Geshe la's Teachings: Sunday, 20 & 27 April, 2008
Geshe la's two teachings in the latter half of April, covering pp. 23-35 in The Meaning of Life, dealt with karma, plain and simple: the creation of it, the accummulation of it, and the dispersal of it. In all of the Buddha's teachings, karma is, in some ways, the central teaching since all other topics are accessible through it: the nature of suffering, the need for compassion, the purpose of meditation, emptiness, rebirth, dependent arising, conventional and ultimate reality, transformation, even tantric studies . . . all of these central subjects are ultimately accessible through teachings on karma.
Initially, the most difficult thing to understand when we confront the The Wheel of Life and the twelve links of dependent origination that constitute it concern the the various ways in which various cycles interact in a single lifetime. Jeffrey Hopkins, in the Introduction, puts the matter succinctly:
When we see that, basically, one action led to this lifetime and that during this lifetime we engage in a great many actions based on ignorance, we realize that we are establishing potencies for a great number of lifetimes. If we want to end this process, the weak point is attachment, since even if we have billions of potencies to take billions of rebirths, if those potencies remain unnourished and unactivated, we will not take rebirth (24).
In other words, a seed that receives no water will not germinate.
The problem is that we are constantly, second by second, watering these seeds and giving birth to karmic potencies that drive us back into samsaric existence. We do this out of ignorance, and from ignorance, as we know, desire and hatred arise: so these three delusions, until they are dissolved, will keep us tied to the Wheel of Life.
The main problem then for all Buddhists involves overcoming ignorance because when ignorance is conquered, so too are desire and hatred. But how do we do that? How do we overcome a force so formidable as human ignorance? It's a tall order, but one of the attractive aspects of Buddhist thought is that it recognizes the daunting formidability of the problem and so provides us with many techniques for conquering it. Maybe one of them, it's hoped, will work; maybe one of them will light the fuse that ultimately explodes our massive ignorance into pieces small enough to make them manageable, discrete enough to identify them and begin to correct them.
Understanding karma is simply one of the ways available to us that might ultimately lead us to understand the debilitating effect and the extensive reach of our ignorance. It's not vitally necessary, in my opinion, to know specifically which actions will come to fruition in a day, or a month, or year, or a lifetime, or many lifetimes. If your meditations on karma naturally give rise to such knowledge, then that is one thing; but to try to memorize a Table of Periodic Actions, so to speak, is counter-productive, a way of substituting a sanitized conceptual structure for the real world experience of a very simple idea: all of our activities, both mental and physical, have inescapable consequences. Knowing that, we see that our task is a simple, but difficult one. And it is a task that has three parts: 1) become aware, gradually, of each and every one of these consequences; 2) develop the critical capacity to recognize the difference between positive and negative consequences; 3) and activate the wisdom to generate the former while discouraging the latter.
It sounds simple enough, but there are hidden difficulties.
For example, it is one thing to entertain intellectually the idea that a single thought of hatred will bind you to another lifetime in the future after certain karmic potencies have been actualized in connection with that single thought of anger. But does that idea stop your capacity for hatred? While you must answer that question for yourself, for me, I can say that this idea doesn't have much of an effect on my infinite reserves for destructive emotions. However, if I begin with the idea that all of my actions have specific consequences, and test that idea in meditation, observing the mind's fundamental motions, the way one of its ideas leads inexerably to another, then gradually I am led to accept the credibility of the idea that a single thought of hatred does indeed have specific consequences that I can identify and ultimately transform into a state of mind that is more positive and leads more directly to an authentic happiness.
So I can road-test this simple idea in meditation, see that it is a true and workable idea, at least in its most fundamental application, and proceed from there, knowing now both intellectually and intuitively, that a single thought of hatred does indeed have identifiable consequences that do not contribute to my happiness. So, having performed this meditation, I am slightly less likely in the future to indulge similar thoughts of hatred because I know they will ultimately make me unhappy.
It doesn't require a great deal of karmic theory to perform this experiment, but after you've done this experiment for a while a great deal of karmic theory begins to make more sense.
Remember, the laws of karma, no matter how complex they become, are simply descriptive of the reality that we are trying to understand. The laws will not make much sense, they will not have an impact on our behavior, until we experience that reality for ourselves. And most of us experience that reality gradually, from its most fundamental level, extending gradually to its most complex level.
Therefore many of the complex ideas about karma that we are currently discussing are simply that . . . ideas that we have yet to experience.
Even if we understand them intellectually, it is not until we experience these ideas, until we see them in action, that they will affect our behavior, that they will be transformed from intellectual knowledge into an intuitive energy that arises from understanding, at every level, that all of our actions have inescapable consequences.
So we begin at the beginning, with the simple idea that our actions have consequences, and we read and discuss the more complex ideas that we have yet to experience for ourselves. But these more complex ideas must be taken as a road map for a journey that we are just undertaking. Maybe we will see all the sights that are listed on the map, but maybe we will not.
But we can all be certain of our beginning, the starting point for our journey: All of our actions have unavoidable consequences. We begin with that, honestly, simply, and watch our journey unfold. When we have questions about where we are going, The Meaning of Life will have invaluable information and clear directions.
But there's no real point in worrying about a left turn in North Dakota when we're still trying to get out of Arkansas.
Sidney Burris, Tibetan Cultural Institute of Arkansas
