Complexities of Karma

Years back, I was asked to give a talk on karma to a group of people who had been doing vipassana for many years. I talked about how understanding karma is an important part of understanding how and why you’re meditating, because when you meditate you’re trying to develop a skill, and the way the Buddha taught karma—the principle behind karma—is that what you experience in the present moment is a combination of two things: results of past actions, and then current actions and their results. After all, not everything waits until the next lifetime to show its results. You stick your finger in a fire and you don’t have to wait until the next lifetime for it to hurt. It hurts right away.

So we’ve got this complex interaction: past karma plus present karma. That’s why we meditate, focusing our attention on the present moment, because what we do in the present moment is going to make a big difference. Not everything is determined by the past.

Sometimes we hear a simplistic idea of karma, that what you do in the past shapes the present moment, what you do in the present moment will shape the future. You do good, you get good results. You do bad, you get bad results. Those are the basic principles and they sound very simple. But there’s more to karma, and in the actual working out, karma can be very complex.

I explained this to the meditators there, and they gave me perplexed looks. I found out later that they had been taught that meditation meant not doing anything at all in the present moment: just being with whatever comes up, accepting it, and letting it go. Well, that is kind of a doing, but it limits you in terms of the skills you can develop right now.

As the Buddha said, there are some things we want to comprehend, other things we want to abandon, other things we want to develop. And his reason for the focusing on the present moment came from his seeing how complex karma can be.

You may remember that on the second watch of the night of his awakening, he saw beings passing away and re-arising in line with their karma. You read that, and the first impression seems to be that if you do good in this lifetime, you’re going to get good results in the next lifetime: go to a good place; be happy. If you do bad in this lifetime, you’re going to go to a bad place.

But the Buddha saw that karma was a lot more complex than that, because you could do good in this lifetime and still go to a bad place next time around. In cases like that, he said, it’s either because you had some past bad karma that was stronger, or because you changed your habits before you died and started doing bad things. Or, at the moment of death, you developed wrong view, deciding that all that good you had done wasn’t worth it. Sometimes people are in a lot of pain when they’re approaching death and they feel, “Hey, I’ve done all this good in my lifetime and it hasn’t done me any good in preventing this disease.” They change their attitude, develop wrong view, and that wrong view can pull them down. Now, that doesn’t totally erase the good that they’ve done in the past. It simply delays it. But the delay can sometimes be very long.

And vice versa: Someone can do some bad things in this lifetime and still go to a good place next time around—either because they’ve done good beforehand or done good afterwards, or because they’ve developed right view at the moment of death.

Also, the Buddha saw that the good you do and the not good you do all comes down to your intentions: why you act.

So the mind is really important. It determines the quality of the action. But it can also erase some good things you’ve done in the past simply by adopting wrong view. It can delay the results of your good actions.

So as you look at your life, think about what you’re going to do to find happiness in this lifetime and prepare for the possibility that there will be in a next lifetime shaped by your actions. You can’t just be generous or observe the precepts. You’ve got to train the mind, because if the mind changes on you—and as the Buddha said, there’s nothing in the world so quick to change direction as the mind—then all that goodness can be blocked at the moment you die. You don’t want that.

This is why we develop mindfulness, so that we can remember what’s good, what’s right and what’s wrong, and hold that in mind and not let our emotions or our moods push that knowledge away. Remember, mindfulness means keeping something in mind. And you want to keep in mind the fact that your intentions are important, your actions will shape your life. So you have to be very careful about what you do and say and think. You’ve got to hold on to that right view.

When the Buddha describes mindfulness as a governing principle, it’s not just watching things arising and passing away. It’s remembering what’s right and what’s wrong, and then making sure to give rise to what’s right and to abandon what’s wrong. You want that mindfulness to be really strong, which is why you want to develop it to the point of concentration, where you can stay focused on one thing in spite of the disturbances around you.

Like right here, as we’re sitting: It’s a relatively quiet place. There’s a little bit of noise in the background, and there may be pains here and there in your body. But you have to ask yourself, “Where can I focus that will get the best results now and on into the long term?” You focus on the breath, which means that you have to pay no attention to the other things. They’re there. It’s not the case that your ears grow deaf or your body gets numb when you get concentrated. It’s simply that you don’t lift your attention out and focus it outside. You focus it right here, in spite of everything else that’s going on.

Think about it: When you’re dying, there’s going to be a lot more going on. If you’re in a hospital, there’ll be all the beeps and noises of the hospital, all the people coming and going up and down the corridor. And all that on top of the fact that your mind realizes it can’t stay in this body anymore. It’s got to go. So you want to maintain your focus, maintain your determination, that you want to go to a good place where you can continue practicing. You have to believe that the work you do right now as you’re dying in trying to keep the mind under control is really worthwhile.

Some people think that as you approach death you should just get yourself shot up with morphine or other painkillers, and relax as best you can because there’s nothing you can do. Well, there’s actually plenty you can do to maintain your right view, and to keep your focus solid and strong, as all these other distractions threaten to pull you in their direction.

Of course, the opportunities that will open themselves to you at that point will depend not only on your having meditated, but also on the times you’ve been generous, the times you’ve been virtuous. Which is why the Buddha recommended a complete course of goodness: not just meditation, but also generosity and virtue. That way, your mind is under control, and you have good opportunities waiting to open up for you.

So the Buddha’s policy for living a good life—and that includes managing a good death—comes down to some very basic things: Be generous, be virtuous, develop thoughts of goodwill in your mind, and then try to develop as much concentration and mindfulness as you can, ultimately leading to discernment—a discernment that sees when the mind moves in certain ways, it creates suffering, and you don’t have to move that way anymore. When it moves in other ways, it creates the path to the end of suffering. Those movements you want to encourage.

As for the narrative that you’re leaving this life, that can get you really depressed, really upset. So just remind yourself that all you have to do is maintain the state of your mind at that point. Your body is under the responsibility and care of the doctor, if you’re dying in a hospital. If you’re dying in an accident or someplace away from a hospital, you say, “The rest of the world can take care of the body. I’ve laid claim to it long enough. Now’s the time to move on”—realizing that your most important possession at that point is the state of your mind.

We read so much in Buddhist teachings about how the important place to focus is the present moment. We’re sometimes told that it’s because it’s the only place there is. Sometimes we’re told that it’s because it’s a wonderful place to be. It’s not always wonderful. And you do have to prepare for the future. But where do you prepare for the future? You prepare right here, right now, because the qualities that come up in the mind right now are going to make a difference. As in the Buddha’s insight: seeing that one moment of a mind state at the end of your life can have a huge effect on where you go.

Just because it’s just one moment doesn’t mean that it’s weak. In fact, with every moment, we’re making decisions to shape our experience. The better we learn how to do it well right here, right now, the more sensitive we are to how we do it right here, right now, then the greater the likelihood that we’ll be able to do it well then.

So make sure your goodness is complete. That way, good opportunities will be open to you, and you’ll have the presence of mind to choose them well.