Lecture Notes on the Sūtra of the Collection of the Father and Son (75)

The Causes and Retribution of Greedy Craving and Greedy Actions

The mind faculty dwells upon the dharma base as its object realm. The mind consciousness delights in craving the realms of mental sense-objects; being drawn along by those objects, greed arises. For example, take a piece of cake: the cake has colors, which are seen by the eye consciousness; the shape manifested on the cake, its contained ingredients, nutritional information, and so forth are mental sense-objects (dharma-objects), which the manas confronts and the mind consciousness discerns. After the mind consciousness discerns it, it feels the cake is sweet and delicious, and greedy craving arises; because there is greedy craving, there is greedy action—one wants to take it as one's own and quickly eat it, and at the same time may also think of ways to ensure one can eat it again in the future. This is greedy action. Greedy action is the conduct of body and speech; greedy thought is the mind's deluded scheming and feelings. One can be drawn along by sense objects and thus decide to create karmic actions. Once the karmic action has been created, the seeds are stored in the tathāgatagarbha, and when the conditions for those seeds ripen, the retribution manifests. If the manas is successfully perfumed in this way, this person will be gluttonous life after life.

If the cake eaten belongs to someone else, and when eating it the other person does not know, or does not wish to give it, then it counts as stealing the cake to eat. The karma of stealing is stored in the tathāgatagarbha, and when the karmic conditions ripen, the retribution manifests, and one must repay the other person a thousandfold or more. For stealing one cake, the retribution is at least a thousandfold—in the future one must repay at least a thousand cakes. If one has stolen the property of the Three Jewels, or stolen the belongings of a person of spiritual cultivation, the repayment will be ten thousand, a hundred thousand, a million, or immeasurable times over; moreover, among these there is also the inherent offense of the greedy mental nature. If the inherent offense is grave, one must fall into hell to undergo evil retribution.