Some Karma Kuestions and Komments

[Matt Johnson]

Hey Matt,

I really like your notions of Karma and Rebirth above. If I read it correctly, it is pretty modern like my view because you speak of our being reborn as "everything and everybody else" (rather than the more traditional view of a specific chain of literal future lives), and call many of the more traditional Tibetan and like descriptions (Bardo, etc.) as "metaphorical and symbolic." I am with you on that.

I agree that seemingly amoral aspect of Emptiness (beyond small human judgements of "good and bad") also is somehow a Great Good, not amoral at all, and that aids us in living better and more gently in this world, and is the source of the Precepts. I don't think that piercing and even profoundly experiencing and realizing Emptiness automatically makes us good, kind, generous however. Alas, I have seen too many exceptions otherwise, of good Buddhists with profound insight into Emptiness, yet still selfish. I think that "looking out for No. 1 (ourself)" is too hard wired into the brain, so such a realization alone is not enough to root it out. We must work at it.

stlah

Yeah I'm not about to go jumping off cliffs to save deer. However, I am about trying to work with many of the most difficult people because I know for a fact if I had lived their life, I would have made all of the same bad decisions.

I agree realising emptiness alone does not guarantee ethical behaviour. I just thought part of the process after repeated realizations of emptiness was to then become aware of our connection to everyone and that this necessarily implied the insights that eventually were turned into precepts.

As I'm sure we will get into during jukai there are many cases when it is ethical to break the precepts. And who can ultimately stand in judgement?

I am still trying to figure out what happened to Ryushin from ZMM... He is/was the real deal IMHO... but he ran afoul of the community he was in... BTW You wouldn't happen to know how I can get in contact with him? You seem to be connected to everybody

_/\_
sat/ah
matt

[Jundo]

Don’t we have both rebirth and no rebirth? If all of Buddha nature pervades all existence, space, time, beings… then nothing is born to be reborn… and yet, it is as well. Or is it all part of the delusion? Even delusions can be born, grow, die, return…

Gassho,
Jay

Sat/lah

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Just to clarify, I consider myself an open minded "agnostic" on the topic of literal rebirth. If anyone could show me a feasible mechanism, and some solid evidence for it, I would believe. It is just that I have seen neither, so choose to practice without worry about the question.

I will also say that I HAVE had profound personal experience (quite simple, obvious and logical once one experiences so) that we are, not just a "me," but also the worms and trees, stars and wombats from long ago. It is like that "3-D" picture I describe (one ya see it, ya see it.) It is just that I have had no experience, and doubt anyone who would claim, to have been a particular wombat 200 years ago.

Gassho, J
stlah

[Matt Johnson]

.

.
Just to clarify, I consider myself an open minded "agnostic" on the topic of literal rebirth. If anyone could show me a feasible mechanism, and some solid evidence for it, I would believe. It is just that I have seen neither, so choose to practice without worry about the question.

I will also say that I HAVE had profound personal experience (quite simple, obvious and logical once one experiences so) that we are, not just a "me," but also the worms and trees, stars and wombats from long ago. It is like that "3-D" picture I describe (one ya see it, ya see it.) It is just that I have had no experience, and doubt anyone who would claim, to have been a particular wombat 200 years ago.

Gassho, J
stlah

Ok. So no conversation like this would be complete without discussing the 12-fold chain of causation. Do you subscribe to a traditional notion of this? Do you have a new and improved version?

_/\_
sat/ah
matt

[Jundo]

Ok. So no conversation like this would be complete without discussing the 12-fold chain of causation. Do you subscribe to a traditional notion of this? Do you have a new and improved version?

_/\_
sat/ah
matt

Well, I think that my "new and improved" version is actually not that far from what the original version was before commentators and others got all tangled in it (e.g., some saying that the first 4 are about past lives, the middle 4 about current life, the final four about future life ... which just makes no sense, and make a muddle of the whole thing.) There is actually good historical research on the "12-fold" chain and how it developed over time, e.g., it did not always have "12-folds," but originally 6, then 8, I believe. For example, Paul Williams points to this very early sutta as one of its earliest expressions ...

“(Once a child is conceived and with birth and the growth of youth) his sense faculties mature, then he becomes furnished and invested with the fìve strands of sensual desires and exploits them: forms cognizable through the eye that are wished for, desired, agreeable and likable, connected with sensual desire and provocative of lust; likewise sounds cognizable through the ear, odours cognizable through the nose, flavours cognizable through the tongue, and tangibles cognizable through the body. On seeing a visible form with the eye, hearing a sound with the ear, smelling an odour with the nose, tasting a flavour with the tongue, touching a tangible with the body, cognizing an idea with the mind [this indicates the eighteen dhatus of sense, object, and resultant consciousness for each of the six senses], he lusts after it if it is likable, or has ill will towards it if it is dislikable [dependent upon ignorance of its true nature he produces greed and hatred]. He abides without mindfulness of the body established and with mind limited while he does not understand as they actually are the deliverance of mind and the deliverance by understanding wherein those evil unwholesome states cease without remainder. Engaged as he is in favouring and opposing, when he feels any feeling, whether pleasant or painful or neither-painful-nor-pleasant [=the three types of feeling], he relishes that feeling, affirms and accepts it. Relishing arises in him when he does that. Now any relishing of those feelings is clinging. With his clinging as a condition, being; with being as a condition, birth; with birth as a condition, ageing and death come to be, and also sorrow and lamentation, pain, grief and despair. That is how there is an origin to this whole aggregate mass of suffering. (Trans. in Ñanamoli "The Life of the Buddha" 1992:251 ff.)

I believe that it was meant to show how, physically and mentally, our sense of being a separate "self" arises, which separate "self" is the source of suffering in Buddhism. There is not really much in such description to connect it with literal "rebirth" in future lives. Here is my explanation, which is very, very close to the above but takes as its inspiration, for example, Piaget's model of early child development ...

One of the most basic of “Buddha Basics” is the Twelve-fold Chain of Dependent Origination, sometimes called the Twelve-fold Chain of Cause & Effect. It describes how our experience of being a separate “self” arises — and with this, as its mirror reflection, the experience of a separate world that is “not our self” — coupled with desires, judgments, discontentedness, worries about loss, fears, feelings of passing time and all the rest that the “self” feels about the “not the self.”

My interpretation may be a bit modern, but I am struck by how the Buddha’s idea parallels modern theories of the development of a consciousness and a sense of separate identity in the human infant (such as by Piaget and others)… as the child begins to respond and react to pleasant and unpleasant input through the senses, slowly building a hard sense of “self” vs. “other,” driven on by its thirst and hunger and other desires.
Buddha-Basics (Part XIV) – The Twelve-Fold Chain (LINK)

Gassho, J
stlah

[Matt Johnson]

I believe that it was meant to show how, physically and mentally, our sense of being a separate "self" arises, which separate "self" is the source of suffering in Buddhism. There is not really much in such description to connect it with literal "rebirth" in future lives. Here is my explanation, which is very, very close to the above but takes as its inspiration, for example, Piaget's model of early child development ...

I was hoping it would yield some connection to the past life issue. Subject and object being "one" is fine but lacks enough subtlety to derive any useful and specific cause and effect information.

In my present life I seem to be able to track causes and effects well enough to make change where change was needed to ease suffering. However, in terms of absolute reality it seems so much more random and disconnected (firewood is firewood, ash is ash?).

One second were in our life the next second we are somewhere else? No apparent or discernable connection... I mean sometimes you can see the connection sometimes you can't...

Am I making any sense here?


_/\_
sat/ah
matt

[Jundo]

I was hoping it would yield some connection to the past life issue. Subject and object being "one" is fine but lacks enough subtlety to derive any useful and specific cause and effect information.

In my present life I seem to be able to track causes and effects well enough to make change where change was needed to ease suffering. However, in terms of absolute reality it seems so much more random and disconnected (firewood is firewood, ash is ash?).

One second were in our life the next second we are somewhere else? No apparent or discernable connection... I mean sometimes you can see the connection sometimes you can't...

Am I making any sense here?

I think I get your drift.

I will leave aside any lives that might be after this one.

However, I do see that our actions do TEND to have commensurate effects in this life. Not always, of course, and far from it. Sometimes quite the opposite.

So, good actions and being a kind and peaceful person, limiting attachments and greed, anger and such ... TENDS to have some good effects in one's own life for oneself, on one's family and friends and (in the interconnected world) in the surrounding community or society. But not always! Sometimes there is no visible effect, or even things backfire. I mean, we can generously give a meal to a hungry person who proceeds to get ill from it!

Bad actions such as being greedy, angry, spiteful, mean, jealous, petty, violent will tend to have poisonous effects on one's own life, one's family and the surrounding society. But not always! Even wars and pogroms, amid the ugliness, cause some good effects. I know a baby born because the parents fled a war and met overseas as refugees. I know that being "greedy, angry, etc." might even get somebody elected rich and the President of the USA! (Sorry, I could not resist.)

Maybe this is one reason that "intention/volition" is so important in Buddhism. If I intend to do something good, and it explodes in my face, still ... it is the intention that counts.

Gassho, J
stlah

[Tai Shi]

I have experienced rebirth and come close to death several times and I am still am alive today and I suspect circumventing death is something like rebirth.
Gassho
deep bows
sat/lah

[Matt Johnson]

I have experienced rebirth and come close to death several times and I am still am alive today and I suspect circumventing death is something like rebirth.
Gassho
deep bows
sat/lah

I think you may be right. Especially since you were not the same person after.

_/\_
sat/ah
matt

[Tairin]

If there are future lives, heavens and hells ... live this life here and now, seek not to do harm, seek not to build "heavens" and "hells" in this world ... let what happens after "death" take care of itself.

And if there are no future lives, no heavens or hells ... live this life here and now, seek not to do harm, seek not to build "heavens" and "hells" in this world ... let what happens after "death" take care of itself.

This pretty much sums up my entire approach. Over the many years I’ve been at Treeleaf I have seen this expressed many times and I really appreciate the practicality. It is an expression that is very aligned to our Precepts and our Vows.

Thank you as always Jundo.


Tairin
Sat today and lah

[Tai Do]

My wife is a firm believer in karma and rebirth and she is a trained scientist who who works as a professor. The belief in literal rebirth, even though we can't think of a mechanism for it to happen, is not so irrational and anti scientific as many, perhaps because of a deeply rooted Western Christian idea of only one life per soul (that is alien to Buddhism, by the way). That said, as Jundo, I myself am agnostic about it and consider it one of the questions that don't lead to liberation.

To it, I would like to add also the idea that karma and rebirth could be viewed as a great useful skillful means (upāya). In the early Pali suttas, the Buddha many times start to teach new disciples not with the Noble Truths, which were termed supramundane or spiritual right view, but with moral exhortations to generosity and the Five Precepts followed by karma and rebirth, named mundane right view. I think it points out to the idea that for those not yet familiar with impermanence, dhukkha and not-self, it can be skillful to act thinking that every act, word and thought is linked to previous things you've done and will have consequences that will affect your future life.

The karma-rebirth myth can be a powerful motivation for those that had no glimpse of emptiness and interbeing. I myself found it useful in my daily life even though I have no metaphysical opinion about its reality or not. Besides, as I have no idea what really happens after death, it is as good as any other guess.

Gassho,
Tai Do
Satlah

[Matt Johnson]

My wife is a firm believer in karma and rebirth and she is a trained scientist who who works as a professor. The belief in literal rebirth, even though we can't think of a mechanism for it to happen, is not so irrational and anti scientific as many, perhaps because of a deeply rooted Western Christian idea of only one life per soul (that is alien to Buddhism, by the way). That said, as Jundo, I myself am agnostic about it and consider it one of the questions that don't lead to liberation.

To it, I would like to add also the idea that karma and rebirth could be viewed as a great useful skillful means (upāya). In the early Pali suttas, the Buddha many times start to teach new disciples not with the Noble Truths, which were termed supramundane or spiritual right view, but with moral exhortations to generosity and the Five Precepts followed by karma and rebirth, named mundane right view. I think it points out to the idea that for those not yet familiar with impermanence, dhukkha and not-self, it can be skillful to act thinking that every act, word and thought is linked to previous things you've done and will have consequences that will affect your future life.

The karma-rebirth myth can be a powerful motivation for those that had no glimpse of emptiness and interbeing. I myself found it useful in my daily life even though I have no metaphysical opinion about its reality or not. Besides, as I have no idea what really happens after death, it is as good as any other guess.

Sorry for this late reply Taido, Sometimes I read things too quickly and forget to respond to certain things. I like what you're saying here.

Certainly, the reincarnation question does raise some interesting possibility when thinking about lgbtqia2s+. Fluidity of identity etc.

I agree that the simplistic notion of one's soul jumping from body to body seems to be a teaching story that was inherited from pre-buddhist Origins. But it would seem much more complicated than that in reality...

I think a lot of our concepts get in the way of understanding interbeing. Primarily ideas of space and time. The idea of past lives of course is linked to a linear concept of time. The idea of self being contained to one body is limited in its concept of space.

But it would be confusing right out of the gates to say to someone. "Time and space are illusory".

Another troubling aspect when telling the karma story is how quickly people like to attach ethical observance to it. Then we get situations like the Soto Zen Buddhist association suggesting that if one cannot get to a Zen Centre for face-to-face teaching there must be a karmic issue at play (so nothing further need to be done). Thus linking ethical observance and disability or sickness. This is wrong, wrong, wrong...

Yet I personally ponder on occasion my own disabilities and how they have shaped my journey and affected my ability to practise Zen in a traditional manner. As many of my issues are congenital I can't have avoided the thought that I must have done something in a previous life to have resulted in this situation. However, up to this point I can find no past causal (in ethical terms) relationship. But I have had it explain certain tendencies going forward.

But to say that my mother's lack of consumption of folic acid (due to stress) lead to a birth defect in me and to the extent that I am my mother--this can be another way of describing the karma from a past life leading to effects in a current one. It's funny how we don't automatically include our parents as our past lives...

Anyway just some thoughts,

_/\_
sat/ah
matt

[Tai Do]

Hi Matt,
I think the main issue you are bringing here is our deep desire that the world be the way we want. Reality doesn't have to conform to our wishes nor be such a way as we are deemed blameless victims of circumstances.
That been said, what lies at the heart of this issue seems to be if karma is THE explanation for everything that happens to us. To that, a Buddhist answer should be alliegned with the Buddhist text. There is a helpful sutta in which the Buddha explicitly denies that every bad thing that happens to us us due to karma: https://suttacentral.net/sn36.21/en/...ighlight=false
The Buddha presents eight different causal sequences to explain the experiences we have - karma is just one of them, which include medical, climate and other causesb even reckless behavior (what we involuntarily do is not intentional and so not karma). The point to me is that the way we are born, any disea ses or conditions we may have are must likely due to biological/medical causes, not to karma.
Gassho,
Tai Do
Satlah

[Matt Johnson]

Hi Matt,
I think the main issue you are bringing here is our deep desire that the world be the way we want. Reality doesn't have to conform to our wishes nor be such a way as we are deemed blameless victims of circumstances.
That been said, what lies at the heart of this issue seems to be if karma is THE explanation for everything that happens to us. To that, a Buddhist answer should be alliegned with the Buddhist text. There is a helpful sutta in which the Buddha explicitly denies that every bad thing that happens to us us due to karma: https://suttacentral.net/sn36.21/en/...ighlight=false
The Buddha presents eight different causal sequences to explain the experiences we have - karma is just one of them, which include medical, climate and other causesb even reckless behavior (what we involuntarily do is not intentional and so not karma). The point to me is that the way we are born, any disea ses or conditions we may have are must likely due to biological/medical causes, not to karma.

And yet it's all, Karma right? David Loy for example, speaks about things like generational trauma (war / holocaust) and institutionalised greed (capiltalism) as being karma, just not the individually "caused" and "effected" type.

But I think at the individual level what prevents someone from finding a certain level of freedom within all of this Karma that they did not cause is related to more personal decisions. Let's also not forget there's Good Karma which can be just as bad for Buddhist practise as bad karma!

_/\_
sat/ah
matt

[Jundo]

And yet it's all, Karma right? David Loy for example, speaks about things like generational trauma (war / holocaust) and institutionalised greed (capiltalism) as being karma, just not the individually "caused" and "effected" type.

Just a note that any kind of "collective" or group Karma is a modern notion that I have heard here and there, but is probably not so traditional (where, in past centuries, the stream of Karma was generally individual to the "person.") So, these other notions by David Loy seem a bit modern (especially about capitalism). While I see where he gets them, they seem rather like his or someone's modernist invention.

Gassho, J
stlah

[Matt Johnson]

Just a note that any kind of "collective" or group Karma is a modern notion that I have heard here and there, but is probably not so traditional (where, in past centuries, the stream of Karma was generally individual to the "person.") So, these other notions by David Loy seem a bit modern (especially about capitalism). While I see where he gets them, they seem rather like his or someone's modernist invention.

I doubt Gautama understood his Dharma outside of his particular karmic context. As you well know (Zen) Buddhism has been changing based on its cultural context all along. All this name calling, "modern" versus "traditional" is just a distraction.

_/\_
sat/ah
matt