A conversation at Dangerous Harvests started out on the topic of financing a dharma center but morphed into a discussion of karma. One commenter, bob, said,
Karma makes no sense unless coupled with innumerable lifetimes. That we all have been through the cycle of existence, from being gods to being hell beings, should be a source of compassion for ourselves and others. If we think of these things as only in reference to this present life, or to other people we very easily get caught up in gain/loss, praise/blame etc thinking.
As a zennie, I tend to distrust anything about dharma that "makes sense." Cognitive knowledge is too limited, too one-sided. If you can conceptualize it, you're missing something. I do realize other schools of Buddhism are less, um, contrary about things.
That said, to me, karma doesn't "make sense" if it doesn't impact this life. I don't dismiss karma continuing in other lives, but this is the life I'm focusing on at the moment. And as my first Zen teacher used to say, "What you do is what happens to you."
Karma is about taking moment-to-moment responsibility for our actions (note to self: pay attention!), and not just for our own benefit. With practice you become more sensitive to the way the effects of your actions ripple in all directions, reaching far beyond your individual sight to impact others.
To me, the issue is not to move beyond this present life, but beyond this individual self. You can still get caught up in gain/loss thinking if you believe the future being who will accrue the benefit of your good work is still little ol' you. But if you are no longer limited to "self," it hardly matters what life you're talking about.
As far as the gods and hell beings and other beings of the Six Realms go -- these can be understood on many levels, and I don't think only one level is the "right one. I have read essays by some Vajrayana teachers describing them as personality types. My teacher says we pass through many realms every day. We might manifest as a hell being one moment and a deva another moment.
In other words, these are not necessarily just places where you may be reborn in some distant future. Remember, the Buddha said we die and are reborn every minute.
Another commenter, Petteri Sulonen, responded to bob's comment on his own blog. There's a bit on Vasubandhu's model of personality and memory that I find intriguing. He also links to Shravasti Dhammika's excellent essay on karma that I've linked to in the past. One of my Zen teachers was impressed with this essay, also; it's not just a Theravadin perspective.
I like your thoughts here, but I have to take exception to Petteri Sulonen. He writes:
“This features in the Tipitaka and other Buddhist writings, of course, but there are also plenty of contemporary or near-contemporary accounts of it.
I have no reason to doubt those accounts. My question is, what, exactly, is being recalled, and what does it mean?”
It means he doesn’t understand what cultural appropriation is, and he trying to exude his whiteness onto my tradition by boxing it into a ‘Western’ mentality. This is the same imperilist attitude I run across everyday here at college from other so-called “convert Buddhists.”
He goes on to say:
“So, when an enlightened being recalls his past lives, what, exactly, is he recalling? What relationship does his reconstruction bear to past events? What information about “actual” past events do such memories contain?”
I’m sorry, but how dare he try to deconstruct my culture and my religion into his whiteness and Western ways of views. Nothing against him or other Westerners, but they shouldn’t question something that isn’t theirs. They just can’t understand something that isn’t marked in their flesh and bones.
Tassja — let’s see if I can get this correctly — Sulonen discusses the work of Vasubandhu, a 4th century Mahayana scholar who made significant contributions to the yogacara tradition, which in turn greatly influenced Buddhism in China and Tibet. And although he doesn’t spell this out explicitly, he is obviously connecting this to the Buddha’s teaching of anatta and how that relates to the teaching of rebirth. I think the point he is making is one many Asian Buddhists, as well as Buddhists from other continents and of all colors, could agree with. I know a lot of the literature from the Chan (Zen) tradition from Tang Dynasty China would harmonize nicely with what Sulonen wrote.
And your reaction is, “how dare he try to deconstruct my culture and my religion into his whiteness and Western ways of views.” Do you want to try to make some sense yourself? How the bleep is what he wrote “white” or “western”?
I agree that there is all kinds of smarmy appropriation of Buddhist teachings by westerners, but this ain’t it.
Hi Barbara, I was alerted to the fact that someone had commented on your blog using my pen-name, Tassja. The above comment was not made by me, nor does it represent my views about the particular post. I’m not sure who is impersonating me, but rest assured I’m as annoyed by the impersonation as you probably are about the comment.
Sorry for the derailment of discussion caused under my name.
Tassja,
Calling people “whiteness” and accusing them of cultural appropriation ad nauseum may give you personal satisfaction but it does nothing to create an actual conversation with people. If you really want to have an open discussion about Buddhism and how you see it developing in the west as an Asian practitioner, I welcome the opportunity to hear from you. But if your only point is “Buddhism belongs to ME and all white people keep out” then I wish you well and have nothing more to say on this matter.
I believe this person taking the name Tassja is a troll and is attempting to whip up some antinomy here. That is all.
“That said, to me, karma doesn’t “make sense” if it doesn’t impact this life. I don’t dismiss karma continuing in other lives, but this is the life I’m focusing on at the moment.”
This is a good summary of what I would have said if I wanted to get into that discussion with Bob and others. Given that it was off topic, I chose to just agree with Bob on a certain level, and suggest that others don’t see it that way. But I’m glad to see you pulled this up for another look, because there was something about Bob’s statement that didn’t sit quite right with me.
Tassja,
I find your conclusions about Petteri’s post confusing. Rebirth, past lives, beings amongst the six realms, and even the nature and functioning of karma have been subjects of debate amongst Buddhists since the beginning. There has never been, and probably never will be a single take on any of this. When I was an ESL teacher, I had Buddhist students from nearly half a dozen countries. And really, when I consider the ways they each talked about their Buddhist practice and way of life, there were plenty of differences. Including the fact that a few seemed really invested in stories of past lives and beings that sounded supernatural in nature. While at least two others I can recall had little interest in such talk. And these folks were originally from Burma, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, and Sri Lanka, all places you could say Buddhism is “marked in their flesh and bones.”
I routinely stood up for your essay on Womanist Musings Tassja and felt that much of the white convert Buddhist commentary on it was way off the mark. I especially was disturbed by the level of nastiness directed at Sri Lankans, and the ways in which commenters used your background to dismiss everything you wrote. However, one thing that has always bugged me about what you wrote is the claim that it’s “my religion.” How is such an ownership of Buddha’s teachings even possible?
@Nathan – Your question shows your inability to understand cultural appropriation in its institutional sense. It is not “my religion”, but is my cultures religion. Whiteness has stolen Buddhism, which is an imperialist mentality, and has attempted to mold it to fit your materialistic society.
@Nella Lou – I appreciated your post on whiteness, but by dismissing my concerns as a woman of colour by saying I am a troll, you are showing me you have not accepted your privilege completely. I know you are a strong woman, and have many righteous and powerful things to say, but you must accept that Buddhism is not yours.
@Barbara – Even questioning rebirth is a perfect example of how whiteness has stolen and appropriated Buddhism. Who gave convert Buddhists the OK to question something that isn’t theirs?
@Wayne – My flesh and bones are covered and marked in Buddhism, it is who I am, what I was born as. For you, it is a pretty ornamental dressing of another’s cultures. I am sorry that white people are so bland, and that their culture, or lack of one, is defined so negatively, but until you accept this, you are nothing more than part of the problem.
@Nathan #2– I never commented on Barbara’s blog because I was scared of what they would say about my family. Please read Arun’s post about this, It’s not about Richard Gere But I have accepted that I must stand up for my culture and my religion, and endure the slings and arrows of hate, to enable us to overcome this sad cultural appropriation.
To everyone to dismiss my words by saying I am a troll or something other than someone who hurts and is speaking the truth is just another way to avoid these truths about whiteness. I have braced myself and am ready for your arrows!
I have been in contact with the real Tassja, and this one is without question a troll.
The reality is that for every imperialist minded white huckster in the 19th and first half of the 20th century that traveled through Asia and cherry picked Buddhist teachings, there was an Asian Buddhist monk, priest, and/or Zen master who traveled to the U.S., Canada, Europe, and South America to spread the dharma. Although some of these folks were fleeing violence and oppression in their home countries, others specifically traveled as missionaries devoted to finding and teaching new converts.
And in the past 50-60 years, there has been so much back and forth influence between Buddhists from all over the world that it’s sometimes difficult to know who is influencing whom anymore.
So, do with that what you will. And if you could point to specifically what in Petteri’s essay is problematic in your view, it might help me and others understand a little better. Because I honestly don’t see the leap in judgement you are making there.
-Note: I just saw Nella Lou’s comment, and think she might be right about the trolling. Did Tassja ever come to your blog and comment during the row about her essay, or anytime after?
Sometimes I wonder if we don’t make more out of karma than there really is. Secular society talks about it as some sort of spooky-supernatural force that balances out human behavior in the world over time. The good are rewarded and the evil punished. However, in Buddhism (and correct me if I’m wrong), karma in the simplest terms is volitional action and the eventual result (vipaka).
What is there to make sense of? If we take the time to look, we can see this at work in our everyday lives.
I don’t know why some find it difficult to understand karma. Considered as an explanation for how we can act in the world, it seems both simple and straightforward. The Buddha’s unique contribution to karmic theory placed it in the mind, where others described it as a sort of physical or metaphysical scum that we need to wash off through ritual action.
By placing the mechanisms of karma in the mind, and by maintaining a phenomenological explanation of those mechanisms (i.e. how one’s will feel or experience “the all” if one acts this way or that), the Buddha’s notion of karma needs no “woo-woo” or metaphysical hocus-pocus that so many self-described skeptics decry.
In fact, those who claim to either eschew or maintain agnosis about *Buddhist* karma typically fail at understanding the referent of their doubt when pressed. I have yet to meet someone who has been able to maintain a stance against *Buddhist* karma once they have studied it. In fact, the only element of the karma issue that one can remain agnostic about and maintain intellectual honesty is in areas of the mind-body debate, and specifically whether/how the mental force of karma continues once the physical dependencies of the mind cease.
It has recently occurred to me that if emptiness indicates a way of realising the interconnection of all things, karma then indicates a way of realising the interconnection of all actions– two sides of the same coin really. I’ve been thinking of that Bob Dylan song lately, “Who Killed Davey Moore” which illustrates this so well.
I cannot dismiss rebirth (whatever the hell that means!) but I also cannot, at this stage, dismiss it either. I’m willing to wait and see where my understanding will lead me later down the track. But I agree that the response-ability that karma retains great importance regardless of how one understands rebirth: everything rests in this present moment– response-ability belongs here and now, not elsewhere. How will you act right here, right now? I think that’s the important thing to keep asking ourselves, not whether or not we’ve got all our doctrinal ducks in a row.
The Buddha did not create Buddhism, and was not a Buddhist. A silly reminder perhaps, but seems to be forgotten quite easily.
Whatever Buddhist beliefs you hold, defend or debate is just a form of attachment to others’ borrowed thought forms. This attachment breeds desire to prove that empty words have value in and of themselves, which can only create delusion and suffering.
There are countless teachings/expressions. Teachings are meant as pointers to personal realization. Work on that does not include debates over canonized ideologies. That is religious tradition/dogma best left to academics for study/debate, and lineage holders for safe keeping. It is not the way to realize Buddha Mind (not can it prevent you).
Look at these matters directly. Make your own way in this, finding what you can in texts, without clinging to them. Waste no time debating what others think or do. Liberate yourself first.
Awaken, then attempt to teach if you are so moved, with whatever means present, without need for defense or debate of old texts, but with them as expressions/reflections. Only before awakening is their value debatable.
Of course if you prefer dogma promotion to dharma realization, then carry on in defense and debate of this or that. It’s your life. Maybe you’ll have other lifetimes to make up the lost time now…
Point is you can’t know, so why waste time?
FWIW, I’m not a Buddhist. I don’t address the myriad religious and cultural aspects (which are fascinating, but not mine). I only speak to what Buddha realized as available to all without regard to religion, culture, or race.
PS – To ~riverflow – Yes, two sides of same coin. A very shiny one, that some grasp firmly when found, but can never be spent. Toss it back into the fountain of Buddha Mind you plucked of from. Watch the ripples expand outward, reflecting 10,000 times more light…
You are not the first person to point that out. It’s an inane statement, nonetheless.
Buddhism is a discipline or practice more than a belief system. The historical Buddha taught what he himself practiced. If you define “Buddhism” as “the path of practice taught by the Buddha,” then in fact the Buddha did “create” Buddhism and was a Buddhist himself.
Of course, you can define “Buddhism” as a spiritual tradition, a diverse groups or schools and institutions, and even as an aspect of Asian culture, and if you define it in one of those ways, then often the Buddha is pretty far removed.
Then you have a lot of cheek lecturing actual practitioners about what our practice is.
The Buddhadharma is available to all without regard to culture or race, but the “religion” part is problematic. If you had more intimate experience with Buddhism, you would know that it is not just some pleasant philosophy that can be adopted and appropriated by anyone regardless of beliefs. At the deeper levels it really cannot be blended with any other religion to form one’s own personal spiritual soup.
dear m’ am barbara,
please forgive me for sounding too concerned or perhaps intrusive, but if there really are trolls/imposters here, something should really be done about it to prevent any enmity/disturbance here. i’m beginning to think that there are people who just want to start an argument for the sake of it or they really just want to be an A—–E. i really can’t understand why.