In todayand#8217;s FBA Dharmabyte titled and#8220;What Karma Isand#8221; Nagapriya offers a good, pithy introduction to the traditionally thorny and rather misunderstood area of karma and rebirth, teasing out its relationship to Buddhist ethics in general. This excerpt is from the talk and#8220;Understanding Karma and Buddhist Ethicsand#8221; given in Manchester, 2003
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What Karma Is
[music] Dharma Vites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for real life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, come and join us at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. Thank you and happy listening. [music] So what karma is? Well, as I said earlier, the Buddhist notion of karma has got to be understood in the light of the most general and fundamental and comprehensive Buddhist doctrine, which is the doctrine of dependent origination. I haven't got that much time to go into this doctrine in a lot of detail, but I'm just going to go into it briefly. So according to this doctrine, as I say, the fundamental, if you like, metaphysical idea or doctrine of Buddhism, all things, everything arises independence on conditions. And when those conditions cease, the thing itself ceases. So just for example, this event that we're participating in arises independence on conditions. Clear vision of organized this event, they've sent out publicity, you came here, I've come here, and we're here, and we have an event. Later on, maybe about four o'clock, while all have gone, an event will be over, so it's come about independence on conditions and we'll cease again when the conditions cease. In some ways, this seems trivially true. It seems very obvious and straightforward. I'm sure all of you could understand what I just said about this event, arising independence on conditions. But we tend to look at other things, perhaps not events, but objects in isolation, and we see them as having some identity, some independent nature that's independent of their surroundings, and they have an identity that persists through time. And I think the reason, or part of the reason, why we do that, is that we can name things. So, I'm named Naga Priya, and when attaches to this name, various qualities, traits, etc. that maybe one sees persisting through time. And when they move from that to think, aha, yeah, there's something that defines this person, that is Naga Priya, there's some essence there. But from a Buddhist point of view, this is a mistake. Continuity does not mean identity, does not mean permanence. And in a way, I'm going to be playing around this distinction, probably in most of what I say. So, let's just look at a natural object, let's say a tree. We look at a tree, and we think, yeah, tree has recognizable characteristics, and we tend to, in our mind at least, abstract that tree from its surrounding environment. As though it has some kind of nature, some tree-ness, if you like, that's there. But if we look at it a bit more closely, well, take the soil away, what's going to happen to the tree? Fall over, die. Without rain again, it'll just dry up and die. There's many conditions that are needed to keep the tree growing, changing, and staying alive. And if those conditions are removed, well, the tree starts to disintegrate, becomes dead wood, rots again into the soil, maybe provides the basis, the nutriment for another tree. So, I think what happens is that on the whole, and I include myself in this, we lack the imagination to see how things are conditioned. And we tend to see them as having this kind of fixed, permanent nature. And obviously, with things like mountains and planets, it's even more difficult to see how perhaps they're changing, but we just need a longer-term perspective. Okay, so this doctrine has two important implications. First of all, well, because things arise in dependence on conditions, they're impermanent. Whenever, as I've said, the conditions that support that object or event are taken away, the thing itself ceases, shows its impermanent nature. If we see this impermanence, this can lead to what we might describe as a serene withdrawal, a serene withdrawal from attachment to things. A lot of pain is caused from thinking that things are going to continue. So, I don't know, we break our best watch, somebody scratches our car, whatever, and we get upset. Because we're hoping that that watch, that car, is going to stay like that more or less permanently. So, everything's impermanent, and if we realise this, there's this serene withdrawal. Secondly, and in a way, this is merely an extension of the first point. Nothing has a fixed, unchanging nature, and that includes us. And this is what's known as the principle, or doctrine, if you like, of anatar, or no self, not self. Yes, so we too, are rising dependence on conditions, and we're constantly changing, both physiologically and psychologically, mentally. Our bodies are constantly changing, we take in food, we pass out waste, we gain more wrinkles, as time goes on, maybe a few grey hairs, maybe we start losing our hair, maybe we shrink, maybe we grow. And of course, eventually, we die, all of us die. But not only our body is changing, our mind's changing as well. So, we develop new habits, we develop new skills, maybe we become happier, or maybe we become less happy. We gain more knowledge, perhaps, over time, and as I say, maybe gain more skills, more confidence. So, we're constantly changing. And to kind of draw this out a bit more fully, I want to introduce you to quite an important and fundamental model, a Buddhist model, of the human being, if you like. So, this is called the Candas, or the Scanders, the Five Candas. This is a way, really, of just trying to see how we're constantly changing, and we don't have a fixed nature or fixed self. So, there are five Candas, or heaps, it's often translated as, sometimes aggregates. First of all, we've got big nyana, consciousness. Then we've got sanyar, aperception. This is the process, really, of kind of interpreting our experience, like recognizing, say, that's a chair, recognizing that that's my friend, you know, over there. Etc., memory, all these sorts of functions that, in a way, we perhaps don't think about too much, but are going on all the time. The process of interpreting our world to make it meaningful, to make sense of it, if you like, sanyar. Then we've got rupa, form, or body. This refers to kind of the physiological aspect of us, all the others are mental. Then we've got Vedana, which is feelings and sensations. And finally, and in a way, this is the most important one for today. We've got sankara, and I've here rendered it as volition, or habit. Sometimes it's translated as volitional tendencies. It's given all sorts of different translations in different places, but let's stick with that for now. So we usually define ourselves, or we usually describe ourselves in terms of our sankaras, in other words, in terms of our habits. These are usually what are most recognizable about people. You know, such and such is into football, you know, such and such. They've got this tendency to talk very loudly, et cetera, things like that. We generally define people in terms of their leading habits or qualities. Such and such is an angry person. Such and such is a very shy person. And we see these things as not really changing. I want to use an analogy to try to kind of illustrate this business about the sankaras, and it may or may not work for you. But I want to use the analogy of a football team. Let's just, for argument's sake, call this football team, Manchester United, a bit of local colour. So we talk in terms of a team, or if you like, in terms of a self, that somehow seems to have a certain identity that persists through time. The sankaras, the sankaras, if you like, are each of the individual players, 11 players. Just for now, there's 11 sankaras. You've probably got a lot more than that, but let's say there's 11. And we think that there's a core to this, but really what is the core? What is the core to this team? Is it Ryan Giggs? Or is it Roy Keane, the cap team? Well, sometimes they don't play. So when they don't play, where is the core of Manchester United? Where's it gone? We're still talking in terms of the team having this identity. Actually, there's only a notional sense of identity. The identity comes from description. There is no identity there. We impose that on the experience of these 11 players, if you like. Perhaps you could say, well, what is distinctive about Manchester United is the red shirts. But actually, sometimes they play away. They wear blue shirts, even white shirts. So where's Manchester United when they're wearing those shirts? Perhaps it's the manager, but managers change over time, even if they stay for quite a long time, they move on. Perhaps it's the fans. Well, the fans too. Grow old, die. There's new fans. All of the players that play for the team at the moment will one day no longer play. There'll be 11 new players, but we'll still talk about Manchester United. So you can see there's this constant change going on. And it's not an absolute change. It's not that one day there's one set of 11 players. And the next day, a different set of 11. There's continuity. Players play for several years. New player comes in, one player drops out, et cetera. So there's a sense of continuity. And that's very real. That's very present. But we need to avoid moving from there to think that because there's that continuity, there's some fixed and changing Manchester United in us. Okay. Yeah. I mean, the reason why I'm banging on about this a bit is that we need to understand this. This business about the Sankara is changing over time and continuity. If we're going to understand the Buddhist idea of karma and the idea of rebirth. We could say that if we did have a core and changing self, we couldn't change. And from a Buddhist point of view, we couldn't gain Nirvana. We couldn't gain enlightenment. So actually, it's a great boon that we're constantly changing. We hope you enjoyed the talk. Please come and help us keep this free at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. And thank you. [music fades out] [music fades out] [BLANK_AUDIO]