Karma

[Guest]

The great teacher Daido Loori indicated quite often that he regarded reincarnation as doubtful, and from his viewpoint somewhat irrelevant. From where I stand, the whole possibility of karma operating as an inexorable law of cause and effect is self-evidently, utterly and completely false unless there is reincarnation. Why? Well, is it not eminently clear to anyone with eyes that in this life, many millions of people who do very bad shit - again and again and again - thrive; while many millions who live wonderfully compassionate and generous lives suffer endlessly? So, no reincarnation, no karma. If the doers of bad shit so obviously don't get their recompense here and now, where do they get it? Without reincarnation, they don't, or at least, they can't. When I ask about this matter in the sanghas I visit, the sound of brooms sweeping dirt under the carpet is heard loud and clear. Or I am given evasive bollocks about taking this contradiction as a koan. I recall the words of a feminist practitioner who tried to ask about the suppression of women in Zen only to be told by her male teacher "We're all women here" or words to that effect. She got pissed and wrote "Zen Women: Beyond Tea Ladies, Iron Maidens and Macho Masters". If I had the talent and learning, I'd write a little book called "Karma and Reincarnation: You Can't Have One Without The Other". Instead, I'd like to hear from any one of the millions of practitioners who understand more than I ever will about the dharma, and who can shed light on this problem. Thanks.

[Seiryu]

Re: Karma

check out this link from our forum

viewtopic.php?p=17953#p17953

it deals with Karma

see if that can answer you questions

Gassho

Rafael/Seiry?

[natezenmaster]

Re: Karma

That's a pretty interesting question, David. It seems the thread given by Seiry? covers it.. and embedded within Jundo's message is a link wherein there's a passage "I see many people doing evil things .. and living a good life, while there are ..very religious .. struck down by a terrible disease. How do you explain this?"

http://www.londonbuddhistvihara.org/qa/ ... #qa_kamma4

It suggests that without clarity in our view, and what could be taken as complete visibility to all workings, that seeing the impacts of karma on an individual isn't going to happen. E.g. you may not see the karmic influences on the people doing all the bad shit.. just the same as if you see someone born with a terrible disease, you don't see the influences leading up to that.. and in either case, it doesn't mean we should relish or await the 'bad' consequence on the evildoer or lack compassion on the ill since its 'his karma'. In so doing, we sow are own seeds. And as Jundo's message also tackles, reincarnation and rebirth are different.. to be reborn or reincarnate indicates some self or permanence beyond who we are now, when who are now changes itself from moment to moment.

I often get hung up on questions like this and many others - just last week or so posting a debate on whether life is 'fair'. Then later I laugh at myself because my most immediate need is right now and clarity.. to tame my own mind and views.. and so I think until I'm able to see clearly, not get caught up in dualisms, to cultivate consistent mindfulness, I have nothing more immediate. Best wishes...

_/_ Nate

[Jundo]

Re: Karma

The great teacher Daido Loori indicated quite often that he regarded reincarnation as doubtful, and from his viewpoint somewhat irrelevant. From where I stand, the whole possibility of karma operating as an inexorable law of cause and effect is self-evidently, utterly and completely false unless there is reincarnation. Why? Well, is it not eminently clear to anyone with eyes that in this life, many millions of people who do very bad shit - again and again and again - thrive; while many millions who live wonderfully compassionate and generous lives suffer endlessly? So, no reincarnation, no karma. If the doers of bad shit so obviously don't get their recompense here and now, where do they get it? Without reincarnation, they don't, or at least, they can't. When I ask about this matter in the sanghas I visit, the sound of brooms sweeping dirt under the carpet is heard loud and clear. Or I am given evasive bollocks about taking this contradiction as a koan. I recall the words of a feminist practitioner who tried to ask about the suppression of women in Zen only to be told by her male teacher "We're all women here" or words to that effect. She got pissed and wrote "Zen Women: Beyond Tea Ladies, Iron Maidens and Macho Masters". If I had the talent and learning, I'd write a little book called "Karma and Reincarnation: You Can't Have One Without The Other". Instead, I'd like to hear from any one of the millions of practitioners who understand more than I ever will about the dharma, and who can shed light on this problem. Thanks.

Hi David,

As the cited essay I wrote describes ...

check out this link from our forum

viewtopic.php?p=17953#p17953

it deals with Karma

see if that can answer you questions

... I call myself an "open minded skeptic" who tends to doubt overly literal, mechanical images of rebirth. Anyway, it is not central to my practice here and now, for I believe that people create very real "heavens and hells" for themselves and those around them in this world, through their actions in this world. If you act now through constant greed, anger, attachments ... well, you may have a million bucks in the bank, but I am sure that you are not content much (not in a good way, anyway).

But Dogen Zenji offered a very simple answer to why it looks like "bad things happen to good people in this life." (It is in the Shobogenzo Section, "Deep Belief in Cause and Effect", if I recall). He tended to be rather more traditional in his views on rebirth and future lives. Basically, he said ... folks may look like they are doing well (financially, for example) in this life now although doing bad, but some "effects" don't play out until next life, or the lives after that. On the other hand, they may be doing bad now, yet they may have done good in a past life ... so that is why they have some good effects now. In the end, everyone get's their just desserts.

One of the first talks I ever gave at Treeleaf a few years ago was after the great Tsunami, about perspectives on bad things to good people and our response ...

http://www.treeleaf.org/sit-a-long/with ... tance.html

Gassho, J

[Rich]

Re: Karma

I think Buddha said there is no permanent self or atman so reincarnation is a mute point. I don't believe there is any philosophical requirement in order to practice zazen. Over time ideas align with experience. too much thinking about stuff like this is pointless and unnecessary. Actions create effects but we don't have know about every little one. Don't know is enough.

Just thinking.

[Taigu]

Re: Karma

Thank you for this Rich. A voice arises from the field of experience. Thank you again.


gassho

Taigu

[Ankai]

Re: Karma

I think when we focus too much on rebirth, it makes our motivation a little selfish. To westernize the idea, I'm thinking of my aunt, who was something of a wild woman and had a terrible temper, but now that she's older, attends Mass daily and approaches the world with a saccharine smile. She has said before that she's trying to get into heaven. (She takes Catholic doctrine VERY seriously and VERY literally.) My thinking is that while that's all well and good, it means that her "niceness" and "piety" are born of purely selfish motive, and it makes it hard to see as her giving and kindness as being for anyone but herself.
If I, as a Buddhist, am behaving in a certain way with the motive of attaining a good rebirth, then the boddhisattva Vows I've taken are a lie, aren't they? I'm not out to "free all beings," I'm looking to get myself a cooshy next life!
I just figure I am who I am, I've done what I've done, and where I am right here, right now is what matters. Karma will take care of Karma - and will, in the end, be its own absolute truth and right- without my help.

[Stephanie]

Re: Karma

In my experience, the "problem" lies in the "wheres" and "hows." Where do we look to see karma-vipaka taking action? How do we think it works?

Of all the Buddha's teachings, I found the twelvefold chain of Dependent Co-Arising the most impenetrable. It made absolutely no sense at all, the order in which one chain was said to link to the next. Ignorance and perception happen before birth? WTF? I puzzled over it, wrote out diagrams, and just couldn't get it. Very frustrating.

It wasn't until I read Steve Hagen's explanation of the twelvefold chain in Buddhism Plain and Simple that I got it. Suddenly, it all made sense. Perfect, beautiful sense.

I had originally read the twelvefold chain as sort of a 'metaphysical-worldly' unfolding. But Hagen presented it in the context of Mind--of conscious experience. The twelvefold chain is not how mountains and stars form--it is how the human world forms. The human world as we experience it, through the perceptions of our mind. It starts with ignorance because it is our ignorance of mind as mind that keeps us taking our thoughts and views of the world as the reality of the world.

Think about karma in terms of mind. There is no deity or personality behind karma, so our ideas of it as some sort of cosmic punishment and reward system are hopelessly misplaced. The world is not fair, in the sense that people that steal don't always get the money they stole taken away from them. Immoral people live lives of wealth and luxury. Good people suffer misfortunes they don't "deserve." Trust me, I've seen it all even just in the context of my family.

BUT... this sphere, this outward material sphere, is not where karma unfolds. Karma unfolds in the subjective sphere. The way the Buddha taught karma, it was about what we do with our minds. Thinking and reacting in a certain way creates a mental "groove" that we get stuck in. The way we think creates our world. Not in some magic, "The Secret" sense. But in the sense that our mind dramatically shapes how we experience the world.

People that live their lives violently, live in a subjective world of violence. The "karma" of violence is not that if you shoot someone, then someone shoots you--though it often happens that way--it's that you live in the mental abode of violence. The abode of violence is a paranoid place, fearful, edgy, aggressive. There's no place to relax and feel at peace. If you ever watched the TV show The Sopranos, the show creators did this tremendously well--showing that no matter how much opulence and luxury Tony Soprano enjoyed, his life was hellish, he was always looking over his shoulder, always having to assert his power.

If you are a thief, whether by stealing in the grossest sense or in the corporate sense of taking more money and resources than you need at the expense of destroying the environment and hoodwinking honest people, you live in a thirsty, fast-paced, hungry world, where you're always obsessed with getting more. You might get to keep everything you steal and never get called to "justice," but you never get to fully enjoy it, because the very mind that accumulates material wealth is incapable of stopping and enjoying it.

And so on... I think this is very important because it gets at the heart of what the Buddha's teaching was all about. Which is that we look to the wrong place for answers and for happiness. We look to the world outside, not to the thinking that makes that world seem a certain way. We believe our thoughts and don't look to the thinker. As long as we keep looking outside ourselves, we stay stuck in the same repetitive cycle of dissatisfaction. The Buddha's revolutionary insight was that we can stop this cycle of frustration and dissatisfaction by placing our attention correctly. This means not automatically believing our thoughts or getting caught up in the content of our minds.

One of my favorite Zen koans is the "fox koan," which basically boils down to a question about karma and reincarnation. The question is, does waking up mean we are freed from karma? The person that answers that waking up means we are no longer affected by karma, who says that we transcend cause and effect when we wake up, spends 500 lives as a fox! The wiser person says we do not transcend cause and effect, but we see cause and effect. At any time, we can see what we are doing and the crazy things we are playing out inside our heads, and stop.

"Good karma" doesn't mean that because we handed a beggar a dollar that the prize patrol shows up on our doorstep and hands us a check for $100. It means that an act of true generosity--as opposed to 'generosity' done in hopes for a reward--creates a lightness and freedom, a joy, in our subjective experience. The more generous and kind things we do, the kinder world we live in, subjectively.

[Taigu]

Re: Karma

"Good karma" doesn't mean that because we handed a beggar a dollar that the prize patrol shows up on our doorstep and hands us a check for $100. It means that an act of true generosity--as opposed to 'generosity' done in hopes for a reward--creates a lightness and freedom, a joy, in our subjective experience. The more generous and kind things we do, the kinder world we live in, subjectively.

Beautifully put Stephanie.

A Boddhisattva fully and utterly embraces his fall. No hope. No heaven to be.Destiny? Just this dust to kiss. He-she sees how selfish, vain and stupid he-she is. Dust. And this dust, totally seen as such, is the true land, the very other shore. A shore he doesn't care about, dream about, aim at...A shore that appears to everything that meets his gaze. She-he sees the world as open. And open again.

A Boddhisattva is the closest thing I know to a clown.

Opening people's eyes with a bit of dust-dream-clumsy like act.

Don't expect glory and bliss.

Dust.

Just dust.

gassho

Taigu

[Kaishin]

Re: Karma

Stephanie, that's probably one of the most lucid and unfettered explanations of karma I've read. This is how I've always thought of karma, but could never explain it this well. I very much agree with your understanding that karma isn't some cosmic justice system, where every good deed is rewarded and vice versa. Rather, you make heaven or hell in your own life with your thoughts and actions.

Cheers,
Matt

[Hans]

Re: Karma

Hello Stephanie,


great post. In this context I am reminded of the Buddha holding a handful of leaves in his hands, representing the teachings he was giving us, as opposed to the uncountable leaves of the forest behind him (which were there but not essential as the marrow of the Dharma he re-discovered).

All he has given us are tools that can be and have to be applied in the fiery furnace that is our lives...the teachings are road maps that must be traveled through within the context of our own personal experience. That is all he taught, and with this, he taught it ALL.

Mind you, that doesn't mean that the old Zen ancients or disciples got "karma" wrong and we enlightened westerners got it right. It just means that the Buddhadharma is so deep and diamond like that it reflects light even when turned to a different angle that we might be more able and willing to look at.

Gassho,

Hans

[Earthling]

Re: Karma

Thank you so much for that, Stephanie!

() josh

[Jundo]

Re: Karma

Ah, Stephanie ...

I hope it okay, as I did not want to see this one writing blow away so fast. So, I made it part of the explanation for newcomers on Karma. (At the end of the long post here). Your words are so crystal clear.

viewtopic.php?f=24&t=1281&p=17953#p17953

Wonderful. Wonderful.

Gassho, J

[Shonin]

Re: Karma

_/_

[Stephanie]

Re: Karma

I'm glad my fingers and brain connected today!

I kind of feel like a dumbass though, because I feel like the people giving me positive feedback understand what I'm writing about better than I do :lol:

Nonetheless... gassho!