Review
We are looking at the four laws of karma, or behavioral cause and effect. The first law is the certainty of karma, which is that if we are experiencing unhappiness, it is certain that that unhappiness is the result of destructive behavior and the tendencies that have been built up from that, and if we are experiencing happiness, it’s definite that that happiness is the result of constructive behavior and the positive potentials and tendencies that have been built up from that.
We examined in quite a lot of detail what the connection was between destructive behavior and unhappiness – what they have in common. We saw that what they have in common is exaggeration. Obviously, with both happiness and unhappiness, there is grasping for truly established existence, without which we wouldn’t have exaggeration.
When we act in a destructive way, we are under the influence of a disturbing emotion or attitude, which means that we exaggerate the positive or negative qualities of something. When we make a big deal out of the positive qualities of something we don’t have, we want it. So, then we have longing desire, or lust: we have to have it. If we do have it, then we don’t want to let go. So, then we have attachment and greed: we want more, even if we have enough. On the other hand, if we exaggerate the negative qualities of something or ignore the positive ones, then we want very much to get rid of it. So, then we have repulsion, anger, or hatred.
So, it’s on the basis of these disturbing emotions – which come from an exaggeration based on making a solidly established thing out of the object and its qualities and of the “me” that has to have or get rid of it – that we act destructively. As a consequence of those actions, negative karmic potentials as well as tendencies to repeat those actions are built up on the mental continuum and eventually ripen.
We saw that potentials and tendencies ripen into many things. They can ripen into a feeling of liking to do a certain action. Along with that, there is usually exaggeration as well. Based on that feeling, the urge actually to do the action comes up. We don’t always act on that urge, though. For example, we have an expression in English, “I could kill you! I feel like killing you!” We don’t actually act on that, though we might feel like it. At least, we say that we feel like that. Maybe we don’t. In any case, there is a difference between the feeling of liking to do something and the actual driving force, this urge that gets us into the action itself. It’s that driving urge, or force, that’s the actual karma.
Other ways in which the potentials and tendencies ripen are repeating actions similar to what we’ve done before and experiencing situations in which something similar to how we’ve behaved before happens back to us. Those wouldn’t necessarily be based on liking to do something; nonetheless, we experience those kinds of results. Yet another way in which they ripen has to do with the type of rebirth states we are born in and the types of situations we encounter there. There are many things that we experience as ripenings of karma. The main result that’s discussed, though, in this first law is experiencing happiness or unhappiness.
We saw that to understand what happiness and unhappiness are, we need to look at the definitions. Happiness is the experience of something in a satisfying manner. What that means is that we find it to be of benefit to us, whether or not it actually is. When we’re happy, we’re satisfied with the situation; we don’t exaggerate, although we might still make a solid thing out of it. When we’re unhappy, we’re not satisfied with something. We exaggerate either the negative qualities, so want to get rid of it, or the positive qualities, in which case, we want more or something better. There are many ways in which we exaggerate. In any case, we saw that exaggeration was the connection between unhappiness and destructive behavior.
Also, as I’ve said all along, it’s very important to be convinced that the unhappiness we experience is the result of destructive behavior. Otherwise, why would we want to refrain from destructive behavior? Unless we are convinced of that connection, it’s very hard to be motivated to stop acting destructively. We could be motivated by, “My teacher told me to,” or “I want to be a good boy or a good girl,” and these sorts of things, but we wouldn’t really understand why. We wouldn’t really be convinced. So, it’s very important to understand the connection between unhappiness and destructive behavior, happiness and constructive behavior – constructive behavior being to refrain from acting destructively when we feel like acting destructively.
Increase of Karmic Results
Last week, we discussed the increase of karmic results, the second law of karma – that from a small cause, a large result can follow. We saw that when we are inclined to act in a certain way, a certain potential and tendency to act in that way had already been built up and that by repeating the action, the likelihood of committing the same type of action again in the future is increased. In this way, the strength of the potential and tendency both to repeat the action and to give rise to stronger results is multiplied.
We saw that what ripens from a karmic potential and the strength with which it ripens is affected by many things. The frequency with which we commit an action is one factor, but various other things can cause the strength of the ripening to increase as well. In the case of destructive actions, those would include not regretting the action, not doing anything to counteract it, etc.
That led us to an explanation of what these karmic potentials and tendencies are. They’re not like little, encapsulated ping-pong balls on our mental continuums; they’re not something physical. They’re merely something that we impute. It’s like putting together two dots by imputing a line between them. So, these potentials are not just sitting there with the results sitting inside. They network with each other and are affected by many other things. Therefore, the strength of them can increase more and more – especially the negative ones. Our destructive actions are numerous and our disturbing emotions are strong, so the strength of those negative potentials will continue to increase. On the other hand, the strength of the positive ones also increases. Therefore, if we’re really involved in doing a lot of constructive things, and we’re really on a spiritual path, the positive potential built up from doing some small positive thing increases in strength.
There are, of course, examples from the literature in which some very small thing ripens into a very strong result later on – for example, seeing a picture of a Buddha on a wall and, because of that, meeting a Buddha in the future. I think that, although these are nice illustrations, they don’t give a complete picture of all the things that would have happened in between and that would have acted as additional causes for that karmic action to have an increased result.
Karmic Results Cannot Be Experienced without Having Amassed the Causes
Now we’re up to the third law of karma, which is that we will not meet with the karmic result of something without having amassed its cause.
Now, of course, this way of phrasing it is loaded because a result presupposes a cause: you can’t have a result without a cause. The term “result” arises dependently on the term “cause.” I think what is meant is that whatever we experience can’t arise without a cause. In other words, we won’t experience something unless we have built up the cause to experience it.
That gets us into a discussion that can go rather deeply into the topic of causality. Can things happen without a cause? What would it mean if things could happen without a cause? If things could happen without any cause whatsoever, everything would be random. Anything could happen. Now, we might think that that’s the case – that anything can happen.
Participant: Then all of Buddhist philosophy would collapse.
Dr. Berzin: But aside from that, thinking that anything can happen leads to a very insecure feeling, doesn’t it? But I think a lot of us feel that way – that lightening could strike at any time. But when lightning strikes, isn’t there a cause? There has to be a storm. There have to be various physical causes for lightening to strike. Or a terrorist attack – there are causes for that. So, that’s one level of understanding causality.
Different Types of Causality
But we’re not really speaking about that level of causality. We’re talking about what causes us to experience these things. That’s what we’re talking about when we talk about karma.
We can understand why lightning strikes when we know what the physical causes are. We can understand why a terrorist attack occurs when we know what the sociological, economic, or doctrinal causes are. What’s more difficult to understand is why we experience what we do, why we feel like acting in certain ways, and why we feel happy or unhappy.
There are three areas or aspects of causality that we could analyze.
Feeling Like Committing Actions That Are Similar to What We Have Done in the Past
I think the easiest one is feeling like doing some sort of action similar to what we’ve done before. What would be a cause of that?
Now, what I really want to emphasize here is the difference between causes and circumstances. Are circumstances enough to bring about our experience of something?
Let’s give an example: I like to eat chocolate. There could be a circumstance in which there’s a lot of chocolate around or one in which people offer me chocolate. Would either of those be a sufficient cause for me to eat it?
Participant: It wouldn’t be a sufficient cause if you hadn’t experienced the taste of chocolate before and determined that you liked it.
Dr. Berzin: Right. Also, if we were ill or the chocolate were dirty, we might not take it. So, there are many reasons why we might not eat it. But aren’t these circumstances rather than causes?
Participant: What do you mean by circumstances?
Dr. Berzin: Circumstances affect whether we eat it or not – for example, being hungry, having just eaten five chocolate bars, being sick, etc.
Participant: I think that liking the chocolate you have previously eaten is a cause.
Dr. Berzin: I would say it’s the habit of eating it, which is based on liking it. But what about the first time that you eat chocolate in this life?
Participant: Well, that was your granny putting chocolate in your mouth and saying, “Yum, yum.”
Dr. Berzin: But you might or might not like it. Your granny could put liver in your mouth and say, “Yum, this is so delicious,” but you find it horrible.
Participant: But you’re a human being, and most human beings like sugar.
Dr. Berzin: So, you’re saying that the circumstances are that we’re human and that most human beings like sugar. But there are a lot of humans who don’t. Most Tibetans don’t like sweets, for example. Most people probably don’t like liver either – although, I like liver.
Participant: Then it’s a cultural thing – that Tibetans don’t like sugar.
Dr. Berzin: So, that’s a cultural thing.
Does an infant have likes and dislikes?
Participant: Well, some do, yes. And most babies like something a little sweet.
Dr. Berzin: OK. But we’re not just talking about food. Some babies like to be held; some babies don’t like to be held. I remember I had a dog that didn’t like to sit on anyone’s lap and wasn’t into being petted. Not all dogs are into that. Some cats like to sit on people’s laps; some cats don’t. So, even animals have different likes and dislikes. It’s not just dependent on circumstances. It wasn’t that I beat the dog every time it tried to go into my lap and, so, learned not to go there. It’s not like teaching it not to go to the toilet on the floor.
Participant: So, there must be some connection: there is a sensory cognition, and based on that, you feel happy, you feel good.
Dr. Berzin: So, there’s a connection in that when a habit arises, a feeling of happiness also arises with it.
What about liking to do it? Well, again, if you feel happy, you feel it’s of benefit to you. I’m just wondering, when a habit arises to yell, do you feel happy about yelling and getting angry? But maybe that fits with the definition that says you think it’s of benefit to yourself.
Participant: First, you get a relief from the tension.
Dr. Berzin: Right.
What about somebody who has a habit that they’re trying to break but aren’t able to break and who feels bad about it? Let’s say, smoking cigarettes: “I can’t help myself. I know it’s no good. I’m not happy that I smoke. I feel terrible afterwards.”
Participant: Then your habit is stronger than the will.
Dr. Berzin: I think the point here about habits, feeling like doing something, such as smoking, having the urge to do it, and so on, is that they have karmic causes and that those karmic causes refer to habits built up from previously smoking
Then the question is, do habits start only in this lifetime, or do they start in previous lifetimes? I don’t think anybody would dispute that a habit can be built up in this lifetime, whether it’s a habit to repeat a certain type of behavior, a certain type of thought pattern, or whatever. But then the question is, are we blank cassettes when we’re born? Are we blank cassettes, and then all of these habits, in a sense, get imprinted on us from external circumstances or passed on genetically?
Participant: They’re both.
Dr. Berzin: But are those sufficient explanations? This is really the question.
Participant: Well, then you have those children who, at the age of three, play an instrument or something.
Dr. Berzin: Right. And there are children who are extremely intelligent, some who are not intelligent. Can these things happen without causes?
Now, I think that when they talk about karmic results here, they’re not talking about whether a glass can break on the floor without the cause of it dropping. A karmic result, I think, has to do with something that we experience. So, could we experience something without having created a cause?
Experiencing Things Happening to Us That Are Similar to What We Have Done in the Past
Participant: I’m thinking about the time I was hit by the car. What was the cause of that? I can’t see a cause.
Dr. Berzin: Right. So, now we have the second aspect of causality, which has to do with why we experience something happening to us. (It’s not that we have already come up with the answers to these. The whole point of this course is to teach us how to analyze, and analysis doesn’t necessarily lead to coming up with final answers in our classes.) The examples that are always given in the literature about this point are ones such as there being a fire in which five hundred people die, but one person is able to escape. Why was that person able to escape and nobody else? The reason is that if somebody hasn’t built up the causes to die in a fire, they won’t experience that result.
You gave the example of being hit by a car. Is there a karmic cause? Well, there’s a contributing factor: the car was coming. That would be a simultaneously acting condition for being hit, but not the karmic cause.
Participant: And the driver wasn’t paying attention.
Dr. Berzin: Right. There was also your total confidence that, because you were crossing when the light was green, no car would come along. I see that here in Germany. When there’s a green light, nobody actually looks both ways before they cross the street. Everyone totally assumes that all the cars have stopped. You would never do that in India. In India, when there’s a green light and you want to cross the street, you always look. And you look both ways in each lane because people can drive in the wrong direction. So, your inattention was one condition, one contributing condition.
Why were you crossing the street at just that time?
Participant: There are many reasons. But I cannot see any of them as being the main cause.
Dr. Berzin: That’s the question. Is there a connection between your having hit somebody else in a previous lifetime and your experiencing getting hit by a car (though you might not have hit the person with a car; you might have hit them with your horse or your elephant or something)? Are the circumstances under which you were hit sufficient causes for having been hit? Was it just your “bad luck” that you were hit?
Participant: I don’t see the connection here. I can’t see how the result is connected to the karmic cause of having done something similar in a previous life.
Dr. Berzin: This is the question. And it’s a very difficult one to understand. I’m not pretending that it’s easy. Nor am I pretending that I understand it. For example, let’s say that a car hits a few people who are crossing the street at the same time, but only one person gets really hurt. Why?
Participant: I know from my work as a psychologist that people who get into a lot of accidents have a tendency to get hurt. I was wondering why there was a tendency for these people to get hurt. Maybe it’s because those people are not very aware of what’s around them.
Dr. Berzin: And certainly, there are people who always get hurt when it comes to relationships. They are always drawn to somebody who will inevitably reject them. They are always drawn to the wrong person, we would say, and so are hurt over and over again. What you’re saying is that that can also be the case in terms of physical injuries, not just emotional ones – that people get into situations where they get hurt physically. There are people who aren’t careful, who do dangerous sports and these sorts of things. That’s one thing. But what about Marianna’s example of getting hit by the car? I’ve crossed the street many times with you, Marianna. You are super careful about crossing the street.
Participant: I didn’t want to get hit.
Dr. Berzin: Yet, you were hit. So, again, why?
The way that this law is expressed is that when you do experience something, it hasn’t happened without a cause. So, OK, you experienced being hit by a car. The karmic cause of that is in a previous lifetime: you hurt others. If you hadn’t, you wouldn’t have been hurt by somebody else.
Why don’t we take some time to think about this.
[meditation]
One thought I had was about the law in physics that says that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Could that apply here – namely, that if we act in a certain way, the equal and opposite reaction would be for others to act that way back to us? For example, if we lie all the time, other people will lie to us, or if we exaggerate all the time and so on, nobody will believe us – which are the kind of karmic results we find listed in the texts. In examples like that, the law of cause and effect makes sense, doesn’t it? But the example of being hit by a car is more difficult to make sense of, unless we’ve been quite injurious to others – which could simply mean having killed insects. We don’t have to have been driving around, hitting people with our cars.
Looking for the Karmic Causes of Our Experiences in Our Behavior
What I usually suggest to people is that if we experience something that is described in the Buddhist literature as one of the results of karma, we look at our behavior. There should be traces of the cause – something that we’re continuing to do that perpetrates that type of result.
A common example is being in relationships in which we are always being parted from loved ones – whether the others die, they leave, the relationship breaks up, or whatever. What is the cause for that to happen? The cause is divisive language. We say bad things about others to our friends, we criticize them, and so on and, in a sense, instigate the break-up of relationships. As a result, our relationships break up. That gives us a clue as to what to work on in our behavior.
This pattern can’t come from no cause; it must come from a similar cause. And I can find in the literature what the karmic causes of various things are. And if I look deeply enough, I can usually find a pattern of behavior corresponding to those causes in me. So, that, as I said, gives me a clue as to what to work on in order to avoid having similar things happen to me in the future, whether in this life or future lives.
That, by the way, is the practical application of this law of karma. Think about that. That’s actually extremely helpful. So, try to think of things that happen to you quite frequently and then try to see what the karmic causes as explained in the literature might be. Let’s analyze, “Do I have any tendencies to act like that, to commit that cause?”
[meditation]
Does it make any sense to you? It makes sense to me in terms of my experiences.
Participant: I think it makes sense in many cases. But there are also many cases of partnerships breaking up because a younger, more attractive girl comes by and so on.
Participant: That’s not the reason for breaking up. It’s because the relationship was not working.
Dr. Berzin: Right. A relationship breaking up because of finding somebody else, being bored, and things like that are circumstances, which have to do with when it breaks up and how it breaks up. We’re talking about a deeper causality here. We’re talking about why we experience our relationships not working out over and over again. Now, we could explain that psychologically, of course.
Participant: Yeah. But they can work out over a long time.
Dr. Berzin: They could. That’s a different scenario. We’re talking about certain patterns that we see in ourselves and about how we would deal with them if we wanted to break those patterns. This is what the teachings on karma are all about. It’s not that the things that happen are just “bad luck.” There have to be causes. Pinpointing the causes is what the teachings can help us do.
Now, correcting the causes by not saying nasty things to other people about their friends, not criticizing them, and so on is a step. At least, we would be taking some sort of step. If we’re always criticizing people, saying things that are not very nice about them to a third party, that third party might think, “Well, behind my back, they’re criticizing me,” in which case, they wouldn’t really want to be our friend.
There are many different examples. This is just one example. But it’s something really to think about.
The other thing that I had meant to say is that the import of this third law is that if I’m not experiencing a karmic result, it’s because I didn’t build up the causes – as in the example of the person who was not burned to death in a fire because she hadn’t built up the causes. The people who did burn to death had, in a previous life, burned down a bush where a lot of insects were living or something like that. That’s the classic example.
Let’s say my business is not succeeding. If we take all the restaurants in this neighborhood as an example, we can see that some do very well and some don’t. Why? Or in India, for example, there will be twenty shops right next to each other selling the exact same cloth. Some succeed; some don’t. They sell exactly the same thing. Well, if I’m not experiencing a result such as my business going well, it’s because I didn’t build up the causes. According to the Buddhist teachings, the main cause of a business going well, of making money, and so on is being generous. So, I look: “Am I being miserly and, therefore, I’m poor and never get any money?” In other words, not getting money wouldn’t happen without a cause. So, it gives us an indication of what to work on.
Now, that of course is a very initial scope motivation: “I want people to be nice to me and help me make money, so I’m going to be nice to them.” That’s a very worldly motivation. But that’s the initial scope: to improve samsara and to get a better rebirth. Obviously, as we progress on the path, we want to be nice to them in order to help them – they’ve all been our mothers, etc. But on the initial level, we are aiming just to improve our samsara and, particularly, future lives.
This third law of karma applies to the precious human rebirth as well: If we don’t have precious human rebirths, it’s because we haven’t built up the causes. This is the whole motivation behind building up a lot of positive force. But, again, we have to not get stuck in this thing of “I’m building up positive force in order to gain something.” That you have to overcome; that you have to go beyond. Initially, though, it starts us on the way.
Let’s think about this. I think a good example is being poor. The teachings say that being poor is the result of not being generous – that there’s some sort of correlation between the two. On the other hand, there are some poor people who are very generous. Now, when you look at poor people who are very generous, you can see that they’re usually quite happy, whereas poor people who are not generous are worried and unhappy. So, we have several things interacting here. So think about that.
Participant: I was wondering about Marianna’s having been hit by a car. Say one of the reasons for the accident was that, in the past, she had stood on an ant and killed it but that due to some positive causes, only her foot got run over.
Dr. Berzin: This is very good. For those who don’t know Marianna – a car ran over her foot. No bones were broken, although her foot was badly injured. What you’re saying is that she might have been hit because she had squashed a lot of insects in a previous life (I don’t think that stepping on one ant would be enough of a cause). But because she had also done a lot of very positive things, the result was quite weak compared to what it could have been. So, yes, this is the way that karma works.
Anyway, let’s think about these things.
This is exactly the kind of thing that is important to understand about karma. It’s what I was saying: a result can grow stronger, weaker, and so on – according to the second law – because it’s not sitting inside the potential, just waiting to pop out. That’s the Samkhya fallacy – that the result is already sitting inside the cause, just waiting to manifest. Instead, it’s constantly affected.
Participant: So, the result can be changed.
Dr. Berzin: It can be changed not only according to circumstances but also according to what you do.
I think you’re getting the idea that all of these karma teachings are leading us to consider positive ways of modifying our behavior – in order to be happier, basically. That’s very significant, actually. That’s this third law regarding results and causes: happiness is not going to come from nowhere.
Questions
What Connects a Karmic Action and Its Result? Imputation
Participant: I cannot see this connection between my behavior and what I experience. For instance, in my youth, I stepped on ants and spiders and killed them. How does this deed continue, continue, continue and then, at some moment, a result pops out?
Dr. Berzin: Now we get to the very interesting question, which we covered a little bit before: what is the connection between a causal action and the result? For instance, in your youth, you might have delighted in killing spiders or stepping on ants or whatever, and now, later on, as an adult, you experience a car running over your foot. What connects these events? This was what we were talking about when we were discussing karmic potentials and tendencies, such as the tendency or potential to be in an accident. What connects them is basically an imputation. There is a cause, and there is an effect. There has to be a connection. So, a tendency or potential, which are imputations, is the connection.
Now, we could wonder if it isn’t just playing games to say, “I’m just imputing something as the connection.” However, there’s no connection otherwise. But this arises from a misunderstanding of imputation. Imputations are objective phenomena. It’s not that someone needs to actively impute them for them to conventionally exist – for example, speed, age and years. But don’t go to the extreme of imagining that tendencies connecting karmic cause and effect exist as solid, findable things sitting in your mental continuum.
We can also explain the connection in terms of the no-longer-happening of the action – that it passed away one second ago, then it passed away two seconds ago, then three seconds ago, and so on – and the not-yet-happening ripening that, moment by moment, gets closer and closer to giving rise to a presently-happening result. There are many different ways of looking at the connection. And none of them are concrete.
Again, we could ask, “If it isn’t a mental game, what is it? What are these imputations?
A good example that I always use is motion. Do we see motion? Well, actually, we see only one second at a time. It’s like a movie: we see only one frame of the movie at a time. Do we actually ever see motion in just one microsecond? No, but we see things moving, and that motion we see is an imputation on what we see over the course of these microseconds. There is motion because of a time sequence – things happening in chronological order. It’s not that frame number three of the movie comes from nothing. It comes from two, and two comes from one. There’s one frame each second.
Participant: Yeah. But there’s one frame that goes to another.
Dr. Berzin: Right. Buddhists would explain it in terms of a no-longer-happening two seconds ago, a no-longer-happening three seconds ago, a no-longer-happening five seconds ago, etc., and in terms of the not-yet-happening result. The not-yet-happening result is like the not-yet-happening new year. Each day, that new year, which is not yet happening, is getting closer. That new year is an imputation. It’s not something solid. That’s just it. It’s not a way of knowing; it’s not a form of physical phenomenon. It is a connector, in a sense.
That’s not easy. Think about it.
[meditation]
Example: A War
I think we have to find an example to understand how cause and effect are connected abstractly, without there having to be something physical connecting them.
Let’s take a war. There are many causes for a war. This side does this; this side does that. Some time passes. Another side does this; another side does that. Time passes. There are some economic things that happen. More time passes. Then a war occurs. Was there something physical that travelled through time, going moment to moment to moment from the causal actions to the result? No. Yet, there’s a connection between cause and result, isn’t there. What connects them?
So, the question really is, does the connection need to be physical, does it need to be mental, or can it be merely an imputation, which is neither of the two? If there were no such things as imputations, which are neither forms of physical phenomena nor ways of being aware of something, would it mean that there could be no relation between a cause and an effect?
And the potential for a war that had been building up over time was not located anywhere. There’s no place where it was located. It’s not as though it was planted on some sort of conveyer belt going through time.
Think about that. I think this is a good analogy.
Participant: The example of a war is more complex because there are so many factors involved.
Dr. Berzin: That’s true.
We could, instead, think in terms of a relationship between two people – for example, a marriage that breaks up. There are many causes for the marriage to break up. Where are the causal actions and the result located? And is what’s causing the relationship to break up happening every single moment? No.
Participant: If you have a physical cause like a seed and you provide the circumstances, such as water, soil, and sunlight, the seed gradually grows. Or if I build up a habit of yelling at people, I create a situation where it’s more likely that they will yell back and also that I will yell again in the future. Those are examples where the connection between cause and result are easy to understand. But to say that if I did something twenty years ago, like hitting an ant or several ants or whatever, something should happen to me as a result, something should hit me physically, is much harder to understand. It’s difficult to make that connection.
Dr. Berzin: You’re saying that it’s more difficult to see the connection because there’s a longer time span between that cause and that effect. That gets us into the fourth law of karma (which we’ll discuss next time), which is that if you’ve committed a karmic cause, the potential to experience a result is not going to wear out by itself. It will eventually give its result, even if a long time passes. So, having a long time span between a cause and a result doesn’t make a difference.
Participant: How can you prove that?
Dr. Berzin: You can analyze.
Participant: But you can’t prove that something done lifetimes ago is the cause.
Dr. Berzin: Well, this gets into what will follow after the four laws of karma: Is Buddha a valid source of information about this?
Participant: I don’t think you can prove it scientifically.
Dr. Berzin: We will get into the logical discussions of it after we’ve finished the four laws of karma.
I think you’re getting the message – I hope you’re getting the message – that all these points are extremely difficult and require a great deal of thought and analysis.
However, if you’re going to follow a Buddhist recommended path of modifying your behavior and refraining from destructive behavior, you need to be convinced that this is a valid thing to do, that this makes sense. You need to understand why you would do it. Is it just because Buddha said so?
The Laws of Karma Are Not Like Man-Made Rules That Have to Be Obeyed
Participant: You speak about the “law” of karma. That brings up the image that if I break a law, I will have to go to court.
Dr. Berzin: I’m sorry, “law” is not the word in Tibetan or in Sanskrit.
Participant: Is it more like a natural “law” of gravity?
Dr. Berzin: It’s not as though somebody made up these laws – that these are the “rules” and that, therefore, you have to follow them. It’s that you disregard these principles. I used the word “law,” but the word “law” isn’t there in the Tibetan or Sanskrit texts. These laws of karma are more like principles. As Jorge was saying, they’re like the laws of physics. It’s not that you obey them or don’t obey them: it’s just the way things are.
There are these principles of karma. How strongly you experience the results of your actions is not a matter of how much time passes and so on. And it’s not that by disregarding these principles something “bad” will happen. If you disregard the principles, you are left without a clear course of action for how to improve your situation in life. That’s what it does. And it also might lead you to engage in a course of action that will not bring you more happiness.
A general theme within Buddhism is that everybody wants to be happy and nobody wants to be unhappy. So, how to be happy – happy on the three levels of samsaric happiness (happy rebirths), liberation, and enlightenment? Those are degrees of happiness. So, how do you bring happiness about? Well, here are the principles that can be used as guidelines for bringing it about, at least on the most initial level of worldly happiness: things going well, getting a better rebirth, and so on. And though you want things to go well, you don’t want them to go too well – not to the point that you’re not motivated to do anything. But for the most part, you want things to go well. You want to get a precious human rebirth, basically, so you can continue helping others and continue on the spiritual path.
Anyway, that’s the third law of karma.
We haven’t talked so much about if we’re not happy, it’s because we haven’t built up the causes. That’s a difficult one. What are the causes for happiness? It’s refraining from destructive behavior. You’re not going to experience happiness unless you stop acting destructively – although, obviously, you’re not going to experience that happiness immediately. And what is constructive behavior? It’s refraining from acting destructively. So I might feel like hitting you or yelling at you, but I restrain myself; I don’t do it.
Now, the habits can be very strong such that you begin to yell, you begin to lose your patience, you begin to be critical in a sarcastic way. But then, over time, you catch yourself more and more quickly. This is what Shantideva’s whole chapter on ethical discipline is about. Watch, pay attention, and apply opponents as soon as you recognize that you’re starting to get impatient, starting to yell, or to be unpleasant. As soon as you notice it, you correct it. And as for correcting it, you just do it. Don’t make a big deal out of it: just do it. Or don’t do it – whatever it is. Don’t yell. Stop. That’s the initial thing.
And it’s all done with the understanding that “if I’m experiencing unhappiness, it’s because I acted destructively. And if I continue, I’m just going to experience more and more unhappiness. If I’m unhappy, it’s also because I haven’t built up the causes to be happy. And if I’ve built up the causes to be unhappy, then – the fourth law – I’m going to experience that result unless I do something to change it. It’s not going to go away by itself; it’s not going to wear out.” Those are the general principles of karma. Then you get into the specifics.