Karma as Context

On the first night of the retreat, we noted that the topic of karma tends to be unpopular in modern Buddhist circles, largely because it seems to be teaching fatalism and determinism: Your old bad karma is going to get you, and there’s nothing you can do about it. As a result, people often say that karma is either irrelevant to the quest for the end of suffering or that it was a mistake: a teaching that’s inconsistent with the rest of the Dhamma that someone got added to the Dhamma from beliefs in ancient Indian culture.

For the past few days, we’ve tried to show how wrong these attitudes are.

To begin with, while it may be true that other Indian religions have taught a fatalistic view of karma, the Buddha’s teachings on karma are not fatalistic at all. We’ve shown that he taught that actions tend to give certain results, immediately or over time, based on the quality of the intention that motivates them, but that the word “tends” there is important. Past actions simply provide the raw material from which your choices in the present moment actually shape your present experience. If your present-moment choices are skillful, then you don’t have to suffer, even when past bad actions yield their results.

We’ve illustrated this principle with several images: From the Canon, the image of the field full of seeds, some of which are ready to sprout, and where you can choose which seeds to water with your attention. Another image from the Canon is the lump of salt: If you put it in a cup of water, you can’t drink the water because it’s too salty. But if you put it in clean, wide river, the water is still fit to drink. Another image, not from the Canon, is of a wise cook who knows how to make good food even out of unpromising ingredients.

The fact that karma follows a pattern that allows you to exercise your freedom of choice within the pattern is what makes it possible to learn the skills needed to shape the present moment well: Without a pattern, nothing your learned today would give you any good guidance tomorrow. Without freedom of choice, you wouldn’t be able to direct the pattern in the direction you want: the end of suffering.

The practice of the Buddha’s teachings in terms of generosity, virtue, and meditation offers trainings in precisely those skills. In particular, in meditation, you learn to use the three types of fabrication—bodily, verbal, and mental—along with acts of intention and paying attention to the right questions, as your body of skills to shape your experience of the present moment—and the future—in the best way possible. In fact, it’s possible to see all the Buddha’s teachings as instructions in how to master these five mental qualities: what to aim at, how to talk to yourself, what questions to ask, what perceptions and feelings to focus on, even how to breathe.

The fact that you can master these skills shows that the teaching on karma is not fatalistic.

And because these skills are actions, it’s obvious that the teaching on karma is not irrelevant to the rest of the Dhamma. Because the Buddha’s noble eightfold path is a path of action leading to a result — the end of suffering — the nature of action and of cause and effect is the one philosophical issue that the Buddha had to address directly, to show how a fabricated path could lead to an unfabricated goal.

As for the issue of whether karma is inconsistent with the rest of the teaching, we noted on the first night that people often like to ask, “If there’s no self, who does the action and who is there to receive the result?” We also noted that this question has the context backward, starting with the assumption that not-self means no self, and that no self forms the context, whereas karma has to fit into that context — and it doesn’t fit. The correct question, we noted, reverses the context: The teaching on karma — as instructions for how to use the freedom of choice allowed by the pattern of cause and effect to the best effect – is the context. “Self” and “not-self” are perceptions, and as perceptions they’re forms of fabrication — mental fabrications — so they have to fit into the context of karma. So then the questions become, “Which kinds of perceptions of self and not-self are useful? When are they useful? And why?”

By now you should understand why this is the most profitable way to approach this issue.

The noble eightfold path is, as we noted, a path of karma: the karma to put an end to karma. It’s based on the intention to develop dispassion for the craving that causes suffering.

We learn about this intention from one of the factors of the path — right view — which teaches the four noble truths and the duties or actions appropriate to each truth. Because right view is part of the path, it is also a type of action — fabrications and perceptions aimed at the end of suffering.

To end suffering, you have to develop the path that enables you to develop dispassion for the cravings that cause you to cling to the aggregates in your search for happiness. To follow the path, you need to perceive yourself as capable and responsible, and that you’ll benefit from following the path. That type of perception of self is skillful. You need these perceptions of self especially to develop the central skill of the path: right mindfulness leading to right concentration. And to develop these skills, you have to cling to the path.

The aggregates that you cling to have their pleasant side — if they didn’t, we wouldn’t cling to them — and in fact, the practice of concentration is composed of aggregates. So for the time being, you focus on the pleasant side of the aggregates that keep you in concentration, but you focus on the unpleasant side of aggregates that would pull you out of concentration. So you have to be selective in how you apply perceptions of self and not-self, because these perceptions are based on value judgments as to what’s worth clinging to and when. In terms of the raft analogy, as you’re crossing the river, you have to be careful to cling to the raft and not to the flotsam and jetsam that flow past you on the river.

As you approach the far shore, you have to let go of the raft. That’s when you fabricate perceptions of not-self that apply to everything you experience, for the sake of developing dispassion for every type of aggregate, even the aggregates of the path, and even any clinging you might feel on first encountering the deathless.

That, by the way, is the meaning and purpose of the phrase, “All phenomena” — fabricated or unfabricated — “are not-self.” Liberating dispassion has to be all-around.

Now, that phrase “All phenomena are not-self,” is a verbal fabrication. In other words, it’s a type of karma, which means that it, too, has to be abandoned when it’s served its purpose.

It’s in this way that we practice, not to arrive at right view, but to use the karma of right view as a tool to arrive at the unfabricated, the cessation of suffering, the highest possible happiness.

As Ajaan Suwat used to say, “When you arrive at the highest happiness, it doesn’t occur to you to ask if there’s a self experiencing it or not. The happiness is that complete.”

Now, this may seem far away, but it’s necessary to make an important point that has immediate bearing on your life: The efforts you make to be responsible in acting skillfully in thought, word, and deed, are an important part of the path to the end of suffering. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. It’s not the case that there’s nothing to attain and nobody to attain it. The ultimate happiness can be attained, and it can be attained through your actions.

This is the ultimate lesson of adopting right view on the topic of karma. When you do, it gives meaning to your life. The Buddha saw that the universe as a whole has no meaning, but you can make your life and your actions have meaning by trying to be as skillful as you can in what you do, say, and think. The happiness that you can create through your actions is directly related to the goodness you develop in your heart and mind.

The fact that you are free to choose your actions means that good qualities of the heart like generosity and gratitude have meaning. In fact, when the Buddha introduced his teaching on karma to people, he would focus on how his explanation of the role of free will is what allows for generosity and gratitude to be meaningful.

If we weren’t free to choose our actions, an act of generosity would have no meaning at all: People would give because they were forced to by outside power. It would be like receiving praise from AI. At the same time, the fact that other people have freedom of choice means that when they went out of their way to help you when they didn’t have to, gratitude would be an appropriate response on your part.

These attitudes are nourishing to the heart, and it’s good to believe that they are genuinely meaningful. They make life worthwhile.

At the same time, the fact that you can reflect on the results of your actions and learn from them how to become more skillful means that attitudes of compassion, responsibility, and integrity are genuinely worthy of praise. If we couldn’t develop the qualities of mind that allow us to become good judges of the results of our own actions, again, we’d be like machines, capable of doing only what we were programmed to do. But we can learn, and the integrity we bring to the process of learning is what gives dignity to human life.

This is why the Buddha said that the Dhamma is nourished by commitment and reflection: You commit yourself to doing your best, and when, on reflection, you see that the results are not good enough, you try to figure out where you went wrong so that you can avoid making the same mistake next time.

This is where skillful intentions differ from mere good intentions. Good intentions can still have some delusion in them, but skillful intentions have reduced that delusion to a minimum. This is why, as you try to develop a skillful sense of self to help you on the path, the best sense of self is one that’s always willing to admit mistakes and to learn from them. That’s when your practice is truly mature.

So the teaching on karma not only gives us guidance as to what is skillful and what’s not, it also affirms the importance of the good qualities that we can develop in our hearts and minds. We’re not just spectators in this world. We’re agents, capable of developing our hearts and minds so that our actions can lead to true happiness, both within ourselves and in our good influence on the world around us.