Our FBA Dharmabyte today titled: and#8216;Rebecomingand#8217;, by Ratnadharani, explores the distinction between skilful and unskilful as a process of re-becoming or rebirth.
From the fourth talk in a five-part series from Tiratanalokaand#8217;s retreat on the and#8216;Four Mind Turningsand#8216; of the Tibetan tradition titled and#8216;Karma and the Consequences of Our Actions.and#8217;
[music] Dharma Bites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for Your Life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. Thank you, and happy listening. Let's go back to Karma and skillful or unskillful. It's also interesting to reflect on how do we tell whether something is skillful or unskillful. It's actually again remarkably easy. It's not as though we have to sort of sit down and get hold of our mental state and look in a book to work out, whether it's based in craving or hatred. It's so simple, there's an instinctive sense once we're reasonably adult. There is actually all of us have the potential for making that distinction. It's inbuilt. We're born with the potential for making that distinction. Maybe it's very small children where the universe is an extension of us. It's a little bit harder to start to make that distinction, but it doesn't take much for, you can see that children have that ability to understand that once it's sort of spelled out in terms of, you know, if you hit him, he'll probably hit you back and he won't like it, and it would hurt if he hit you, so don't hit him. But we have this natural inbuilt ability to distinguish. We just know, we're born with a conscience, we just know whether something is skillful or unskillful. It's something we need to work on, it's something we need to refine, and the more we practice, the more sensitized and clear we become about the distinction. But it's interesting that it's a law of the universe that activity based on greed, hatred, or delusion will eventually result in suffering. It sort of begs the question, well, why? Why should that be the case? And you start hearing these terms like we live in an ethical universe. But it seems very strange that the, why should we live in an ethical universe as opposed to an unethical universe? And I'm going to go a little bit further on a bit more into why that might be the case and how, how it actually happens, how it works. But for the moment we'll just take it on trust that that is how it seems to work. And in terms of karma, the teaching of karma is obviously very bound up with the idea, the concept of "rebecoming" or "rebirth". It's quite embedded, in fact, the two are quite embedded, but they don't, you don't have to necessarily embrace both. But the Buddha's enlightenment experience did arise very clearly out of a reflection, or how it's come down to us, is that it was very bound up with a reflection. He saw his past, he saw his past lives, and he saw them unfolding. And he could see their past lives of all other beings, and he could see them stretching into the future. And you get a very strong sense that what he could see, the significance of this, was he could see how they unfolded. He could see the law that governed their progression. And on the basis of that was his understanding of enlightened. So karma seems to be very, very bound up as part of the understanding of conditioned co-production. And the Buddha's explanation behind "rebecoming", we don't have to take it on, it's foreign to our culture. It may take a bit of time to see whether it fits for us, whether it makes sense for us. But it hasn't been contradicted by any of the schools of Buddhism down the ages. So it's worth giving it considerable weight. But we can see the workings of karma and karma, the paka, simply as they operate in this lifetime. Very clear from the verses in the dharma pada, that karma has an effect in this lifetime as well as it's postulated in future lifetimes. We hope you enjoyed today's Dharma Bite. Please help us keep this free. Make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. And thank you. Thank you. [music] [music]
