Virtuous karma and its effects

• Virtuous karma is created when restraining from negative actions or doing the opposite
• The ways that virtuous karma ripens
• Polluted and unpolluted karma
• The causes for rebirth in a pure land
• Throwing and completing karma
• The four combinations of throwing and completing karma

Gomchen Lamrim 32: Virtuous karma and it’s effects (download)

Contemplation points

1. There are two aspects to doing virtuous actions (although the lamrim itself only explains one of them). What are these two?
2. What is the motivation we often have for doing virtue/refraining from non-virtue when we first start off on the path? What motivation do we eventually progress to?
3. Go through the ten virtues (or 20 if you’d like to do both aspects) and consider each of the four results that come from them (if you created a spreadsheet of the 10 non-virtues last week, add the 10 virtues and the four results for each). How does really examining the results of virtue affect your mind?
4. How does taking precepts play a part in creating virtue?
5. What makes karma polluted? What kind of being creates polluted karma? What kind of being creates unpolluted karma? What kind of being doesn’t create karma at all?
6. Consider that as ordinary beings, every action we do is creating the cause for rebirth in samsara. Why is this not a cause for discouragement? What does creating virtuous karma, even though it is polluted, do that eventually leads to liberation?
7. What is the difference between throwing and completing karma? Go through the four points of throwing and completing karma. Does examining this aspect of karma help you to better understand the various situations of beings in samsara?