RINPOCHE’S FULL TEACHING ON KARMA & THE IMPORTANCE OF PURIFICATION PRACTICES.

"Everyone wants happiness and does not want suffering and problems. We know this Is true. So in order to find happiness and avoid suffering, we should learn about those factors that bring happiness, so we can practice them, and those factors that bring about suffering, so we can avoid them.

Whatever suffering that happens has a principal cause and conditions. Correct feng-shui is an external condition that contributes to achieving harmony and success. On the other hand, incorrect feng-shui is an external environmental condition that disturbs and brings is harmony. The way the elements of the environment are arranged - whether inside the house, the house itself, things outside, the location, the surroundings, the buildings, and so forth. These things can either be harmful or disturbing to you, or they can be harmonious, and contribute to your peace and success.

Good feng-shui can help in many ways. It can contribute to harmony in the family; good relationships between husbands and wives; wealth and prosperity; education and learning; good family reputation; being able to find friends; health and long life; finding a good job and developing a good career; clarity of mind and good meditation. Good feng-shui can benefit the family as a whole and bring great benefits to all family members. Therefore, I think it is especially important when one is building a new house to build according to feng-shui so that harmony is handed down for as many years as the house will last. In this way all the people who will live in the house in the future will receive great benefits for all those years.

Even though feng-shui can help in many ways for many years, still, feng-shui is not the main cause of all success and happiness in life. The main cause of all success and happiness in life is your own mind. In other words, the main cause of all life success and happiness is good karma, a positive, pure, healthy intention, a peaceful attitude toward life, the nature of which is non-attachment, non-ignorance, non-hatred and non-self centered mind.

What is karma

To begin, there are the body and the mind. Within the mind there are six consciousness’

and five mental factors.

The 5 mental factors: contact, feeling, discernment, intention, and apprehension.

The five mental factors ascertaining the object : aspiration, appreciation, recollection, concentration, intelligence

The six root afflictions: attachment, anger, pride, ignorance, afflicted views, doubt

The eleven virtuous mental factors: faith, self-respect, consideration for others, detachment, non-hatred, non-bewilderment, enthusiasm, suppleness, conscientiousness, equanimity, and non- aggression

The twenty non-virtuous mental factors: wrath, vengeance, spite, envy, cruelty, avarice, self-satisfaction, excitement, concealment, dullness, faithlessness, laziness, forgetfulness, inattentiveness, pretension, dishonesty, shamelessness, inconsideration for others, unconscientiousness, distraction

The four variable mental factors: sleep, regret, general examination, and precise analysis

The definition of karma is: the thought called intention (one of the 5 accompanying all mental factors) that accompanies the principal consciousness. This refers to the thought that arises, accompanies, and functions with the principal consciousness and which has the five similarities of object, aspect, duration, substance, and basis.

From the five all accompanying mental factors, karma is the mental factor intention (Tib. sems pa). Karma is the principal cause which is the sentient beings - mind that produces happiness and suffering. Let’s take growing things as an example’ plants, fruit, beautiful flowers. Even though these things came from the external physical cause of the seed planted in the ground, there must be a reason why all these exist and grow, why they - including their seeds, the physical causes - are happening. There is a reason. The reason is that there is an inner cause. The minds of those sentient beings who perceive and enjoy those plants, fruit, and flowers are the inner cause. The enjoyment experienced in the minds of those sentient beings comes from their own good karma. Their good karma is the inner cause.