Kalachakra for World Peace Graz 2002
Teachings by His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama on:
The Middling Stages of Meditation
by Acharya Kamalashila,
The Thirty-Seven Practices of Bodhisattvas
by Ngulchu Thogme Zangpo,
The Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment
by Lama Atisha Dipamkarashrijnana
Day 2, October 16, 2002
Yesterday, when we started explaining the Stages of Meditation by Kamalashila, we studied about the Buddhist concept of interdependent origination in a grosser form. In general, when we discuss about interdependent origination, it has different levels – the grosser level and the subtler levels. There are also differences in terms of profundity of the interpretations of different Buddhist schools of thought. But here, what we have studied in the beginning of the Stages of Meditation is the concept and the meaning of interdependent origination, which is accepted commonly by all the Buddhist philosophical systems. The interdependent origination that we have studied there was in the context of cause and effect relationship, which primarily states that the happiness that we experience, and the sufferings that we experience, they arise from their individual causes and factors, and therefore the happiness that we experience and the sufferings that we experience can be changed if we change the causes and factors, that are responsible for experiencing happiness and suffering. And therefore this whole concept of cause-effect relationship or karma, should be understood within the general context of the law of causality, that in general there is a process, or there is a way how cause-effect functions as a natural phenomenon, as a natural process of the law of nature. Within that context of the general process of functioning of cause-effect relationship, when human beings in relation to their mental emotions, in relation to certain motivations, when they commit certain positive deeds and negative deeds, that is what is known as karma that we primarily understand in Buddhism. Continue reading