The Buddha’s Metaphysics

It’s well known that the Buddha would often refuse to answer metaphysical questions, the kinds of questions that address issues like, “What is the underlying structure of reality?” “How does it work?” There was a standard list in his time of the metaphysical questions that thinkers would like to debate: whether the world is finite or infinite; eternal or not eternal; whether the life force was separate from the body or identical with the body; whether an awakened person, after death, existed, didn’t exist, both, or neither.

There are other questions of a metaphysical nature that the Buddha also refused to address: whether the world was a oneness or plurality; whether there was a self or no self.

From this, a lot of people have come to the conclusion that the Buddha gave no importance to metaphysical issues at all. The most extreme example of this interpretation is the view that the Buddha had no ideas about the nature of reality. He was agnostic. He’d found what worked for him in bringing his mind to peace, he offered the path as a suggestion, but basically would recommend that everybody find his or her own path, because reality is ultimately unknowable.

But that’s not the case at all.

There was one big metaphysical issue that the Buddha addressed in a lot of detail and to which he gave a lot of importance. That was the question of human action: the causal laws that underlay human action, the question of whether good and evil were built into the nature of reality or were mere social conventions. The Buddha had a lot to say on these issues, and what he said was very relevant to what we’re doing right now.

You might say the Buddha’s metaphysics is a metaphysics you can use. It’s very important because the big issue he addressed was the question of suffering and how to put an end to suffering. Well, suffering is something you do. The act of putting an end to it is also something you do. So the Buddha had to address the question of action, because questions about action address such issues as, “Is everything you do predetermined? Is the world totally chaotic, random, so that you can’t learn anything from today that could apply to tomorrow?” These are issues he had to address.

The Buddha gave so much importance to them that he would often actually seek out people who were teaching wrong views that would deny the power of action, even though they claimed to assert the power of action, and he’d question them, “Do you actually teach this? Do you teach that everything you experience now is determined by past actions? Do you teach that everything you experience right now is determined by the actions of a creator god? Is everything totally chaotic with no pattern at all?” If the other people said, “Yes,” then he’d point out that if you teach that kind of thing, then people would have no choice as to what to do in the present moment. There would be no holy life, no idea of what should and should not be done. That’s strong criticism coming from the Buddha.

You can see the importance of karma in many places in the Canon. In the Buddha’s most basic description of his awakening experience, he set out a causal principle. His description of mundane right view is all about the power of karma. There are good and bad actions, and they do have results. This principle is not just a social convention. It’s built into the nature of things. Mundane right view also teaches that there is a world after this one. That’s the Buddha’s way of saying there is rebirth, the implication being that the results of actions you’re experiencing now may have come from actions done way in the past, and that what you’re doing right now may have implications that go far into the future.

As for the underlying causal principle, it’s basically two principles that intersect: “When this is, that is. When this isn’t, that isn’t.” That’s one principle. Then, “From the arising of this comes the arising of that. From the cessation of this comes the cessation of that.” In the first case, what you have is immediate results coming from your actions. You stick your finger in the fire, it hurts right now. You don’t have to wait for a future lifetime. Pull your finger out of the fire, it stops burning. There may be some remaining pain, but that applies under the second principle: You did something that will have some consequences that will last for a while—or may not even appear for a while—but eventually those consequences will end because the cause itself ended.

Now, when you put these two principles together, the Buddha adds that you do have some choice in what you do in the present moment. In other words, even though there are causal influences extending over time, not everything is determined by what was done in the past. The things you choose to do right now that would have influence right now or on into the future allow you to exercise a certain amount of freedom. So you want to take advantage of that freedom.

This is where these principles become relevant to what you’re doing right now.

On the one hand, you can choose to be generous, and the immediate result of generosity is a sense of well-being, a sense of your own wealth, of being in a position where you have enough to share. But the influences also ripple out into the future. As the Buddha said, when you’re generous, one of the results is that you will have solid wealth, and that will give you more opportunities to be generous. So a small act of generosity now can build up momentum over time, as you become more and more generous, gaining as a result more and more things to share. That is a possibility.

There’s also the possibility of curbing your bad habits. Just because you’ve had a bad habit for a long time, or there’s been a destructive emotion in your life for a long time, doesn’t mean that it has to keep on lasting. And it doesn’t mean you have to give into it right now. You can learn to step back from it. Look at how you breathe around it. Look at how you talk to yourself around it. Look at the perceptions and feelings you have around it. You can change those.

Now, these choices may not immediately destroy the habit, but they can chip away, chip away. You have that element of freedom. And over time, if you keep at it, you find you can free yourself from whatever it was. You see the allure — why the mind went for it — and you can also see the drawbacks. You get to the point where the drawbacks, in your eyes, so outweigh the allure that the allure no longer has any appeal. Then you can escape through dispassion.

This also means is that if you go back to try to find where the bad habit began, you might be able to trace it to an event earlier on in your life, but was that really the beginning? Where did that event come from? It could have come from karma in a previous lifetime or many previous lifetimes way back, which is one of the reasons why the Buddha encouraged you to look at what’s maintaining this habit now, as opposed to trying to dig up where it came from. As he said, if you try to trace back to the point in time when ignorance began, you just can’t find it. Even he couldn’t find it. But you can see what’s sustaining your ignorance right now.

As he said, it’s one of the five hindrances, or a combination of the five: sensual desire, ill will, sloth and torpor, restlessness and anxiety, or doubt. Think about that. These are the things that cause us to suffer. They’re obstacles to our concentration, but they also maintain the ignorance that keeps us suffering. Things you’re doing right now. Things you don’t have to be doing right now.

As the Buddha also noted, what we’re experiencing right now is a combination of the results of past actions, our present actions, and the results of our present actions. Of those three, our present actions are the ones that underlie everything else. We wouldn’t experience the results of past actions without current actions.

This is something the Buddha discovered as a causal principle that’s realizable only in the act of awakening. When his present moment actions ended, his experience of past karma ended at that moment as well. He went beyond the six senses to something that lay outside. This fact gives even more importance to what you’re doing right now.

In dependent co-arising, the intentions of the present moment come prior to your experience of the six senses, and the experience of the six senses count as the results of past karma. So what you’re doing right now will shape how you experience what’s coming in from the past, which means that if you become skillful in what you’re doing right now, you can learn how not to suffer even when bad things are coming from the past.

These are all good things to know—that you have these potentials, you have these possibilities—which is why the Buddha gave so much importance to them. Issues of whether you have a self or not, or whether you have a permanent self or no permanent self: Those are not really the causes of suffering. Issues of whether the world is eternal or not, that’s not a cause for suffering, which is why the Buddha put issues of that sort aside. He focused on the metaphysical issues that you can actually put into use and that can actually be known through the meditation.

It’s hard to imagine what kind of experience you have in meditation that would let you know whether things are empty or not, whether you have a permanent self or no permanent self, or no self at all, or how you would know about the nature of the world out there. But you can learn from your meditation that when you do x, you get y as a result. When you do y, you get z as a result. Those things you can see as you sit here right now.

Now, the Buddha advises you to have some confidence in the fact that the lessons you learn now can be applicable to what you’re going to be doing tomorrow. But because of the nature of past karma, there may be some variations in the raw material you have at your disposal tomorrow, which is why causality is so complex and we have to follow the Buddha’s guidance—that when he teaches us right view it *is *right view even though it’s not right knowledge yet. But when you put it into practice, have some confidence that what the Buddha learned about action applies to you, too, as it applies to everybody. See how far that can take you. Have a sense of the power that puts in your hands, that you can do good, and it really is objectively good. You can apply the teachings that worked 2,500 years ago and they’ll work for you now.

You’ve got this power. It is possible to abuse it. You can make lots of bad choices. But why would you want to? Each small good choice has value. Each small bad choice has power, too. So keep watch over your mind. Nurture the good things inside. Allow the bad things to starve. The Buddha gives you a metaphysics that’s useful, so learn how to use it well.