In todayand#8217;s Dharmabyte, and#8220;Visions of Helland#8217;s Extreme Sufferingsand#8221;, we continue our exploration of the third of the Four Mind Turning Reflections: Karma. Here, Padmavajra offers a clear explanation of the Buddhaand#8217;s teaching particularly: Not everything we experience now is the result of Karma or unskillful actions. From the second talk in the series Tibetan Book of the Dead (Bardo Thodol).
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Visions of Hell’s Extreme Sufferings
[music] Dharma Vites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for real life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, come and join us at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. Thank you and happy listening. Hell of course is a state of extreme suffering. In Tibetan Buddhism, as in other traditions, you have vivid descriptions and depictions of Helen's, the state of unending torture that goes on there. You get lots of descriptions of the different burnings and freezings that go on and all the different awful tortures. Tibetan Buddhist texts are particularly vivid in describing these, and they really are medieval in their descriptions. You're even told what sort of things have led to very precise and particular sufferings. Personally, I feel very uneasy about all this, about all these descriptions. And I know that Sangerachta, our teacher, is too. It's not the sort of thing that we know that the Buddha went in for. The Buddhist Archimony in the Pali text. He doesn't go in for descriptions of the hell realms. In fact, all he talks about really is downfall. If you follow particular negative mental states, that just leads to downfall. He doesn't give some elaborate description over hell. You just, as it were, fall down. It leads to suffering, leads to pain. So if you, yes, if you indulge particular negative mental states, it will lead to suffering. So personally, I think we shouldn't go in for these terrifying descriptions of hell. And we definitely shouldn't meditate on them. I do know some Tibetan groups, they do encourage people to sort of meditate on the hell realms, even at a sort of beginners class. So I think that's really, well, I would never do that. I think that's very unfortunate. And I think especially if we have a strong Christian conditioning, I think it can create fear and guilt and so on. I think we should avoid all that. We have to remember that Buddhism operated within a social context. We don't often realize that because we have our knowledge of Eastern Buddhism mainly from books, but it operated within a social context. And descriptions of hell are very often to do with social control. You know, if you haven't got a police force and a judiciary and all that sort of thing, well, how are you going to get your social control? You know, you're going to kind of scare people with descriptions of hell. And that's got really nothing to do with spiritual development. So I think we've got to be read this sort of material very critically. We don't need these descriptions because we can see the hells here on this earth. We see intent suffering around us. We see people suffering intense physical and mental pain. And here again, I want to sound a note of caution. Some Buddhist, again, especially some Tibetan Buddhists have the view that all suffering now comes about through evil that you've done in the past. A recent, very striking example of this is concerned with last Boxing Day tsunami. A friend of mine who was involved in a Tibetan group told me that the lama in this group sent a letter round to all the centers saying, explaining how that tsunami had happened. And it was because the people in that rim, most of them were fishermen. They'd taken so much life through fishing. And the effect was, you know, the terrible earthquake and tidal wave and suffering and all the rest of it. I must say I was appalled by this. I'm sure he was well-intentioned in saying it, but I think you just cannot say that. And it's not the Buddha's teaching on karma, not at all. In the oldest Buddhist text, the Buddha says categorically that not everything you experience now is the result of karma. Not everything you're suffering now, for example, is the result of unskill for actions that you've done in the past. You can't say that. There are, in fact, in Buddhist tradition, different orders of conditionality that are recognized, including the material and biological orders of conditioning. You can say, I can quite happy to say, well, because of my ignorance, you know, this is perhaps a traditional way of putting it. You've been born into a world where things like tsunamis happen, but you can't say, I am suffering this particular physical pain because in a past life or in this life I did this, that or the other. This is more like Hinduism. This is more like the sort of thing you get in Hinduism, where karma is like a sort of fate that you have to suffer, and you get incredible rationalizations of this to do with social control again. The untouchable outcast communities in India are suffering because of their evil in the past, so don't try to change. Don't try to get out of your untouchable outcast status because you won't purify yourself. Your suffering is a purification of your sins, so it's good that you are made to suffer at the bottom of the pile. That way you can work yourself up. You can see how insidious this is. In any case, no one, not even a Buddha, can say why things happen. So we need to be very, very careful with this crude, unsophisticated interpretation of karma. What I do know is that my negative, unskillful states cause me and other people pain. I know that. I can see that. I can see when I get angry, and if I express that anger to other people, I know that that's painful for them, and I know I suffer the pain of remorse. But I cannot say, for example, to a mother who loses her child. Well, that's because, you know, in a past life, you did such and such. So we need to be very careful about this. I don't think you help people who are suffering by telling them they've been a bad person in the past, and they've done bad deeds. You know, not only are they suffering from one fate, but you're also saying, well, and actually, there's another problem here. We hope you enjoyed the talk. Please come and help us keep this free at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. And thank you. [music fades out] [music fades out] [BLANK_AUDIO]