Deep Dive into Karma Copyright © 2020 Lion’s Roar Foundation, except where noted. All rights reserved. Lion’s Roar is an independent non-profit whose mission is to communicate Buddhist wisdom and practices in order to benefit people’s lives, and to support the development of Buddhism in the modern world. Projects of Lion’s Roar include Lion’s Roar magazine, Buddhadharma: The Practitioner’s Quarterly, lionsroar.com, and Lion’s Roar Special Editions and Online Learning. The Dalai Lama has said that of all Buddhist concepts, karma is the most difficult to understand. The simplest way to look at it is as cause and effect: Negative actions or mind states like aggres- sion produce suffering for yourself and others, now and in the future. Love, selflessness, and other positive qualities create ben- efit. Thich Nhat Hanh talks about karma as the seeds we plant in our minds that will bear fruit as suffering or happiness. It’s said that if you want to know your past karma, look at the state of your life now. And if you want to know your future karma, look at the state of your mind now. That’s why the Bud- dhist understanding of karma includes freedom—in every moment we can choose the seeds we plant of our future happiness or suf- fering. The twist is that the ultimate benefit comes from produc- ing no karma at all, which is one definition of enlightenment. But until then, the safest choice is to concentrate on creating positive karma. The articles that follow explore the subtle and not-so-subtle meaning of karma and how to work with it in our lives. —Melvin McLeod | editor-in-chief, Lion’s Roar 3 DEEP DIVE INTO KARMA LIONSROAR.COM CONTENTS The Law of Karma Bhikkhu Bodhi, Jan Chozen Bays, and Jeffrey Hopkins Is It All My Karma? Judy Lief Karma: The Choice Is Yours Ajahn Buddhadhasa What Is Karma and Why Should It Matter to You? Toni Bernhard The Right View of Rebirth Ajahn Punnadhammo Forum: Is Karma Fate or Freedom? Rita Gross, Andrew Olendzki, and Larry Ward Introduction by David Loy Karma Is Not Fate Traleg Rinpoche Inquiring Into Karma Andy Karr The Power of Positive Karma Tulku Thondup 4 DEEP DIVE INTO KARMA LIONSROAR.COM The Law of Karma The Buddha taught that because of karma, beings are bound to the ever-turning wheel of rebirth. Only when a person stops believing in the existence of a permanent and real self can he or she become free from karma. Bhikkhu Bodhi, Jan Chozen Bays, and Jeffrey Hopkins discuss what that means. What is karma, according to the Buddhist teachings? Bhikkhu Bodhi: Perhaps we could begin with the description of the Buddha’s enlightenment experience as given in various sutras in the Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha (Pali, Majjhima Nikaya). This gives a very concise statement of the early Buddha’s understanding of karma. The Buddha’s enlightenment unfolded by way of what are called the Three Higher Knowledges. The first of these is the Buddha’s knowledge of his past lives—recollecting his previous lives going back hundreds of thousands of eons. The second is his knowledge of the death and rebirth of beings, which involves 5 DEEP DIVE INTO KARMA LIONSROAR.COM THE LAW OF KARMA | BHIKKHU BODHI, JAN CHOZEN BAYS, AND JEFFREY HOPKINS understanding how beings transmigrate according to their karma. Perhaps I could read a passage describing this from the Bhaya­ bherava Sutta: When my concentrated mind was purified, bright and so on, I directed it to knowledge of the passing away and rebirth of beings. With the divine eye, which is purified and surpasses the human, I saw beings passing away and being reborn, inferior and superior, bare and ugly, fortunate and unfortunate. I understood how beings pass on according to their actions thus: These beings who are ill-conducted in body, speech and mind, revilers of noble ones, wrong in their views, giving effect to wrong view in their actions, with the breakup of the body after death, have reappeared in the plane of misery, in a bad destination, in the lower worlds, even in hell. But these worthy beings who were well conducted in body, speech and mind, not revilers of noble ones, right in their views, giving effect to right view in their actions, on the breakup of the body after death, have been reborn in a good destination, even in the heavenly world. Thus, with the divine eye I saw beings passing away and being reborn and I understood how beings pass on according to their actions. 6 DEEP DIVE INTO KARMA LIONSROAR.COM THE LAW OF KARMA | BHIKKHU BODHI, JAN CHOZEN BAYS, AND JEFFREY HOPKINS Finally, the third knowledge is described as the knowledge of the Four Noble Truths. But preceding that comes the understand- ing of the chain of dependent origination (Pali, patichcha­samup­ pada), or dependent arising. This involves understanding the dynamics of how karma, in conjunction with the basic defilements of ignorance and craving, brings about rebirth. Jan Chozen Bays: As a physician, I teach karma from a scientific point of view, because what I love about karma is that it is ratio- nal. Karma is like the laws of physics. It’s almost mathematically precise, and there is a great relief in that. Because if you under- stand karma, you really understand who and what you are, and you understand the rest of the universe too, because the laws of karma are universally applicable. When I teach about rebirth, I ask people to consider what happens to the physical elements of the body after they die. I ask them, if we buried you in the ground with no preservatives and dug you up in a week, would we recognize you? Yes. If we dug you up in a year, would we recognize you? Maybe. If we dug you up in ten years, would we recognize you? No. So what happened to the elements that made up the body? They all dispersed and became other things. Appreciating this, people begin to understand that on the phys- ical level there is an endless chain of energy that passes through a series of changes. Then if you apply the same principle to our 7 DEEP DIVE INTO KARMA LIONSROAR.COM THE LAW OF KARMA | BHIKKHU BODHI, JAN CHOZEN BAYS, AND JEFFREY HOPKINS mental and emotional energy, you can also ask where it goes. That energy is also not destroyed, though the energy that was “you” will transform. Karma is almost mathematically precise. It’s a wonderfully exact force in our lives—JAN CHOZEN BAYs “ Karma is a wonderfully exact force in our lives. If you die angry, what happens to that energy of anger? Where does it go? When you walk into a room where people have been angry, you can sense it—the energy is palpable. So is that the kind of energy you would like to pass on, to be picked up by other lives? One can also look back at what energies have been passed down to you— perhaps by your family or the people who influenced you—and that helps you understand that energy doesn’t die but rather con- tinues on in some form. I don’t worry too much about questions like, “Am I going to remember that I was Queen Victoria or her servant?” People get caught up in that sort of approach to karma and rebirth, but it’s almost irrelevant. The continuity of the energy is what’s import- ant. What do you want to pass on—suffering or happiness? Bhikkhu Bodhi: Somebody who is a strict materialist might reply to your argument by saying that of course the mental energy is dependent on the physical basis—the body, the nervous system, 8 DEEP DIVE INTO KARMA LIONSROAR.COM THE LAW OF KARMA | BHIKKHU BODHI, JAN CHOZEN BAYS, AND JEFFREY HOPKINS the brain—and so when the body dies whatever mental energy has been generated by that person perishes also. In response to that, I would look at two extreme cases: an extreme case of evil, Adolph Hitler, and on the other hand, somebody like Mother The- resa, who engaged in so much self-sacrificing labor for the good of others. If we take a materialistic viewpoint, then when each of them dies, it is the complete end. Maybe for Hitler there are a few moments of remorse or regret, then it’s just blank, it’s all over. When Mother Theresa is about to die, there might be a few moments of rejoicing for her altruistic work, then everything is over. If one takes the materialistic viewpoint, then, it means that the universe has no underlying principle of moral justice. How- ever, if we are going to recognize some kind of moral justice in the universe, there would have to be some continuity beyond death. That could take the form of an eternal afterlife in one realm or another—eternity in hell, eternity in heaven—but that seems dif- ficult to reconcile with the position that any kind of volitional action generates only a finite mental force. What seems more convincing is that our various activities in this life will produce rebirth in a realm where they will expend their force over a finite period of time, to be followed by a new existence somewhere else. Jeffrey Hopkins: The appeal of karma to me is psychological, based on my own experience of attitudes and actions from ear- lier parts of my life that I have seen play out later.