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Verses 21 and 22 provide the reasoning to support these above quotations from ''The Sūtra of Nanda's Going Forth''. | Verses 21 and 22 provide the reasoning to support these above quotations from ''The Sūtra of Nanda's Going Forth''. | ||
{{PullBcaVerses|4.21}} | {{PullBcaVerses|4.21}} | ||
Specifically, here, an "evil action of a single instant" refers to malevolence toward a bodhisattva or to the five negative actions with immediate effect [LINK to glossary]. These are exceptionally heavy karmic actions | Specifically, here, an "evil action of a single instant" refers to malevolence toward a bodhisattva or to the five negative actions with immediate effect [LINK to glossary]. These are exceptionally heavy karmic actions that can cause someone to die swiftly and to fall directly into a very bad birth without the usual intervening period in the bardo (Tib. ''bar do'').<ref>bardo (བར་དོ་ Wylie: bar do) is an intermediate, transitional, or liminal state between death and rebirth.</ref> This verse explains how, since we have been accumulating such extremely bad karmic actions since beginningless time, there must be so many nonvirtues imprinted on our mindstreams that have not yet ripened. And since we have not purified nearly all of them, how can we expect again to find a happy state of rebirth. The next verse explains that just by experiencing the negative karmic consequences of an action we will not be free from these unhappy states. | ||
{{PullBcaVerses|4.22}} | {{PullBcaVerses|4.22}} | ||
We may think it will not be difficult to escape the lower realms and that once the results of our earlier negative actions have been exhausted we will again take rebirth in one of the higher realms. But our experience of the karmic effects alone is not what liberates us from these unhappy states. In these lower realms virtue is very rare, and beings constantly accumulate further negative karma through committing terrible negative actions. Such beings are trapped in a vicious downward spiral of negativity. This is partly because karmic effects similar to the cause [LINK to glossary] of previous negative actions will ripen in powerful tendencies toward states of mind such as aggression or extreme desire. | We may think it will not be difficult to escape the lower realms and that once the results of our earlier negative actions have been exhausted we will again take rebirth in one of the higher realms. But our experience of the karmic effects alone is not what liberates us from these unhappy states. In these lower realms virtue is very rare, and beings constantly accumulate further negative karma through committing terrible negative actions. Such beings are trapped in a vicious downward spiral of negativity. This is partly because karmic effects similar to the cause [LINK to glossary] of previous negative actions will ripen in powerful tendencies toward states of mind such as aggression or extreme desire. | ||
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