Why doesn’t karma just dissipate and become ineffective?

Iñigo

The heat from a campfire dissipates into the space and becomes weak and unnoticeable after a while, so why doesn’t the result of our actions just dissipate and become impotent after a while?

patbb

from the rebirth point of view, im not sure.

from the biological point of view, because your subconscious mind is designed to try to help you by remembering how you want to handle situations.
so you don't have to wonder about how you want to react to situations you already live through so many times.
Like if you are afraid of dogs, now when you see a big dog you don't have to stop and think "oh, a dog! sooo.... what was my opinion about dog again? let me think about it. how is it that i wanted to react again???"
you just feel fear in your belly and you run.

ThailandTom

They do, but each action and it's consequence (mental or physical) all take a different length of time to run their course. Imagine the pond, one stone one action, one set of ripples. Now your life, many stones, many sets of ripples over and over of different sizes and duration. If you beleive in rebirth then they can carry over lifetimes.

ThailandTom

To add, I will use an example. Say in the morning you say something quite fowl to your mother before leaving the house. That action does not just dissipate like the flame. Your words may be in your mind throughout the day, regret and anger may arise. As for your mother, well she may feel sad and dissapointed throughout the entire day. When you come home, if you cling to your action in a certain way and do not resolve it, maybe that action will cause further aflictive emotions for you both in the evening.

Iñigo

Thanks Tom and Patbb!
Tom's point about them continuing like ripples make sense to me now. For example if I in insluted someone today, they may forget it tomorrow and hence my karma might only be in my subconscous regret or not at all (Patbb's point about subconscious mind).

OK, so the issue now then is that we may act suddenly on our death bed and generate a new karma and regretably a new birth.

There must be a way to avoid that and as far as I can tell it is to arrive at a state of mind in which there is either a) never bad intentions or b) no way that the karma accumulates to 'my' sense of self. Any thoughts on a, b or another way to solve this?

ThailandTom

As far as generating karma the best you can do is lead a virtuous life in the 'now'. That way any past karma that is negative may be dilted, past karma that was positive but may have not had the conditions to rippen may rippen. All you can do is live and act in the now, so your rebirth (if it is a reality) is only something you should consider when you get there

Iñigo

he best you can do is lead a virtuous life in the 'now'. ... All you can do is live and act in the now

I think you are right, the empahsis should be on the "now". What comes to mind is the statement I read in which buddha still acted but didn't generate new karma. He knew that there would be no more becoming i.e. he was sure he would not be reborn. So there appears to be a turning point when it becomes a fact. (I can provide quotes if necessary). My impression is that this turning point came when he realised that his past was not important either i.e. even past karma would not generate a rebirth.

ThailandTom

No need, it is pretty well known among buddhists that if one reaches a state of consciousness such as full awakening, liberation, then one stops the cycle of rebirth and samsara. But you should not wish for this, not strive because that is clinging to a notion. Like I said, work in the now, cultivate in the now and the rest will follow. It may take many life times, but work in the now.

federica

The heat from a campfire dissipates into the space and becomes weak and unnoticeable after a while, so why doesn’t the result of our actions just dissipate and become impotent after a while?

keep chuckin' wood on it, and it don't go out...:facepalm:

We feed the flames of desire, clinging, aversion, hatred... you name it.... we re-play scenarios in our minds, sometimes giving them different endings by 'changing' our input to "i wish I'd said this"... and subtly making ourselves the winners.... but we know it didn't go that way, so we perpetuate the thinking to convince ourselves we'd have felt better if we HAD only said that.....

and so the flames just burn hotter, and climb higher into the sky......

Sabre

The desire to be reborn is in itself a form of past karma. If this desire is no longer there, there will also be no karma generated; No karma to be reborn is literally no intention to be reborn. This is the Therevadan idea, at least.

Karma by the way is a model for what causalities happen in the mind, starting with our intentions. It is not something physical in itself that you can see or touch, like a fire. The Buddha said we should not try to grasp karma in full. Questions as this may be interesting, but maybe not very fruitful. However it is important to realise that our actions have results - how the mechanism itself works is not really that important.

A fire may be the chemical reaction of carbon and oxigen molecules, but the most important thing is that you can burn yourself by it.

pokey

The heat from a campfire dissipates into the space and becomes weak and unnoticeable after a while, so why doesn’t the result of our actions just dissipate and become impotent after a while?

In fact it does. We just don't like feeling unimportant.

Jeffrey

It might be because the brain is involved in the mind sense. So you have these pathways in the brain.

But it is taught that nobody knows the workings of karma until they are fully enlightened.

ThailandTom

It might be because the brain is involved in the mind sense. So you have these pathways in the brain.

But it is taught that nobody knows the workings of karma until they are fully enlightened.</blockquote


Well the full workings of karma yes, one can observe simple cause and effect every day which is karma, but the complexicity of it is meant to be only understandable when a being is enlightened.

person

I feel it comes down to the question of is the mind purely a product of the brain or is their an immaterial component that survives the body.

In either case, if a pebble is thrown into a pond and you forget about it then when the ripples eventually reverberate off the edge and come back that doesn't mean you didn't create them, just that you don't remember doing it.

So why don't the ripples simply die out? IDK, I suppose in a pond there is some type of physics involved that works against the energy of the waves. The question then is, does the mind work just like the pond or is there no countervailing force that works against karma in the mind?

What is the mind? There are various answers but that's the question I would explore to try to answer your OP.

Cinorjer

Because the metaphor can't be mistaken for the thing. Karma is not heat or energy and subject to the physical laws of thermodynamics. If you want a metaphor, karma is more like that of a body in motion. Karma is the direction you're heading. Unless something acts to change that direction, you continue in the direction your actions have pointed you to indefinitely.

Tosh

This is a very good book:

Exploring Karma and rebirth by Nagapriya; it's aimed at people new to Buddhism, it's easy to read, and extremely good.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Exploring-Karma-Rebirth-Nagapriya/dp/1899579613/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1331583579&sr=8-1

Dakini

We keep generating the seeds of new karma.

Jason

The heat from a campfire dissipates into the space and becomes weak and unnoticeable after a while, so why doesn’t the result of our actions just dissipate and become impotent after a while?

The way kamma operates isn't quite analogous to the heat of a campfire in my opinion. However, actions as causes will certainly lose their potency if the supporting conditions for their ripening are no longer present, or are counteracted or diluted by other competing actions.

Jeffrey

The heat from a campfire dissipates into the space and becomes weak and unnoticeable after a while, so why doesn’t the result of our actions just dissipate and become impotent after a while?

The way kamma operates isn't quite analogous to the heat of a campfire in my opinion. However, actions as causes will certainly lose their potency if the supporting conditions for their ripening are no longer present, or are counteracted or diluted by other competing actions.

Jason I liked how you mentioned to foster more than just anger in handling a problem.
:bow down emoticon:

Iñigo

Thanks all for the help and answers.
What I now see is that the analogy may undestimate karma, in that karma doesn't correspond to the same physical laws, so the question of "disspation" may not be applicable.

I find the question of action, doer and ultimately karma to be quite fascinating so will continue to look into this. Thanks for the book recommendation too, Tosh.

ThailandTom

One more thing I will quickly say is that karma is a law that operates in our universe, but it requires an agent, a conscious being.

Iñigo

...karma is a law that operates in our universe, but it requires an agent, a conscious being.

Hi
My understanding of buddhism is that we draw the line at the point just prior to this. Rather there is agency i.e. karma - action, but there is no doer which can be distinguished as an entity initself. Consciouness too, is subject to arising and falling.

An area of interest for me is something which Federica touched on above (quoted below). The issue of past karma needs to be addressed even if "we" recognise there is no 'doer'. I have a suggestion here which I would like others feedback on:

Firstly on recognition that there is no doer, it becomes clear there never was a doer or owner of karma. The doer/owner of karma is an idea at root and once that idea is extinguished then even our past has minial results on us. It isn't possible to avoid the karma of the past completely because of 'others' actions, but this still has no future effect (it doesn't create new karma) at this point in respect to the one who has extinguished a sense of self/doer.

... we re-play scenarios in our minds, sometimes giving them different endings by 'changing' our input to "i wish I'd said this"... and subtly making ourselves the winners.... but we know it didn't go that way, so we perpetuate the thinking to convince ourselves we'd have felt better if we HAD only said that.....

and so the flames just burn hotter, and climb higher into the sky......

Jason

Thanks all for the help and answers.
What I now see is that the analogy may undestimate karma, in that karma doesn't correspond to the same physical laws, so the question of "disspation" may not be applicable.

The Pali literature lists kamma among five distinct causal laws or processes (panca-niyamas) that operate in the physical and mental worlds: seasonal laws (utu-niyama), biological laws (bija-niyama), psychological laws (citta-niyama), kammic laws (kamma-niyama) and natural laws (dhamma-niyama). My impression is that kamma is essentially presented as a natural, psychological process in which there's a cause and effect relationship between our actions and how they're experienced (AN 4.235); a process whereby immaterial causes (skillful ad unskillful intentions) produce effects, where actions condition potential experiences (predominately in the form of pleasant, painful, both pleasant and painful, or neutral feelings).

person

@Jason can you provide a link for the 5 causal laws? I'd like to find out more.

person

Particularly citta-niyama

Iñigo

Thanks Jason for this, it is helpful!
Person, here is one link, you may need to search for the word citta to find citta niyama in the document, it is about half way down. I haven't personally seen more info than this yet.

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/narada/nutshell.html

caz

The heat from a campfire dissipates into the space and becomes weak and unnoticeable after a while, so why doesn’t the result of our actions just dissipate and become impotent after a while?

Because karmic imprints are carried in the very subtle mind, The very subtle mind is indestructible and so until the seeds of karma are ripened there they shall remain.

Jason

Thanks all for the help and answers.
What I now see is that the analogy may undestimate karma, in that karma doesn't correspond to the same physical laws, so the question of "disspation" may not be applicable.

I find the question of action, doer and ultimately karma to be quite fascinating so will continue to look into this. Thanks for the book recommendation too, Tosh.

@Jason can you provide a link for the 5 causal laws? I'd like to find out more.

For a general overview, there's this from Mahasi Sayadaw:

Utu Niyama - physical inorganic order, e.g. seasonal phenomena of winds and rains. The unerring order of seasons, characteristic seasonal changes and events, causes of winds and rains, nature of heat, etc., all belong to this group.

Bija Niyama - order of germs and seeds (physical organic order), e.g. rice produced from rice-seed, sugary taste from sugar-cane or honey, peculiar characteristics of certain fruits, etc. The scientific theory of cells and genes and the physical similarity of twins may be ascribed to this order.

Karma Niyama - order of act and result, e.g., desirable and undesirable acts produce corresponding good and bad results. As surely as water seeks its own level so does Karma, given opportunity, produce its inevitable result, not in the form of a reward or punishment but as an innate sequence. This sequence of deed and effect is as natural and necessary as the way of the sun and the moon.

Dhamma Niyama - order of the norm, e.g., the natural phenomena occurring at the advent of a Bodhisattva in his last birth. Gravitation and other similar laws of nature. The natural reason for being good and so forth, may be included in this group.

Citta Niyama - order or mind or psychic law, e.g., processes of consciousness, arising and perishing of consciousness, constituents of consciousness, power of mind, etc., including telepathy, telaesthesia, retro-cognition, premonition, clairvoyance, clairaudience, thought-reading and such other psychic phenomena which are inexplicable to modern science.

And about citta-niyama specifically, there's this from the Abhidhammattha Sangaha, a post-canonical commentary:

When a material object is presented to the mind through one of the five sense-doors, a thought-process occurs, consisting of a series of separate thought-moments leading one to the other in a particular, uniform order. This order is known as the citta-niyāma (psychic order). As a rule for a complete perception of a physical object through one of the sense-doors precisely 17 thought-moments must pass. As such the time duration of matter is fixed at 17 thought-moments. After the expiration of that time-limit, one fundamental unit of matter perishes giving birth to another unit. The first moment is regarded as the genesis (uppāda), the last as dissolution (bhanga), and the interval 15 moments as decay or development (thiti or jarā).

sndymorn

The heat from a campfire dissipates into the space and becomes weak and unnoticeable after a while, so why doesn’t the result of our actions just dissipate and become impotent after a while?

Karma's half-life is 14 trillion years.... so of course the effects of your actions will weaken after this initial period.
Thanks for asking!

person

@Jason TY, its interesting to think about mental events obeying causal laws like other natural events. Or is it thinking? BUM... BUM... BUUMMM!!!