lies that we tell ourselves. So, we have to wake up is the answer to that one.
DGL: In dealing with karma, awareness is such an important tool…
JTP: … yeah, it’s the essential part of the whole path. The Buddha said that the one way to Liberation is through mindfulness or awareness. I mean, there’s no other real way.
I think anybody who has a lot of questions about karma and rebirth and the place it plays in Buddhist thought would do well to read a book called Rebirth: A Guide to Mind, Karma, and Cosmos in the Buddhist World by Roger R. Jackson. It deals with rebirth from the very earliest sutras through the Mahayana, including Nagarjuna and so forth, all the way into the tantric path. He shows how underlying everything is the doctrine of karma and rebirth; they play an incredibly important role at all levels of the Buddhist path. This book explains it so much more clearly than I can do. If anybody really cares about this question, they would do well to read this book.
DGL: Brilliant. We’re going to cover as much as we can, but because we’re time-constrained we won’t be able to delve so deeply into this very profound topic. This book is a wonderful resource for those of you who want to get into it, into more detail.
“Is karma to be understood to mean the same as cause and effect? Is everything karma then?”
JTP: Basically I would say yes, karma can be understood as cause and effect. We create the cause and we will eventually experience the effect of that cause. As I say, like a seed, when it’s given the right conditions (the correct water, sunshine etc.), that seed will sprout.
If we plant a poisonous seed we get a poisonous plant. So if our actions of body, speech or mind are motivated by negative thought forms such as anger, greed, jealousy, pride, and so forth, then in the future we will meet with adverse situations. This is the understanding. Or maybe even here and now; it might sprout up immediately. You can’t tell when it’s going to come. So actions based on negative emotions will create negative results, and positive roots will produce positive plants. That’s the basic idea; do good and don’t do any harm.
But on the other hand, not everything is karma according to the Buddha. One of them is climate. If it’s raining today and a bit cold, it’s not necessarily our karma, but I think if one got reborn in a country which was habitually cold and rainy, one might say that was a result of one’s karma. But every time you have a thunderstorm — unless you get hit by lightning — it’s not likely to be karmic. It’s just, you know, the climate.
Then there are certain other situations which the Buddha said were just the way things happen. I don’t remember what they are, I apologise. But there are certain things which just happen, and the Buddha said you can’t say that that’s just on account of our karma. It’s just the way things happen. So there is that side too, that there are just some things which are just general and not particular to ourselves.
DGL: That’s very interesting, Jetsunma-la. In terms of the climate, what if there’s a thunderstorm and I get very scared — would that be a karmic propensity?
JTP: That might not be karmic, but it might be part of our habitual tendencies which we brought over from past lives. Because along with our consciousness and our karmic seeds, we also bring our habitual propensities. So if maybe in a past life you got struck by lightning, then in the next lifetime you might be very frightened of thunderstorms with no particular reason why. In that way it would be karmic insofar as previously you were hit by a thunderbolt. But it also becomes part of the mental continuum. For example, some people get very angry, some people get very frightened… like that.
DGL: “It is said that the full scope of karma and its results can only be comprehended by a fully Enlightened being. If that is the case, is there any way that us ordinary beings can have any notions of the efficacy of karma within our limited view?”
JTP: Certainly one of the outcomes of a deep Samadhi (Meditative Concentration) is the knowledge of past lives, not just for the Buddha but also for many of his followers. One of the three knowledges was the knowledge of past lives. Of course, this is a result which is not really available to most of us. But my feeling is that really a belief in karma helps us to deal with the circumstances of our life without having to ask, “Why is this happening to me?”
Common ways of relating to this question are either we believe that everything is designed and judged for us by an external creator (a god outside of ourselves), or we believe that things just happen arbitrarily with no particular meaning. With either of these views, there’s nothing really much we can do beyond trying to make samsara a bit more comfortable. One of the problems for people nowadays is that their lives basically have not much meaning. They don’t have any purpose beyond being comfortable and making a bit more money or maybe helping people a bit. But beyond that, what’s it all for? That’s what people always ask.
The Buddhist option is to believe that results follow on prior causes, and how we act now will create future results. This will keep going until we break through the whole cycle of birth and death, which is the aim, really: to get out of this endless cycling up, down, round and round, creating fresh karma, using up past karma and never knowing the way out. The Buddhist path is to attain Liberation, setting down the burden, and to cultivate the quality of Bodhichitta, which is the motivation to also help liberate others.
I mean, you can’t prove it, right? There’s no proof, per se. But it’s a useful hypothesis because it gives meaning to life. As I say, we don’t have to think: Oh, why is this happening to me? Well, it’s because we ourselves created the causes and conditions for it to happen. So now get on with it. How are you going to respond to that in a way which will transform whatever is happening into the Dharma path?
DGL: You touched upon the whole point of the path, which is to get out of samsara — to liberate oneself and to escape that cycle of rebirth. Nowadays some modern movements even within Buddhism reject the notion of rebirth. In your opinion, is it fair to say that rebirth is essential to Buddhism?
JTP: I think if you take refuge in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, then fair enough, you can consider yourself a Buddhist. But as this book on rebirth I mentioned shows, from the very beginning, the whole raison d’etre of the Dharma is to go beyond this endless cycle of rebirth. From beginningless time until endless future, we go round again and again: “Get me out!” That was why the Buddha became a Buddha — to show the path to Liberation.
But if we only have one lifetime, what does it mean, the path to Liberation? Because when we die we’re finished anyway, so what difference? Why would we practice renunciation? Bodhichitta makes no sense at all, because we’re certainly not going to liberate everybody in this lifetime. The whole meaning of the effort on the path and the realisation of the path depends on the idea of Liberation. If there’s only one lifetime, what’s there to be liberated from?
DGL: Absolutely. It makes perfect sense with all that in mind.
JTP: Well, it makes it so small. It makes it so tiny. Just making our… like mental health for this lifetime. The whole vision of endless space and time is put into a nice little feel-good package.
DGL: I guess it’s also very much in line with the modern materialistic view of life and how everything is just condensed to this body matter here right now and nothing else can be proved.
But in fact, there’s a lot of research on past lives as well. Scientists like Stevenson and Tim Tucker, they’ve done a lot of research of children who remember past lives. So the evidence is actually there.
JTP: If you want to read it.
DGL: “The classifying of karma into positive or negative categories seems to be very moralistic. How is that different from the idea of being judged by our sins or our misconduct in other religious systems?”
JTP: Well, it seems to me that just because all the religions agree that we should be kind, and that doing good is good and harming others is bad, doesn’t therefore mean that ethics is wrong. I mean, thank goodness that finally religions all agree on something! They all agree we should try to be nicer. I mean, isn’t that a good thing?
Actions based on anger, greed, jealousy, pride and delusion cause harm to ourselves and to others, whereas actions based on kindness, love and compassion bring wellbeing. Buddhist ethics is based on harmlessness — on not taking life, not stealing, being responsible for one’s sexual conduct, not lying or using harsh speech, and refraining from intoxicants that cloud the mind. In other words, living in this world without harming others. Even if we don’t do any good, at least we’re not harming others or ourselves.
Imagine what the world would be like if we all had these basic ethics as a foundation. I mean, what’s wrong with being ethical, for goodness sake, as if that’s something bad? To be kind? To be good? You know, come on, what do you think? That’s the basis of everything.
The difference with karma is that we bring judgment on ourselves by our own conduct. We cannot blame God. We cannot blame the government. Again, as you sow, so shall you reap.
All of this — all of our actions of body, speech and mind — depend on our mental state. The karma depends on our intentions, and whether they are influenced by positive or negative roots; this is why we should observe the mind at all times. This is very important to remember. But in the meantime, even if we cannot totally control our mind by any stretch of the imagination, at least we can begin to control our verbal and physical actions and bring them into conformity with a life of kindness and compassion.
DGL: “What is the practice of purification and how does it work?”
JTP: In the Tibetan tradition, which is based mostly on the tantras, but also on basic Mahayana Buddhism, the practices of purification are Vajrasattva, Confession to the Thirty Five Buddhas, or Nyungne (Fasting Practice) based on the thousand-armed Chenrezig.
The basic idea of all these practices is that it can clear away some of our negative karma so that less obstacles appear on our spiritual path and in our life. It cannot clear all our past bad karma, but it can clear enough that it clears the path so that we can walk ahead.
The idea is that when we do have problems in our practice, outer or inner, this is usually considered the result of negative karma and that we haven’t accumulated enough positive karma. So purifying and accumulating merit, as the Tibetans do with the Preliminary Practices, can be very helpful for the main Vajrayana practices. It doesn’t clear away all our negative karma, but it clears away enough to make the road a little less bumpy.
DGL: That’s a very nice analogy. I once heard that doing purification practice is almost like cleaning a vessel before pouring a very pure nectar into it. You want the vessel to be as clean as possible, and purification practice is the process of cleaning, shining and polishing it before you pour the nectar in it.
JTP: Of course, we don’t clear it completely — there are still spots and blemishes — but it’s cleaner than it was. We’ve helped to throw out a lot of the mucky stuff that was stuck in there and clogging it up.
DGL: “It seems a bit contradictory that purification is possible since one of the four characteristics of karma is that it is never lost and will ripen indefinitely. Can you please help us understand this and reconcile this seeming contradiction?
JTP: As I said before, in general, the seeds of past actions remain latent, even through eons of time, until the right causes and conditions allow them to sprout up. However many lifetimes it may take, the seeds are still there waiting for the opportunity to arise. This is why you can’t say, “Why has this happened to me?”
Bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people. The experiences of this moment are not necessarily the direct karmic result of the seeds planted in the previous moment. However, as these Mahayana and tantric practices I just mentioned can help to clear away at least some of the past negative karma by providing a counterbalance or antidote that dilutes the poison
But even the greatest practitioners — even the Buddha himself — suffer loss and hardships. They get sick and die, sometimes very young. Everyone faces challenges in life. So it’s not that all our past karma is clear and we’re now only going to have positive karma, but these purificatory practices do clear away enough to remove some of the major obstacles that we might face in our life, especially in our practice.
Beyond that, we cannot aspire. I mean, even the Buddha died, even the Buddha’s whole tribe were killed. The Sakyas were massacred during the lifetime of the Buddha, which was a great grief for him, especially as he probably felt partly responsible. But purification can definitely help to clear the way for our future practice.
DGL: “How do actions in one lifetime influence the next rebirth according to Tibetan Buddhist belief?”
JTP: In all Buddhist belief, although the physical body dies, nonetheless the consciousness, especially the subtle consciousness, continues, including the alaya-vijnana, the store consciousness, which contains all the imprints of our actions of body, speech and mind. That continues on, along with our habitual propensities.
For example, if we’re very angry or very kind people, then in the next lifetime that propensity is likely to be there. Babies sometimes are very upset, angry little babies and sometimes they are very sweet, lovely little babies. They have different temperaments right from the start. You look in their eyes and already a personality is there, which from a Buddhist point of view is a result of their past lifetimes being brought into their present lifetime.
Of course, the results of all these imprints do not arise immediately, but only when the right conditions appear for them to turn up. We never know what’s going to come next. Even if we led a very good lifetime last time, it doesn’t mean that in this lifetime all is going to be well because we might get some negative karma coming up from past lives, or vice versa. We might have been quite difficult last lifetime. Maybe this lifetime will seem easy until that negative karma has the opportunity to ripen.
We can’t know exactly what’s going to happen — it’s not like that. This is why good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people. Results are not immediate. If I plant this seed, then tomorrow that same seed might or might not grow. That’s the point.
Really, from the point of view of practice, the point is to take all the situations which come to us in our life — the difficult ones and the easy ones — onto the path and make use of them for our spiritual progress.
This is very important, really. Everything is considered to be a learning tool. Don’t think so much about good karma or bad karma. Don’t think: What good karma did I do to deserve this? What bad karma did I do to deserve this? We don’t know. We can’t know, because it might have been in this lifetime, but it might have been a long way back. How do we know?
It’s not important what we did before. What is important is what we’re doing right now and how we are dealing with the conditions and situations which arise in our life right now. We need to respond to them positively, take them onto the path, and make use of everything. Then, there is no good or bad karma as far as the results are concerned, because we can learn and grow from everything. I think it’s really very important that we don’t always expect things to be easy and nice, categorising that as good and difficulties as bad, because that’s a very dualistic, egotistic point of view.
Maybe the things which appear the most difficult in the end turn out to be of the greatest spiritual benefit. Many people who had very life-threatening diseases later say how grateful they are because it was a wake-up call for them: they recognise what is important in this life and what is not important, they move from the road they were leading onto a much more profound and spiritual path, and they open up their compassion.
We shouldn’t get caught up categorising experiences as good and bad. We also shouldn’t ruminate: What did I do for this to happen? We don’t know and it doesn’t really matter. Right now, how are we dealing with that situation: skilfully or unskilfully?
I really recommend everybody read books on Lojong (Mind Training) because this is a very important text about how to take everything onto the path. Really that’s the point, that we should transform everything into a Dharma practice. How can we cultivate patience if we have nobody to annoy us? That’s the basic idea.
DGL: I’d also like to remind people about your latest book, The Heroic Heart, which deals exactly with this topic of Lojong, with being able to take obstacles into the path. We learn how to deal with difficult situations in life, which will definitely arise, whether it’s because of karma or not. In the end, that doesn’t matter. Things will become difficult, and then we have to deal with them somehow, so I thoroughly recommend The Heroic Heart, Jetsunma’s latest book, a commentary on The Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva.
A follow-up question just popped in my mind:
It’s said in Buddhism that one very important moment in this life is the moment of death, which definitely can very strongly influence the next life. Do you have any tips on how to make the best of that moment of death if we have the good opportunity to die in a peaceful environment?
JTP: The first thing, of course, is to let go. Let go of all of your attachments to your loved ones, family, position, identity and sense of who you are. Just let it all go. Let go of your possessions. Let go of the people around you, and just open up and relax and give yourself permission to go forward.
Then I would say if you have an object of faith, focus on that. The object of faith could be anyone (if it’s a good object of faith, obviously): a teacher, a deity, a Bodhisattva… anyone. Christians would have Jesus, Mary or God, and Buddhists would think of the Buddha, Chenrezig, Tara or Amitabha, for example. Let go of the present surroundings and just focus the mind on yearning to become one with your object of devotion.
If you don’t have an object of devotion, then think of the light and go towards it. Don’t be afraid of the light; at the time of death when the gross consciousness dissolves into the subtle consciousness, you will have this vision of the Clear Light (Nature of the Mind). This is called the Mother Luminosity. Ordinary people draw back from the light because they don’t know what it is, and then they lose consciousness and might wake up in the bardo states (the intermediate states). So it’s very important not to be afraid of the light and to go towards the light with confidence, recognising this as the ultimate nature of reality.
If and when we arise in the bardo state, the important thing there is to recognise that everything which occurs is just the projection of the mind. It’s not real; we’re just projecting this whole scenario. Whether it is welcoming or threatening doesn’t matter; it’s all just our own self-projection. So in the bardo we must remember that it’s all our own self-projection and not take it as real and don’t grasp at it.
But if possible, really the very best at the time of death is to focus on the object of our devotion with yearning because then that will come to welcome us.
DGL: So the point of all of this is to basically cultivate a positive, virtuous state of mind when the dying process starts?
JTP: Totally. Be ready. Let go of what’s happening now.
The worst thing you can say to anyone who is dying is, “Oh, don’t leave us, don’t leave us.” If you are in the presence of someone who is dying, just tell them to relax, let go and go forward. If they do have an object of devotion, remind them of that object.
Basically, don’t create an interference. Don’t talk too much, don’t try to get them talking to you, don’t tell them not to leave, don’t recriminate them or anything like that. Just leave them alone to peacefully go forward with a very positive state of mind as much as they can. Then, you can say prayers and create merit on their behalf to ease their journey in the bardo.
DGL: Brilliant. Thank you very much for that very clear answer, Jetsunma-la.
JTP: My feeling is keep it simple. Tibetan Buddhism is very, very complicated. You know, this element dissolving into that element, dissolving into this element, and then there’s this consciousness into that consciousness. “Which consciousness am I in now? Which element was that? Was that the earth consciousness? Or the earth element or the water element?” I mean, that’s not the point.
Of course, great tantric masters are very skilled in that, making them the master of the situation. This is why, at the time of death, they go into a meditative state called Thukdam. But for ordinary people like us, it’s better not to complicate things and to keep it very simple: let go of our earthly attachments, get ready to make the big, exciting adventure of the journey into the next life, and recognise that it’s all just a projection.
DGL: You’ve touched a little bit upon next question, but maybe you can expand a bit more if you see it necessary, Jetsunma-la.
“How exactly does rebirth happen? What is the process that takes place from the moment we die in this life to the moment we get reborn in the next one?”
JTP: Quite frankly, this is a huge question. If you really want to know, at least from the Tibetan point of view, then you should read some books on the bardo. There are many books nowadays written by Tibetan masters on death and dying, the bardo states, and rebirth. It’s quite a complicated and vast subject.
But basically, our very subtle, non-dualistic consciousness never ceases, even when the gross consciousness declines. So even if someone is unconscious, their basic, very subtle consciousness never ever declines. It’s always there; like the sky, it never fades away. The sky is always there, right? This is very important. So our basic awareness flows like a river through the various stages of the intermediate state until we’re reborn at whatever level our prior actions have created for us. We could come back as a human or an animal, or we could get reborn in the various spiritual dimensions. There are many different realms of being where you could take rebirth, not just in the human realm.
The important thing is to keep as much clarity of awareness as possible, with whatever is happening, and to realise that at a very profound level, this is all just our self-projection.
DGL: Wonderful.
JTP: Well, it might be wonderful. It might not be wonderful, depending on how we’ve used this lifetime. But this is our big opportunity for Liberation. Death is therefore not something horrible and terrible; it’s something very natural and it is our big chance. If we are even just a little bit prepared then we can advance and either take a very good rebirth or we could get reborn in pure lands, if we keep our focus on our object of devotion.
DGL: Hearing you talk it seems like you’re excited about the whole notion, whereas most people find death to be very challenging and frightening. How can we change that attitude?
JTP: Well, I don’t know. As you know, I was brought up as a spiritualist, so death, dying and what happens next was an everyday topic of conversation in our household. So I don’t think there’s been a single day in my life in which I haven’t thought about death, almost with a sense of anticipation: Let’s see what happens next. I always say to people, “At least then we will know who’s right.” Because everybody has their version of what does or doesn’t happen next. Now we’re finally going to know; I think that’s very exciting.
DGL: It is. I think you’ve got me excited as well, Jetsunma-la. I hope it is contagious to other people, because I find that particularly in the West, the topic of death is so heavy and so difficult. It seems like it doesn’t need to be; in the end, it really can be something that is so natural, isn’t it?
JTP: I mean, death is shown as this horrible skeletal figure or demon. I think it’s very important to make friends with death. Poor death, nobody loves him. So embrace him and say, “Hi, Death. I’m your friend, and you’re my friend. We’ve known each other for many lifetimes, and I know you’re a good guy at heart.” Because who needs to live forever? What a horrible thought.
DGL: Yeah, it is a horrible thought. I was just thinking how there’s this attachment to life, but living forever would be a nightmare.
“If Buddhism claims that there is no self, no atman, no soul, then what is it that continues on to the next life?”
JTP: The subtle consciousness that is beyond time and space — which the Buddha called The Deathless or The Unborn — that never ceases. The words self, atman and soul might evoke a sense of something unchanging and uniquely me, different and separate from all the other atmans and souls. But rather than that, the subtle consciousness is changing moment to moment like a river; it’s always conditioned by the past moment and it just flows.
Why do we carry our past karma and our habitual tendencies with us? Because we believe in an actor: I have carried out these past actions. These thoughts are me and mine. That is the problem; this clinging to a dualistic, egoistic consciousness is what binds us to the wheel of becoming, to samsara.
One Burmese monk explained it using a metaphor of a mala: all the beads on the mala are karmic actions. If you pull one, everything else goes round and round. What keeps all these momentary karmas connected is the thread. That thread is the thought: I did this or I am doing this. It’s our identification with our actions of body, speech and mind. If we cut that string, the beads won’t go round, they will just lie there; that’s the end of the beads and the mala. That’s the point.
This state of pure consciousness connects us with everything. This level of consciousness is described as being like space because it’s all-permeating. It connects us with everybody, all living beings: animals, birds, fish, trees, flowers, etc. We are all conscious beings and deeply interconnected; that’s what we have to realise. Our ordinary dualistic consciousness is what separates us — that is what keeps us grasping at the wheel of birth and death, so we have to go beyond that.
Honestly and truthfully, Buddhists do not have a copyright on Ultimate Reality. How different spiritual paths describe it is depending on their dogmas, but nonetheless, I would say most genuine spiritual traditions, not necessarily religions, but spiritual traditions, agree it is beyond thought, concepts and duality. They agree it is something nameless — that anything we say about it, it’s not that. It’s an inexpressible experience within us which can be recognised but cannot really be spoken about.
All genuine spiritual practitioners — Christian mystics, Sufis, Hindu saints, Buddhists, Shamans, etc. — recognise that we all possess a level of being which is our true nature, but that normally we do not recognise it. The spiritual path is to bring that true nature into our conscious awareness, which is beyond the dualistic division of me, mine, yours, and others. That’s the point; that’s what gets reborn again and again until we wake up and discover our true nature.
In the meantime, we are locked in our dualistic conceptual thinking mind which automatically separates us from all other beings; that’s our tragedy. This is why the buddhas and bodhisattvas have great compassion. Not because of our mundane suffering, but because of our enormous potential which we simply do not understand. We suffer, cause suffering to others and destroy our planet because we are in the grip of delusion. How sad.
But at the same time, the buddhas and bodhisattvas are smiling because they see behind all that. They see the Ultimate Truth which is always there — pure, shining and just waiting for us to wake up, see it and recognise it within ourselves and everyone else. This is why in the Mahayana path, we’re all said to have Buddha Nature. We just have to recognise it and then we wake up. In the meantime, we’re all asleep and snoring.
DGL: What a beautiful reminder, Jetsunma-la. Thank you so much for that. It’s really uplifting to hear how we all have this Buddha Nature latent within us.
“Can we decide or at least influence the kind of rebirth that we will take?”
That’s a good question. Yes, we can certainly make aspirations in this lifetime for the next lifetime. For instance, we should make aspirations to meet up with the Dharma and have the opportunity to practice as soon as possible. We can pray to come back in the world and help others as much as possible. We can pray to be reborn in a pure land and carry on as quickly as possible working towards the goal of Enlightenment so that we can send emanations down into the world to help them.
We can do all these things, but if we want a happy rebirth, we must create the causes and conditions right now: we have to develop more kindness, compassion, generosity and patience in this very lifetime. Our present actions have to suit our prayers. It’s no good being really mean and nasty and then praying that we’re going to be reborn in a harmonious atmosphere. We have to create the harmony right now.
Just wishing won’t be enough. If we want to make a cake, we have to gather all the ingredients, right? Just wishing for a cake is not going to create the cake. We have to get the flour, raisins, water and everything else we need for cake making. If we want a good, auspicious and meaningful next life, we have to create the causes and conditions in this lifetime. We must pray and direct our thoughts to where we would like to go and how we would like it to be, and then suit our actions with our aspirations.
DGL: To summarise, would it be fair to say that we need to make positive aspirations but also make good effort into realising them?
JTP: Exactly that.
DGL: “Can you please share some stories that have helped you gain confidence in the possibility of rebirth, and that could perhaps point to us the fact that it actually happens?”
JTP: To my mind, there are two things here from my own personal experience.
One was that as a child, I had recurring vivid dreams of past lives. In the most recurring one, I was a young male adult, so I was seeing things from a very different perspective to the little three or four-year-old girl I was at the time. It was very hot, the sky was deep blue, nothing like foggy old London, and I was walking up a hill towards what later I recognised as a Greek temple.
The most important thing was not only the feeling of heat, the intensity of the sun like you never get in England, and the fact that I was a male, but the joy in my heart and the devotion I felt as I was going towards the temple. I would just climb up the stairs in this white temple with pillars and go into the shade, and then I would wake up. As a small child, once it began to start again I would always think: Oh, this is this nice dream. I would sort of settle back into this other state of being. It was very deeply meaningful to me as a small child. But that’s a personal thing.
Next, to my mind, meeting very high incarnations when they are very small before they have been recognised was very convincing. I will give an example. A friend of mine was a disciple of this Lama called Bairo Rinpoche and his wife, who was a Nyingma Lama. I knew Bairo Rinpoche because he had been in The Young Lama’s Homeschool where I taught, so I would sometimes go to visit.
Anyway, he had a little son; I first met the little boy when he was about two years old. And he was already wearing robes. They explained it’s because he kept saying to them, “Why are you dressing me in lay clothes? I’m a Lama.” So they put him in little robes. Then he said to his mother, “I cannot sleep with a woman. I am a monk.” So they made him a little bed.
Another time, when the little boy was about three, I went to see his father and heard another story. His father said that a few days before, the little boy had climbed up onto some sacks of rice, put a clean towel on it, sat down, and said to his father and mother, “I’m a very high Lama. You don’t know who I am. But it would be to your benefit to make prostrations and offerings.” His parents looked at each other with a bit of incredulity and also acquiescence. They got khatas (long white offering scarves), prostrated, and went to the little boy who blessed them, put the khatas around their necks, and then got down from the throne. His father said, “I don’t know who this kid is, but he’s somebody.”
Another time his father said to me, “Is it normal for three year olds to go up on the hill and just stare for hours into space?” This is, of course, actually a very advanced Dzogchen practice. Most little boys don’t do that.
Then, when I was in Delhi my friend wrote and said, “Guess what? That little brat, he’s the Gyalwang Drukpa!” He had been recognised as the Drukchen — the head of the Drukpa Kagyu, my lineage. So I bought some toys suitable for a four-year-old and I went back to see him.
He had been recognised as the Gyawang Drukpa one week prior to my arrival. He was sitting there, so I prostrated and offered a khata to him. He blessed me, I gave him the presents, and he pushed them to one side.
Then he said, “So Ani-la, who is your Lama? And what books have you studied? And what practices are you doing?”
I mean, he could have been 40, not four. So like that.
My own Lama recognised me when he saw me for the first time. He also would always just sit quietly on his seat when people came. He was two, and he would just sit there while people sat. When they left, he would get down, and when somebody else came, he would leave his toys, and return to sitting on the throne. Even if they stayed for an hour, he would just sit there quietly. So like this.
I mean, many other lamas I also met when they were very, very small, and they are just not like ordinary children. They just are not, even before they have received training. People say, “Oh, well, tulkus are special because they are trained.” True. But before they have been trained, they are so completely different to the average child. They have this look in their eyes which is so very different from what you see in an ordinary child’s eyes.
This convinces me that they didn’t just come from nowhere. They really were high incarnate lamas, who were later recognised as such. So to my mind, if you meet these really special lamas when they’re very small, before they’ve been recognised, you can see that they are very extraordinary human beings; you can see that they’re great bodhisattvas, and nothing like how we ordinary beings were at that age.
The only answer to that is that they’ve had lifetime after lifetime of training. When they come back, they are choosing to come back instead of being propelled by the wheel; it’s their Bodhisattva aspiration to come back in order to help us. They already are carrying with them the weight of their many lifetimes of practice and training, and they bring that into their present incarnation.
DGL: Thank you very much for sharing that, Jetsunma-la, that’s very inspiring. All I can say about that is that I’ll make aspirations right now to be able to sit on a hill and stare at space as a three-year-old.
“The teaching on the Twelve Links of Dependent Origination seems to be very relevant in connecting the topics of both karma and rebirth. Could you please give a short explanation of what these 12 links are and how they illustrate how rebirth comes into being?”
JTP: Quite frankly, no. It’s a very complicated situation and we’ve come to the end of our time. However, we should remember that the initial cause, even though dependent origination is a cycle, and the cause for the continuity, as depicted on the rim of the Wheel of Life, is ignorance, avidya, not knowing.
Here we have the wheel of life depicted so that everyone can see it.
The first picture on the wheel of life is the blind man, which is avidya, non-seeing. What are we not seeing while we’re clinging to the wheel? We are ignorant of our true nature. That’s the whole point. We create the idea of this separate, unchanging “I” that is the main actor in our life. The brain projects this dualistic subject-object reality. That’s the whole problem. That starts the whole process.
From this arises karmic formations, then rebirth consciousness, and so on through all the links. It’s quite complicated and we don’t have time to go through it all, but the cause is that we misinterpret our true nature; from that arises grasping, clinging, rebirth consciousness, and all the other links. One thing follows the next, follows the next, and so on.
As the Buddha recognised during his Enlightenment experience, it just keeps going round and round and round, so we have to break the link. When we break the link and go backwards, then the whole thing falls apart. Until then, the wheel keeps revolving.
What keeps the wheel revolving, of course, are those three little animals in the middle — the pig, rooster, and snake — which represent our ignorance, and growing from that, our anger and greed. They are the hub of the wheel, and they’re biting each others’ tails, going round and round, which initiates everything else: the beings going down, the beings going up, and the six different kinds of rebirths.
We could get reborn in the human, animal, hungry ghost, asura, deva realm and so forth. In all these realms, there is a buddha or a bodhisattva trying to help, but what keeps it all going are these three animals right in the middle — our greed and hostility based on our avidya, our unknowing mind.
We do not know, and this avidya (primordial ignorance) is the beginning of the dependent origination. Once we have Rigpa (Wisdom), this genuine knowing of the Nature of the Mind breaks the cycle. This is why practice is important, especially to understand the Nature of the Mind, because everything is our mind; all of this is just our projection and we don’t recognise it. We think it’s real and true. That’s our tragedy, but also our hope — because it’s not true, we can break free. If it was true, then we would be trapped forever. But because it’s not true and it’s just a story we tell ourselves, there is the chance of Liberation. On that happy note…
DGL: Fantastic. Jetsunma-la, could you dedicate any merit or give us any closing remarks?
JTP: As the Buddha said, the gift of Dharma surpasses all other gifts; we are very deeply grateful to the Buddha because he gave us the gift of the Dharma; we’re also very grateful to all those who have passed on the Dharma as they heard, read, and realised it since that time 2,500 years ago. They have passed it on to the present day in so many countries and in so many different situations the Dharma has spread and shone on so many cultures and given meaning to so many lives. So we can be deeply grateful, not only to the Buddha himself, but to all those who carried on his message, often under very difficult circumstances; they’ve handed it on like a candle, lighting candle after candle, all the way to our present situation.
The Dharma is still very alive and illuminating the minds of so many beings and sincere practitioners up to the present day. This is wonderful and we should rejoice; we hear so much about all that is wrong in the world and all the naughty things human beings think of to do, but we also do beautiful things. There is so much goodness in the world too, and the Dharma helps to encourage that in our hearts, speech and actions to create positive karma for a better world.
So may all beings be well and be happy.
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May All Beings Benefit
Sarva Mangalam