Geshe la's teaching today began with a brief disquisition on a few of the fundamental points of meditation. If you've taken any meditation classes, or read any meditation books, it will seem as if that for every teacher of meditation, there is a different school of thought about how we ought to meditate. Geshe's school of thought on this subject is the Gelugpa's school of thought: the meditative session is greatly enhanced by a fundamental familiarity with the structure of the mind.
Today, Geshe la mentioned "laxity" and "excitement," two of the mind's qualities that disturb its equanimity and can derail a meditation session very quickly. Many Americans have the mistaken impression that when we meditate, our thoughts are shut off and pressed down, a technique that if successful can lead to laxity and, as Geshe la said today, to snoring. The point is that thoughts are a natural part of the mind's functioning, and while these thoughts cannot be avoided, they can be allowed to arise and evaporate, so much so, that as meditators we become intimately familiar with their tendency simply to evaporate if we will only let them do so. That's the skill that needs cultivating: allowing the arising thought to evaporate. If we don't do that, if bottle them up, cut them off, in search of a kind of mental blankness, we will cultivate laxity.
However, allowing thoughts to evaporate, to float away, is at times not as easy as it sounds. If we become hyper-alert, constantly scanning the mental horizon for a thought, leaping on it when it arises, following it as it fades away, and then quickly searching out others, we will also create the quality of excitement, which disturbs the mind's natural equanimity as surely as does laxity.
Occasionally, it is helpful to remind ourselves of the true nature of thought: insubstantial, fleeting, by its very nature impermanent . . . in short, thoughts will perish if they are allowed to do so. No need to demolish them ourselves. No need to destroy them ourselves--that would lead to excitement. And no need to bottle them up, suppress them--that would lead to laxity.
Geshe la's main teaching today centered on the section entitled "Action" (p. 11). He introduced us to the fundamental workings of karma, a subject that Americans are typically fascinated by, and one that generated a good deal of discussion. Karma is a kind of science, and it must be approached logically and in a linear fashion: begin at the beginning.
Geshe la spoke of a "root action," or one that insures the next rebirth. A root action involves an action that cannot be countered or will not come to fruition in the current life, and requires at least another life for it to be fully resolved. Rebirth as a human--or god or demi-god--involves a virtuous action of some sort, and traditionally all human lives are said to have arisen from ethical behavior in a previous life.
Geshe la dissected karma into its four component parts, rather like the four parts of a mathematical
formula: Basis, Intent, Deed, and Completion. This four-part sequence must exist in all its elements for the karma fully to be accumulated. Geshe la spoke of killing: there must be someone to kill, you must formulate and nourish the intent to kill that person, you must commit the act, and the person must die as a result of your action. If you kill the wrong person, if your intent is wavering, and of course if the person survives, the karma collected is lighter.
The problem is that when we hear the word "karma," we often supply the adjective "negative." John Lennon, of course, told us famously that "instant karma's gonna get you," and it's not unusual for one of my friends, pondering a well-deserved payback, to say, "Yep, karma's a bitch." But karma is far more than retribution. Karma is simply a system of cause and effect operating in a universe that, so far as the physicists know, is founded on cause and effect. We are often told that we are accumulating karma at an extraordinarily rapid rate, milli-second by milli-second. This means simply that every action we undertake, from loading a gun to breathing in a molecule of carbon, from meditating on compassion to digesting a cookie, gives rise to a result, which in turn becomes a cause for another rising result. Plainly, this chain of events is always with us, continually operating, ceaselessly making us who we are.
At first blush, it seems mechanistic. Pre-determined in an oppressive way. But a closer examination reveals something quite different. By studying and meditating on the workings of karma, we first become convinced that karma is an accurate description of the fumandental operation of the world, both the world around us and the world that we cultivate within us. Once we feel confident in the inevitability of the karmic sequence, we then begin to notice which actions, which thoughts, which perceptions generate which results, which conclusions, which observations. And we begin to notice, through regular meditation on the subject, that this cause-and-effect sequence exists at the subtlest levels. We then understand that we can interject ourselves into the firing sequence, if you will, and begin to generate the results that we desire. We begin to realize that we do not have to accept as inevitable, for example, the pain that arises from rejection; the difficulty that arises from illness; the fear that accompanies the prospect of our dying. We begin to see that this so-called pain, difficulty, and fear are habitual reactions and that, because they are simply habitual and not hard-wired, they can be transformed into positive, knowledgeable responses. All we need do is become aware of the sequence, and then disrupt it, substituting an insight or idea that generates the wished-for effect instead of the habitual one. This Gandhi called the "art of thinking."
Much of the discussion centered on judging various actions and attempting to calculate the nature of the karma accumulated. Once we understand the fundamentals of karma, we often then start to build an almost mathematical table of equivalency. Is there a difference in the karma accumulated in eating a chicken that a processing plant has killed and one that you have killed? Isn't it better to kill one yak, which feeds a village, than 12 shrimp, which feeds one person? And how can the Buddha eat chicken and not accumulate karma? What happens when I inadvertently step on a bug?
The answer to all of these questions involves our consideration of motivation. It is impossible to judge the karmic value of an action without understanding its motivation. In Buddhist terms, if we witness one person killing another one, we can't be certain of the karmic consequences of that action unless we understand fully the motivations that lie behind it. And as we contemplate the killing of a chicken by a Tyson worker, and wonder, as we eat it, who gets which karmic consequence, we might remind ourselves that we are missing extraordinary and multiple opportunities to generate positive results that will benefit not only ourselves but those around us: blessings on the food; thankfulness directed toward those who have built the table around which we sit, the chairs, the table cloth, the plates, the silverware; generosity in giving those who sit at our table the food from our cupboards; gratitude at having the clarity of mind to understand the clear relationship between the Tyson worker and the meal we are currently taking to maintain our health so that we can bring benefit to the larger community; compassion in realizing that 16000 children will die on this day--one every five seconds--because they can't get what we have in front of us; and resolve in understanding that our fortunes must be brought directly to impact those whose fortunes are less richly endowed than ours . . . all of these things represent continual opportunities to generate a forceful, clear mindstream that gives rise to positive effects and thereby realizes its potential, gradually making progress in the grand evolution of consciousness that will remove the ignorance that currently skews our perception.
In short, it's not so much whether you eat a chicken or you don't eat a chicken. It's how thoroughly you've transformed your motivation, your reason, for eating the chicken. Karma, ultimately, does not rely on a mathematical equivalency between the action and the karmic value of the action; it relies on the specific quality of mind that generates the action.
A question was asked concerning the Buddha's potential for accumulating negative karma. The accumulation of negative karma arises from our ignorance, from undertaking various actions without understanding the extent of their influence and the nature of our attachment to those actions. The Buddha, then, because he fully understood the motivations that lay behind his actions, and because his motivations arose from a complete lack of attachment, would not accumulate the negative karma which would arises from an incomplete understanding of his actions, whether it be eating a chicken or delivering a teaching. Again, this speaks directly to our motivation.
Remember, nirvana, or enlightenment, is traditionally defined in this way: "Nirvana is neither a place nor a mental state. It is a fact about us. A nirvana is the absence of afflictions in someone whose cultivation of wisdom has resulted in the destruction of ignorance, desire, hatred, etc. That mere absence is nirvana" (Cozort, Preston 77). This mere absence of affliction, then, does not arise by blindly following a code of conduct. It is a "fact about us," and one that has profound implications for our actions, but it is not one that dictates our actions. The worth and value of our actions--and the karmic imprint they leave--are determined by the motivations that give rise to our actions.
Sidney Burris, Tibetan Cultural Institute of Arkansas
