Karmic Dividends (1/2)

I’ve been finishing up the series “All My Ancient Karma” more slowly than expected. In the meantime I offer:

Karmic Dividends

Generosity is the very first step in the Buddha’s gradual path. It is easily comprehended by all, including children, and brings great karmic benefit, that is, every act of generosity, when carried out with pure intentions, brings benefit that stays with the actor. The benefit starts immediately in the form of delight and a feeling of peace in the heart. Then affection and gratitude grow out of this transaction. And the future becomes brighter as every act of generosity nurtures one’s tendency to generosity, makes one kinder, more saintly, less self-centered and therefore of more peaceful and happier disposition. Perhaps paradoxically, a lifetime of generosity brings with it the liberal sense of abundance, in spite of one’s immediate material sacrifices. Moreover generosity benefits the recipient karmically as well as the donor since the recipient will experience gratitude which itself generally leads to an urge toward generosity.

In western culture, we tend to prefer the reciprocal exchange to the one-sided act of generosity. Although many people give generously to charities, or volunteer in civic projects and, indeed, generosity is upheld as a core value in our society (except maybe among readers of Ayn Rand). I think that in general we are poor receivers of generosity: We tend not to be gracious recipients of gifts, except of those from family members. We feel uncomfortable as recipients of charity, or if someone offers to pay for the meal we insist on paying and feel internally disgruntled when the other insists more convincingly. Self-sufficiency is also upheld as a core value in our society. This tends to close opportunities for others to practice generosity.

Aside from gift and exchange, there is one other way in which goods and services change hands: plunder. Stealing is not a step in the Buddha’s gradual path. It is easily comprehended by all, including children, but brings great karmic detriment, that is, every act of plunder, when carried out with tainted intentions, brings detriment that stays with the actor. The detriment starts immediately in the form of constriction and turmoil in the heart, then ill-will and animosity grow out of this transaction. And the future becomes darker as every act of plunder nurtures one’s tendency to plunder, makes one meaner, more exploitive, more self-centered and therefore of more violent and unhappy disposition. Perhaps paradoxically, a lifetime of plunder brings with it the stingy sense of lack, in spite of one’s immediate material gains. Moreover plunder tends to harm the victim karmically as well as the perpetrator since the victim will experience resentment which itself generally will lead to an urge for recompense.

In western culture we tend to be gracious recipients of plunder, with some reservations in the case of blatant illegality. Businesses love to “externalize costs,” merchants love to give their customers less than they paid for, advertisers love to sell customers a sexier new “you” when all customers actually get is a bar of soap, empires love their colonies, bankers love to fix the system to ensure a continuous inflow of plunder. Almost everyone loves to be able to put one over on the other fellow. Moreover, we tend to be forgiving of this behavior in others because we would do the same thing if we could.

We might discern, at least for exposition, three kinds of economy: an economy of exchange, an economy of gifts and an economy of plunder, although in practice these are inextricably intertwined. Often the three kinds of transactions involved even produce identical material results: If I give someone an A spontaneously out of generosity and that person later gives me a B out of generosity, this might have the same result as a fair exchange of A for B. Or if I steal a B from someone out of greed, while they are stealing an A from me also out of greed, this might also have the same result as the fair exchange of A for B. In any of these cases we might say that the economy is humming along. BUT there is a huge non-economic but spiritual difference in these three economies, the kind of karma that is generated in each case is quite dissimilar:

• A transaction of fair exchange is in principle karmically neutral.
• A transaction of generosity brings a karmic dividend.
• A transaction of plunder carries a karmic forfeiture.

I should note that the ostensible exchange may hide plunder, or it may hide generosity. The first is the case, for instance, in fraud or deceit, the second, for instance, when someone values customers and takes pride in exceeding expectations. Intentions are what matter.

Note that the proportion of these three components vary in regional and global economies. For instance, anthropologists tell us that primitive societies, as well as those of our primitive ancestors, rely much more heavily on gifts than on exchange. The prevailing economy in a giving society have karmic consequences for their participants. We predict, on Buddhist principles, that the people who live in predominantly economies of gifts to have a high level of relative well-being, and that the people who live in predominantly economies of plunder will have a low level of relative well-being, as the populations busy themselves daily accumulating karmic dividends or forfeitures respectively.

With these differences in mind, we note that devout Buddhists are admonished not to participate in the plunder economy (at least as plunderers), for they are counseled to follow the precepts of not taking what is not freely given nor to say what is not true, and to choose a right livelihood, in which they are not allowed to profit from the suffering of others, nor use deceitful means in exchange. We also note that monastics are furthermore strictly disallowed from participation in the economy either of plunder or of exchange. They can have no business dealings, no trade (except in limited circumstances with other monks, like swapping otherwise ill-fitting robes), no handling of money. They practice generosity toward others, most notably by offering the Dharma, but can accept no tit-for-tat compensation for this. Monastics live as a matter of vow entirely in the economy of gifts. Monastics thereby gain a unique opportunity for spiritual progress.

A crucial point in these economic considerations is that the social context in which we live typically restricts the choices available to us, and therefore is a limiting factor on our practice, which, after all, consists of choices (karma). For instance, most of us would love to be able to walk to work each morning, but the social conditions may dictate that we commute for half an hour in heavy traffic. Likewise, we would love to have neighbors that are all generous farmers with whom we might share our own produce rather than having to sell it to distributors. We may need a job but cannot find a livelihood that does not involve deceiving customers or disadvantaging someone in some way. If we are in debt or under other social obligations our options become even more limited. Social context can force us from the economy of gifts increasingly into the economy of exchange, or from exchange into plunder, with inevitable dire consequences for our spiritual progress.

Therefore a crucial part of success in Buddhist practice is to optimize our social context, favoring the economy of gifts over the economy of exchange and the economy of exchange over the economy of plunder. I don’t expect readers to be inspired by these words to become activists in the cause of tearing down the system of global neo-liberal capitalism, which is certainly a system based as much in plunder as in exchange, but there are less daunting ways to negotiate the social landscape to optimize our individual or community social context. One is choice of livelihood, another is voluntary simplicity, another is choice of living place, rural rather than urban, for instance, or even Costa Rica rather than America. Migrate in the direction of happier people, because they are likely to live under a more favorable gift-to-plunder ratio.

A useful way to implement the Buddhist practice of generosity, beyond the occasional charitable contribution or favor to improve an otherwise mixed economic existence, is to be ever mindful, with every economic transaction, of what economy one is acting in right now. The economy of plunder is an insult to Buddhist practice. The economy of exchange is a world of wasted opportunities in which fair transactions are performed but with no karmic benefit. The economy of gifts is worlds apart. If one, like sincere monastics, can in one way or another spend all or most of one’s time in the economy of gifts, one’s spiritual progress will flourish. If one combines this practice either with a meditation practice or with unplugging oneself from media for the masses, it will soar. If one combines it with both, it will astonish.

Next week I would like to consider the opportunities Buddhist communities enjoy for nourishing an economy of gifts. It is significant that the Buddha was already on top of this issue.

All My Ancient Twisted Karma (1/5)

Perceiving what can be expressed through concepts,
Beings take their stand on what is expressed.
Not fully understanding the expressed,
They come under the bondage of death. – Itivuttaka 3.14

Discussions of rebirth generally focus on theory, that is, rebirth is conceptualized into a belief or proposition, a topic of speculation or conjecture, that is then open to objective scientific or philosophical verification or debate. In the Western context opinions about this topic abound:

“It just feels right in my bones that I have lived before this life.”
“I dunno about this rebirth thing. It sounds like unicorns and flying spaghetti monsters to me.”
“I’d believe it if I could remember a previous life, but until then I’m not convinced.”
“Buddhism is not about belief. It is about practice. You can practice the same way whether or not you believe in rebirth.”
“Practice is about being in the moment, rebirth is about the past and future. Who cares?”
“The Buddha never taught rebirth.”
“The Buddha taught rebirth … and that’s good enough for me.”
“Hogwash!”
“Scientists at the University of Virginia have proven rebirth!”

Speculation about rebirth seems to have been much alive in the Buddha’s India, to have largely abated for many centuries in the Buddhist world, only to have emerged anew in the modern world. Noteworthy is how spectacularly unproductive speculative debate about it has been. Rarely does a participant in the debate seem to change his view, but rather generally ends up instead holding it all the more firmly once he had taken a firm stance in debate. Occasionally it is even a deal breaker for someone who is not yet resolute in Buddhist practice.

This may explain why the Buddha avoided this debate at a speculative level altogether, instead to treat it as a purely experiential, subjective, empirical matter, or, as a last resort, to justify it for its practical contribution to the results of spiritual practice. The reason the speculative debate has been unproductive is perhaps most closely addressed by the “not about belief” guy quoted above. There is a disconnect between the terms of the debate and the needs of the actual practitioner, whose needs, one would suspect, would also reveal the motives of the Buddha – generally quite parsimonious of conjecture and grounded in experience – in making critical reference rebirth at some of the most critical points in his teachings.

In this series of short essays I would like to approach what is at issue not by way of speculation, but rather from experience and efficacy. I will generally avoid the word rebirth, because it readily brings to mind the speculative perspective we wish to avoid, in favor of karmic continuity, as something we may progressively and fruitfully explore and refine in our own subjective experience. Karmic continuity is the sense that our karmic conditioning derives from before birth, then plays out in our few decades of life and practice, to produce results that extend past death. I hope this shift in perspective will be useful to the reader who may either have already dismissed the notion of rebirth as hogwash, or hold too tightly onto any of the other speculative views of rebirth, to reach a full personal understanding of what has been expressed as rebirth. My conclusion will be that embedding our moment-to-moment practice in such a context of karmic continuity makes a huge difference in the quality of our practice that cannot be dismissed.

In the next weeks I intend to submit four more posts on this subject. In Discovering My Ancient Twisted Karma, I will consider these questions from an experiential perspective, “Is my karma older than me?” and “Will its results outlive me?” In The Long and the Short of It, I will look at the Buddha’s teachings relevant to karmic continuity, particularly what he had in mind when he taught samsara, the continuous round of rebirths. In Putting Practice into Context, I will take up the question, “Why, if practice is in the present moment, is it so crucial to frame our practice in a wider temporal context?” Finally, in Our Present Task, I will summarize the conclusions of the foregoing about the nature of Buddhist practice in the context of karmic continuity.

Growing the Dharma: Transcendence

You are reading a serialization of the ebook Growing the Dharma: Buddhism’s Religious Spadework. This chapter deals with the question, Why did the Buddha teach rebirth? This is a bit different aspect of what falls under Buddhist religiosity than the social concerns of the rest of the book, but is included for completeness. In short, this chapter, serialized in two parts, is really an independent essay.

Chapter 4. Transcendence (1/2)

The Great Cathedral in Cologne, Germany began construction in 1248 A.D. and was to be magnificent. It was completed in 1880, over six centuries later! This makes me think of the original founders of the Cathedral, marvel at what their motives might have been and try to imagine what it was like to start a project of this size such that they would not live to see past its earliest stages. This undertaking certainly required a great trust that others would be there to continue the work through the generations and centuries to come. It certainly required patience when progress must have seemed so snail-like in their lifetime. Along with patience it must have fostered a sense of urgency as the significance of this project dwarfed all other considerations in the lives of these founders. After all every decision they made was for an eager posterity, for untold generations to come, after the ephemeral gains, losses and fatigue of their small lives would have been long forgotten. The small lives of the founders would have acquired huge significance as instruments of this project. I imagine that sicknesses, deaths, births, droughts would have barely deterred the founders in their determination to see the work continue without interruption. This is a meaning that transcends this fathom-long body and these few decades of life.

This particular sample of selfless urgency and determination, of meaningfulness and zeal, comes out of a religious context, but similar examples are easily found in secular realms as well, for instance, in science or in art or among explorers, in which agents characteristically give themselves over completely to a project perceived as somehow dwarfing their own selves in magnificence. That greater context is often ill-defined: the glory of God, the march of human knowledge, lasting beauty, going down in history. Others die for their country, and still others dedicate themselves tirelessly so that others will not have to die for theirs. Even in secular contexts this kind of zeal is often recognized as “religious.” The alternative to this religious zeal is to think of science, art, or whatever, as a job, one that pays the bills until one retires after which one can devote oneself full-time to fly fishing. I speculate that only at the higher transcendent level of meaning will genius arise.

Without careful deliberation, our human life is tossed by the sea, blown by the wind, a plaything of circumstance. This is presumably how most animals live, simply responding to changing conditions one by one with predictable needs and fears. When this life presents the human with mere sensual pleasures it is still formless, arbitrary, directionless and existentially empty, until boredom, depression or despair catches up to its indulgences.¹ With deliberation giving rise to determination and vow, the human life is quite different. The highest meaning however is not something the human adds to his life, but that into which he embeds his life, as if his life were a single scene, or maybe a cameo appearance, in a larger play. A life devoted to service of God, a life devoted to beauty, a life devoted to developing the conditions for Awakening, these exemplify one’s relationship to a higher meaning that transcends this present life, and at the same time adds satisfaction to this present life.

The aim of our practice is no less than the perfection of the human character, it is about making something no less magnificent than the Cologne Cathedral: a Buddha. If we fail to find that higher meaning in our practice we can instead easily see no further than making our present lives temporarily more comfortable until we die, at which point any progress along the path will disappear anyway, along with the entire human predicament that evoked it. Our practice will be like beginning construction on a village church, rather than a Cathedral, which we expect to occupy and preach in in this very life. The result might indeed be competent, but hardly magnificent, something more like common psychotherapy than the Path to Awakening. We will have failed to transcend a petty fathom-long body and few decades of life and thereby squandered the opportunity for an Awakening that might otherwise have been possible, even in this very life and body. I speculate that only at this higher level of meaning will Awakening arise.

Rebirth

“I’m Saved!”

Buddhism is about salvation, it’s even about, uh, being born again. The soteriological aim of Buddhism is Nirvana, the Buddhist form of salvation. Rebirth is an integral component of the Buddha’s thought about this. Nirvana is achieved as the escape from Samsara, from the beginningless and heading-toward-endless round of birth and death.

The Buddha described the second of two knowledges realized prior to his Awakening:

“When the mind was thus concentrated, purified, bright, unblemished, rid of defilement, pliant, malleable, steady, and attained to imperturbability, I directed it to the knowledge of the passing away and reappearance of beings. … I discerned how they are inferior and superior, beautiful and ugly, fortunate and unfortunate in accordance with their kamma: ‘These beings — who were endowed with bad conduct of body, speech, and mind, who reviled the noble ones, held wrong views and undertook actions under the influence of wrong views — with the break-up of the body, after death, have re-appeared in the plane of deprivation, the bad destination, the lower realms, in hell. But these beings — who were endowed with good conduct of body, speech and mind, … have re-appeared in the good destinations, in the heavenly world.”²

As before, I suggest that the most important question with respect to Buddhist authenticity here is not “Is rebirth really true?” but rather the more functional “Why did the Buddha think it was important to teach rebirth?” In general he scrupulously avoided any kind of metaphysical speculation. For instance, in a famous passage he picks up a handful of leaves:

“‘What do you think, monks? Which are the more numerous, the few leaves I have here in my hand, or those up in the trees of the grove?’

“‘Lord, the Blessed One is holding only a few leaves: those up in the trees are far more numerous.’

“‘In the same way, monks, there are many more things that I have found out, but not revealed to you. What I have revealed to you is only a little. And why, monks, have I not revealed it? Because, monks, it is not related to the goal, it is not fundamental to the holy life, does not conduce to disenchantment, dispassion, cessation, tranquility, higher knowledge, enlightenment or Nibbana. That is why I have not revealed it.’”³

The teaching of rebirth therefore must function to help attain the goal of the holy life. How can it do this?

Rebirth turns a narrowly circumscribed attempt at happiness and comfort within this single life into an epic struggle for salvation from a beginningless history of suffering with endless consequences for the future. Unless that struggle succeeds history will repeat itself ceaselessly into the future. This realization enhances the urgency of saṃvega, horror at the predicament in which we all find ourselves. As the Buddha spoke,

“Which is greater, the tears you have shed while transmigrating & wandering this long, long time — crying & weeping from being joined with what is displeasing, being separated from what is pleasing — or the water in the four great oceans?… This is the greater: the tears you have shed…”⁴

He also talked about the blood spilled, the mountains of bones we have left behind, the cemeteries swelled. We need not succeed fully within this life in this struggle, but we can make great strides then continue in the next life and the next. This is the source of hope, pasāda, the calm trust that through diligent practice we are well on our way to winning the struggle to replace step by step the lot of the common being with something magnificent, with a Buddha. What’s at stake in this project dwarfs all other considerations in this life; after all every decision you make will be for a world eager to end suffering, long after the ephemeral gains, losses and fatigue of your small present life are long forgotten. This means you will continue to practice virtue, even under the pressure of bad times or of immediate gain, because it is your virtuous karma that will carry over into future. The fruits of the practice of this small life will acquire huge meaning in the context of this project. Sicknesses, deaths, births, falling stock prices will barely deter you in your determination to see the work continue without interruption. Even if rebirth should fail and bring our project to a halt at our deaths, we will have lived a life of great meaning.

The main alternative to rebirth is annihilationism (Pali, ucchedavāda), the view that all our efforts and progress, everything, comes to naught with the breakup of the body. At our death it will matter not one twittle whether we’ve practiced assiduously or just goofed off. The hapless annihilationist lacks the urgency that might otherwise propel him toward Awakening, even in this life, and the Buddha repeatedly reproved his viewpoint.

This former, deeper perspective is the function of rebirth in early Buddhism, and explains why the Buddha, otherwise so wary of philosophical speculation, took a clear and firm stand in this one case. What is really at stake, as with Refuge, is the attitude behind our practice. Bhikkhu Bodhi states more succinctly than I have:

“To take full cognizance of the principle of rebirth will give us that panoramic perspective from which we can survey our lives in their broader context and total network of relationships. This will spurus on in our own pursuit of the path and will reveal the profound significanceof the goal toward which our practice points …”

So, the primary function of rebirth is the perspective it lends to the pursuit of Nirvana, the final end of tears, blood, bones and cemeteries. A secondary is simply to provide intermediate resting places on the way that mark our progress or regression on the Path. Generally six kinds of realms are envisioned into which one might be reborn, Hell, Ghost, Asura, Animal, Human and Deva, depending on one’s practice. And within the human realm one might be born sickly, long-lived, ugly, beautiful, rich or poor. There are frequent references to this system in the early suttas, for instance,

“Just as rust, iron’s impurity, eats the very iron from which it is born, so the deeds of one who lives slovenly lead him on to a bad destination.”⁵

By the same token, through one’s meritorious practice one accrues benefit, life becomes less of a problem. This happens within this very life, but all the more when one’s practice trajectory extends over many lives. In this way rebirth frames even the more immediate goal of practice in a way that inspires urgency.

This seems to be the function of rebirth, to frame our practice in greater-than-life terms and thereby to inspire urgency and meaningfulness. I am aware that rebirth raises skeptical eyebrows in much of the expectedly astute readership of this book because many of us tend to demand independent verification for religious (or religious-sounding) truths.⁶ However, if we assume the annihilationist position and reject rebirth outright we lose this function and we have therefore stepped beyond the scope of authentic or core Buddhism. Therefore it behooves us to ask, for the benefit of those who balk, and for the enrichment of understanding of those who do not, “How much wiggle room do we have for upholding these functions?” I certainly do not want this issue to become a deal breaker for anyone intent on the Path.

The secondary issue of realms of rebirth is easily put to rest. Assuming for the moment rebirth as a linear process that lines lives up front to back, realms of rebirth function to express that our practice or malpractice can save us from, or get us into, a heap of future trouble. Hell and deva realms in particular add vivid imagery to our success or failure. On the other hand, we hardly need to leave the human realm to experience heaven or hell; we already manage to do it right here! We might well be reborn over and over in the human realm into various circumstances of bliss or woe and we sacrifice no functionality and therefore no authenticity in our understanding. We can then just as well regard these realms as colorful and perhaps effective mythology, and leave it at that … or take them as real.

We have three optional views that define the wiggle room to retains the functionality of rebirth:

1. Rebirth is literally true as described in early Buddhism. Probably this is the dominant view historically.

2. Rebirth is an approximation for something more subtle, potentially verifiable, yet largely equivalent with regards to the functionality that authenticity demands. This is a view seldom considered.

3. Rebirth as literally understood is a beneficial working assumption even if it is a pretense. This is the Buddha’s own recommendation, as we will see, for the skeptical.

The view that the Buddha never taught rebirth at all requires great imagination, that a ring of monks tainted with brahmanic views slipped heretical changes systematically into sutta after sutta shortly after the time of the Buddha and then managed to popularize these changes to such a degree that no contradictory suttas survived. It requires dismissing the drive for transcendent meaning in Buddhist practice that I have argued here is essential for the Path of Awakening. Let’s look at each of these three optional takes on rebirth.

Literal Truth of Rebirth

Consider this: If you know that water is flowing into one end of a pipe with only one inlet and only one outlet, you know that it must be flowing out the other end. The pipe in this metaphor is our present life and the water is (old) karma (Pali, kamma).⁷ Our old karma at any point in time is the content of our character, our impure habit patterns of body, speech and mind, our tainted views, our identities, our pleasures and our anguish, our skills, our strengths and faults. Karma is conditioned continually throughout our lives through our intentional actions (new karma), and also corresponds to the well-being we experience directly as the quality of our life. Let’s let the degree of purity of the water represent the quality of life or character (good or bad karma). A strong Buddhist practice should serve to turn scuzzy water flowing into the pipe into pure flowing out.

The crucial point is that there is water flowing into our pipe and that therefore it should not surprise us that there is water flowing out.⁸ Think, for example, about your habit patterns, your tendency to anger, for instance, or to indulgences, the way jealousy manifests, or envy, the way judgments arise. Where did all that come from? Why does it always seem that we are playing out an ancient script that we did not write, at least in this life? I know I am not smart enough to have come up with more than a few of the things that have arisen in my mind in my years (most of which are premonastic). And I was coming up with twisted actions almost from infancy. How about you? A chant of repentance used in a Zen tradition runs like this,

“All my ancient twisted karma,
From beginningless greed, hate and delusion,
Born of body, speech and mind,
I now fully avow.”

There is something that rings true about the obscure antediluvian origins of our habits. We are each engaged in an epic struggle with karmic forces from the ancient past. And therefore, it follows, with outcomes that will reach endlessly into the future. For if water is flowing into the pipe of our life, water must be flowing out! It is hard to conceive that this ancient flow of water through many lives is capped with you. Why not with the life before?⁹ We are therefore largely conduits for karma with some opportunity for purifying it, scuzzifying it or eliminating it altogether in our lifetimes. For karmic water to have someplace to flow, there must be rebirth!

Before poking holes in this argument, let’s consider some verification. Rebirth and reincarnation are recognized in divergent cultures and religions throughout the world. Maybe many find consolation in this belief, though that is not its function in Buddhism, where ending rebirth is rather preferable to extending it. Second, the modern objection to the conventional model of rebirth is hardly decisive. It is that there is no material coupling known to science by which the water flowing at the outlet of one pipe would find its way to the inlet of the next pipe where physical death intervenes. That is, the answer to the question, how one’s karmic dispositions at one’s death could possibly find a home in a new life, requires a greater independence of mind and matter than many modernists and most scientists would be willing to concede. However the results of extensive recent research involving the memory by very young children of events and circumstances of previous lives¹⁰ that make a compelling case that such an elusive mechanism must exist, even if it has yet to be identified. Even so, this is far from verification of the entire model of rebirth nor of its ubiquity.

Even if one finds this literal model of rebirth compelling, it concerns me that people might stake their entire Buddhist practice on a model that they might potentially be dissuaded from, should additional scientific evidence turn against it. A well-known Western monk recently stated that if he were to learn there is no rebirth he would disrobe. Can this be unshakable trust in the Dharma? This alone makes it worthwhile how far an understanding that retains the functionality of rebirth might bend to the evidence.

1Victor Frankl (2006) attributes much of what is diagnosed as neurosis in fact to no more than the experience of meaninglessness. He describes how inmates of Nazi concentration camps pretty predictably gave up hope when they felt they had nothing to live for. For him personally, thoughts of reuniting with his family and reconstructing and publishing his research kept him going, even though he estimated at the time that his chances of survival were no better than 1 in 20. Yet as he attributes to Nietzsche, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”

2MN36.

3Simsapa Sutta, SN 56.31.

4Assu Sutta, SN 15.3.

5Dhammapada 240.

6For some reason our criteria seem often much less demanding when we feel we are safely beyond the scope of the religious.

7Actually if Awakening occurs in this present life then miraculously water flows in but not out, but this is the rare exception.

8Note that what enters into the pipe is not “you.” You are too chubby. But paradoxically it is the delusion of you that enables “your” pipe to empty into the next.

9This would actually be a kind of conceit. A similar mindset was satirically expressed in a series of ads for a local men’s clothing store, “You are the product of billions of years of evolution. Your suit is ready!”

10This compelling research is particularly due to Dr. Ian Stevenson (2000, etc.) and his colleagues at the University of Virginia. Frankly, I find it quite solid and astonishing.

Fundamentals of Buddhist Religiosity: Transcendence

Uposatha Day, February 18, 2013

Index to this series

Chapter 4. Transcendence

“I’m Saved!”

Buddhism is about salvation, it’s even about, uh, being born again. The soteriological aim of Buddhism is Nibbana, the Buddhist form of salvation. Nibbana is achieved by Awakening, but it given a particularly lofty scope in Original Buddhism, the escape from samsara, from the beginningless and heading-toward endless round of birth and death.

I am aware that rebirth, not to mention escape from rebirth, raises skeptical eyebrows in much of the expectedly astute readership of this treatise because of the metaphysical issues it also raises. In order to determine what is Core in this mechanism, it will be far more useful to begin with its function, which is, briefly, to inspire the urgency without which Awakening is not possible, rather than with its specific formulation in Original Buddhism, then to parameterize a range of authentic options for fulfilling that function.

Higher Meaning

The Great Cathedral in Cologne, Germany began construction in 1248 A.D. and was to be magnificent. It was completed in 1880, over six centuries later! This makes me think of the original founders of the Cathedral, and marvel at what their motives might have been and what would have inspired them to start a project of this size that would not live to see past its earliest stages. This undertaking certainly required a great trust that others will be there to continue the work through the generations and centuries to come. It certainly required patience when progress must have seemed so gradual in their lifetime. Along with patience it must have fostered a sense of urgency as the significance of this project dwarfed all other considerations in the lives of these founders; after all every decision they made was for an eager posterity, for untold generations to come, after the ephemeral gains, losses and fatigue of their small lives would have been long been forgotten. The small lives of the founders would have acquired huge meaning as instruments of this project. I imagine that sicknesses, deaths, births, droughts would have barely deterred the founders in their determination to see the work continue without interruption.

This particular sample of selfless urgency and determination, of meaningfulness and zeal, comes out of a religious context, but similar examples are actually found in secular realms as well, for instance, in science or in art or among explorers, in which agents characteristically give themselves over completely to a project perceived as somehow dwarfing themselves in magnificence. That greater context is often ill-defined: the glory of God, the march of human knowledge, lasting beauty, going down in history. Even secular contexts this kind of zeal is often considered “religious.” I speculate that it is only this level of higher meaning that can produce genius. The aim of our practice is no less than the perfection of the human character, it is about making something no less magnificent than the Cologne Cathedral: a Buddha. It is only this level of higher meaning that can produce Awakening.

If we fail to find that higher meaning of our practice we can instead easily see no further than making our present lives temporarily more comfortable until we die, at which point any progress along the path will disappear anyway along with the entire human predicament that evoked it. Our practice will be like beginning construction on a village church, rather than a Cathedral, which we expect to occupy and preach in this very life. The result might indeed be competent, but hardly magnificent, something more like common psychotherapy. We will have failed to transcend a petty fathom-long body and few decades of life and thereby squandered the opportunity for an Awakening that might otherwise have been possible even in this very life and body.

Without deliberation our human life is tossed by the sea, blown by the the wind, an plaything of circumstance. This is presumably how most animals live, simply responding to changing conditions one by one with predictable needs and fears. Even when this life presents the human with for sensual pleasures it is still is formless, arbitrary, directionless and existentially empty, until boredom, depression or despair catches up to its indulgences. Victor Frankl (2006), for instance, attributes much of what is diagnosed as neurosis in fact no more than the experience of meaninglessness.

With deliberation and vow the human life can take on new form in the form of purpose, as found, for instance, in career and family. Frankl relates how inmates of Nazi concentration camps pretty predictably gave up hope when they felt they had nothing to live for. For him personally, thoughts of reuniting with his family and reconstructing and publishing his research kept him going, even though he estimated at the time that his chances of survival were no better than 1 in 20. Yet as he attributes to Nietzsche, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”

The highest meaning however is not something the human adds to his life, but that into which he embeds his life, as if his life were a single scene in a larger play. Frankl calls this “super-meaning.” If meaning seems better than meaninglessness, super-meaning should be better than normal meaning. A life devoted to service of God, a life devoted to beauty, a life devoted to developing the conditions for Awakening, these exemplify one’s relationship to a higher meaning that transcends this present life, and at the same time brings satisfaction to this present life.

Pretense in Human Affairs.

Very typically a higher meaning requires a correspondingly higher level of trust often in things unseen and possibly unknowable. The argument often raised against accepting things unseen and unknowable is that they are quite possibly not true. Do we really want to entrust our lives to something pretend? We will see that Buddhist transcendence might involve less pretense than, say, God, but just in case lets look first at this pretense thing.

One of the outstanding characteristics of Buddhism is its relatively high degree of empiricism. This has two sources: First, Buddhism is concerned with developing a set of skills in order to perfect the human character behaviorally, affectively and cognitively. This is the topic of the stem of the flower, the Path toward Nibbana and is necessarily a nuts and bolts enterprise, requiring dealing intimately with real observable phenomena, just as the potter cannot learn his craft without learning the feel of clay in his fingers. Second, the Buddha was remarkably parsimonious in avoiding philosophical speculation and unnecessary metaphysics. The two primary metaphysical assumptions of the Buddha seems to have been:

1. When this is, that is. From the arising of this comes the arising of that. When this isn’t, that isn’t. From the stopping of this comes the stopping of that. — AN 10.92
2. I recollected my manifold past lives, i.e., one birth, two… five, ten… fifty, a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand, many eons of cosmic contraction, many eons of cosmic expansion, many eons of cosmic contraction & expansion: ‘There I had such a name, belonged to such a clan, had such an appearance. Such was my food, such my experience of pleasure & pain, such the end of my life. Passing away from that state, I re-arose there. There too I had such a name, belonged to such a clan, had such an appearance. Such was my food, such my experience of pleasure & pain, such the end of my life. Passing away from that state, I re-arose here.’ – MN 36

The first is the metatheoretical assumption that things arise and fall dependent conditions. It gives rigor to almost everything the Buddha taught, and is generally pleasing to the scientifically minded (though modern quantum physicists might raise objections even to this). The second cannot be verified or observed in the present life except by those of exceptional memory. This makes the second almost unique in the Buddha’s thinking. Why did he say this?

The answer is in fact the point of the famous “Kalama Sutta”: the Buddha promoted rebirth for its efficacy. The Buddha argues in this sutta that the proper grounds for accepting a teaching are not epistemological but ethical. He itemizes every possible way short of direct experience that we might think we “know” something and tells the Kalamas not to go by those things. Rather we should ask, with the help of the wise, where the benefit is, where the harm is.  For instance, suppose the Flubovian scriptures tell them that God has given the land of Fredonia to them regardless of who happens to occupy Fredonia at the time (the Fredonians, as it turns out). Should this teaching be accepted? No, because it would cause harm. Even if the scriptures are as true as the Flubovians firmly believe, it would not be countenanced by the good dhammic Flubovian. It is important to recognize what this is an exceedingly strict criterion, often overlooked in the world’s religions.

The Buddha at the conclusion of this same sutta applies the same criterion to the teaching of rebirth, considering the case in which deeds of good or evil alternatively do or do not bear fruit in a future life and discovers that under no circumstances is there a downside to accepting the rebirth position. The lesson: accept rebirth, as a matter of pretense if necessary.

Pretense is well within the realm of human capability, and humans certainly have this capability for practical purposes. Consider that all of fiction, including theater, movies, novels, operas, and so on, are pretense. Entertainment without pretense would be pretty slim indeed. Most children’s play is pretense, and most mammals seem capable of play. Dogs pretend to fight with one another, to chase sticks as if they were chasing prey. This enables them to practice and develop skills prior to real fighting or real hunting. Play also underlies many ritual or ceremonial enactments in religion, whose rationale is not necessarily in the acts themselves but in their function in developing skills. Food offerings to Buddha statues are common and is recognized as pretense in the knowledge that the Buddha is really going to eat what is offered. It’s play.

A baseball game, also a kind of play, is a pretense, even for spectators. While there are real physical actions going on, these actions have interpretations that are just made up, a running pretense that accompanies the physical actions, a counting-for-something. Someone hits a ball with a stick and because it goes somewhere it counts as a home run. Someone touches someone else with a ball and it counts as being “out.” Three “outs” and the other team comes up to bat. A sport, for many among the most tangible experiences in life, is pretense! Myth, religious or otherwise, is pretense by definition, but can likewise shape one’s attitudes in many helpful ways.

Nothing I know of illustrates the usefulness, and at the same time the palpability, of pretense as well as money. Money, such a huge factor in modern life and human consciousness, does not even exist! Historically money has had a physical counterpart, for instance, clams, cattle, silver, gold, then paper, for which a running pretense of counting-for-something was critical, in this case having a certain recognized value in commercial exchange. The physical part has since gone almost completely by the wayside, the physical money we carry in our pockets (actually not in mine) is now a very small portion of the money supply. The rest is entirely pretense: Banks pretend to create it at will simply by clicking some figures on a keyboard to enter it into someone’s account, then pretend mime-like to track its movements from bank to bank. There is nothing more substantial there than 1’s and 0’s in computer memory.  An satirical news article in The Onion imagines a scenario in which the economy grinds to a halt as “Nation Realizes Money Just a Symbolic, Mutually Shared Illusion.”

Pretense is something we use privately all the time to broaden the limits of our reality. A bashful young man about to ask someone on a first date will imagine himself much sauver than he actually is before dialing. Visualization techniques create realities that we then try to fit ourselves into. Athletes find such techniques improve their performance. They don’t have to be objectively “true.” To relax we might imagine ourselves lying on a sunny beach in the Bahamas. Even Buddhism makes use of visualizations in certain forms of meditation.

Pretense is something we use to manipulate others as well as ourselves. As a precaution against nocturnal mischief some American children are told that the “Boogie Man” will “get” them if they get out of bed at night. A grownup is even more gullible: even knowing that the beautiful blonde in the car ad does not actually come with the car, he buys it anyway, just in case. The divine rights of kings, the idea of a better life hereafter, the battle of good and evil, the promotion of “free markets” as an unquestioned force for good, and even an unnaturally strict interpretation of the Law of Karma are pretenses that have all been introduced as forms of social control.

If God is a pretense, He is a whopper. When one grows up with God, and develops a personal relationship with God, recognizing in God the central role in the universe, and in oneself a subservient role, interpreting all things of the world in relationship to God, then God becomes every bit as palpable as money or football. Pretense or not, God serves a number of beneficial functions, the most immediate of which, as I understand it, is to dethrone the Self from the center of the universe. He may also sometimes, in some hands, with some understandings be abused in the service of harmful functions, in some cases, for instance, legitimizing Osama-like what no person could justify on his own. This is perhaps a reason why harm and benefit above all are the criteria by which Buddhist accept or deny teachings. Many faithful hold many of their pretenses lightly, often regarding them as useful tools in negotiating life, much like money, but, when questioned, not literally true, for instance when scientific push comes to religious shove. Karen Armstrong maintains that most people in most lands throughout history have simply never thought about the difference between pretense or myth and truth, and would not particularly care.

Science itself is not immune from pretense, it just keeps it on a shorter leash. The quaint Nineteenth Century idea of purely objective truth has since given way to conceptual models that only approximate reality. Niels Bohr, who developed our model of the atom, stated about his own field of research, “There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract physical description. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature…” Scientists are captives in the realm where they can only make things up, progressively more skillful pretenses which however inevitably challenge what is the observable.  Bohr also said, “A physicist is just an atom’s way of looking at itself.” Models of progressively greater clarity but less correspondence with finer empirical data, trail off into folk science, the science of the common layperson. Models of motion within a curved universe give way to models of mutual gravitational attraction of masses, which give way to sets simple principles like, “things fall downward,” and “what goes up must come down.” What’s interesting is that the scientist probably picks his model opportunistically, reverting past the level of relating acceleration to mass and force down to the level during his leisure time of , “pressing the gas pedal makes the car go more.”

As we move from realm to realm, for instance, from commerce to science, from science to sports, from sports to religion, and from one religion to another, some pretenses become out of place, so we shift to new pretenses. We negotiate a world of often contradictory pretenses and social skill demands a particular capacity for tracking and accounting for the pretenses of others as well as of our own.  Interfaith dialog requires perhaps the greatest skill in this regard and teaches to hold our own doctrine convictions a little less tightly. But short of Awakening we all have them. We live in a world of pretense, so why not one more if it brings higher meaning into our life.

Rebirth

When the mind was thus concentrated, purified, bright, unblemished, rid of defilement, pliant, malleable, steady, and attained to imperturbability, I directed it to the knowledge of the passing away and reappearance of beings. … I discerned how they are inferior and superior, beautiful and ugly, fortunate and unfortunate in accordance with their kamma: ‘These beings — who were endowed with bad conduct of body, speech, and mind, who reviled the noble ones, held wrong views and undertook actions under the influence of wrong views — with the break-up of the body, after death, have re-appeared in the plane of deprivation, the bad destination, the lower realms, in hell. But these beings — who were endowed with good conduct of body, speech and mind, … have re-appeared in the good destinations, in the heavenly world.’  – MN36, the Buddha reporting the second knowledge gained just prior to his Awakening.

Rebirth turns a narrowly circumscribed attempt at happiness and comfort within this single life into an epic struggle for salvation from a beginningless history of suffering. Unless that struggle succeeds that history will repeat itself ceaselessly into the future. This evokes the urgency of samvega, horror at the predicament in which we all find ourselves. As the Buddha spoke,

Which is greater, the tears you have shed while transmigrating & wandering this long, long time — crying & weeping from being joined with what is displeasing, being separated from what is pleasing — or the water in the four great oceans?… This is the greater: the tears you have shed…

He also talked about the mountains of bones we have left behind. We need not succeed fully within this life in this struggle, but we can make great strides then continue in the next life and the next. This is the source of hope, passada, the calm trust that through diligent practice we are well on our way to winning the struggle to replace step by step the lot of the common being with something magnificent, with a Buddha. What’s at stake in this project dwarfs all other considerations in this life; after all every decision you make will be for a world eager to end suffering, long after the ephemeral gains, losses and fatigue of your small present life are long forgotten. This means you will continue to practice virtue, even under the pressure of bad times or of good short-term gains, because it is your virtuous kamma that will carry over into future. The fruits of the practice of this small life will acquire huge meaning in the context of this project. Sicknesses, deaths, births, falling stock prices will barely deter you in your determination to see the work continue without interruption. Even if rebirth should fail and bring our project to a halt at our deaths, we will have lived a life of great meaning.

The alternative to rebirth is annihilationism, the view that all our efforts and progress, everything, comes to naught with the breakup of the body. At our death it will matter not one twittle whether we’ve practiced assiduously or just goofed off. The hapless annihilationist lacks the urgency that might otherwise propel him toward Awakening, even in this life, and the Buddha repeatedly reproved his viewpoint.

This former, deeper perspective is the function of rebirth in Original Buddhism, and explains why the Buddha, otherwise scrupulously wary of metaphysics or philosophical speculation, took a clear and firm stand in this one case. What is really at stake, as with Refuge, is the attitude behind our practice. Bhikkhu Bodhi states more succinctly than I have had space for the point I present here:

“To take full cognizance of the principle of rebirth will give us that panoramic perspective from which we can survey our lives in their broader context and total network of relationships. This will spur us on in our own pursuit of the path and will reveal the profound significance of the goal toward which our practice points,…”

For those well disposed to religious skepticism and well practiced in the raising of eyebrows rebirth is regrettably sometimes a deal breaker. Given the well considered importance the Buddha attributed to rebirth it is important not to dismiss it lightly. Actually we have five well placed options in how to think about rebirth:

1. Rebirth is literally true as described in Original Buddhism. Probably this is the dominant view historically.
2. Rebirth is a beneficial working assumption even as a pretense. As we have seen, the Buddha recommends this remedy for the the skeptical.
3. Rebirth is an approximation for something more refined. Aha, I hadn’t mentioned this option yet, but will take it up presently.
4. Rebirth is a humbug. Why, the “Buddha’s” teachings on rebirth might well have been slipped into sutta after sutta later by monks tainted with brahmanic views.

Having hopefully mitigated the resistance to the pretentiousness of option 2, I will weigh in in favor of option 3, since 3 subsumes 1, is much more satisfying than 2, avoids recourse to the unfortunate option 4 and might have, as I will show, a sound scientific basis bound to appeal to the most skeptical of eyebrows.

There is no doubt that our present lives are woven as short threads into a rich and immense tapestry of human history, of family history, of evolutionary history, of cultural history, of political history, of religious history, of Buddhist history of trends in art, technology and popular entertainments, of relentless patterns and recombinations of neediness, aversion, confusion, contentment, kindness and clarity. Our life and therefore our practice is woven inextricably into something far grander in scale that in fact lends it its higher meaning.

Consider this: If you know that water is flowing into one end of a pipe you know that it must be flowing out the other end. The pipe in this metaphor is our present life and the water is (old) karma (Pali, kamma). (Actually if Awakening occurs in this present life then miraculously water flows in but not out, but that neither here nor there.) Our old karma at any point in time is the content of our character, our deeply rutted and shallow habit patterns of body, speech and mind, our views, our identities, our pleasures and our anguish, our skills, our strengths and faults. It is conditioned continually throughout our lives through out intentional actions (new karma), and also corresponds to the quality of our life.

Let’s let the degree of purity of the water represent the quality of life or character (good or bad karma). A strong Buddhist practice should serve to turn scuzzy water flowing into the pipe into pure flowing out.
(Incidentally in a quote above “inferior and superior, beautiful and ugly, fortunate and unfortunate,” “plane of deprivation, the bad destination, the lower realms, in hell,”  and “good destinations, in the heavenly world” functionally express quality of life at the beginning of a new life; they need not really require the existence of supernatural realms, since we are perfectly capable of creating and experiencing heaven and hell right here.)

The main point is that there is water flowing into our pipe. Think, for example, about your habit patterns, your tendency to anger, for instance, or to indulgences, the way jealousy manifests, or envy, the way judgments arise. Where did all that come from? I know I am not smart enough to have come up with half of the things that have arisen in my mind in my (uh, pre-monastic) years. This is called our “ancient twisted karma,” referring its obscure antediluvian origins. Our twisted karma is ancient because  our present lives are woven as short threads in a rich and immense tapestry. Our present actions have been anticipated in the lives of our ancestors before us, in our culture, in our evolutionary history and in the rest, then transmitted to us through various channels, even, if you insist, directly from our “previous life.” This is the water that  flows into our pipe.

Since there is water flowing into our pipe there must be water flowing out. Notice that in this model karma can flow out through multiple channels because in Buddhism it does not have to hang on to a personal identity. The karma that flows out is the legacy of the present life. That is why our practice matters beyond this fathom long body and few decades of life. That is what gives our practice its transcendent meaning. We are each engaged in an epic struggle with karmic forces from the ancient past and outcomes that will reach endlessly into the future. Our practice has vastly more at stake than happiness and comfort in this present life. It has never been exclusively about this one present life.

Each element of this refined model can, I believe, be independently examined and verified; the fact is nowadays we know of many channels for interpersonal communication of karmic factors — genetic, behavioral, social, environmental, etc. — that would have been dimly understood at the time of the Buddha. The difference between this refined model and the traditional model of rebirth is that the latter is much more linear. I will accordingly call these the reticulated model and the serial model respectively.

For the serial model pipes would be laid serially end to end such that all of the water that flows out of one pipe flows directly into the next, our next life is heir to our present karma. The reticulated model is more general than the traditional serial model; the traditional model is a special case of the reticulated. But the serial model is (1) inadequate in itself — We can observe the lateral transmission of at least some karma, for instance, from culture to individual, or heck from kalyanamitta (admirable friend) to individual — and (2) difficult to examine and verify — though very compelling research, particularly of Dr. Ian Stevenson and his colleagues at the University of Virginia, suggests that this kind of transmission does at least sometimes occur.

Now … the big question: In moving from the serial to the reticulated have we preserved functionality, that is, are we still within the scope of Core Buddhism? In either case we realize a higher transcendental meaning of our practice as desired, in either case it is found in a responsibility to the future, in producing purity, not scuzz, in this life. There is a difference, however, in the perspective each provides of the gradual progression of our practice through stages of attainment culminating in Awakening. The linear model provides a straight path, passing through many lives but serially, toward Nibbana. The reticulated model provides in this life a greater potential for Awakening in the future, but with less certainty about who will exploit that potential in the future — often many — and less sense of following a direct path. Interestingly the reticulated model fits well with the bodhisattva ideal articulated in much later Mahayana Buddhism, whereby we practice “not for ourselves but for all beings.” I will come back to the bodhisattva ideal in a couple of chapters.

In Sum

Dedicating one’s life to a higher meaning is a condition that in the arts and sciences can produce genius. Dedicating one’s life to a higher meaning is a condition that in Buddhism can produce Awakening. In either case it will produce a fulfilling present life, one of purpose.

Higher meaning for the Christian is attained through God. Higher meaning for the Buddhist is attained through “that panoramic perspective from which we can survey our lives in their broader context and total network of relationships” that comes from realizing that our lives and therefore our practices are woven inextricably into something far grander in scale, a rich and immense tapestry of human affairs. We realize that we are each engaged in an epic struggle with karmic forces from the ancient past and with outcomes that will reach endlessly into the future. Our practice therefore has vastly more at stake than happiness and comfort in this present life. It has never been exclusively about this one present life. From this the urgency that impels us to deep practice develops that also opens up the prospect of Awakening.

Serial rebirth is the model the Buddha provides to help us find our way into this panoramic perspective. Features of this model are difficult to verify and many modern people have difficulty with their assumption and have demonstrated an unwillingness to accept it even as a working assumption in the absence of better evidence. I have explored a way in this model can be generalized in a way that makes these features unnecessary yet nearly preserves the essential functionality of the Original model.

Lay Buddhist Practice 1

Uposatta Day, July 8 (Index to Series)

Energetic and heedful in his tasks,
Wisely administering his wealth,
He lives a balanced life,
Protecting what he has amassed.

Endowed with faith and virtue too,
Generous he is and free from avarice;
He ever works to clear the path
That leads to weal in future life.

Thus to the layman full of faith,
By him, so truly named ‘Enlightened,’
These eight conditions have been told
Which now and after lead to bliss.

AN 8.54

Lay Practice is consistently contrasted with Monastic Practice in the ancient Buddhist texts, throughout Buddhist history, and in all Buddhist countries and almost all traditions in Asia. Segmenting the religious community into a monastic and a lay component is a peculiarity of Buddhism, along with some sects of Hinduism and certain Christian sects. In the West we generally do not appreciate how deeply embedded this is in virtually all Buddhist societies in Asia, though we generally are aware that the Buddha and his closest disciples were monastics and that most of his teachings were given to monastics. Is this bifurcation necessary, or even desirable in the democratic West?

The core of Buddhist practice, what really distinguishes Buddhism from other religious practices, is the Noble Eightfold Path. Notably, the Eightfold Noble Path makes no distinction between Lay and Monastic, each is fully capable of observing all eight noble steps and neither is exempt from following all eight noble steps in the attainment of the highest goal. So, what is it that makes Lay Practice different from Monastic Practice?

Not a cookie-cutter religion. Practice obligations tend to be quite uniform in probably most of the worlds religions. Islam is a primary example because the daily obligations are well defined for all. Quakers are another; their governance is even highly democratic, and includes no clergy. Probably most Protestant sects can be included. I call these “cookie-cutter religions,” because a uniform definition of what is expected of the adherent, that they live according to a certain moral code, that they except a certain creed, that they follow certain daily ritual practices, would be expected to produce similar results. Of course people everywhere inevitably distinguish themselves in terms of level of commitment or laxness, but there is a lot of communal strength and conceptual appeal in the uniformity of the cookie-cutter paradigm.

Buddhism in its pure form could never be a cookie-cutter religion. Buddhism has an unusually sophisticated and deep-reaching system of practice with many interconnected parts, and a very long and rigorous path of practice passing through many different stages of development, generally conceptualized as proceeding through many lifetimes, and culminating in complete awakening. Because of the potential extreme depth of systematic Buddhist practice it is generally defined conceptually in terms of an ideal, in terms of what the most whole-hearted, committed and fortunate will undertake but few even of them will attain, in this lifetime.

Virtually everyone falls short of the Buddhist ideal, and to wildly varying degrees. It is recognized from the get-go that its adherents will differentiate themselves on the basis of faith, commitment, obligations and interests outside of Buddhist practice, preferences as well within Buddhist practice, zeal, opportunities for inspiration and instruction from others, and so on. As a result, some adherents will meditate, but not follow precepts, some will follow precepts and practice generosity, but fail to approach contentment in sensual matters. In short, in Buddhism there is very little uniformity of practice, and correspondingly there is little obligation to maintain some agreed standard of practice. The amount and nature of Buddhist practice are ultimately matters of personal choice and opportunity and correspondingly there is a great tolerance for a variety of personal choices.

Setting out on the Buddhist path is like taking a hike with a large and very mixed group of people of every age, state of health, type of footwear, backpack size, degree of inebriation, and so on. Such a group will spread out along the path, with the strongest, healthiest, be-hiking-booted, light-backpacked, boldest, most persistent and most enterprising leading the way. In the middle there might be a mutually infatuated teenage couple that keeps up in spurts, but keeps getting side-tracked and disappearing from the path for minutes at a time, some chubby middle-aged people who huff and puff, along with some fit but ancient birdwatchers. Falling way back are parents and their little kids who “cannot walk another step,” a couple of people sitting on a rock drinking beer, an elderly gentleman watching fire ants devour his cane that he had to abandon upright after it sank into a soft spot in the ground, and a lady who broke a heal upon encountering the first rock. The Buddhist path is defined with the leaders at the head in mind and the rest of us try our best to keep up but straggling to varying degrees; we do what we can, and often the accomplishments of the leaders, and tales of views from lofty heights inspire us to try a bit harder. The field guides, trail maps and high-tech hiking boots are generally designed with the leaders in mind.

No, the monastics are not necessarily the leaders. However, individually people do make practice commitments at different points in the mix, often very rigorous commitments, and Buddhism does provide standards and communal support at many different levels depending on individual commitment. The Refuges bring with them a certain incentive. There are various sets of Precepts, from five to over three hundred, that one can take for life or on special occasions. There are communal ritual practices, Dharma talks, meditation and other events to encourage structure in one’s practice. Working with a teacher can support a strong personal practice. Monastic practice is a particularly strong standard supported within the Buddhist community. The point is that Buddhism has its cookie cutters but a lot of different cookie cutters, including one that turns out nuns and monks, but also many adherents that aren’t cut to size by any of them.

The jugglers fallacy. A normal worldling life is full of different activities and commitments, obligations and worries. Many things we do are not chosen as a part of our Buddhist practice, or might even go against good practice. For instance, we do one thing because it is a family obligation or because it is our job and the boss says we have to do it. We do another thing because it seems like fun, even though it is not conducive to serenity and is of questionable virtue. We would rather gossip, listen to loud music, watch an adventure show, make love or sleep than meditate. These are all life-style choices. We each value different things and not all of our values come from the Buddha. I am a monk, so it is a good guess that my most of my values are in line with Buddhist teachings. However, I am also the father of grown children, and am fully aware of how meaningful and rewarding parenthood can be. Most people juggle a lot of things along with their Buddhist practice.

This issue of juggling is more thorny than most realize: Suppose we find our lives are divided between our Buddhist practice and other things at at a ratio of maybe 10%, to 90%. So, we calculate: “Hmm, if I practiced 100% I could become enlightened in 1 year. It follows that if I practice the way I am now doing, at 10%, I could become enlightened in 10 years; that seems both reasonable and acceptable.” This same logic is commonly used to compute time until completion for various tasks, for instance, for building a house when only weekends are available for working on it, or for attending night classes toward a college degree. However this logic is a fallacy when applied to Buddhist practice, what I will call the Juggler’s Fallacy. Why the logic of the Juggler’s Fallacy fails is that everything we do is relevant to our practice, potentially setting it forward or backward or into a tailspin. It doesn’t matter if we call it practice or not, nothing is ever excluded from practice, whether it is right practice, wrong practice or something in between.

The reason nothing is excluded from practice is that karma is the stuff of our practice, which is to say, our character and destiny develop according to our intentional actions of body, speech and mind. If this were not the case, practice would be fruitless. However, we are producing karma all the time, not just during the 10% of the time that we are “practicing Buddhism.” In fact, the 90% of the time we are doing something other than “practicing Buddhism” is bound to dominate our progress. This is, for instance, why Right Livelihood is so important; 40 hours working in a slaughter house is a lot of cumulative karma in a week, enough to overwhelm one hour of daily meditation regardless how many years, or in which jhanas, we meditate. We cannot even begin to make a separation between our practice and the rest of our life. Everything we juggle in our lives influences the progress we make along the path.

Monastic life is a life of not juggling. Monastic life is most supportive of Buddhist practice because it has nothing visibly in it, only our own untamed thoughts, that contradicts personal development, and because it has much that supports it. In fact almost every element of the monastic life is there because it is sound Buddhist practice. Even if my meditation is lax and my mindfulness sloppy, as I adhere to the monastic lifestyle, development will at least not regress. I might be like the chubby middle-aged people huffing and puffing, but will make progress. If my practice is ardent, as I adhere to the monastic lifestyle, progress along the Buddhist path will be very rapid indeed, and I could be up front strong and fit, and with high-tech hiking boots. The monastic life was carefully formulated and described in the Vinaya by the Buddha, who used elements of ascetic practices common in Buddha’s India. It is a life of renunciation, but not extreme asceticism. that pares away everything that I would otherwise have to juggle.

The Juggler’s Life. The Lay life is the juggler’s life, and most people will prefer to juggle many things that a monastic would turn away from. To begin with people’s values are informed through many influences, not all of which are Buddhist, and those values may be difficult to give up. Secondly, people vary in faith and may not be convinced about Buddhist values or that the monastic life is as advertised. Third, many people have family obligations, debts, etc. that keep them locked into the juggler;s life. The most notable deal-breaker for most is that monastics are strictly celibate! They also minimize family responsibilities, refrain from accumulating wealth or doing any kind of business or conducting a conventional livelihood. They restrain the senses by not going to shows, listening to music, and so on. Monastic life is simple, and believe-it-or-not quite joyful, but does not enjoy universal appeal.

Lay Practice is the art of juggling. Lay practitioners follow the Noble Eightfold Path just like monastics, but in addition must follow the extremely challenging ninth practice of Right Juggling in order to shape and balance your life in such a way that the less Buddhist aspects of your life are not overwhelming or neutralizing the benefits of Buddhist practice. Lay practice is challenging, but not limited in its potential to achieve the highest attainments of Buddhist practice. What is worrisome about the Western lay life is that so few people realize that there is an art to juggling, that if not mastered can make progress on the path all but impossible. I’ve often seen Buddhist practice accordingly end in frustration. I hope that the series I am herewith beginning will help readers master the Art of Lay Practice.

Let me present the Art in brief, but in metaphorical terms that may be cryptic enough to keep you in suspense until next week, but suggestive enough to inspire you to think about Lay Practice between now and then.

The Art of Juggling.

Select. Choose your balls carefully. Choose a set of balls that feel just right for you, that are the right size, weight and appearance, and that are not too great in number.

Reject. Get rid of balls that are defective or unjuggleable. This is a check on the result of the first step. You may have been captivated by a ball because of its appearance, for instance, but overlooked its drawbacks. Throw it out if it is really too heavy, light, small to be usable.

Balance. Have a wholesome, balanced relationship to your balls. Don’t be captivated by, nor proud of, the new shiny golden ball as it whizzes by. Your task is to juggle it faithfully and skillfully.

Simplify. Don’t juggle things that aren’t balls. That is, while you have, say, six balls in the air, don’t at the same time try to answer your cell phone, smoke, drink coffee or flirt with a member of the audience.

Faith II

Uposatha Day, First Quarter Moon, May 10, 2011

“It takes a lot of faith to do zazen [Zen Buddhist practice], otherwise you’d never do something so stupid.”
– Rev. Shohaku Okumura

Last week I introduced the notion of faith as a space in which we all spend most of our waking time, the space that exists between our ability to discern and reason and know, and our need to act in all manner of daily affairs and of lifetime commitments. One of the difficulties in talking about faith is that most people have some fixed ideas — generally adopted on faith — about it, often as some kind of higher good, or alternatively as a kind of human weakness, gullibility or laziness in thinking. I hope I impress upon the leader over and over in this short series of posts that whether we have or act on faith is not a choice in the realm of human possibility, only whether our faith is skillful or unskillful. The Buddha’s view is that faith is a faculty of the human mind. As such it is a topic of investigation and understanding as a part of human psychology, and is subject on the one hand to training and development of skill, or on the other to neglect and misuse.

I want this week to open up the topic of the content of faith, that is, what is it we have faith in. In subsequent weeks we will look at the origin of, or influences on our faith, and the emotive properties of faith. To repeat my own definition from last week, anything that can be said to inform our actions and activities and life decisions that is beyond the scope of rational discernment and reasoning fits under faith.

I would like to cast our net far, but let me at least zoom in to make some early reference to Buddhist faith so we don’t lose track of our primary concern. Buddhist faith will also provide some interesting examples of some universal points. The Pali word saddha is generally that which is translated as faith. Sometimes it is said that the primary object of faith is in the enlightenment of the Buddha. A secondary object of faith is in kamma (Sanskrit, karma). These two make sense: If Buddhism is primarily concerned with the perfection of human character, the Buddha’s enlightenment provides the example of what we are all capable of, and kamma is the developmental model that shows how attention to our actions gets us there. (Please keep in mind that karma in Buddhism is quite distinct from alternative models of karma in various Hindu traditions, with which it is commonly confused. Last year I wrote a long series on the Buddhist developmental model, “From Thought to Destiny.”) Saddha is also commonly associated with the Three Refuges, or Triple Treasure. Going for Refuge is a matter of putting faith in the authority of the Buddha, the Dhamma (Sanskrit, Dharma) and the Sangha. When we take refuge in the Buddha we recognize the Buddha’s enlightenment, as well as his wisdom as a teacher capable of accurately expressing what he realized, and of setting in motion a means to propagate his teachings and extending their influence into the future. When we take refuge in the Buddha we place our faith in the accuracy of what the Buddha taught, and in the efficacy of the various practices and of the way of life he recommends. When we take refuge in the Sangha we place our faith in the Buddhist adepts responsible here and now for conveying, exemplifying and maintaining the integrity of the teachings.

The Dhamma is somewhat distinct in that by and large it treats faith as provisional, something that is progressively replaced with direct discernment as one’s practice develops. Recall Sariputta’s (he was the Buddha’s foremost disciple in wisdom) words in the opening quote last week, “I don’t take it on faith. I know.” The Dhamma is a sophisticated doctrinal system, but one open to investigation, ehipassika, “to be seen for oneself.” Investigation, in turn, is a progressive process, a possibility that depends on, and opens up more and more with continued practice. Therefore at the outset one necessarily starts with a lot of faith, faith that the Buddha knew what he was talking about and that it has been successfully conveyed in the Dhamma and through the Sangha to you. But what the Buddha taught included clear instructions that enable you to investigate for yourself, gradually to see what the Buddha saw. As Rev. Okumura expresses in the opening quote above, we start with little discernment — we cannot see for ourselves the sense of zazen — andso without faith we would not start at all. However, through investigation based on our experience of practice, discernment progressively replaces faith, and at the same time the intensity of faith in the rest grows through repeated confirmation.

What enables this development of discernment is that the Dhamma is really a nuts-and-bolts system, with relatively little in the way of lofty and sweeping truths, for instance, about the existence of God or the origin of the universe, rather primarily confined to pointers to elements of present experience, things you can see with a degree of training and practice. But more about this later.

So, now zooming back out from Buddhism, we ask, What are the elements or contents of faith? Naturally much of the content of faith has the form of beliefs, for instance, the belief that heaven and hell are real places, that God is an animate being, that free markets ensure the optimal use of resources, that walking under a ladder or breaking a mirror is bad luck, or that craving is the source of suffering. Notice that for all of us, individually, virtually all common beliefs are matters of faith, for instance, that the moon orbits around the sun or that water is made of oxygen and hydrogen, since we rely on some other authority to stand behind these beliefs whose infallibility most of us cannot generally prove rationally. We believe in scientific “truths” for the most part because we have faith in science, and we trust that scientists discern or establish these beliefs on a rational basis.

What does the scientist have faith in? He has faith in the data provided by other scientists, but further than that, he has faith in the correctness of the scientific method, in the existence of an objective world in which certain propositions are true that humans have the capacity know, none of which can be rationally established with certainty. Moreover, the individual scientist, doing what is known as normal science, works and is invested in a certain paradigm or broad theoretical framework, which acts as a lens through which data is interpreted and given meaning. That individual scientist has faith in that paradigm. It is faith because belief in it is not arrived at rationally by that scientist through considering all possible alternatives, but rather through faith in the authority of that scientist’s elders, usually especially his dissertation advisor. Other scientists will at the same time have faith in competing paradigms, but virtually any scientist has allegiance to some particular paradigm or another. Science is riddled with faith.

If we grant that belief in science can arise through faith, we should also acknowledge the ongoing impetus in science to investigate, including to challenge accepted beliefs or to improve their rational basis over time. This ensures progress over time toward aligning belief with some rational empirically grounded criteria of truth (notice, however, that the existence or nature of such criteria is a matter of faith). There is a trend in science that moves toward knowing and away from faith, but not a accomplished goal. This is not so different from the spirit of investigation alive in Buddhism that Sariputta refers to, but is uncommon in most areas of human interest. This raises an interesting question about these other areas: Are they just sloppier than science about what is true and what is not, or do they have good reasons for believing something without a reasonable basis for whether it is actually true or not? In other words, is faith at least sometimes preferable to knowing?

The human capacity for denial illustrates the tendency to ignore reason to grasp at a more comforting proposition out of faith. For instance, the notion of eternal life protects us from the horror of future non-existence. Or you may choose to tell a victim of a clearly about-to-become fatal accident, “You’re going to be O.K.” to protect him from the shock of a more objective appraisal. And, the implicit and comforting view that “all beef” on the package means something like ground steak, protects us from the uncomfortable recognition about what body parts the hot dogs we are eating really are made of. Buddhism, seemingly in contrast to most religious faith, is not generally prone to encouraging denial, often lending the impression of Buddhism as pessimistic: “What makes you think,” the Buddhist asks, “that you exist even now?” On a cautionary note, I am sure most readers are aware of the often serious dangers of denial, for instance, denial of the lump growing under the skin, of an increasing burden of personal debt or of the accelerating rate of severe weather events.

On the side of more skillful applications of belief based in faith, there are cases in which faith gives rise to truth. William James points out the power of faith to provide its own verification. Most of the cases involve cooperation among people. A group of die-hard strict rationalists would be hard put to exhibit any cooperative behavior at all, or even to develop friendships. Each would think along the lines of, “It is wasted effort for me even to think about doing my part of this proposed collaborative task before I have good evidence that those other people intend to do their part of the task,” then put their efforts on hold to await such evidence. Or they would reason, “Why should I be friends with him when I have no basis for suspecting that he wants to be friends with me?” If they are all thinking like this then nothing gets done and no friendships are forged. These are generally not people you want on your basketball team, in your platoon, among your squad of circus acrobats or in your construction crew. These are also not people prone to have dates on Saturday nights. Why? Because they lack sufficient faith. Collaborative behavior requires at least one person daring enough to have faith in the intentions of others, and then to begin to act on that basis. It is faith that inspires. James states, “Who gains promotions, boons, appointments, but the man in whose life they are seen to play the part of live hypotheses, who discounts [doubts about?] them, sacrifices other things for their sake before they have come, and takes risks for them in advance? His faith acts on the powers above him as a claim, and creates its own verification.” In fact, I would suggest a supplementary pattern of human development is to learn to live up to the faith place in you be others.

A notable form of faith would be in that which is discernibly questionable or false. However, these are sometimes skillful as well! All myth falls into this category, but may nonetheless provide lessons and examples that inform skillful actions. In weeks past (see “Buddhism with Beliefs”)I have talked about the skillfulness of the belief in the existence of two pillars of Western culture, whose actual empirical existence is questionable: Money and God. The skill in believing in God can perhaps best be illustrated from the perspective of Buddhism which makes no use of such faith. Buddhism holds that there is a mythical element running through most human thought — in fact, even through virtually all of science — an element whose existence has no support in discernment or reason, but which people consistently accept on faith. Furthermore Buddhism holds that faith in this element is an example of unskillful faith. This is, of course, faith in the existence of things, including in the existence of our selves, as separate entities. As we have just seen in the series on non-self, faith in this myth gets us into a lot of trouble. As we have also seen, it is no trivial task to shake our-selves loose from this kind of faith. One way to look at God is as a means of fighting fire with fire, as a means of offsetting the consequences of an unskillful myth with another myth. Faith in God does for us much of which losing faith in the self does: It dethrones the self from the center of the universe.

In summary, much of faith has the form of beliefs. We all adopt many of our beliefs on the basis of very little hard evidence, often unskillfully but also skillfully and sometimes even as a matter of necessity. I have focused this week on belief, but next week we will see that the content of most of faith does not concern belief at all, but rather values and commitments that are difficult to express propositionally, and which also resist a basis in pure discernment and reason. Next week I will turn to the contents that are not belief. Probably in two weeks I will consider The Kalamas Sutta, a well-known and important statement of the Buddha’s views on religious faith and reason with which many readers will already be familiar. In the pipeline is also a discussion of the emotive aspects of faith. Does this sound good?

From Thought to Destiny: the eBook

From Thought to Destiny

Traditional and Modern Understandings of Kamma

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From Thought to Destiny: Conclusion

Uposatha Teaching: Full Moon, December 21, 2010.

Index to Current Series
“Thought – Act – Habit – Character – Destiny”

“Sow a thought,
and you reap an act;
Sow an act,
and you reap a habit;
Sow a habit,
and you reap a character;
Sow a character, and you reap a destiny.”

We now conclude this series of Uposatha (Quarter Moon) Day teachings on Karma.

We humans are thinking acting creatures potentially with a broad array of free will options in every conscious moment. This enables new karma whereby thoughts give rise to acts, or just remain thoughts. Our acts play out in the world and their consequences run deep, in fact continue indefinitely into the future, where they mingle with all the other chains of cause and effect to make the world what it is. At the same time each new karmic thought or act leaves a residue in the mind, and the accumulation of this residue make us who we are. We are what we do. The karmic residue, the old karma, begins to harden into walls and byways that tend to fix our future acts and thoughts into habit patterns, into mounds then mountains that become our world view, fixed opinions, values and aspirations. This landscape, whether pleasant or craggy, becomes the world we inhabit and the best predictor of our future thoughts and acts, the future new karma that will then leave further karmic residue. Our inner world thus formed can become heaven or hell, a human realm of both pain and pleasure, a place of limitless craving and fear, a ghostly realm of perpetual dissatisfaction or a world of rage and competition. Our outer influences can be for harm or benefit, and the outer world we help create around us as we produce new karma in turn produces conditions that trigger our responses in the form of more new karma, just as our acts trigger karmic responses in others.

Unfortunately left to our own devices, with neither skillful reflection nor wise guidance, we rarely achieve the control over our own karma necessary to shape either our outer or our inner world in a healthy direction. We most naturally fall into service of impulses to seek personal advantage, to exploit for ourselves what we think the world might offer and to protect ourselves from the dangers we think the world might harbor. Alongside these is a desire to be of benefit to others, to treat others with kindness, especially those closest to us. But we struggle with an incessant feeling of lack and a sense of dissatisfaction when we actually manage to acquire what we seek, which then just becomes another need. One need leads to another and our behaviors rather than benefiting begin to harm, for which we fashion clever justifications, even as they harm ourselves. The reactions of those we harm create new needs. We wonder why happiness is so elusive as our karma accumulates. We end up inhabiting, disappointed and confused, an unsatisfactory or even frightening world of our own making, with no better notion of what went so dreadfully askew than to try harder at whatever we were doing before, no longer even considering alternatives to the well-worn byways and walls and the rest of the craggy landscape we’ve formed.

With wise guidance and skillful reflection we are able to take control of our karma. First, we see how our impulses that seek personal advantage lead us astray in increasing lack not decreasing it, in leading to more dissatisfaction not less, in leading to harm for others and unhappiness for ourselves, in enmeshing us further and further in our struggles with the world. Second, with sufficient discipline, energy and sense of urgency, we sort out what is skillful and unskillful in our our thoughts and actions. Immediately we become a force for benefit in the world and gradually we begin, by choosing our thoughts and actions with due deliberation and in spite of established patterns of habit and view, to break through the old karmic walls to create new byways, to create a new more habitable and pleasing karmic landscape. Thereby we begin to loosen the compelling hold of greed, aversion and fixed views, and develop in their stead renunciation, kindness and compassion. We are on our way to the attainment of Nirvana.

Unfortunately we tend to have a small view of the scope of the Buddhist project, we tend to think all the benefit of practice as confined to this one solitary life, limited in time and space, where it competes with all the other temporal attractions that promise happiness, such as physical workouts, dieting, the ideal hair style, wind surfing, executive moving and shaking, and opera tickets. The problem with the limited temporal view is that, since all accomplishment on the Buddhist path will be dissipated at the death of the physical body anyway, the reserve of discipline, energy and sense of urgency otherwise available will be dissipated right now, in favor of potentially more pleasant paths to happiness. The fact is, however, that our unskillful karma propagates and perpetuates itself, if not serially projecting into subsequent lives, then at least laterally through imitation, through the responses of others as consequences of our actions, through adoption into the popular culture. Our karma slops over and spills on others so that large parts of our pleasing or craggy karmic landscape are replicated over and over in the lives of others, in our children, in our colleagues and friends and in all who bear the consequences of our deeds. They carry aspects of ourself, we at the minimum are reborn in bits and pieces. And their potential for attaining Nirvana will, to that extent, look like ours.

Our entire Buddhist practice consists in how we meet this moment, and the next, and the next, …, in Thought and Act. We can meet it skillfully or unskillfully. The teachings on karma tell us how important that Thought and that Act are. While profoundly and eternally conditioning the outer world for harm or benefit, they add their imprint on our Habits, on our Character and in the end on our Destiny. Practice is forever.

From Thought to Destiny: The Pragmatics of Destiny

Uposatha Teaching: First Quarter, December 14, 2010.

Index to Current Series
“Thought – Act – Habit – Character – Destiny”

Nirvana is both the beginning and end of Buddhist practice. We begin with accepting the truth of the Buddha’s enlightenment. Even before we have an understanding of what this is, we accept that the Buddha gained some special quality that we too can with time achieve in Buddhist practice. We end with Nirvana. We practice in between, gaining confidence in the Buddha’s enlightenment as we observe elements of our own character fall into place and gain glimpses of the ultimate goal.

Nirvana, along with its companion, Rebirth, forms a context for Buddhist practice. Keep in mind though that practice is simply about skillful intentional action, that is, Karma. We have added the layers Habit, Character and Destiny to Thought and Act merely to explore the consequences of our intentional action, so that we better understand what it is to be skillful and why its cultivation is so imperative. As with the understanding of Rebirth the understanding of the goal of Nirvana is not without pitfalls.

The Goal. Goals themselves are often put to unskillful uses. They quickly become objects of desire, clinging and obsession, and thus foster unskillful states of mind. “I gotta have that NOW! Oh, I can’t wait, I can’t wait.” Sugarplums are painful things to have dancing in your head. Nirvana can do that as well. Once achieved goals accordingly create an equivalent fear of losing what has been accomplished, or dissatisfaction in it. Don’t worry, you will not have achieved Nirvana in the first place if you have this level of clinging. How do you have a goal skillfully?

It is important to hold skills lightly. Think of them as the North Star, guiding your path, but not something you need to actually reach (in fact the North Star is more and more out of reach the further you travel toward it; it ends up overhead). If you are learning a language, you just follow a fixed daily routine of practice, otherwise you will make yourself miserable striving to speak as a native and will eventually give up. Consider Gandhi’s life task; he just followed the daily practice of non-violent non-participation along with encouraging others to join him; he never would have endured his half-century campaign had he been obsessed constantly with driving the British out of India. Consider the misery of dieting to get slim, the repeated sacrifice of what needs to be renounced in the painful effort to be slim, then the disappointment after you abandon the discipline that you had barely been able to sustain, only to return to your former pleasingly plump condition. The goal can skillfully form a background context to occasionally consult to ensure you are headed in the right direction.

The ways in which the goal of Nirvana has been framed seems to have played an important role in Buddhist thought. In China the notion of Sudden Enlightenment became very prominent. This is the idea that within this very life it is very feasible that one can attain Nirvana, without plotting out a path of development spanning many lifetimes. Zen literature is full of references to people who through practice and skillful instruction suddenly realize in a single instant Enlightenment, often with little preparation beforehand. These stories in a sense mirror the stories of the early Suttas of disciples of the Buddha who realize the final goal during a single discourse of the Buddha. However in the Suttas the presupposition is almost always present that these are people “with little dust in their eyes,” people who have already lived as recluses perhaps for many lifetimes, practiced meditation, developed virtue, reflected deeply on the nature of existence, and only needed the wisdom of the Buddha’s teaching to pull it all together. Within Zen even while embracing Sudden Enlightenment the contrasting notion that one should practice without a goal, simply practice. The notion that “We are already enlightened” encourages this. This is particularly evident in the teachings of Japanese Master Dogen (1200-1253), whose view was essentially that Enlightenment is not something you achieve, it is something you do, or fail to do, moment by moment. After all, the only way we shape Habit, Character and Destiny, or in fact anything else in the world, is through our intentional actions. Isn’t it enough just to get our intentional actions right, that is, to face each moment with a calm mind, virtue in the heart, and clarity about what is going on, and then act skillfully? Similarly, for the chubby person is it not enough just to face each day moderate eating habits? In either case the goal takes care of itself.

It is important to distinguish striving for a goal from effort. Effort does not require clinging, which is painful, only discipline, which can be quite joyful. What we would call an awakened being, and arahant, someone who has attained the goal of Nirvana gets intentional actions right naturally and without effort, which is why we don’t even think of them as intentional or karmic any more, and would not know what else to do. The rest of us must meet each moment while being hammered by the typhoons and eruptions of impulse and obsession, assaulted by the flames and avalanches of passion and rage, so we must be able to put all that aside then act with a calm mind, virtue in the heart, and clarity about what is going on, and to enact Enlightenment. So effort does not vanish with the notion that we are already all enlightened. We still need to act like it.

I suspect that, like much of Buddhist doctrine, the various ways of treating the goal of Nirvana are pragmatic adaptations of the Buddha’s teachings to differing cultural circumstances. It has been suggested that the idea of Sudden Enlightenment is related to the existence of greater social mobility in China than in India. In India there was not much expectation that one’s lot in life would change significantly within this lifetime, life required extreme patience, and many lifetimes to make progress. In China one might be born a peasant and die an advisor to the emperor, quick results could be expected in this lifetime. I doubt that the Chinese actually developed a way to become enlightened faster, they just framed to process in a more appealing, less frustrating way. For those that might have doubts about the veracity of Rebirth, which recall brings with it a sense of urgency in practice, the prospect of Sudden Enlightenment might also inspire to urgency in practice. The downside of all this is that the prospect of Sudden Enlightenment encourages clinging to the ultimate goal. This would explain the common accompanying theme of practicing with no goal as a wise defense against this clinging.

Now let’s consider Western culture. We tend to be acquisitive, we tend to expect instant click-of-a-button gratification, we tend to interpret things as personal goals. These things require that we be extremely careful with Nirvana, Enlightenment and the other synonyms. Already these have become marketing tools for Buddhist products, including teachings, accompanied by promises of fast results. I recommend that people steer clear of such appeals. I personally like to teach in terms of Gradual Enlightenment but Steady Progress in order to mitigate greed and encourage patience. I teach in terms of Perfection of Character or Virtue rather than Ending of Suffering, or Eternal Bliss, because it is less about personal advantage, it suggests something you do for everyone rather than just for yourself. I tried teaching in terms of Responsibility for a while, but students seemed to think that was a bummer. (It is perhaps an advantage of being a monastic that I do not have to try to sell anything, like seminars, books and retreats; I don’t depend on teaching as a livelihood, I have no livelihood. This leaves me free to teach what is most skillful, like renunciation and disenchantment, rather than what appeals to the naive and commercially influenced understanding.) Most importantly is to settle into a well-defined daily practice routine, disciplined but not striving. The book will get written if you write a certain number of pages a day, competence will develop if you learn something new each day. Just take care of the day, the moment, the intention behind the action and the rest will take care of itself.

Rebirth and Nirvana together give a broader meaning to the Buddhist path that extends beyond the confines of this one life. Although Nirvana is a distant goal for most, it is one toward which noticeable progress, along with occasional glimpses of its waiting arms, can be witnessed in this one life, and sometimes some recluse will actually attain this lofty goal of perfection of character. For most of us Nirvana simply provides a cathedral-like framework to contain our daily practice or aspirations.

Greater than the One Life. The focus on this one life gives a limited view of the Buddhist path. Another analogy is perhaps in order.

The focus of corporate capitalism tends to be limited to quarterly profits. Sometimes the executive vision is a bit more far-sighted as certain long-term perspectives are able to raise stock prices for the short term, but the performance of executives are by and large judged on the basis of quarterly profitability. This means that the global view is largely lacking; where will we be, say, one hundred years from now? The characteristic myopic decisions of individual corporations exemplifies what in Artificial Intelligence is known as Hill Climbing. The logic of Hill Climbing is that if you want to get to the top of the mountain in the fog, just keep walking up hill. The decision-making process is thus driven by a local metric, the contours beneath your feet. The weakness of hill climbing is that you almost always get stuck at the top of a foot hill and miss the top of the mountain altogether because you lack the global perspective. This is the problem of scrambling for short-term, measurable gain. Since corporations by and large can not sustain a long-term perspective, other human institutions are required that can. The scientific and technological research communities can afford a long-term view because at their purest they are generally not required to show quarterly results or any particular practical results. Their practitioners, sustained by job security (tenure and so on) provided generally through government funding, have the leisure to work on projects with very long-term goals, or simply advance human understanding of certain principles, like computability. They become a resource for future long-term corporate profitability, at little corporate expense. They also potentially provide a social conscience in corporate decision-making. (Unfortunately a great weakness of the corporate system is that more often than not warnings that would conflict with quarterly profits tend not only to be ignored actually suppressed through corporate control of media and through corporate lobbying of government agencies responsible for allocating funds for scientific and technological research.)

Our individual spiritual focus tends to be similarly limited to quarterly results. Sometimes we are motivated to sustain a meditation practice through the inspiration of others, but generally we waste time scrambling for short-term measurable gain, wealth, reputation, fun, a new romance, kids off drugs and in school, the neighbor’s dog not barking all night, getting the upper hand in the battle of the bulge, finding the best cell phone service provider for the family, looking busy at work and so on. With so many petty concerns it is easy to lose sight of Nirvana, the overarching goal of the Buddhist life, the lofty peak that may lie many lives in the future, and instead get stuck at the top, or even half way up, a little hill. As a matter of fact, since Buddhists by and large can not easily, in the bustle of samsara, sustain a long-term perspective, another human institution is required to hold to that perspective as a constant reminder. This is a traditional role in Buddhism of the monastic Sangha. Its practitioners, sustained by lay donations, and at the purest giving up all temporal concerns that might distract them from the higher goal, have the leisure to work on something much bigger than their single lives. They become the conscience of the Buddhist, keeping him pointed toward the higher goal. On a quarterly basis the elements of Buddhist practice may not seem so urgent, but those periods on the cushion, meeting situations with kindness and insight, keeping life simple and peaceful, make an incalculably huge difference in the Destiny of the world.

From Thought to Destiny: Nirvana, the Perfection of Character 2/2

Uposatha Teaching: New Moon, December 6, 2010.

Index to Current Series
“Thought – Act – Habit – Character – Destiny”

Last week we began discussing Nirvana in two of its aspects, Imperturbability and Awakening, that is, the affective and cognitive aspects. This week we consider the the remaining aspects of Highest Virtue and of Liberation, which ties together these three aspects.

Highest Virtue. This is the result of developing the behavioral aspect of character, or the morality, and thereby brings us one again to the issue of Karma. Virtue comes with the erosion and eventual loss of unskillful roots of Greed, Aversion and Delusion and with the arising and growth of Renunciation, Kindness, Compassion and Wisdom. In fact, with the complete disappearance of Greed, Aversion and Delusion, and backed by Renunciation, that is, staking no personal claim in anything, and by the penetrating and encompassing insight of Wisdom, the factors of Kindness and Compassion are unleashed to bring the world unlimited benefit. A saint is born. This seems, in fact, to accord with the Buddha’s life story.

However, there appears to be some confusion about what the Arahant, the one that has attained Nirvana, is capable of. Nirvana is frequently described as the End of Karma, referring specifically to the end of New Karma, that is, intentional actions, rather than Old Karma, that is, the cumulative results of past intentional actions, which may persist for a while after the attainment of Nirvana. For instance the following passage describes actions in accord with the Noble Eightfold Path as leading not only to the ending of skillful (bright) Karma, but also to the ending of unskillful (dark) Karma and everything in between, the ending of All New Karma altogether.

The intention right there is to abandon this kamma that is dark with dark result, the intention right there is to abandon this kamma that is bright with bright result, the intention right there is to abandon this kamma that is dark and bright with dark and bright result. This is called kamma that is neither dark nor bright with neither dark nor bright result, leading to the ending of kamma. AN 4.232

Because Karma is a fabrication, that is a compounded thing, this provides a release from the arising of any slight suffering that would be associated with even skillful (bright Karma). Furthermore, with the end of Karma comes the end of Samsara, that is the end of Birth and Death, upon the physical death of the body. Rebirth, recall, is driven by Karma. But then, it seems that the arahant must be not only incapable of intentional action after Nirvana is attained, but also would be unable, in any case, to stick around to be of benefit in subsequent lives. So on the path nearing Nirvana the arahant has accumulated this huge reservoir of Virtue, only for it to be squandered in the attainment of Nirvana! Could this really be the case? It seems from the Suttas that the arahants were all capable of much more than sitting around blissfully drooling on their mudras, but apparently this is a common Mahayana understanding of what it means to become an Arahant: In response the Bodhisattva became a contrasting ideal, as one who stops just short of Arahantship, intentionally and nobly, in order to put this huge reservoir of Virtue to use for the benefit of all beings, in this life and in subsequent lives.

The best way to resolve this question, whether the Arahant is capable of benefiting the world, would be to find an arahant and ask him, but I am not sure where to find one. However, I would suspect to find someone far from the common Mahayana view of the Arahant. For instance, there are alternative passages that suggest as much. The following example suggests that the skillful roots produce no karmic fruit in any case:

In the same way, any action performed with non-greed… performed with non-aversion… performed with non-delusion — born of non-delusion, caused by non-delusion, originating from non-delusion: When delusion is gone, that action is thus abandoned, its root destroyed, made like a palmyra stump, deprived of the conditions of development, not destined for future arising. AN 3.33

The emphasis on non-delusion might suggest that particularly pure actions of non-greed and non-aversion are under discussion, ones without a hint of attachment to what is thereby fabricated. Perhaps these are the activities allowed the arahant. These might be quite spontaneous pure and simple acts of compassion and kindness in response to conditions as they present themselves with no attachment to results. The turtle is on its back, set it upright, what is there to say or even think about? There is nothing karmic about it in the sense of producing a lasting impression on the character or producing another Rebirth, but such simple actions can produce enormous benefit, coming from an limitlessly insightful, compassionate and kind mind. I think this is probably like the Taoist notions of no-mind and the action of no-action, which in fact became the Zen understanding of nirvanic behavior, as described like this in Twelfth Century China:

People of the Way journey through the world responding to conditions, carefree and without constraint. Like clouds finally raining, like moonlight following the current, like orchids growing in shade, like spring arising in everything, they act without mind, they respond with certainty. — Master Hongzhi

In other words compassionate and wise action becomes the natural function of an Arahant, just as the natural function of rain is to pitter-patter and the natural function of a door is to bar access until opened, requiring no particular intentionality on the part of the rain or door or even sense that a choice is being made.

Liberation. In common usage Liberation means the freedom to do what you want: If you want to speak harshly of others, freedom of speech allows you to do so. If you want to eat ice cream, money in your pocket ensures that you can. In Buddhism Liberation is something deeper: It is freedom from having to want. It is therefore freedom from the constraints of our own minds, freedom from the annoying backseat driver in our heads that is constantly demanding that we go there and avoid that, all the while with little sense of what will get us into an accident or take us on a long detour. These directives have their origin in the fabricated self, that entity in the world but not of it, on behalf of which personal advantages are sought in the world and the dangers of the world avoided. They take the form of emotional cues, of lust, of disgust, of heartbreak, of anger, of longing of disappointment, of envy, of acquisitiveness, of stinginess, of pity, or sadness, that keep the mind in anxiety and turmoil and give rise to our actions. This is the human condition.

Buddhism is about looking outside the box with the eye of wisdom. It is about seeing how our rich emotional lives, though providing good material for Italian opera, keep us constantly on edge, perpetually dissatisfied and trapped inwardly in a drama from which we cannot get free, all the while thrashing about outwardly a world of our own fabrication in horribly harmful ways. It is about transforming this insanity that we all seem to be endowed with, and instead to live worthwhile, satisfying and harmless lives, by liberating our actions from our basest emotions, by developing skill in our Karmic actions, turning away from our untutored emotional reactiveness. This is taking responsibility for our lives.

The word Nirvana means extinguishing, as one would extinguish a fire. Ven. Thanissaro Bhikkhu points out that at the Buddha’s place and time the physics of fire was different that we commonly understand it, so that the image for us can be misleading. Something like liberation from painful bondage is intended. Ven. Thanissaro translates Nirvana as Unbinding. In ancient India fire was considered to be present everywhere, normally in a cool state. However when it comes into contact with fuel it tends to attach to it, at which time the fire becomes hot and visible, as in the Buddha’s famous Fire Sermon:

Monks, the All is aflame. What All is aflame? The eye is aflame. Forms are aflame. Consciousness at the eye is aflame. Contact at the eye is aflame. And whatever there is that arises in dependence on contact at the eye — experienced as pleasure, pain or neither-pleasure-nor-pain — that too is aflame. Aflame with what? Aflame with the fire of passion, the fire of aversion, the fire of delusion. Aflame, I tell you, with birth, aging & death, with sorrows, lamentations, pains, distresses, & despairs. The ear is aflame. Sounds are aflame… The nose is aflame. Aromas are aflame… The tongue is aflame. Flavors are aflame… The body is aflame. Tactile sensations are aflame… The intellect is aflame. Ideas are aflame. Consciousness at the intellect is aflame. Contact at the intellect is aflame. And whatever there is that arises in dependence on contact at the intellect — experienced as pleasure, pain or neither-pleasure-nor-pain — that too is aflame. Aflame with what? Aflame with the fire of passion, the fire of aversion, the fire of delusion. Aflame, I say, with birth, aging & death, with sorrows, lamentations, pains, distresses, & despairs. SN 35.28

Nirvana is a matter of unbinding the fire from the fuel to return to the natural, and for people of India more pleasant, state. He does not mention it, but this is much like our modern understanding of Oxygen, normally tame and cool, but quite ready to turn aflame in the presence of fuel and spark. Flame is as a metaphor for the directions of of the backseat driver brings forth graphically the aspect of suffering.

Liberation, it can be seen, summarizes the three aspects of Imperturbability, Awakening and Virtue. Imperturbability is the stilling of the flames, the turning away from the directives of the backseat driver, not getting caught up in the emotional life. Awakening results from seeing the world from a perspective other than through the flames of want, to see the world as it is on its own terms, and thereby recognize the insanity of the emotion-driven life. Highest Virtue is to recognize the sanity of the purpose-driven life and to behave in accordance with the world as it is.