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Question about Karma
I understand a good amount of what karma means, etc but am lost a little bit. I know it ends when a person reaches nirvana and the karmic energy dissipates. BUT when does it begin? I have learned about birth and re-birth, but when does it officially begin? Meaning, say you're 6 and you squash a grasshopper, does this cause you to have negative karmic energy? That's more of a two part question but I could use some help with this. It came to me at lunch today at work and I have been itching to hear about it since. Thanks in advance to whoever decides to help me understand this better.
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Comments
EDIT: After finding the info below, it appears I am right - !
Hence the question: " When did karma begin ? " shows a misconception of the very nature of karma; it is a perpetual condition of existence in matter, neither beginning nor ending, but eternal. If the form of the question be modified, and it is asked: " When did the karma of a particular creature begin ? " then the answer is: "At the time at which that particular creature came into manifestation."
From here
The simplest answer that the Buddha gives to this question is that there is no conceivable beginning. From what most translators translate the Buddha's exact words as being, he does not say that there is absolutely no beginning whatsoever, but that samsara (lit. recurrent wandering) is without a cognizable beginning. Either way, regardless of whether or not there was a beginning point, the main idea is that it is pointless to worry about one because you won't find it. Just for reference, two examples of this passage from SN XV.3 are as follows:
Jason
The thing I am working on in my practice right now, is living for right now. So I've been trying not to dwell on things that do not concern right now. Thanks again Fede and Elohim your responses helped alot.
No worries. We all offer what we can. I have simply been studying the Samyutta Nikaya recently, so it was easy enough for me to produce this reference. I was just at the right place at the right time sort of speaking.
Jason
The present is where we make all the difference.
Jason
I've booked it... next time I'm coming back as a snail.
LfA.. absolutely bang on... Live for now, let the rest take care of itself... just Be - and Be Good - !!
That's my excuse as well. Unfortunately, I am always hormonal.
Jason
I tend not to think of Karmic residua as an energy neither essentially negative (as in "bad")or essentially positive (as in "good") (which seems to conceptualize it as a kind of substance), but rather as a momentum which is grown through our involvement with existence. Our ordinary attitude towards existence is a craving one, we have a momentum towards it, driven by our desire, our aversion, or blindly driven wherever in ignorance. Our continued investment in becoming is what we call kamma. As Elohim and Federica pointed out, there is no ultimate cognizable beginning to this process. Your question referred to a single lifetime. In this lifetime there is also no cognizable beginning to this process (which we could say begins anew every time we are born) because it begins anew with the arising of cognition itself, if not before. The six year old child is not exempt from this even if he has not developed a moral sense or conscience. This highlights what we might call for emphasis the horror of samsara; the realization that we spend so much of our time investing (acting: kamma) in becoming in ignorance of the implications of our deeds and in the results they may have; it is said, for example, that to acquire kammic merit as an animal is nearly impossible, because they do not have quite the cognitive ability to see implications of their actions nor the developed moral sense of the average human, not mention they kill mainly on blind instinct. Thankfully, we as Buddhists are not so much concerned with the results of kamma as we are with ending the process of suffering altogether. When an arhat attains Nibbana cutting off the roots of future kamma, there is a remainder of momentum, of what has already come to be (his current aggregated existence)which he can do nothing but endure patiently. It is interesting to note the teachings on kamma available throughout the story of Angulimala: how even a murderer is not beyond hope of holiness if he repents (in the Buddhist, not the christian sense), how previous sins are minimized upon stream-entry, how kammic fruits which might have matured in another lifetime are made to come to maturity in the very same lifetime for an arhat who will not have another existence to bear them through.
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/canon/sutta/majjhima/mn-086-tb0.html
I liked your description of Karma as an energy/momentum "which is grown through our involvement with existence. Our ordinary attitude towards existence is a craving one, we have a momentum towards it, driven by our desire, our aversion, or blindly driven wherever in ignorance. Our continued investment in becoming is what we call kamma."
I think that's a very concise and clear description. I've read so many things about karma that were quite difficult but they were in the same vein as this and I can understand this better. It's a subtle yet complex thing and difficult to grasp. So much more than today's Western fad usage of the word "karma".
Brigid
back to the lexicon....!!
Back to your scheduled programming...
Brigid
I had decided at some point long ago, to study psychology with the eventual goal of finding a career in therapy. I cannot tell you how much of modern-day therapy methods actually have their roots firmly grounded in Buddhism... Which is after all, the very first to recommend examination of the Mind.....