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federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
Yes, but (in response to the view that is not yours ) remember that if we subscribe to the notion of karma (and as Buddhists, even if we don't) part of our practice is to cultivate metta and Karuna, so it's not about evaluating how they got there, it's about evaluating our own response to a fellow being who is suffering.
If we suffer in this life due to our karma from previous lives, why should we help others, such as starving people? Shouldn't we just allow them to suffer to burn up that negative karma and helping them would only prolong the suffering?
In helping others, there is no requirement to reach the highest degree of need (such as starving people) - it is likely sufficient to the definition of 'help' simply that your resources are used for the benefit of others - those who benefit may or may not be net better off than you (before or after the help).
If 'helping' prolongs suffering then it's probably not accurate to describe it as 'helping' in the first place.
Karma as simply cause and effect does not lend itself well to the concept of 'burning it up' - what I mean by that is that if for example you are poor due to a particular behaviour trait, the effect of karma may be that you are poor but in dealing with that, simply 'being' poor does not on the face of it seem sufficient in changing the effect - i.e. the condition of being poor is the effect of the cause and therefore it is the cause that should be addressed rather than prolonging the effect or dwelling on it.
In this way, there is motivation to 'help' yourself and others in dealing with the causes that lead to effects so there is more chance that actual effects will closer resemble intended effects.
This is where a practise towards egolessness allows for changing conditions and Dharmic understandings but ancestor worship in ancient religions always requires things to stay the same as a testament to some original purity. Those Buddhists who practise towards egolessness, allow the teachings to unfold as the intended, the path to sufferings end, whereas those cultural Buddhists who rely on the Buddhist teachings to explain the unexplainable, do so to make themselves feel more secure in a very transient existence. One group manifests the path to sufferings end, the other group manifests the path to sufferings maintenance.
Buddhism, like all religions, is not the path to sufferings end. It's practise is!
Note# Egolessness is not limited to any tradition or practise.
This focus on intention helps us to avoid a number of different misunderstandings and distortions of the teaching on karma, many of which have been quite prevalent, both in Buddhist cultures and in the West, and are not compatible with our intentions to transform ourselves and our world. For anyone developing a socially engaged practice, it is crucial to be aware of these misinterpretations of karma.
We often hear the term karma used as a synonym for fate, with connotations of a kind of mystical calculus of retributive justice for each individual. According to such a calculus, we are each rewarded for good actions and punished for bad actions. If I step on an ant in the morning, I may be stung by a wasp in the evening. The unkind words I said to my partner are “punished” shortly thereafter by someone yelling at me at work. Or, just this morning, my houseguest decided that her karma caused the toilet to be blocked.
A related interpretation of karma is that whatever we are experiencing in the moment is the result of our past actions. A person is born into the pain (and challenge) of poverty or racism, according to this interpretation, because of that person’s unwholesome actions in a past life. Presumably, the young child who died in the Holocaust had acted unskillfully in a previous life. A current form of this thinking surfaces in the assertion that a person who is ill, say, with cancer, is somehow “responsible” for the disease because of actions taken in the past, in this life or a previous life.
Yet such deterministic, fatalistic, and individualistic interpretations of karma are questionable. They can justify and perpetuate conditions of oppression and unnecessary suffering. My friend Jonathan Watts, a socially engaged Buddhist who lives in Japan and who worked in Thailand for many years with the International Network of Engaged Buddhists, told me about such fatalistic uses of the teaching of karma. He helped to organize a conference held in Thailand in the winter of 2003 called “Buddhist Responses to Violence.” At the conference, Ouyporn Khuankaew, a Thai Buddhist activist with the International Women’s Partnership who has led workshops on women’s leadership, empowerment, and nonviolence throughout Southeast Asia and South Asia, reported that it is not uncommon for monks to counsel a woman abused by her husband to cultivate the important Buddhist virtue of equanimity. The wife typically is told to “be patient and kind to her husband so that one day the karmic force will cease and everything will be fine.“
Similarly, among adherents of the caste system in India, the teaching of karma often serves to justify and legitimize higher caste members’ positions of power and dominance—the lower-caste members supposedly deserve their suffering because of past lives. Lower-caste people who share such beliefs submit of their own accord. These interpretations of karma thus tend to legitimize the social order and blame the victims; the moral and spiritual burden is on those who are suffering rather than on those who oppress. They tend to undermine efforts to bring about social change, partly because of the sense that “things are as they need to be,” and partly because the main moral and spiritual focus is on the individual rather than the larger social systems.
These kinds of interpretations of karma go against the Buddha’s central teachings. The Buddha, in his account of karma as intention, does not emphasize the external consequences of actions. Rather, the main emphasis in the teaching about karma is on how our intentions tend to condition similar intentions in the future, and how skillful intentions tend to produce liberation and happiness, whereas unskillful intentions tend to produce bondage and unhappiness.
The Buddha is also clear that it is not appropriate simply to say that any negative or unpleasant experiences are necessarily the results of karma from past actions. He speaks of karma as one among eight types of causes of events and experiences, alongside physical, biological, and environmental causes. At times, furthermore, he mentions someone dying of a disease without attributing this to karma.
(From The Engaged Spiritual Life: A Buddhist Approach to Transforming Ourselves and the World by Donald Rothberg, pp. 60-62)
If we suffer in this life due to our karma from previous lives, why should we help others, such as starving people? Shouldn't we just allow them to suffer to burn up that negative karma and helping them would only prolong the suffering?
This is not my view BTW, but I think it's a logical conclusion of believing that those who suffer extreme hardship such as famine or disability is due to a mechanical belief in karma.
This is a problem with Buddhist cultures today, I believe. If there is one valid criticism of Buddhism as a religious force, it is that too often it gives us an excuse to shrug our shoulders and accept things as they are, because karma, you know.
For instance, Thailand is supposed to be an enlightened Buddhist culture, yet has a thriving sex slave industry to all accounts. Several years ago I read where one reporter interviewed a teenage girl sold by her parents into prostitution. The girl said, "I must have done something terrible in my last life, to deserve so much suffering in this one." Now, according to the Lama and anyone who believes in a strict past life karma connection, she is exactly correct. Whatever bad happens, it's your own fault. You caused it. Who are we to interfere with karma? And that is exactly what she and her society believes, and why people shug their shoulders at the suffering of the world. Buddhism has no problem with sexual slavery when it's just karma being worked out.
I am enjoying this discussion. I have not gotten to studying (yet) much of Karma in Buddhism. I have read many other traditions visions of Karma and I have a hard time removing those readings to focus on how Buddhism sees it. This discussion has been quite helpful in that department.
Prior to coming to Buddhism, my belief in Karma worked more like this: Say in my last life I was a rich royal person who did nothing good with their money, hoarded it, wasted it, and as a result people in my country died while I thrived in wealth. In my next life I was born poor in a staving nation. But people chose to help me, and I did not die thanks to the compassion of those people. Those people who helped, in my previous life were the same people I caused to starve while hoarding my riches, and in this way the Karma balanced out and was "repaid."
My understanding of Karma in this way is why I posted yesterday that I didn't see a huge problem with the "if you do something bad, you might not have a very good rebirth" and that while we are to concentrate on today and today only, it is still with a sense of what being able to do that today, will help to bring to us in a next rebirth. I will have to look where I read that, but I *think* it was in Thich Nyat Hahn book. Am I misunderstanding that as far as Buddhism goes? And in Buddhism, is Karma only about the person (Ie: me) or does it in any way tie to others? Like I said this is where I run into trouble because I held onto my belief of Karma as explained above for many, many years now. It's hard to let go of that entirely to grasp it in a Buddhist contest.
Now what I really want to know is, are all these mosquitoes that bite me the second I step outside going to get bad Karma for causing such suffering?
This is a problem with Buddhist cultures today, I believe. If there is one valid criticism of Buddhism as a religious force, it is that too often it gives us an excuse to shrug our shoulders and accept things as they are, because karma, you know.
For instance, Thailand is supposed to be an enlightened Buddhist culture, yet has a thriving sex slave industry to all accounts. Several years ago I read where one reporter interviewed a teenage girl sold by her parents into prostitution. The girl said, "I must have done something terrible in my last life, to deserve so much suffering in this one." Now, according to the Lama and anyone who believes in a strict past life karma connection, she is exactly correct. Whatever bad happens, it's your own fault. You caused it. Who are we to interfere with karma? And that is exactly what she and her society believes, and why people shug their shoulders at the suffering of the world. Buddhism has no problem with sexual slavery when it's just karma being worked out.
I'm sure that those who believe in the literal workings of karma (like Lama Zopa and I'm pretty sure HHDL as well) would be first to point out that karma is not fate. These people in your example misunderstand it then.
(edit: I'm just playing devil's (Mara's?) advocate here. I feel uncomfortable with that view, but just trying to understand it from different perspectives)
The Buddha is also clear that it is not appropriate simply to say that any negative or unpleasant experiences are necessarily the results of karma from past actions. He speaks of karma as one among eight types of causes of events and experiences, alongside physical, biological, and environmental causes. At times, furthermore, he mentions someone dying of a disease without attributing this to karma.
Did Donald Rothberg cite his sources for these teachings? I tried finding them myself but was unable to do so.
The Buddha is also clear that it is not appropriate simply to say that any negative or unpleasant experiences are necessarily the results of karma from past actions. He speaks of karma as one among eight types of causes of events and experiences, alongside physical, biological, and environmental causes. At times, furthermore, he mentions someone dying of a disease without attributing this to karma.
Did Donald Rothberg cite his sources for these teachings? I tried finding them myself but was unable to do so.
Yes, the source of the eight types of causes is Sivaka Sutta, SN 36.21. Rothberg refers to Bhikkhu Bodhi's translation, but there are also two other translations of this sutta at Accesstoinsight.
Interestingly, Thanissaro's Bhikkhu translation has his note in the beginning that effectively contradicts what Rothberg says about it. I'll post it here, as it's very relevant to our discussion:
Some people have interpreted this sutta as stating that there are many experiences that cannot be explained by the principle of kamma. A casual glance of the alternative factors here — drawn from the various causes for pain that were recognized in the medical treatises of his time — would seem to support this conclusion. However, if we compare this list with his definition of old kamma in SN 35.145, we see that many of the alternative causes are actually the result of past actions. Those that aren't are the result of new kamma. For instance, MN 101 counts asceticism — which produces pain in the immediate present — under the factor harsh treatment. The point here is that old and new kamma do not override other causal factors operating in the universe — such as those recognized by the physical sciences — but instead find their expression within those factors. A second point is that some of the influences of past kamma can be mitigated in the present — a disease caused by bile, for instance, can be cured by medicine that brings the bile back to normal. Similarly with the mind: suffering caused by physical pain can be ended by understanding and abandoning the attachment that led to that suffering. In this way, the Buddha's teaching on kamma avoids determinism and opens the way for a path of practice focused on eliminating the causes of suffering in the here and now.
edit: nevertheless, the Sutta is pretty clear on this:
So any brahmans & contemplatives who are of the doctrine & view that whatever an individual feels — pleasure, pain, neither-pleasure-nor-pain — is entirely caused by what was done before — slip past what they themselves know, slip past what is agreed on by the world. Therefore I say that those brahmans & contemplatives are wrong.
(Thanissaro trans.)
Regarding the last point - the Buddha mentioning someone dying of a disease without attributing this to karma, Rothberg doesn't give a reference for it.
I don't know. Iand, it probably doesn't make much difference if you believe karma is a built in moral force that operates across lifetimes or just a general "actions have consequences" statement of your current life. Whatever brought us to this present moment, we're here. This is what we have to work with.
But, people seem to have this built in drive to find justice in the universe. I guess every spiritual path has to answer the question, "Why do bad things happen to good people" in its own way.
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personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
A theist can (and do) just as easily say an individual's suffering is all part of God's plan and therefore withold compassion. I guess the difference in this fatalistic view and a karmic fatalistic view is that the karmic one puts the onus on the suffering individual.
No doubt viewing karma as fate and using it as a form of moral judgement occurs by many. My understanding of the actual teachings though is that this view is wrong view.
How should we judge the teachings of karma? By the teachings themselves or by the beliefs and practices of certain Buddhists that contradict the teaching?
Yes, I believe that it is the traditional view that whatever happens to a person is a result of karma, not only bad but good or neutral as well.
In the suttas the teachings on kamma are generally forward looking, reminding us that our present behaviour will have specific consequences in the future.
"Does Buddhism teach that every bad thing which befalls a person is the result of Karma?"
No, Buddhism teaches that every thing that 'befalls a person' _is_ Karma. Karma is cause+result, although it sounds like two words, in meaning it is actually one.
We can talk about baggage that sentient beings carry as they bubble through samsara, but this would be more like talking about emotional afflictions, harbors of resentment, heavy baggage of the existential kind.
***
Let's talk about the experience of life. Life is everything you see, everything you hear, everything you touch, smell, and taste. Life is also what you "feel" inside -- does your inner body feel warm or cold, pleasant or uncomfortable, weepy-wailey or sunshine-basking.
In Buddhism there is the teaching of life-continuity (before and) after death, why would this information be useful to us?
[please take a few minutes to meditate on that]
So what is karma? In one way of looking at it, think of every sentient being as a rocket flying through samsara at incredible speed. The very fabric of our lives is samsara, and awareness seems to float above - and yet inside - our physical bodies. The body moves through physical space, but your awareness of body, of inner feelings, of situations -- that is what is hurtling through samsara at incredible pace.
So samsara isn't actually the objects you see around you, it's the mental-emotional-psychological space that we all flutter through so briefly in this life. And the next life, and the previous life; a chain that grows both directions.
Karma is your trajectory through samsara || mental-emotional-psychological space.
The Buddha taught that karma is like the path of the Ox that is tied to a cart. He pulls the cart and can turn it, but the wheels of the cart are not turning on a dime, they turn smoothly, and so the ox can't make 90* turns, but he can influence the way the cart moves. Think about driving a car, think about driving a super super super long car, think about driving a tricycle that has 100 million miles between the front wheels and the back wheels, but is only a meter wide! This is like steering "karma" -- in some respects karma steers us, in some respects we steer it, but karma is basically the recognition of Natural Flow.
**** We are all fish in the river of life.
If there is a big boulder in the river, and I, as a fish, bump into the boulder, it takes a second for my path to smooth out again.
Samsara is kinda like this. There are boulders and hazards everywhere in samasara|mental-emotional-psychological space, and we have been crashing into them for a LONG LONG LONG LONG time.
Each time you bump into something, it changes your course, but invariably it smooths out in the river. Buddhism is like a hack for reality. Enlightened Mind is everyone's fundamental nature, and all are on the path to seeing, but it can take a while, and samsara SUCKS, sucks so bad, oh man does it suck.
So Buddhism, you should know, is founded on the fundamental, the true, the real, and misapprehension of what is fundamental, what is true, what is real, is cause for great strife, great pain, great stretching, great suffering.
***
So consider this, you're walking through a big open building, it's like a huge open hall, it's an auditorium, it's very spacious and you just want to go from the South door to the North door, so you walk across the floor.
Ouch! What was that? I bumped into a table? That's weird, I don't see a table there...
Ouch! What the eff. This is stupid. There is something here in the way, I can feel it, but it's invisible!
FIVE MILLION TRIES LATER
Ohhhh, I can go _AROUND_ the table, awesome !
***
So it's like developing new senses, and it's like being chill, and being joyful, and all-around being a helper, because what you give out comes back to you. That's the law so buckle up.
***
The one last thing I want to mention to you is the word "moral"
Morality, Immorality, Moral, Immoral
What do these mean? Many people come from a predominantly theistic tradition, where morality is defined by some set of rules you can't break. In Buddhism there is no such thing, all rules are bound to be inadequate or eventually devolve into misleading language. Buddhism is all about the space that is BEFORE language occurs in your mind, or in-betweens-the language, so-to-speak.
So if there are no rules, what the heck is moral and immoral?
Well, we don't know how to say it, but it's okay, we can just observe the Natural Flow!
If you see that water is wet, and that fire is hot, then you can see that there are some aspects of life we regard as Utterly Natural. Buddhism is the happy way, and it is the practice of joyfully coming to terms with what is Natural.
There are no rules, there's just a ton of sweet tricks, methods, techniques -- all to help us better see True Nature.
How best to cultivate? See that "just as I suffer, he suffers" -- "just as I suffer, she suffers"
See that "just as I want to have a good time, he wants to have a good time" -- "just as I want to have a good time, she wants to have a good time"
So learning Natural Flow can make life double as a really fun game too!
***
Remember the rocket ship? We're all flying super fast through mental-emotional-psychological space = samsara (!)
Well, that's correct from the view of having your feet on the ground, but really we're all in the water, flowing around, no top no bottom, just flowing!
What if you were a fish, and you decided to hold on to some piece of debris tied to the bottom of the river. And the waves and the water pummels you, absolutely pummels you and it sucks! It hurts because it flows so quickly, and as a fish that wants to hold onto that branch really badly the thought of letting go doesn't even occur!
So eventually the river tears you from the branch, and depending on how you react, your propensities, your "baggage" -- you may decide to let go entirely and see where flow takes hold. If you scramble in fear for the next branch, you'll be stuck in a suffering loop for a long long long long time, because over and over the true nature of the river will overcome your ideas about how best to 'engage' the river.
***
There's a wild fruit called a SUCKSINFIVEMINUTES, and it's actually really really really tasty.
But it only grows in one place, at the top of a very very steep cliff. It grows in such a way that it's impossible to grab the fruit, enjoy it, and make it back safely.
But it's really really REALLY delicious. I'm talking orgasm delicious. Well, not orgasm, but close. From all over beings climb up the cliff and grab a ripened fruit, and plummet 5 minutes to their death into a ton of thorns.
Maybe the first million times, I weigh it out and I see that the fruit and its tastiness outweighs the pain of falling to a miserable death -- I forget about that lifetime, about falling and dying, about the pain, and I climb to the top of the cliff to eat it, and subsequently I fall into an utterly recalibrating experience of pain, shock, tears, fear, terror, and agony.
Yum.
Yum for maybe a couple million more times.
But eventually, I start getting the feeling that this fruit isn't actually all _that_ tasty -- Even though I see tons of other beings going up to grab it and plummeting, and even though I would normally do the same thing, I start to SENSE that it doesn't taste good.
Thus I refrain from that experience, something deep inside What Continues Between Lives tells me with great urgency that I shouldn't eat that fruit, so I either trust my instincts (developed over millions and millions and millions of 'experiences') or I don't.
Karma is your trajectory. Re-orient the mind with the practices of compassion. Seize the seat of true dharma with effort and patience, and most importantly with forgiveness.
***
It is true that based on beings' karma their physical bodies (shadows of the 'spirit') will look different. It is all based on what fulfilments a being seeks. But it's impossible to tell without buddhavision, and there's certainly a slew of superpowers that come with practice, that come with learning Natural Flow. Use them only for the good of all your best friends [since we have certainly been best friends in many lifetimes -- you, you and the ant on your porch, you and your mom, you and the stranger on the bus, you and the guy flying the plane miles above the earth, you and the starfish in the pacific, you and me, me and you].
And I suppose, typically one can get a cancer, or a gigantic knee, or some weird appearance from doing something crazy in a prior lifetime, and the karma ripened in this life, but that doesn't mean we can blame beings for their appearance -- it's just the opposite, we're all melting through boiling hot lava and we should be helping each other out of this mess.
Compassion and Wisdom are like the two wheels on your Buddha Bicycle. The Dharma the frame.
So what is morality, if not developing the sense that we are all in this mess -- it's true, and it doesn't seem true because of what branches we're used to chilling on, but the flow, Oh the flow! How remarkable the flow! The flow of no marks, just love! Superimpose your inner sense on every being you see, and know that they suffer just as you suffer, that they love and crave the love just as we all love and crave the love! And from there start to consider what Dharma could mean, from there spring off into the pool of true vision, into the glorious fountains of bliss. Do not worry about knowing Truth or talking Truth, you yourself BECOME truth through the dharma.
Homage to the Conquerors [of 'reality'], the Lotus Hackers, the Bliss Resonators, and from the bottom of my heart, thank you all for sharing this breeze with me, fellow leaves.
_/\_ so much better when we shine together put my palms together may we shine together
How should we judge the teachings of karma? By the teachings themselves or by the beliefs and practices of certain Buddhists that contradict the teaching?
I think that's actually the crux of the discussion.
You might say that it's the difference between theoretical Buddhism and practical Buddhism.
And if you stop and think of it, we seem to be treating Buddhism differently than we treat...say...Islam. Over the months there have been plenty of references to the violence in Islam, and we blame the teachings just as often as we blame the interpretation by individuals. Yet, most posts seem to say that "my" religion (in this case Buddhism) is different -- the teachings are perfect, but all those dumber Buddhists in Thailand and Cambodia, and Burma have it wrong and misunderstand the teachings.
How should we judge the teachings of karma? By the teachings themselves or by the beliefs and practices of certain Buddhists that contradict the teaching?
I think that's actually the crux of the discussion.
You might say that it's the difference between theoretical Buddhism and practical Buddhism.
And if you stop and think of it, we seem to be treating Buddhism differently than we treat...say...Islam. Over the months there have been plenty of references to the violence in Islam, and we blame the teachings just as often as we blame the interpretation by individuals. Yet, most posts seem to say that "my" religion (in this case Buddhism) is different -- the teachings are perfect, but all those dumber Buddhists in Thailand and Cambodia, and Burma have it wrong and misunderstand the teachings.
Comments
If 'helping' prolongs suffering then it's probably not accurate to describe it as 'helping' in the first place.
Karma as simply cause and effect does not lend itself well to the concept of 'burning it up' - what I mean by that is that if for example you are poor due to a particular behaviour trait, the effect of karma may be that you are poor but in dealing with that, simply 'being' poor does not on the face of it seem sufficient in changing the effect - i.e. the condition of being poor is the effect of the cause and therefore it is the cause that should be addressed rather than prolonging the effect or dwelling on it.
In this way, there is motivation to 'help' yourself and others in dealing with the causes that lead to effects so there is more chance that actual effects will closer resemble intended effects.
This is where a practise towards egolessness allows for changing conditions and Dharmic understandings but ancestor worship in ancient religions always requires things to stay the same as a testament to some original purity.
Those Buddhists who practise towards egolessness, allow the teachings to unfold as the intended, the path to sufferings end, whereas those cultural Buddhists who rely on the Buddhist teachings to explain the unexplainable, do so to make themselves feel more secure in a very transient existence.
One group manifests the path to sufferings end, the other group manifests the path to sufferings maintenance.
Buddhism, like all religions, is not the path to sufferings end. It's practise is!
Note# Egolessness is not limited to any tradition or practise.
This focus on intention helps us to avoid a number of different misunderstandings and distortions of the teaching on karma, many of which have been quite prevalent, both in Buddhist cultures and in the West, and are not compatible with our intentions to transform ourselves and our world. For anyone developing a socially engaged practice, it is crucial to be aware of these misinterpretations of karma.
We often hear the term karma used as a synonym for fate, with connotations of a kind of mystical calculus of retributive justice for each individual. According to such a calculus, we are each rewarded for good actions and punished for bad actions. If I step on an ant in the morning, I may be stung by a wasp in the evening. The unkind words I said to my partner are “punished” shortly thereafter by someone yelling at me at work. Or, just this morning, my houseguest decided that her karma caused the toilet to be blocked.
A related interpretation of karma is that whatever we are experiencing in the moment is the result of our past actions. A person is born into the pain (and challenge) of poverty or racism, according to this interpretation, because of that person’s unwholesome actions in a past life. Presumably, the young child who died in the Holocaust had acted unskillfully in a previous life. A current form of this thinking surfaces in the assertion that a person who is ill, say, with cancer, is somehow “responsible” for the disease because of actions taken in the past, in this life or a previous life.
Yet such deterministic, fatalistic, and individualistic interpretations of karma are questionable. They can justify and perpetuate conditions of oppression and unnecessary suffering. My friend Jonathan Watts, a socially engaged Buddhist who lives in Japan and who worked in Thailand for many years with the International Network of Engaged Buddhists, told me about such fatalistic uses of the teaching of karma. He helped to organize a conference held in Thailand in the winter of 2003 called “Buddhist Responses to Violence.” At the conference, Ouyporn Khuankaew, a Thai Buddhist activist with the International Women’s Partnership who has led workshops on women’s leadership, empowerment, and nonviolence throughout Southeast Asia and South Asia, reported that it is not uncommon for monks to counsel a woman abused by her husband to cultivate the important Buddhist virtue of equanimity. The wife typically is told to “be patient and kind to her husband so that one day the karmic force will cease and everything will be fine.“
Similarly, among adherents of the caste system in India, the teaching of karma often serves to justify and legitimize higher caste members’ positions of power and dominance—the lower-caste members supposedly deserve their suffering because of past lives. Lower-caste people who share such beliefs submit of their own accord. These interpretations of karma thus tend to legitimize the social order and blame the victims; the moral and spiritual burden is on those who are suffering rather than on those who oppress. They tend to undermine efforts to bring about social change, partly because of the sense that “things are as they need to be,” and partly because the main moral and spiritual focus is on the individual rather than the larger social systems.
These kinds of interpretations of karma go against the Buddha’s central teachings. The Buddha, in his account of karma as intention, does not emphasize the external consequences of actions. Rather, the main emphasis in the teaching about karma is on how our intentions tend to condition similar intentions in the future, and how skillful intentions tend to produce liberation and happiness, whereas unskillful intentions tend to produce bondage and unhappiness.
The Buddha is also clear that it is not appropriate simply to say that any negative or unpleasant experiences are necessarily the results of karma from past actions. He speaks of karma as one among eight types of causes of events and experiences, alongside physical, biological, and environmental causes. At times, furthermore, he mentions someone dying of a disease without attributing this to karma.
(From The Engaged Spiritual Life: A Buddhist Approach to Transforming Ourselves and the World by Donald Rothberg, pp. 60-62)
For instance, Thailand is supposed to be an enlightened Buddhist culture, yet has a thriving sex slave industry to all accounts. Several years ago I read where one reporter interviewed a teenage girl sold by her parents into prostitution. The girl said, "I must have done something terrible in my last life, to deserve so much suffering in this one." Now, according to the Lama and anyone who believes in a strict past life karma connection, she is exactly correct. Whatever bad happens, it's your own fault. You caused it. Who are we to interfere with karma? And that is exactly what she and her society believes, and why people shug their shoulders at the suffering of the world. Buddhism has no problem with sexual slavery when it's just karma being worked out.
Prior to coming to Buddhism, my belief in Karma worked more like this: Say in my last life I was a rich royal person who did nothing good with their money, hoarded it, wasted it, and as a result people in my country died while I thrived in wealth. In my next life I was born poor in a staving nation. But people chose to help me, and I did not die thanks to the compassion of those people. Those people who helped, in my previous life were the same people I caused to starve while hoarding my riches, and in this way the Karma balanced out and was "repaid."
My understanding of Karma in this way is why I posted yesterday that I didn't see a huge problem with the "if you do something bad, you might not have a very good rebirth" and that while we are to concentrate on today and today only, it is still with a sense of what being able to do that today, will help to bring to us in a next rebirth. I will have to look where I read that, but I *think* it was in Thich Nyat Hahn book. Am I misunderstanding that as far as Buddhism goes? And in Buddhism, is Karma only about the person (Ie: me) or does it in any way tie to others? Like I said this is where I run into trouble because I held onto my belief of Karma as explained above for many, many years now. It's hard to let go of that entirely to grasp it in a Buddhist contest.
Now what I really want to know is, are all these mosquitoes that bite me the second I step outside going to get bad Karma for causing such suffering?
(edit: I'm just playing devil's (Mara's?) advocate here. I feel uncomfortable with that view, but just trying to understand it from different perspectives)
Interestingly, Thanissaro's Bhikkhu translation has his note in the beginning that effectively contradicts what Rothberg says about it. I'll post it here, as it's very relevant to our discussion:
Some people have interpreted this sutta as stating that there are many experiences that cannot be explained by the principle of kamma. A casual glance of the alternative factors here — drawn from the various causes for pain that were recognized in the medical treatises of his time — would seem to support this conclusion. However, if we compare this list with his definition of old kamma in SN 35.145, we see that many of the alternative causes are actually the result of past actions. Those that aren't are the result of new kamma. For instance, MN 101 counts asceticism — which produces pain in the immediate present — under the factor harsh treatment. The point here is that old and new kamma do not override other causal factors operating in the universe — such as those recognized by the physical sciences — but instead find their expression within those factors. A second point is that some of the influences of past kamma can be mitigated in the present — a disease caused by bile, for instance, can be cured by medicine that brings the bile back to normal. Similarly with the mind: suffering caused by physical pain can be ended by understanding and abandoning the attachment that led to that suffering. In this way, the Buddha's teaching on kamma avoids determinism and opens the way for a path of practice focused on eliminating the causes of suffering in the here and now.
edit: nevertheless, the Sutta is pretty clear on this:
So any brahmans & contemplatives who are of the doctrine & view that whatever an individual feels — pleasure, pain, neither-pleasure-nor-pain — is entirely caused by what was done before — slip past what they themselves know, slip past what is agreed on by the world. Therefore I say that those brahmans & contemplatives are wrong.
(Thanissaro trans.)
Regarding the last point - the Buddha mentioning someone dying of a disease without attributing this to karma, Rothberg doesn't give a reference for it.
But, people seem to have this built in drive to find justice in the universe. I guess every spiritual path has to answer the question, "Why do bad things happen to good people" in its own way.
No doubt viewing karma as fate and using it as a form of moral judgement occurs by many. My understanding of the actual teachings though is that this view is wrong view.
How should we judge the teachings of karma? By the teachings themselves or by the beliefs and practices of certain Buddhists that contradict the teaching?
No, Buddhism teaches that every thing that 'befalls a person' _is_ Karma. Karma is cause+result, although it sounds like two words, in meaning it is actually one.
We can talk about baggage that sentient beings carry as they bubble through samsara, but this would be more like talking about emotional afflictions, harbors of resentment, heavy baggage of the existential kind.
***
Let's talk about the experience of life. Life is everything you see, everything you hear, everything you touch, smell, and taste. Life is also what you "feel" inside -- does your inner body feel warm or cold, pleasant or uncomfortable, weepy-wailey or sunshine-basking.
In Buddhism there is the teaching of life-continuity (before and) after death, why would this information be useful to us?
[please take a few minutes to meditate on that]
So what is karma? In one way of looking at it, think of every sentient being as a rocket flying through samsara at incredible speed. The very fabric of our lives is samsara, and awareness seems to float above - and yet inside - our physical bodies. The body moves through physical space, but your awareness of body, of inner feelings, of situations -- that is what is hurtling through samsara at incredible pace.
So samsara isn't actually the objects you see around you, it's the mental-emotional-psychological space that we all flutter through so briefly in this life. And the next life, and the previous life; a chain that grows both directions.
Karma is your trajectory through samsara || mental-emotional-psychological space.
The Buddha taught that karma is like the path of the Ox that is tied to a cart. He pulls the cart and can turn it, but the wheels of the cart are not turning on a dime, they turn smoothly, and so the ox can't make 90* turns, but he can influence the way the cart moves. Think about driving a car, think about driving a super super super long car, think about driving a tricycle that has 100 million miles between the front wheels and the back wheels, but is only a meter wide! This is like steering "karma" -- in some respects karma steers us, in some respects we steer it, but karma is basically the recognition of Natural Flow.
****
We are all fish in the river of life.
If there is a big boulder in the river, and I, as a fish, bump into the boulder, it takes a second for my path to smooth out again.
Samsara is kinda like this. There are boulders and hazards everywhere in samasara|mental-emotional-psychological space, and we have been crashing into them for a LONG LONG LONG LONG time.
Each time you bump into something, it changes your course, but invariably it smooths out in the river. Buddhism is like a hack for reality. Enlightened Mind is everyone's fundamental nature, and all are on the path to seeing, but it can take a while, and samsara SUCKS, sucks so bad, oh man does it suck.
So Buddhism, you should know, is founded on the fundamental, the true, the real, and misapprehension of what is fundamental, what is true, what is real, is cause for great strife, great pain, great stretching, great suffering.
***
So consider this, you're walking through a big open building, it's like a huge open hall, it's an auditorium, it's very spacious and you just want to go from the South door to the North door, so you walk across the floor.
Ouch! What was that? I bumped into a table? That's weird, I don't see a table there...
Ouch! What the eff. This is stupid. There is something here in the way, I can feel it, but it's invisible!
FIVE MILLION TRIES LATER
Ohhhh, I can go _AROUND_ the table, awesome
***
So it's like developing new senses, and it's like being chill, and being joyful, and all-around being a helper, because what you give out comes back to you. That's the law so buckle up.
***
The one last thing I want to mention to you is the word "moral"
Morality, Immorality, Moral, Immoral
What do these mean? Many people come from a predominantly theistic tradition, where morality is defined by some set of rules you can't break. In Buddhism there is no such thing, all rules are bound to be inadequate or eventually devolve into misleading language. Buddhism is all about the space that is BEFORE language occurs in your mind, or in-betweens-the language, so-to-speak.
So if there are no rules, what the heck is moral and immoral?
Well, we don't know how to say it, but it's okay, we can just observe the Natural Flow!
If you see that water is wet, and that fire is hot, then you can see that there are some aspects of life we regard as Utterly Natural. Buddhism is the happy way, and it is the practice of joyfully coming to terms with what is Natural.
There are no rules, there's just a ton of sweet tricks, methods, techniques -- all to help us better see True Nature.
How best to cultivate? See that "just as I suffer, he suffers" -- "just as I suffer, she suffers"
See that "just as I want to have a good time, he wants to have a good time" -- "just as I want to have a good time, she wants to have a good time"
So learning Natural Flow can make life double as a really fun game too!
***
Remember the rocket ship? We're all flying super fast through mental-emotional-psychological space = samsara (!)
Well, that's correct from the view of having your feet on the ground, but really we're all in the water, flowing around, no top no bottom, just flowing!
What if you were a fish, and you decided to hold on to some piece of debris tied to the bottom of the river. And the waves and the water pummels you, absolutely pummels you and it sucks! It hurts because it flows so quickly, and as a fish that wants to hold onto that branch really badly the thought of letting go doesn't even occur!
So eventually the river tears you from the branch, and depending on how you react, your propensities, your "baggage" -- you may decide to let go entirely and see where flow takes hold. If you scramble in fear for the next branch, you'll be stuck in a suffering loop for a long long long long time, because over and over the true nature of the river will overcome your ideas about how best to 'engage' the river.
***
There's a wild fruit called a SUCKSINFIVEMINUTES, and it's actually really really really tasty.
But it only grows in one place, at the top of a very very steep cliff. It grows in such a way that it's impossible to grab the fruit, enjoy it, and make it back safely.
But it's really really REALLY delicious. I'm talking orgasm delicious. Well, not orgasm, but close. From all over beings climb up the cliff and grab a ripened fruit, and plummet 5 minutes to their death into a ton of thorns.
Maybe the first million times, I weigh it out and I see that the fruit and its tastiness outweighs the pain of falling to a miserable death -- I forget about that lifetime, about falling and dying, about the pain, and I climb to the top of the cliff to eat it, and subsequently I fall into an utterly recalibrating experience of pain, shock, tears, fear, terror, and agony.
Yum.
Yum for maybe a couple million more times.
But eventually, I start getting the feeling that this fruit isn't actually all _that_ tasty -- Even though I see tons of other beings going up to grab it and plummeting, and even though I would normally do the same thing, I start to SENSE that it doesn't taste good.
Thus I refrain from that experience, something deep inside What Continues Between Lives tells me with great urgency that I shouldn't eat that fruit, so I either trust my instincts (developed over millions and millions and millions of 'experiences') or I don't.
Karma is your trajectory. Re-orient the mind with the practices of compassion. Seize the seat of true dharma with effort and patience, and most importantly with forgiveness.
***
It is true that based on beings' karma their physical bodies (shadows of the 'spirit') will look different. It is all based on what fulfilments a being seeks. But it's impossible to tell without buddhavision, and there's certainly a slew of superpowers that come with practice, that come with learning Natural Flow. Use them only for the good of all your best friends [since we have certainly been best friends in many lifetimes -- you, you and the ant on your porch, you and your mom, you and the stranger on the bus, you and the guy flying the plane miles above the earth, you and the starfish in the pacific, you and me, me and you].
And I suppose, typically one can get a cancer, or a gigantic knee, or some weird appearance from doing something crazy in a prior lifetime, and the karma ripened in this life, but that doesn't mean we can blame beings for their appearance -- it's just the opposite, we're all melting through boiling hot lava and we should be helping each other out of this mess.
Compassion and Wisdom are like the two wheels on your Buddha Bicycle. The Dharma the frame.
[cont'd]
***
So what is morality, if not developing the sense that we are all in this mess -- it's true, and it doesn't seem true because of what branches we're used to chilling on, but the flow, Oh the flow! How remarkable the flow! The flow of no marks, just love! Superimpose your inner sense on every being you see, and know that they suffer just as you suffer, that they love and crave the love just as we all love and crave the love! And from there start to consider what Dharma could mean, from there spring off into the pool of true vision, into the glorious fountains of bliss. Do not worry about knowing Truth or talking Truth, you yourself BECOME truth through the dharma.
Homage to the Conquerors [of 'reality'], the Lotus Hackers, the Bliss Resonators, and from the bottom of my heart, thank you all for sharing this breeze with me, fellow leaves.
_/\_ so much better
when we shine together
put my palms together
may we shine together
You might say that it's the difference between theoretical Buddhism and practical Buddhism.
And if you stop and think of it, we seem to be treating Buddhism differently than we treat...say...Islam. Over the months there have been plenty of references to the violence in Islam, and we blame the teachings just as often as we blame the interpretation by individuals. Yet, most posts seem to say that "my" religion (in this case Buddhism) is different -- the teachings are perfect, but all those dumber Buddhists in Thailand and Cambodia, and Burma have it wrong and misunderstand the teachings.