Misunderstandings about karma

Student: I’d like you to talk a little bit about karma, if you would. I have trouble accepting the whole thing. I understand the conditionality of causes and effects, but the long-term business, especially the reincarnation, past lives, future lives—that’s something I have trouble with. Can you tell me how you have accepted that and to what degree it’s based on your experience and to what degree it’s based on faith purely?

Ken: You make an enormous assumption in your question. I can talk about this, probably for a very long time, probably much longer than you want, but let’s see.

There’s a lot of misunderstanding about karma for many different reasons, and I’m not going into the reasons. I’m going to present a couple of ideas. The first idea I’d like to present is that the whole notion of cause and effect is a very inaccurate Western way of looking at karma. And it’s problematic because in looking at karma, in terms of cause and effect, you wind up in a big mess. The term in Tibetan is composed of three words: las (pron. lé, tone sliding down), rgyu (pron. gyu), and bras (pron. dré, tone sliding down). Now, las is the word for action. It’s the word for “work” actually, and the word “karma” means action. [Note: Tibetan forms complex nouns by combining simpler nouns. Thus, action + genesis + result = karma.]

The second word rgyu is usually translated as “cause.” But to my mind, it’s a very inaccurate translation because in English, we simply don’t say that an acorn is the cause of an oak tree. I mean, if you’re a philosopher, you might say something like that, but most of us aren’t, so we use English more correctly than philosophers do. An acorn isn’t the cause of an oak tree, it’s the genesis of an oak tree. That’s a very different thing.

And bras is the word for “fruit.” It’s the result. And that’s usually translated as “effect.” So a better metaphor for karma, than cause and effect, is the seed or genesis, which grows into something. That’s a different picture right there. We have to go a step further—in Eastern thought, you have genesis, which is my translation of the word rgyu, or I can give you the Sanskrit for it if you’re interested.

And then there’s another thing. And that is the conditions that allow something to grow or prevent something from growing. If I plant a carrot seed in the ground, say, in straight sand, and there’s no clay or nutrients of any kind, no water, what’s going to happen to that carrot seed? It’s just not going to do anything, it’s going to sit there like a grain of sand. So even though there’s a genesis for a carrot there, no carrot comes out. There have to be the right conditions.

So when we’re talking about karma, we’re talking about a way of looking at how experience arises, what is its genesis. Then, there have to be the right conditions for those things actually to happen.

When I said earlier today, at the beginning of our meditation session, what we do in meditation is grow attention. One of the basic tenants of Buddhism is that we all have the genesis of attention in us. By applying or arranging the right conditions, which is sitting straight and resting in the experience of breathing, we actually create the conditions for attention to grow in us. That’s karma.

Metaphors for karma


Ken: There are three metaphors for karma that I find useful. As my friend Stephen Batchelor says, “What’s the answer to everything in the East? It’s karma.” But just to say, karma explains absolutely nothing because it’s the answer that you give.

What was the answer that we used to give in the West up to maybe at the very most 50 years ago, but really a hundred years ago? It was God’s will. You know, that’s how we related to things. “Oh, it was God’s will.” And if you’re a Muslim, you say “Inshallah.” There’s a wonderful story about Nasrudin who’s my favorite Buddhist teacher. He goes to the tailor and he says, “Can you make me a suit?” And the tailor said, “If it pleases Allah, yes.”

Okay. And what do we do? “Well, I have to measure you.” And, “When will it be ready?” “Well, if it pleases Allah, next week.” And, “What if I need to have alterations?” “Well, if it pleases Allah, we speak to my assistant.” And at this point, Nasrudin says, “Could we just leave Allah out of this, please?”

So God’s will, Inshallah, karma, etc. These are all ways that were used to explain or refer to things that we couldn’t explain any other way. It was just to say, that’s a mystery. We don’t understand. We don’t know. And we can’t know. So that’s one way the karma’s used.

The second way—I’ve already referred to it—is karma as evolution. Things evolve, they grow into other experiences and so forth.

And the third one is the law of gravity. Has anybody ever tried to repeal the law of gravity? We have the law of karma and in Eastern thought it’s viewed as how the universe works. A very deep principle. Now, you ask, how have I come to accept this?

One of my teachers was Dezhung Rinpoche. He died some years ago. Dezhung Rinpoche was really quite an extraordinary person. He was brought over to the West by the CIA and lived in Seattle, at the University of Washington, to provide resources because the CIA wanted to compile a Tibetan-English dictionary and things like that to run insurgency in Tibet.

He was one of the most profound and widely learned scholars of this last generation of Tibetan teachers, an incredible person. If you asked him a question, you had to be prepared to sit there for two hours because he was such an encyclopedia of knowledge. He was also extremely warm person.

One day he was teaching a group of us and he talked about his own teacher and how when he was a young monk studying with him—because he was recognized as having special ability—he got special tutoring from this person. As they were walking along, his teacher said to him, “Oh, Dezhung-la, do you believe in karma?” Dezhung Rinpoche, being a young, enthusiastic monk, fully engaged in Buddhism, said, “Oh, yes!” And his teacher, who’d spent years in retreat, really working very deeply, and himself an extraordinary person, said, “Oh, you’re so lucky. I find that really hard.” And that really shook Dezhung Rinpoche.

Karma is a story


Ken: What is karma in the end? Karma is a story. It’s a story that was made up to explain what was unexplainable. Why are some people horrible, mean people and rich, and live long and healthy lives? It really rubs us the wrong way. Why are some absolutely wonderful people poor or ill or just scraping by in life? It is not fair. And why are people cut down in the prime of their life? All kinds of things happen, and we have no explanation. The answer is karma.

So, it’s a story. In the West we have our own stories, and we have a long history of chucking stories when they’re no longer convenient or they no longer fit the way we look at the world. We had the Ptolemaic universe with all of these epicycles and spheres within spheres and things like that. Then Galileo saw the rings around Saturn, and so that story got chucked.

Then there was the whole theory about diseases, which had to do with humors and elements and things like that. But then Pasteur came up with this idea that there were little squigglies called bacteria, and that story got chucked. This is what we do in the West. We throw away stories when they no longer fit our experience.

I could start some totally other place. I find James Joyce completely unreadable, except for one book. A few of you have discussed this with me before. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. This is his only readable book, as far as I’m concerned. At the end of the book, he goes into a complete rant about how any religion, which says you are damned to eternal hell before you’re even born, is inhumanly cruel. This is his reason for rejecting Catholicism.

Sometime or other in my career, studying Buddhism, this whole business—a bus careens off a cliff and all of these school children are killed. Well, that’s their karma, they must’ve been murderers in a previous life. I don’t buy it. I’m sorry. That’s the story. But I think that is just as inhumanly cruel. And I come back to this point—this is a story to explain what is inexplicable. I prefer to live in the mystery. You may have a follow-up question.

Finding your own path


Student: Does that mean that you don’t fully accept the notion of reincarnation, and it’s okay not to?

Ken: Oh, I’ve got to ask this question. What’s going to happen to you if you don’t accept reincarnation?

Student: Nothing’s going to happen to me. I just want to feel comfortable as somebody who follows Buddhism and does not believe in reincarnation.

Ken: Sorry I didn’t catch the last part there.

Student: Identifying myself as a follower of Buddhism and not accepting certain things that are considered central by some people to this faith.

Ken: Well, they’re considered central by some people, yes. Okay. What inspires you about Buddhism? Why are you interested in this weird esoteric thing from the East?

Student: Well, from experience, it has been very beneficial to me in terms of letting go of a lot of things and living in a more peaceful and calm way and relating to the world in a more realistic, truthful way.

Ken: Ah, okay. So why, if you have that kind of benefit from it, would you burden yourself with a whole bunch of extra beliefs?

Student: I haven’t, but I come across them from time to time when I go to Buddhist talks.

Ken: Oh, yes. I know. If you listen carefully, you’ll hear the sounds of me being drummed out of one Buddhist center after another. [Laughter] I gave a talk at the Buddhist center once. Somebody came up to me and said, “If Buddhists had the concept of heresy, that would definitely fit.”

Look, there is this body of teaching that comes down to us, which is extraordinarily rich and multifaceted, which has been practiced for 2,500 years. There’s a huge body of experience and wisdom, learning, understanding. And every single individual has had to find their own path.

You take what is useful in exactly the way that you’ve described and you find your own path. And it’s very important, I think, that you do not let the social pressure or peer pressure or cultural pressure lead you to believe something that doesn’t actually fit with you.

You may find, at a certain point, that something you’ve been holding—if it is very important—you may find that that’s completely wrong and then you let it go yourself. Because it no longer makes sense to you. Everybody loves quoting the Kamala Sutra, “Rely on your own understanding,” etc.

But as Ajahn Amaro, a friend of mine, pointed out, everybody leaves out the second part of the Kamala Sutra, which says, how do you discern what is true? By listening to those who have practiced, etc., and seeing what they have said. You listen, you weigh it against your own experience and you keep an open mind, but absolutely it has to make sense to you because it is your life and your practice and your path.

And there are many instances in my own experience where I thought, I understand this, and I wouldn’t listen to anybody. And I would go that way. At certain point, things would get really hard, and I would find, oh, this can’t be true, it doesn’t make any sense. I’d run into a brick wall. Or, actually, it was usually I dropped off a cliff. I’d think, oh, there wasn’t any ground there after all. [Laughs]

That is coming from your own experience. Make every effort to plumb the depths of your own experience. That’s very important. Don’t believe everything your own experience is telling you either. [Laughs]