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Liberated View On Karma
ThailandTom
Veteran
in Philosophy
I was doing something trivial earlier and noticed the type of karma I was creating, either positive, negative or neutral. If one is enlightened, liberated, does karma still apply to that being and if so can they see the karma that they are creating from moment to moment?
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Comments
As we know the good King Buddha, was born to die. His karma so to speak. He was born a prince and died a pauper. His choice and enlightened choice at that. As some of you know I was enlightened last year but through karmic control I am unenlightened this year. Next year and even today will take care of itself.
To answer your question in a more useful way . . . triviality has either the component of liberation or ensnarement, discernment and awareness will decide which is which . . .
I think you'd have to ask an enlightened being for specifics.
BUT we can speculate:
I think an enlightened being would still have karma applied to them - being enlightened doesn't mean you still don't have responsibilities to yourself or others.
If I became enlightened by meditating and following the Eight-fold path, stopping that behavior may very well stop my enlightenment - after all, I know that not doing those things doesn't lead me to enlightenment.
Or, to put it simply, your hotdog will only become warm if you cook it - if you stop cooking it and let it cool, its not longer warm.
I see no reason why an enlightened person would think Karma wouldn't apply anymore - if anything, wouldn't it apply more because they are an enlightened individual? They are awake to the truths of existence are they not?
As for seeing Karma from moment to moment - that sounds like a skill that is accomplished via much practice. I think such paying attention to Karma on a "from moment to moment level" could be done in meditation - but if we actually tried to do it from moment to moment our minds would become a bit cluttered; hard to practice mindfulness when one is focused on their Karma from moment to moment - may lead to attachment of Karma.
After the Ecstasy, the Laundry!
by Jack Kornfield
Excerpts:
"Enlightenment is only the beginning, is only a step of the journey. You can't cling to that as a new identity or you're in immediate trouble. You have to get back down into the messy business of life, to engage with life for years afterward. Only then can you integrate what you have learned. Only then can you learn perfect trust."
Like the monk in the ox-herding pictures [a traditional Zen parable], most of us have to reenter the marketplace to fulfill our realization. As we come down from the mountain, we may be shocked to find how easily our old habits wait for us, like comfortable and familiar clothes. Even if our transformation is great and we feel peaceful and unshakable, some part of our return will inevitably test us. We may become confused about what to do with our life, and how to live in our family or society. We may worry how our spiritual life can fit into our ordinary way of being, our ordinary work. We may want to run away, to go back to the simplicity of the retreat or the temple. But something important has pulled us back to the world, and the difficult transition is part of it.
One lama remembers:
"When I came back it was as if my 12 years of experiences in India and Tibet were a dream. The memory and value of those transcendental experiences was in some way a dream challenged by the culture shock of returning to my family and to work in the West. Old patterns came back surprisingly quickly. I got irritable, confused. I wasn't taking care of my body, I worried about money, about relationship. At the worst point I feared that I was losing what I had learned. Then I realized I couldn't live in some enlightened memory. What became clear is that spiritual practice is only what you're doing now. Anything else is a fantasy."
.....
A Zen koan...is asked of students who have experienced a first awakening: "A clearly enlightened person falls in the well. How is this so?" One Zen master reminds his students, "After any powerful spiritual experience, there is an inevitable descent, a struggle to embody what we have seen." The well we fall into can be created by clinging to our experience and spiritual ideals or by holding inflated ideas about our teachers, our path, or our self. The well can be the unfinished business of our psychological and emotional life--an unwillingness to acknowledge our own shadow, to include the human needs, the pain, and the darkness that we carry, to see that we always have one foot in the dark. As bright as it is, the universe also needs us to open to its other side.
Read more at http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Buddhism/2000/06/After-The-Ecstasy-The-Laundry.aspx#dVP5pLHWGrE3dYWE.99
Seems like it would stay with you always. Until you died. It would have to wouldn't it? You are "making" karma with every breath are you not?
I don't think karma suddenly disappears as a concept because you wake up. But I do think they don't really have to wonder what they are acruing because they already know the ideal way to respond to every situation. They don't really have a chance to do the "wrong" thing because they are in a state of complete understanding of everything about that situation. They aren't filled with the doubt and weighing of duality and so on that the rest of us are, those things we think we need to make decisions. Most of us have had flashes in our lives where we know exactly what we need to do, without a doubt, without a question, and it comes from somewhere deeper. It seems to me that enlightened beings would operate from that spot all the time.
No. To an enlightened being, kamma comes to an end. They don't create anymore kamma.
Karma from prior to awakening can persist. One dramatic example of this is Angulimala's death at the hands of his victims' friends and relatives. There is an article about this issue called The Buddha's Bad Karma, which includes other examples from the Buddha's own life.
I don't understand what the total cessation of karma for an enlightened person looks like. For instance, the suttas say that enlightened people still meditate because it creates a pleasant abiding. Its not clear to me how that's not an example of karma in the most general sense, although I can see how in an enlightened mind state it would not lead to further grasping, rejection or ignorance, which I tend to see as the "business end" of karma.
Ok thanks for the Sutta pull, but how can kamma stop having an influence on an enlightened person, they have created negative and positive karma in their past, it confuses me to be honest.
Well if you no longer come back to samsara you wont have to sow anymore, but you still have to reap the remaining karma before that happens.
an enlightened person, as I understand, has worked through all of their karma and no longer need to continue doing so. They no longer have negative karma to "pay back." They no longer create negative karma.
This makes sense, but that would either mean that it would take many lifetimes do such a thing, or you need to really get it right first time
Or that the ' builder of the house ' has been identified.
When that "person" stopped being anything at all, how can anything affect him/her. He/she has complete "freedom" and nothing left to fear. There is a change in view from "things are happening to me" (I am the owner of my kamma) to some thing else. That is the friut of the path.
according to Theravada, the actions of an awakened being no longer create kamma.. HOWEVER previous kamma is not erased when you become awakened, you can still have to deal with whatever vipaka(fruit of kamma) arises during your final lifetime.
For an awakened person kamma has ceased (ie.erased). Since he no longer see himself as a self, all that happens are not happening to him personally. There is nothing for him to deal with. He is totally liberated.
Personally as a Mahayanist, I find the world is full of suffering/dukkha. Not your job to deal with it either? No self? Selfish or 'liberated'?
_. . . and now back to the totality . . ._
If there is no self, there is no one who needs to be protected (and really no one to liberate) and no more responsibilities. What is left perhaps is the wish to help others attain the same freedom. Selfish or liberated or neither?
After all there are still "beings" wandering about in darkness and those with "little dust in their eyes" who could be "liberated". Hence the 4NT. The 1st is there is dukkha and it is in the 5 clinging aggregates. The totality - there is dukkha and an end to dukkha.
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn06/sn06.001.than.html
http://www.abuddhistlibrary.com/Buddhism/B - Theravada/Teachers/Ajaan Chah/No Ajahn Chah/Non-Seft.htm
http://www.diamond-sutra.com/diamond_sutra_text/page17.html
The enlightened ones are screaming out in one voice but is anyone listening?
To screaming? Certainly not.
This is where skilful means is so important. Whisper or shout, the important thing is the capacity to be heard. I feel this comes with experience and empathy. Most of us need to hear the dharma presented many different ways in order to acknowledge its obvious nature.
Karmically most people are predisposed to hear the dharma of their preference. What they require may be very different. Eventually the need to listen, rather than project, emerges. At this point the whispers of the enlightened, as you say, scream out . . .
It is more of a western and modern convention to speak of more short term this life sort of karma.
With that said Buddhas are beyond cause and effect, better yet they realize the true nature that has always been so. The Buddhas have no newly created karma whatsoever, only neutral seeds, but considering the true view of causality entails that all seeds are non-producing and totally empty, they are burnt from the beginning, so they cannot come to fruition. With that said, no, they are totally beyond karma.
Arhats though have only liberated their mind and not their body, so while alive in nirvana they still experience the fruition of past karma, but again only produce neutral seeds.
However in a specific sense, an 11th level bodhisattva living his last life (a buddha) will still experience experiential or situational ripening of inklings of karma from LONG LONG times ago, however as far as I understand 13th,14th, 15th, and 16th level bodhisattvas (more consolidated Buddhabodies) move closer and closer to even going beyond this, and around 15th or 16th they become completely beyond it. Keep in mind that the 15th and 16th is so beyond conception that it isn't easy to distinguish between the two or tell in a moment where exactly the being is in relation to either, which is why it is hard to say exactly which is the point of completely transcending causality and even karma from aeons ago.
Sowing neutral seeds doesn't sound like too much fun. I think if I was a buddha I'd infuse it for a few aeons in a psychotropic cocktail, before planting it in a pile of cow manure - I can only guess at what the results would be... But back to the OP
No, because by definition, liberated, means they have stopped making karma to begin with. The whole chain of dependent origination has been disassembled and no longer functions. It's hard to see and understand because "the Tathagata is deep, boundless, hard to fathom, like the ocean.".
You could argue that "past bad karma" may still ripen and bear fruit, but that does not matter anymore because a liberated one will not suffer as a result of that ripening. You could say that a Buddha's mind has become "completely bulletproof". If you shoot a bullet at something that is completely bulletproof, well, nothing really happens. It remains unaffected.
Of course even a Buddha has karma.
First, Karma is the sum of the causes one has made, good and bad and "neutral".
Second, Karma is fluid. That is, we continue to make or modify our karma every moment.
Third, one who is enlightened is still a conscious, living entity and as such is still in the "realm" of causation.
When one becomes a Buddha, an Enlightened One, or a "Liberated" one, the perspective changes. But that is for another discussion...
If normal people can see it, enlightened people probably can see it too. But I don't know. Not enlightened yet.