Jasleen ji,
This must be my longest post anywhere, so be warned. ;-)
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Findingmyway:
I have been meaning to reply to this post for sometime but have lacked the time and energy to write my thoughts down though they have been in my head for sometime. Perhaps I was wrong to bring in worldly examples at the beginning but I do not reject them completely as on a superficial level I think thoughts such as those in day to day working are productive in improving manners. We can never really know a persons motivations but that is no reason not to encourage courteous and considerate manners. However, my understanding of karma goes much deeper and it is something I think about an awful lot, especially recently.
C: Anything can be a condition for the arising of wisdom as long as the accumulation for this is strong. On the other hand, when it is weak or absent, no matter how much one is pointed to about the truth which is right here and right now, one would prefer instead, to proliferate in terms of past, present and future driven by attachment and wrong understanding.
And yes we should encourage people towards the good and not assume anything.
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Findingmyway:
I truly struggle with relating karma to past lives as there are just too many pitfalls in this approach. On many levels it also encourages a sense of defeat and gives people an excuse out of their situation.
C: It is good to realize that one does not understand Karma. But it can be very bad if one *misunderstands* it. A correct understanding of karma will never give the impression of being fated. Anyone who feels helpless when thinking about karma must surely be having some misconception about it. Likewise in the case of those who use it as an excuse for certain behavior.
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Findingmyway:
The belief seems to act as a scapegoat rather than a push for improvement. In the example of the bad businessman, you say, "happiness, honor, praise and respect which he receives, would in fact be the result of some good karma done in the past." I do not understand this as you are relating his worldly happiness and praise to good karma.
C: Please change the ‘happy’ to ‘pleasure’.
I was not referring to anything situational, but rather to precise mental and physical phenomena consisting of series of momentary sense experiences together with any interpretation of these. A voice of praise for example would consist of hearing particular sounds and thinking about them in a particular way, which reflects the intention of the other person who is giving the praise. This is one thing we all seek and the rich man simply happens to receive it.
I then distinguished this from the otherwise arising of greed and other unwholesome states in the case of such a person. I said that the former must be result from the past, and indeed if you think that this person has only done evil all his life, the event must then go back to previous lives, otherwise what else could possibly be the cause? But even if we were to interpret praise, honor etc. differently, one would still have to acknowledge that the pleasant experiences through the five senses, do indeed occur for the rich man as it does for everyone else. What then would you consider as being cause for these, and when could they have been initiated?
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Findingmyway:
My understanding about karma is more spiritual because you have already said that we do not really know the intentions of the people giving this praise etc and we do not know how lasting or deep felt that happiness is. I will explain further a little later.
C: It is true that we don’t know the intentions of the other person. But praise is praise and blame is blame. If we mistake one for the other, this is due to perversion of perception and consciousness on our part, we’d be wrong in our conclusions, but this does not change the reality. If for example, we do not detect the sarcasm and are led wrongly to believe that we are being praised, this would simply be due to having been wrong about it.
But praise, blame, pleasure, pain etc. like all realities, are transient. If you are thinking something as happening in time and lasting long, then you are in fact thinking about situations and not in terms of the reality.
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Findingmyway:
I have spent much time with people with learning difficulties on both a professional and personal level. People will often say they must have bad karma from a previous life to be born like that. However, I can't buy this as many of the people I know are inspiring and more contented than I will ever be.
C: You’d both need to differentiate result from causes. Being born handicapped, such as blindness, is result of bad karma done in the past. But this is only one thing and should not be tied up with other aspect of the person’s life. He or she may have great accumulations for kindness which could lead him in fact, to do much good in that life thereby increasing the chance of better birth in the future. Besides in that life itself, he could well be having good experiences through the other senses, but even if this did not happen, understanding should never cause one to feel hapless and dejected. Indeed, at those moments one would do well with some *understanding* about karma and realize that such attitudes are the stuff of the very cause for bad results. In other words, stop complaining and instead understand what is really going on!
In the case of the mentally handicapped, he may have difficulty understanding anything. But this is no reason not to try, after all what is more valuable than an encouragement to good? Besides, our concerns in this kind of situation usually revolve around worldly considerations, for example that the person should function well enough not to then be subjected to blame by other people. But we forget that it is moral integrity which is most important, indeed in that very situation patience and understanding is what all involved need to have. The way we end up trying to fix anything, when analyzed, does it not always come down to a matter of catering to desire aimed at just the four desirable ones of the eight worldly conditions?
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Findingmyway:
Most people equate being born into comfortable home, healthy, few hardships in life with previous good karma. Again I cannot agree as this is judging from worldly levels and not spirituality.
C: Not necessarily. Yes, people do get caught up in ideas about situations, but we can understand these things as being metaphors instead. In which case, being born healthy with few hardships etc. would mean there is much greater frequency of pleasant experiences through the five senses as compared to the unpleasant experiences.
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Findingmyway:
Different communities have different ideas of what is good and what is bad and these are sometimes opposites so how do we judge good and bad karma in those situations?
C: And this is exactly why we need to develop our own understanding, otherwise we’d be influenced by such set values. The reference point must be a mental reality; greed is greed and unwholesome because it has a particular characteristic, function, manifestation and proximate cause. Why would you trust the majority view to dictate what is right and what is wrong, except when it comes to social rules?
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Findingmyway:
Premature babies have no time to earn any karma for their next birth so what happens to them? So many holes and question marks, the list of possibilities is endless.
C: Even for those who die at an old age, the karma which decides the next rebirth does not necessarily come from this life, but objects and tendencies from past lives can come in at any time. And it is the law of psychical order that just before the dying consciousness which is result, a moment of mental volition must arise.
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Findingmyway:
The thing that puzzles me most is when I think about Guru Arjan Dev ji. According to conventional wisdom, on one hand Guruji must have had the most incredible good karma to be a Guru.
C: Hmm, to teach is karma, but you are making it sound as if it is ‘result’ of karma. Or do you mean that he received praise, status and gain?
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Findingmyway:
On the other hand there must have been bad karma there for Guruji to be martyred after enduring the most painful horrendous torture. I cannot reconcile those 2 thin
gs.
C: You’d need to think about all this in terms of momentary experiences. In a day, we all experience both the result of good as well as bad karma; this is what makes this ‘human plane’ ideal for the development of wisdom. I have no problem in this regard in accepting that the Buddha, even after his enlightenment, experienced results of bad karma done in past lives. Indeed this happened just before his death when he ate bad pork curry and had to experience pain and discomfort.
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Findingmyway:
For this reason I understand karma to arise from our actions in this life and we have control over that karma.
C: Then will yourself to enlightenment, right here and right now!
Which karma conditioned which result is said to be one of the “unthinkables” and can lead to madness if indulged in. And I believe that your insistence that it must all take place within this lifetime is a species of such thinking.
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Findingmyway:
The result of karma is also the ability to rise above bitterness, lust, attachment, greed, revenge, anger, ego while dealing with the world. Good karma allows us to always do the right thing and deal with the consequences as doing the right thing is usually tougher. Above all good karma allows us to feel the connection with Waheguru.
C: You are confusing cause with result and attributed to karma what in reality is accumulated tendency.
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Findingmyway:
Whether I believe in reincarnation or not, I'm not sure but I don't believe it is relevant to karma in this lifetime as we have full control over how we behave and think should we choose to exercise that control.
C: First, I do not subscribe to the idea of ‘reincarnation’ but to ‘rebirth’.
Yes, it is useless to think about the past and like I said, to wonder about which result come from which cause is not only futile but harmful. On the other hand however, failing to acknowledge that the cause of a particular result can come from past lives and deeds now gives result not necessarily in this life, is to approach the matter in a way which will never lead to the understanding of it. More importantly, the accumulated tendencies if they indeed come from our endless going round the cycle of existence, but we look to tie events together to explain our behavior and moral cause and effect, this would be akin to being delirious about the whole thing.
That you think that there is control over our actions, may in fact be fed by such myopic vision.
There is no control ever, either at the level of sense experience which is “result” or at the level of volitional actions which is “cause”. Seeing arises not because we will it, but by conditions including visible object / light coming within range and contacting the eye-base and the same goes for the reaction which immediately follows. They arise by a complex set of conditions and all gone before we can think about it. It is delusory to think that there is control over any of this. But understanding this is itself a case wisdom being developed. And this leads not to think in terms of past causes and future effects, but the need to come back to the present moment.
On the other hand, no matter how much we think to only concentrate in this life, if this is motivated by wrong understanding about karma, it can only lead to proliferations *about* the present, but never understanding it.
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Quote Me: We should be careful about any tendency to overreach. Knowing ourselves is to know our limitations and accepting it. Ambition with respect to good qualities is still ambition and is never useful.
Findingmyway:
I cannot agree with this. As human beings we should always strive to be better people.
C: Wisdom does not strive, it simply understands and detaches. What you describe is the exact opposite of this.
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Findingmyway:
If we just accepted the way things are and didn't try to correct out faults the world would be an even worse place than it is.
C: This is just a trick played by attachment and wrong understanding. There is no need to fear such thing happening. I was talking about acceptance which comes from understanding, not otherwise. Wisdom can only have the effect of encouraging good of all kinds by way of understanding its value and the harm in evil states. And one big evil in need of recognizing is ‘self-attachment’ which drives us to seek ‘gain’ even with regard to ideas about good.
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Findingmyway:
I do not understand how on any level striving to be a better person with better qualities can be bad? More important is how you go about it and that is where counterproductive actions can be taken.
C: The aim determines the path followed, if the one is conditioned by attachment and wrong understanding, so will the other. And the end result would be what I call, ‘illusion of result’, one which is then held on to tightly and feeds into the ambition. Having perceived something as counterproductive, taking steps to correct this, what if this is aimed at that particular illusion?
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Findingmyway:
That should not stop us from trying to develop good qualities but make us wary of how we are doing it.
C: Seeing through ‘wrong effort’ is an instance of ‘right effort’ and this accumulates.
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Findingmyway:
Attachment will only arise if you are making the changes for worldly praise and to massage your own ego, not if you are truly trying to do seva in the broadest sense of the word.
C: So you need to understand the mind don’t you? Otherwise how would you know if it is indeed right effort? Not knowing this, how can you ever be sure that seva will not serve ego in ways not readily apparent?
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Findingmyway:
This world drags us down so it is a constant effort to rise above it. Merely accepting my limitations rather than trying to deal with them would only result in me drowning as the fight would be too tough.
C: Why do you perceive the enemy as being ‘out there’? Our real enemies are the ignorance, attachment, aversion, conceit and wrong understanding with which we keep perceiving things. One way to counter these is to develop good qualities such as kindness, compassion, moral restraint, generosity and so on. However the only way that they can gradually lose their power, is through the development of understanding, and this does not require being proactive about it. In fact a proactive approach is reflection of agitation which comes with attachment and aversion. And surely you’d not want to encourage these do you?
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Findingmyway:
Accepting my natural greed, anger, lust, attachment and ego rather than tackling it would take me further away from Waheguru.
C: Again, we are talking about acceptance that comes with understanding. Indeed this acceptance is a manifestation of ‘detachment’ which is a requirement from the very outset for anyone who sees the harm of its opposite, namely ‘attachment’.
