Karma, intention, and the power to be heard

0:00Welcome to Kadampa Podcasts. These podcasts offer practical solutions to daily challenges and help guide us to a happier and more peaceful state of mind. In each episode you will find an extract from a teaching given by one of various Kadampa Buddhist teachers worldwide. All these teachings are inspired by the profound wisdom of Venable Geshe Kalsanghiata Rinpoche, a Buddhist master for our time. We hope you enjoy listening. Well, there's a couple of different directions we can go. There's a connection between our current experience of speech and our previous karma that can help us understand a lot more about our speech. Equally, if we're going kind of forward, we can think about using an understanding of karma to make special intentions around our speech right now, so that it has a power, beneficial power in the future.

1:02So even if in the moment that we're communicating something, we don't see a immediate effect, we can have a quiet confidence that it will have a beneficial ripple effect due to the karma we're creating with our speech. So again, whether or not we believe in karma, obviously not everyone here believes in karma, you don't necessarily say, you know, are open to feeling like, oh yeah, I want to believe in karma, you don't need to. You can sort of take this on the sort of face value or as education, right? You know, getting educated in the Buddhist perspective on karma as it relates to speech or as it relates to communication. And then you can pull any relevant threads out of this teaching and then apply it to yourself without feeling like, okay, I have to completely be convinced or agree with or have confidence in the truth of karma.

2:07So generally karma has a couple of different meanings. So karma is a Sanskrit word and it means action, action. So one meaning of that is that our actions right now have a power beyond the moment to give rise to experiences in the future. That's one meaning. Another is that with respect to action is that when we are experiencing something, we're having an experience of something as pleasant and pleasant, we're feeling good about something, neutral about something, negative about something that it relates to previous actions we performed that were a cause of that effect, that were a cause of that effect more often than not previous lives. So cause and effect, we call it in Buddhism a universal law.

3:07It's a universal law of cause and effect whereby all of our actions are causes and all of our experiences or are a corresponding effect. So Buddha taught karma, taught this law of cause and effect so that we could understand it and turn it to our advantage. So it's not that it's a Buddha didn't create karma from the Buddha's perspective. Like it's not like it's a punishment reward system that is in effect by some sort of external force, superior force that determines we're worthy of something or unworthy of something or we're deserving of something. It's literally like a scientific law. Like Buddhist consider it to be not unlike any other scientific law like the law of gravity, for example. So if I throw something up and it falls down, I don't think that's punishment, I think that's gravity.

4:10It's not like, oh somebody judged me and then this time I threw something up and it fell down. Whereas if I've been deemed worthy, I could have thrown something out and it would have gone up. It's like, no, it's just a universal law, what goes up comes down. And we use that universal law to our advantage, don't we? Like we understand it. We understand that universal law and then we work within it and we turn it to our advantage. For example, if you live upstairs and your laundry is downstairs and you have an open stairwell and you drop your bag of laundry down that stair wall, so you don't have to carry it all the way down, right? That's a law of gravity that you're using for your advantage. If you don't want to have to carry it all the way down. But you know it doesn't work the same way going up. You can't just like throw it up and think, oh it's going to go up. So we understand this kind of scientific law.

5:10From the Buddhist perspective, karma is like a scientific law. That's more with respect to our experiences. And that all of our experiences are not random. They're not determined from outside by external forces. They are corresponding to a cause created in the past. So I'm not going to spend too much more time on this because tomorrow night's Friday night lecture, the monthly Friday night lecture, why me, an introduction to karma, I can on Peter is going to go into more depth on this topic. So I don't want to be, what do they call that when you spoiler? I don't want to be a spoiler for tomorrow night's Friday night lecture. But I think it helps to just have like a rudimentary foundation understand this before we look at speech karma communication karma because it's related. It's the same idea. The idea is that our actions of communication or speech have power.

6:10Have power. And they can have a positive power. They can have a neutral power or they can have a negative power. And understanding that and turning that to advantage can make our actions of speech more beneficial. We can more in line with where we want to go. So the bottom line with respect to this topic is our mind, our mind. The mind with which we communicate something is what determines the kind of karma we create. It's always the mind. So I wanted to just read from a chapter what is karma from a book called Introduction of Buddhism. That just gives a brief synopsis of a few points that I think are important to reference here. So the author, Geshik Helsing, he says to understand the laws that govern rebirth from one life to another, we need to understand karma.

7:13Karma is a Sanskrit term meaning action. All intentional bodily, verbal and mental actions are karma. Sometimes when Buddhists experience suffering or misfortune they say this is my karma and accept it patiently. Strictly speaking, however, the sufferings we experience are not actual karma, but the effect of karma accumulated in previous lives or earlier in this life. All bodily and verbal actions depend upon mental actions because they are all preceded by a mental intention to act. Without an intention to act, we would not do anything. We know that don't we? We're not doing anything. Somebody is like, what are you doing? We're like nothing. Why have you done nothing? I had no intention of doing anything. That's what it came down to.

8:18There was a lack of intention or motivation to do something. So then nothing happened, right? It's very simple. Without intention to act, we would not do anything. A mental intention that is a determination to perform an action is a mental action or mental karma. Thus bodily karma is bodily activity initiated by a mental action and verbal karma is verbal activity initiated by a mental action. From this we can see that mental karma is more important than either bodily karma or verbal karma. So the point being made here is that all karma has its roots in the mind in our own intentions and that's what we have to get to know. So actually whether or not we agree or disagree or believe in karma or don't believe in karma, there's a real practical takeaway from this section which is getting to know our own intentions

9:20and really trying to see what's my intention for what I'm doing, what I'm communicating, what's my intention. And being aware of our intentions helps us communicate better. Because a lot of times we just think about what we want to communicate versus why we want to communicate it. The why is always our intention and that's what we want to work with. If we want to communicate in more compassionate ways, more beneficial, positive ways, with hopefully more positive outcomes, we want to get familiar with positive intentions for our communication. So it's not to just say what we have to communicate changes, but why can change? Why can change? So if our why for saying something or communicating something is anger or resentment or jealousy or pride or greed,

10:26that's going to filter in to our action is essentially going to pollute it with those those kind of. No, if I'll take offense, if I say negative intention, but sketchy intention or mixed intention, like it's going to filter into that. And we know it when we're on the receiving end of it really very clearly. We can see when someone's communicating something, but we feel like, okay, it's coming from a place of trying to be hurtful. Like maybe there's somebody at work who's jealous of us. And so maybe they take every opportunity when we make a mistake to highlight it. In a broad way in front of our superiors or colleagues, they make a point of noting it.

11:26And we find that painful. What's going on there? Why is that communication painful? It's not because it's it's true or not. Actually, it may very well be true. It's the manner of which it's being expressed right the purpose. Like if we get a feeling or we've kind of sniffed out an intention that's not very good, not very well meaning, then it's much more hurtful. Whereas if somebody did that, but with a good intention or good reason or so might be hurtful. But it would be easier, wouldn't it? Because undeniably, we'd start to recognize, well, it's true, right? Or, you know, they're not meaning to be hurtful. Whereas if we feel like they're meaning to be hurtful, what does that mean? It means that there's some intention there, the hurtful intention. And it's making that communication, our receiving of it harder. So I think that we can understand this, that all of our actions are determined by our mental intentions.

12:32So even if we're not sure about karma, we can definitely be sure about this. Like the nature of an action has a lot to do with the intention behind it. And that a positive intention tends to have a much more positive impact. We can't control other people and their reactions or their interpretations. But more often than not, if someone is purely motivated, it's easier for that to be purely received. Right? If they have a genuinely good motivation, it's easier for that to be received. Even if there were men or communication is not pleasing. I was at the doctor's the other day. And this particular doctor spent most of his career in the military. And so he's a little bit tough. Like he's like straight into the point and kind of tough. But I've come over the years to realize that he's very compassionate and very caring person.

13:32So even though he's a little bit rough, and his men is just to the point, like direct, he's given directions a lot. And at first, you're kind of like, this is not the exact pets I've met or I'm used to from a doctor. Over time, as I've, again, a number of years now, come to understand him better. I've come to understand he's a very compassionate person. He's a really good person. And so even when you're getting an exam and he's like, do this, don't do that. And it's like this straight into the point. It doesn't have a sting around it. It's just business. It's easy to interpret it without offense because it's clear to me over this period of time that he's really got my best interest in mind. And not just my best interest in mind, but like with genuine care. It's just his demeanor, right? His demeanor is that way. And I've over time realized that it's similar all the people that work for him in his office.

14:34They all, they're like, it was a real cohesive office, right? They all like work together. They're not the same as him and their demeanor, not at all, but they respect each other. And they respect him. And they don't interpret his communication, you know? And so like, can you say something? They just, they get on with it. You can tell there's not like this tension. It's a very happy harmonious office. So it's not so much about the way someone communicates. Because sometimes we think that's what it's about, but it's more about the intention behind communication. Because sometimes people feel like, well, it's just not in my manner to be, you know, saccharine and flowery. And so that's just not who I am. And I think if I've got to be that, I just can't do that. It's not authentic. So it doesn't have to be. It's more about the intention. If we're coming from a genuine place of being motivated with them, like a caring attitude,

15:40or constructive attitude, like we're trying to be constructive and solution oriented, those intentions will filter through our actions, like the filter through our communication, so that it is more productive. So all of our intentions for communication are karma, are karma. So they are creating causes that will not just impact the moment better, but will also impact the future, the create good communication in the future. So this is also something worth considering, even if we're not sure we believe in karma, because sometimes where we get frustrated and give up on good communication, is because we don't see an immediate good outcome from our efforts to communicate well. But this is where we can go back to that point and made about a quiet confidence.

16:41We can have a quiet confidence that if we're communicating with a good intention, creating good speech karma, good communication karma, that will benefit us and others in the future. It will create good karma for communication to be good and impactful in the future, powerful, in a positive way in the future. So this can help, because oftentimes we get discouraged by the conflict and conversation or different forms of communication. We have so many ways to communicate nowadays, but are just beyond speech, texting, messaging, emailing, commenting. And we can see so much negativity in those forms of communication that often we give up our efforts to be kinder or clearer in our communication, because we think, well, no one else is. No one else is trying. Why should I? But if we understand karma, we can think, definitely, why should I?

17:42This is exactly why I should I. Because it's not about this moment. It's about a future moment. And so every moment I'm trying to communicate with a good motivation, I'm creating karma for healthy, good, harmonious, peaceful, loving, engaging, fulfilling, fun, communication in the future. So if I want that kind of communication in the future, then I can create that future right now. So Buddha said, is the quality of our future experiences are determined by the quality of our present intentions and actions. We're creating our own future, which is wonderful, because that means we can always create a different future than what we're experiencing right now. So if we want a future outcome that's better than this one, it starts with right now.

18:46Our actions right now will determine the quality of our future experiences, so this applies to our communication. If you feel inspired by this podcast, then dive deeper into timeless wisdom of modern Kadampa Buddhism by following the link in the episode description. We look forward to reconnecting with you in the next episode of Kadampa Podcasts.