The Law Of Karma
The
idea behind the Law of Karma is simple- what we do affects what happens to us.
I feel I may safely assume that there are no serious disagreements so far.
The application of the Law of Karma is choosing the causes that will give
you the effects you want. Now, that doesn't sound like superstition to you, does
it?
Naturally, there are many types of karma. This just means that there are
many ways that your actions can have an effect on you. Most of them can be examined
more conveniently by dividing them into four groups:
" Physical
"
Social
" Psychological, and
" Spiritual
These overlap.
The
principle behind the first type, physical karma, is obvious. If you jump off a
tall building, you will probably get hurt. If you expose yourself to germs, you
may get sick. The results of this kind of karma can be gain or loss, comfort,
discomfort, pain, or even death.
The practice is as detailed as the situation
you are in. Driving a car has one complex set of ways you can influence what happens
to you, spelunking has another. You've just got to develop the skills needed wherever
you are.
Physical karma overlaps psychological karma, in that we have psychological
reasons for jumping off that building. This in turn overlaps social karma, because
social pressures are among the most popular reasons for doing something stupid.
Psychological karma can work
through physical karma, causing you to be careful or accident-prone, or through
social karma, causing you to have friends or enemies. This also leads to gain
or loss, etc.
But psychological karma also affects your emotions. Whether
the glass is half full or half empty is not a physical question, it's psychological.
This kind of karma affects how content we are with what we have. Being discontent
is what the Buddha was talking about in the First Noble Truth. He mentioned several
situations that can set off this discontent, like birth, sickness, old age and
death, not getting what we want, getting what we don't want, etc. But all this
is just pain or loss- the emotional reaction you get to them is where suffering
comes in. The scrapes and bruises after the big game hurt a lot less if your team
won.
Now we're getting into the question of "grasping". .If your
standard is a full glass, then that other glass is half empty. If you were expecting
an empty glass, then it's half full. "Grasping", on this level, means
your assumptions.
Social karma
just means you have a whole new set of things to be careful about when you're
dealing with other people. The payoffs are the same as for physical karma, gain
or loss, comfort of pain. Any suffering depends on your psychological karma- being
socially ostrasized might be suffering to a party animal, but the average cocktail
party would grate on a hermit.
The reason social karma is important enough
to consider as a separate type, is because it's often phrased as morality. Throughout
human history, people have often noticed that certain activities have bad results.
They called these acts "bad acts" for this reason. Notice I do not say
these acts have bad results because they are bad. I say they are called bad because
they have bad results.
Morality is basically tactics.
Mark Twain observed
that people who lie need better memories than those who tell the truth. Mark Twain
was honest, not because he believed in a giant invisible magic person who would
punish him, but because he understood cause and effect. Or, to put it another
way, he understood social karma. Well, in his case it was probably also because
he could make more trouble that way.
If you kill, other people are going to
defend themselves. If you steal, they will lock things up, or come after you.
In general, if you always cause trouble, the only thing you can be sure of is
that you will always be in a troubled environment. Is there anything at all about
that that seems superstitious?
And it's not all the "fault of society",
either. There are primitive societies that don't have some of our basic moral
rules. They are all isolated, because those that tried to compete with more moral
cultures all died out. And even in isolation, they sure aren't doing well. It
ain't "Live wrong and prosper"!
The
final kind, spiritual karma, means that what you do affects your religious situation.
If you've been following me so far, the only questions you might have would be
"What is a religious situation?" and "Is it real?".
In
Mahayana Buddhism, there is the idea of the "Buddha-nature". That means
that way down inside, our basic consciousness is not warped by likes, dislikes
and assumptions, but is clearly aware. It is not deluded into thinking that satisfaction
can be granted or denied us by outside events, so it is serene and blissful.
"
Our basic nature is pure of itself. Bodhisattva-Sila Sutra
" Now when
I view all beings everywhere, I see that each of them possesses the wisdom and
virtue of the Tathagata, but because of their attachments and delusions, they
cannot bear witness to that fact. Shakyamuni Buddha, in the Avatamsaka Sutra
"
But though the light of the sun is veiled by clouds and mists,
Beyond the
clouds and mists there is brightness, not dark. Shinran Shonin, in the Shoshinge
The Theravadins reach the same point by saying that there is really no "good"
karma- since it all leads us away from the uncaused enlightened state. Enlightenment,
according to them, is uncaused. If it were caused, it would be impermanent. So,
although they refuse to speak of it using nouns like "Buddha-nature",
they tacitly admit that there is a state already within us (because it doesn't
have to be caused) that is enlightenment.
In this sense, karma is whatever
distracts us from being aware of that pure level of the mind. That is, any action
that is motivated by attachment..
This Buddha-nature is hard to point out,
but maybe I can mark out the limits of the area within which you will find it.
The ordinary daily deluded mind may not know the law of gravity, but your body
obeys it every moment of every day. So, on the atomic level, you are in full contact
and full accord with reality. That's the lower limit.
If, like me, you like
to go into used book stores, you will have noticed their shelves are in a jumble.
Do you read every title? No! You scan the shelf, and somehow the name of a favorite
author or a word in a title catches your eye. How did your eye know to be caught?
Somewhere below the conscious layer of your mind, there is a consciousness that
is aware of all those titles and authors. From my own experiences I estimate that
that layer is about three hundred times as aware as your so-called "conscious
mind". At least. That's the upper limit.
Somewhere between there lies
the Buddha-nature.
So for religious purposes, applying the Law of Karma means
to give up attachment to anything that would distract you from that pure, serene
awareness. Karmic results on this level are not products of our attachments, like
a broken leg or AIDS in physical karma. They are a function of attachment. The
difference is, when you give up the attachment, the broken leg still has to heal,
and the habits that have been etched into your nervous system still have to be
broken. But the suffering caused by psychological karma and the unenlightenment
caused by spiritual karma disappear as soon as the grasping is gone.
Theravadin
monks do this by living a lifestyle wherein they perform no actions that would
constitute an investment of time and energy in things of this world. They contemplate
the impermanent nature of all things to help keep from getting attached to them.
Mahayana Buddhists express the ephemeral and distracting nature of all physical
things a little differently.
" Everything with form is unreal. If all
forms are seen as unreal, the Tathagata will be perceived. The Diamond Sutra
When
the Buddha-nature is depicted as Amida Buddha, who is said to have "reached
Enlightenment ten kalpas ago" (the point being that we already have Enlightened
Mind available within us), we try to give up self-power(karmic acts) and "rely
on Amida" (function naturally from our inner Enlightened awareness).
So as a Buddhist practice, we do good as a practical matter while we are still in this world, and because "good" karma is often easier to let go of than "bad" karma, but we don't depend on our deluded efforts for awakening.