Buddhist Engineering

When the Buddha gave his shortest description of his awakening, it was a principle of causality:

“When this is, that is. From the arising of this comes the arising of that. When this isn’t, that isn’t. From the cessation of this comes the cessation of that.”

Those are actually two causal principles.

One is causality in the present moment. When A happens, B happens immediately. When A goes away, B goes away immediately. That’s the first principle.

The second principle is causality over time. After A arises, B can arise at any time, right away or after a long, long time. When A passes away, B will eventually pass away—again, quickly or over a long time.

When you’ve got two causal principles interacting like this, things can get very complex. That’s why the Buddha said that karma is one of those issues that if you try to tease out all the complexities, you go crazy.

But the basic principles are all very simple. If you act on skillful intentions, the results will be good. If you act on unskillful intentions, the results will not be good. As for when those results will come, or how strong they’ll be felt, that’s going to depend on a lot of other factors.

But the important thing, as the Buddha described it, is the importance of the mind in this causal sequence. First verse in the Dhammapada: “All phenomena are preceded by the mind, made by the mind.” Then he uses that principle to illustrate karma. If you act with a clear, bright mind, the results will be good. If you act with a clouded, defiled mind, the results will be bad. The good results will follow you like a shadow, which has no weight. The bad results will follow you like a cart you have to pull. It’s heavy and it obliterates your footsteps.

So the causality that the Buddha is interested in is not so much the causality of billiard balls, but causality in the mind, and particularly the causality that produces happiness or pleasure on the one hand, pain or sorrow on the other.

The important point of the double principle of causality is that it leaves the room for freedom of choice. Sometimes the causes that arise in the present moment are caused by things in the past, but sometimes they’re not.

And those causes whose results come in from the past: It’s not that you have one karma bearing fruit right now that’s going to impel you to have to do something in response. The Buddha’s image is of a field. You’ve got lots of seeds in the field. Some of them are all sprouting at the same time. You can hurry up some of them by your active attention. You water them, he says, with your attention.

What you pay attention to in the present moment will depend on the range of things coming in. But there will be a range. Sometimes it’s a narrow range, sometimes it’s broad, but there are some choices available.

One of the purposes of the meditation is to see what opportunities are given by your past karma. If we were to explain the Buddha’s teachings on karma and causality, we’d have to make reference to non-linear systems, which can get very complex. But the important point about these systems is that they sustain themselves, but they also contain the seeds for their own dissolution. Following the principles that build them up can also sometimes take them apart.

We’re here to take things apart, but first we have to build. If we were to compare the Buddha to a scientist, he’d be like an engineer. He talks about how we make houses out of reeds and they get washed away. We make bridges out of reeds and they get washed away. But we can build a raft that takes us across. We can build a path.

The word bhāvanā, which we translate as meditation, really means to bring into being. You have to bring the path into being. It’s something you put together.

The Buddha’s image for the path was like engineering a chariot. Chariots back then were quite elaborate. If you wanted a chariot that rode comfortably over rough roads, the suspension had to be very intricate. People prided themselves on their knowledge of chariots, the way car enthusiasts today pride themselves on their knowledge of cars.

So you’re putting together a path. The important thing to know about the Buddha’s teachings on causality is that they have a pattern but it’s a pattern that can be manipulated. It’s not set in stone. It’s not just gears in a machine. It’s something you can point in the direction you want it to go. So you can take the wood, the raw material coming from your past karma, and you can try to build a house out of it that’ll eventually get washed away. Or you can try to build a chariot that will take you far. You’ve got that choice.

If it weren’t for the pattern, there’d be nothing we could learn. The Buddha actually argued with other teachers about their teachings on causality. And it’s interesting to note that even though he was not the sort of person who’d ordinarily go out and pick fights with people, he would go out to confront people who were teaching views about causality that he thought were detrimental.

He argued with people who, on the one hand, taught determinism, that everything was totally determined by the past, in which case you had no choice in the present moment. On the other hand, he argued with people who said that there was no causal pattern, that everything was totally random. Both teachings, he said, would leave no possibility for there to be a path to the end of suffering.

If you had no choice, you couldn’t choose the path. You’d just have to wait for suffering to end on its own—if it would. You’d have no way of knowing whether it would.

As for randomness, there’d be nothing you could learn today that’d teach you about what to do tomorrow. You couldn’t develop skills.

The Buddha approached the path as a skill. As I said, it’s an engineering skill. You’re putting together a state of right concentration right now, or at least you’re trying to. You start with right effort. If any unskillful qualities come up in the mind, you cultivate the desire for them to go away, and then you do your best to actually make them go away. And you try to make sure they don’t come back.

As for skillful qualities, you try to give rise to them. Again, the word for giving rise is bhāvanā. You build them; you bring them into being. Once they’re there, you try to maintain them.

So the raw materials you have here are mindfulness, alertness, and ardency. These are qualities of the mind you can bring to the task. And then you’ve got the objects to which you can bring them: the body in and of itself, feelings, mind, mental qualities in and of themselves.

For the time being, the Buddha said, “Start with the breath,” because when you focus your mind on the breath, you’ve got all four of those frames of reference in one spot.

The breath, of course, is an aspect of the body.

When you’re breathing comfortably, there’s a feeling.

When you’re paying attention to the breath, there’s a mind state.

When you try to be observant of these states and work with them, you’re dealing with mental qualities—either with hindrances or with factors for awakening. Those are all the raw materials. You want to bring some skill to this task. Try to put things together in a skillful way.

And then, as he said, commit and then reflect. Have you put together a good chariot? Is it something you can ride in comfortably? Can it take you anyplace? If not, try to make adjustments.

When you’re focusing the mind like this, don’t throw away whatever mindfulness or concentration you have. Some people say, “This concentration is weak, so I’ll throw it away to find something better and stronger.” But where is concentration going to get strong unless you take the weak concentration you’ve already got and work with it, try to extend it? If you’re able to stay with the breath for three breaths, the next time around get to five breaths. The next time around, ten. Take the weak mindfulness you have, the weak concentration you have, and maintain them, develop them. That’s how these things grow.

This is a more organic image, which may not fit in with engineering, but you get the idea. You’re taking a causal principle and you’re using it. You’ve learning the pattern. You’re trying to point the pattern in the direction you want it to go, so that you finally do get a sense of well-being with the breath.

You learn how to breathe in a way that feels good, not just at your nose but throughout the whole body. Then you try to maintain that. As you maintain it, it grows stronger.

So we’re taking the principles of causality and we’re doing something with them. That’s why we’re like engineers. We don’t just sit and talk about theory, or debate whether we have freedom of choice. We assume that we do have the freedom of choice to take a causal pattern and direct it where we want it to go.

The other image of engineers that the Buddha used in his time were the people who built canals. They’d direct the water to irrigate fields. So direct your mind in this direction, toward a healthy field with healthy karma seeds and a sense of well-being while you’re here.

Learn how to use the principles of causality for the aims that you have: a happiness that doesn’t let you down; a sense of well-being that goes deep inside.

One more important principle about causality that the Buddha taught is that what you experience right now is a result of past actions together with present actions. You take the potentials, say, for form, feeling, perceptions, thought fabrications, and consciousness, and you turn them into the actual experience of these things, using your present intentions. This, too, is a type of fabrication, and we’re doing it all the time.

We want to get more sensitive to exactly how we’re doing that. That’s where the emphasis gets more and more focused in the direction of, “What are you doing to put together this chariot? What are you doing to put together this path? Can you do it in more subtle ways? Develop your skills. What happens if you get the mind to a point where everything is so balanced that you don’t have any more input in the present moment? What happens then?” That’s why there’s a possibility for the deathless—because it is possible to stop doing these things in the present moment.

You can’t just stop them by saying, “Well, I’m going to stop and not do anything,” because that intention is a form of doing. You have to learn how to find the right point of balance.

That sense of balance can come only if you’ve gotten really good at constructing good things in the present moment. You’re more sensitive to what you’re doing, and then more sensitive, and then more sensitive, until the mind reaches a point of equilibrium where it doesn’t want to go, it doesn’t want to stay.

If everything comes together just right at that point, then there’s an opening, right here in the present moment—but it takes you out of the present moment.

That’s when you realize that what the Buddha had to say about causality is so important. If everything were a result of past actions, there’d be no opening in the present moment. If everything were random, there’d be nothing you could do to induce that opening in the present moment.

But if you’re sensitive to the fact that things are coming in from the past but you’re also doing things in the present moment, then you get more sensitive to what you’re doing in the present moment. As you get more and more skilled in creating present moments, that’s what makes awakening possible.

So try to understand that we do have freedom of choice in the present moment. If we didn’t have that freedom, as the Buddha said, there would be no path to the end of suffering. But there is a pattern we have to learn. You can’t just will any old freedom you want. You have to find freedom through learning to master the pattern. This combination of a pattern that’s there but can be manipulated, is what allows for freedom.

If you know nothing else about causality, then know that much, and then act on it. Don’t be a theoretical physicist. Be an engineer. And try to be a really good one. That’s how you get free.