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KARMA CLASS: Deeds of Rob Reiner's son

• 

  Rabbi Yeshua (Jesus) JewBu Nazarene/Essene

  Jews who follow Judaism (as opposed to most Jews who just wear the label "Jew" like a secular identity, race, ethnicity, claim to fame, burden, or way of showing support for genocide and Western imperialism to build "Greater Israel") subscribe to a belief in kismet rather than karma.
• What is KISMET? KISMET = The Jewish Koan (fate, luck, fortune, chance, destiny, predestiny, "God's plan," capricious universal indifference to anything we do because it's all written in advance and plays out by the force of the Fates).
• KISMET translation question? : r/hebrew
• Kismet is "predestination" in Abrahamic Islam

Karma-shmarma, Judaism only believes in kismet (fate, destiny)

The historical Buddha, the greatest Karmavadin

Karma means "deed" or "deeds." There are all kinds of karma, that is, a great variety of intentional actions capable of bearing a result anytime in the future. The Buddha or "Awakened One" talked about karma so much that in his day he was not known as a "Buddhist." He was known as a Karmavadin, a "teacher of the efficacy of karma (action)." What we do comes back to us. The Dharmic religions, in contrast with the Abrahamic ones, teach the power of our personal action. Our deeds got us into this mess, and they can get us out (with help from others like the Buddha, the best friend of all beings, the gods, God, noble friends, parents, but mostly our own striving to develop compassion and wisdom, which lead to calm and insight).

Sadly, we often do not realize what we do in this sense. According to the Abhidhamma, a systematic explanation of the Buddha's "Doctrine in Ultimate Terms," what we are doing anytime we are committing an action is laying down a great number of cittas ("mind-moments") that act like "seeds" as it were. (What worse is that they have javanas, "impulsions," sub-moments of motivation, sub-cittas, a citta being uncountable numbers of "mind moments" not thoughts, as the term is sometimes mistranslated).

How many frames does it take to complete one "action" in a film? Karma has many more cittas.

• A "thought," if one thinks about it is like a sentence. What is a sentence? It is at least one complete thought, which requires an actor and an action, even if life is not this way. Grammar imposes rules on our thinking so that noun and verb must at least be implied to speak a sensible sentence in modern English. A citta, in that case, would be like all the atoms used to write out that sentence, far from sentences themselves. (Imagine a molecule. What is it made of? Atoms. How many? An uncountable number). Cittas (the stream of consciousness or viññāna kicca) in the immaterial world of intangible software are like kalapas ("particles of perception") in the material world of tangible hardware and things.
• A better way to think about it is to imagine seeing a movie clip, a short scene. It only lasts a moment, but what is it really made of? It is made of many many individual frames, which are the sub-moments of the film. The higher the fidelity of the film, the more sub-moments. There might be 100 frames for 1 second of movie runtime. A complete "scene" might then have millions of frames. A frame is not a scene; it's not even a second of a scene.
• Now imagine that when we act (karma), our action does not take one second but a few seconds to complete. How many sub-moments elapsed? It is hard to say. Each of those mind moments has many impulsions. If each impulsion could produce a result when it ripens, one act will give results for a long time. The number "500" comes up a lot in Buddhism, but it rarely if ever means five hundred. It is an indeterminate number and a handy way of saying "many." One act of killing could easily result in 500 miserable rebirths of being killed or being sickly or having one's life shortened, and so on. The Buddha expressed this as "for a long time," meaning in many many future births.

The force or deciding factor behind a deed is the intention. What is decided? At the decisive moment of acting, what we in our normal consciousness might think is happening is just one thought.

But that is not at all what is happening. The best comparison to understand this is physics. When something happens, it appears to us that only one thing is happening, such as lighting a match. It is often, we do an act, and it is lit. However, physics tells us that many things are happening in the sub-moments. Fire itself is not a single thing at all but rather a process.

Each moment of "fire" is many (at least five) sub-moments of process:

1. Heat is heating,
2. oxygen is oxidizing,
3. fuel is fueling,
4. wick is wicking, and the 
5. process of combustion is processing.

Abhidhamma (Sayalay Susila & Seven)

So what? Here's what. How long does it take to kill someone? With a gun, not long. An instant is enough. With a knife, as used in the infamous case of Nick Reiner murdering his parents, longer, a few instants. How long is an instant? For us in ordinary consciousness, it is just a finger snap's duration, right? But how long is it really, say, to a physicist or a psychologist? If we analyze it, that is, break it down to sub-moments, it's a long time.

Here's why it all matters: It isn't that one karma (one deed) will bear one result. This is completely wrong, but it's how nearly everyone talks, as if one action would bear just one result one time. One karma, one intentional action, will bear MANY results. Some might say an uncountable number of results. Now why is that? It is because each single "act" (deed) is built out of many impulsions, and it is these impulsions (as if they were seeds) that will bear results. So one single deed = a hard to count number of potential results.

• BOOK: Unravelling the Mysteries of Mind and Body Through Abhidhamma (by Pa Auk Sayadaw through student Sayalay Susila and editor Seven)

The intention behind an act is so crucial that the Buddha equated intention (cetanā) and karma. They are not really the same thing, but so vital is that intention that it determines the classification of a deed. There are three obvious classes (good, bad, or neutral). That is, we can classify by results: This deed, when it ripens, will bear an unpleasant (possibly unbearable), unwelcome, unwanted result, so we call it bad. This other deed, when it ripens, will bear a pleasant, welcome, wanted result. Many deeds, being mixed, will bear mixed results. One might say other deeds, being neither good nor bad, will bear neutral results.

If I give even one unit (ancient kapana, dollar, rupee, coin), the motivation or intention behind it will reap many results many times because that one single act of giving was only accomplished through many sub-moments, many-many impulsions. If each citta (mind moment) is composed of many sub-moments, many impulsions, and each has the power to produce a result, one can see how even a little giving is great. However, this is simultaneously saying that even the slightest wrong (misdeed, unskillful act, bad action) has the power to produce many-many unwanted results.

This is all well and good and easy enough to understand. The Buddha went further to point out things that are not at all obvious. In fact, it is unlikely that anyone but a supremely enlightened buddha could point all of these things out. Why? The first thing that is needed is access to more than normal consciousness. This even an average, normal, instructed "worldling" can master.

Never having heard the Buddha's Dhamma (Dharma, Doctrine, Teaching), we are "uninstructed [ignorant] worldings." Having heard it, we are instructed worldlings. Putting it into successfully practice, we experience a "change of lineage" (gotrabhu), awaken, and are counted among the "noble ones," the enlightened in about seven stages (now universally reduced to four main divisions (stream entry, once-returning, nonreturning, and arhats or fully enlightened ones).

• NOTE: It may be a little confusing, but "full" enlightenment is not "supreme" enlightenment. That distinction is reserved for people like the historical Buddha Siddhartha Gautama (Siddhattha Gotama) who awaken to the utmost WITH the capacity to teach. Nonteaching (pacceka) buddhas awaken to the utmost, that is with the intrepid powers of a buddha or the dasa-(tathāgata-) bala.

He led us to understand one more extremely important distinction to be made. And here come to the point of all this discussion. There is a fivefold kind of karma (kamma in Pali) that might be called "the worst in the world." These are the ānantarika-kamma or:

The Five Heinous Deeds

The are five acts (five kinds of karma) that the Buddha classified as "actions with immediate destiny." They are:

1. parricide (killing one's father),
2. matricide (killing one's mother),
3. killing an arhat (a fully enlightened person),
4. wounding a buddha (a teaching [samma-sam-buddha] or nonteaching [pacceka-buddha] supremely enlightened person),
5. creating a schism in the Buddha's Monastic Order (Bhikkhu or Bhikkhuni Sangha).

In A.V. 129, it is said: "There are five irascible and incurable humans destined to the lower world [dismal subhuman planes of existence] and to hell [avici, the waveless], namely: the parricidal, matricidal, homicidal [if the victim is an arhat], the wounder of a buddha, the creator of a schism in the sangha of a buddha."

About this fifth kind, see A.X. 35, 38. With regard to the first heinous crime, it is said in DN 2 that if [greedy son] King Ajātasattu had not deprived his father [the Buddha's student and supporter King Bimbisara] of life, he would have reached the path of stream-entry when he heard the Buddha teach as did all of his companions (App.)

Because he did commit this act, even though he was full of remorse for having done so, he was lost. His mind/heart could not reach the necessary calm and serenity (samatha) to attain liberating-insight (vipassana) to awaken to the ultimate truth. He did not become free of his destiny [his immediate next rebirth in the hells] as a result of his heinous deed nor of all further rebirth and suffering in samsara, the unending Cycle of Rebirth and Suffering (the Wheel of Life and Death).

• Nick Reiner, son of Rob Reiner, TMZ, 12/18/25; Five Heinous Deeds (definition) Ven. Nyanatiloka, Buddhist Dictionary; Explanation: Dhr. Seven, editing: Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Wisdom Quarterly

How karma chooses our next life

(Buddha's Wisdom) How karma (our deeds) chooses our next life: Can we still change it?

Is it KARMA or payback?

"Payback" is your act, not karma's results.

Not every bad thing that happens to a person right after doing a bad thing is the karmic-result of THAT bad thing. Things take time to incubate and produce their results (vipaka and phala). It would be very unusual for an act (deed) to be so weighty as to produce an immediate result such as the Beatles would have called "instant karma." In any case, the result of an action is not called "karma." Results are called vipaka (resultants) and phala (fruti). Doing something unpleasant to someone who did you first is called revenge, and it is your unskillful karma. Their karma has not yet ripened to produce its result. Therefore, there is no need to attack people. This will only be harmful to you. They'll get theirs. Trust the impersonal law of causes and effects, of deeds producing appropriate results. It's universal.

KARMA (Sanskrit, Pāli kamma) "intentional action," correctly speaking denotes the wholesome and unwholesome volitions (kusala- and akusala-cetanā) and their concomitant mental factors, causing rebirth and shaping the destiny of beings.

• Cetanā is the intention, motivation, underly motive, the volition behind an action; this is what determines if it skillful, neutral, or unskillful more than the action itself seen objectively. It is the subjective input, which is visible to those who develop spiritual sight (dibba cakkhu).

These karmical volitions (kamma cetanā) become manifest as wholesome or unwholesome actions by body (kāya-kamma), speech (vacī-kamma), mind (mano-kamma).

Thus, the Buddhist term "karma" by no means signifies the RESULTS of actions and certainly not the FATE or DESTINY of beings or whole nations (so-called wholesale or mass-karma), misconceptions which, through the influence of Theosophy, have become widely spread in the West.

"Volition (cetanā), O meditators, is what I call action (cetanāham bhikkhave kammam vadāmi), for through volition one performs the action by body, speech, or mind.

There is karma ("action"), O meditators, that ripens in hell.... Karma that ripens in the animal world.... Karma that ripens in the world of humans.... Karma that ripens in the heavenly worlds....

Threefold, however, is the fruit of karma:

1. ripening during the lifetime (dittha-dhamma-vedanīya-kamma),
2. ripening in the next birth (upapajja-vedanīya-kamma),
3. ripening in subsequent births (aparāpariya-vedanīya kamma)...." (A.VI.63).

The three conditions or roots (mūla) of unwholesome karma (actions) are greed, hatred, and delusion (lobha, dosa, moha).

Those of wholesome karma are:

1. unselfishness (alobha),
2. hatelessness (adosa = mettā, goodwill),
3. nondelusion (amoha = paññā, knowledge).

"Greed, O meditators, is a condition for the arising of [unskillful] karma; hatred is a condition for the arising of karma; delusion is a condition for the arising of karma...." (A.III.112, A.III.34, A.III.147).

"Unwholesome actions are of three kinds: conditioned by:

1. greed,
2. hate,
3. delusion.

"Killing... stealing... sexual misconduct... lying... slandering... rude speech... foolish babble, if practiced, carried on, and frequently cultivated, leads to rebirth in hells, or among animals, or among ghosts" (A.VIII.40). More

Beauty is only skin deep? Transformed

C'mon, now, don't fight dirty. It leads to anger.

Do "Beauty and the Beast" relationships really exist, and do they produce little beauties?

(Extraordinary People) "I just want to look normal" and have children not stare at me anymore.

Enlightenment: I love her inside, so it doesn't matter if my wife's surgery is successful or not.

Did we choose this life?

Me, Myself, and Mine: Anatta (Not Self)

Why ME? The 'Law' of Karma

(Buddhist Audio books) Invisible Law Controls Our Life: Kamma (Karma) in Buddhist Abhidhamma

First of all, what is Abhidhamma? It is the systematic treatment of the Dharma, the Buddha's Teachings, in ultimate terms.

Second, what is karma in Buddhism? It is a deed, willed action, which the Buddha divided as either physical, verbal, or mental, singling out intention or motivation (cetana) as the key to determining what it is and what it will produce.

If I do something, why I do it matters. A Manhattanite is walking down the boulevard on a dark and rainy night. She looks down an alley as see me over someone, lifting a blade that glints in the light of a dingy streetlamp about to bring down a blade on the body.

There's always a solution, a fix it.

What's happening? Can we judge? What's the karma (deed, action, doing)? She screams, "bloody murder!" and I look up and show her my scalpel. She looks down and sees a woman on the ground unable to breathe. And I explain that I was about to stab her in the throat, draw blood, and let air into her windpipe because she has something jammed into her mouth and is about to go unconscious and die if I do not intervene. "Oh, are you a doctor?" she asks me. "No, of course not, but I do watch lots of reruns of MacGyver," I answer.

Now that we know all this, what's the karma? The horrible act of attempted murder or the exact opposite, the precious act of preserving life?

It's hard to say, so we should reserve judgment at least a little, until we can discern my MOTIVE, my INTENTION, my VOLITION, my cetanā or underlying impulse to act.

The Roots of Good and Evil: Buddhist Texts

That mental motive is the real "karma," the real determinant of the deed, and it doesn't matter what others think, approve of, or condemn. She may hate me, she may get a beat cop to shoot me to prevent what she thinks is going on, a judge may imprison me based on her testimony, but all of that is HER karma, not mine. I will be "judged" impersonally by myself or the universe for what I was actually doing when that ACT matures and comes to fruition.

Importantly, there are only six root motives for an action, a deed, any kind of karma. See The Roots of Good and Evil: Buddhist Texts translated from the Pali (Buddhist Publication Society, Wheel Series 251-253) by Western monk Ven. Nyanaponika Thera.

There are other divisions, such as the Ten COURSES (kamma-patha) of Unwholesome Action and, of course, Ten Courses of Wholesome Action. There are probably millions of deeds, but getting to the root (radix, radical) of the matter, we have only six roots:

1. greed (lobha, lust, craving, clinging, desire, wanting)
2. hatred (dosa, aversion, fear, anger, annoyance, ill-will)
3. delusion (moha, ignorance, wrong views, confusion)
4. nongreed (alobha, letting go, selflessness, sharing, giving, generosity, dispassion, detachment)
5. nonhatred (adosa, loving kindness, compassion, mudita or joy in others' joy, unbiased onlooking)
6. nondelusion (amoha, wisdom, knowledge, knowing-and-seeing, understanding, penetration).

• See the Discourse on Right View or Sammādiṭṭhi Sutta.

We can divide karma (acts) into ten kinds:

• Three of body

1. destroying life

2. stealing

3. sexual misconduct

• Four of speech

4. false speech

5. divisive speech

6. offensive speech

7. senseless speech

• Three of mind

8. covetousness

9. malice

10. wrong view.

Ah, what does the Buddha know anyway?

What is there to notice here? Most karma is produced by the mouth or other means of VERBAL expression. The body may do things, but when does it do them that it is not being motivated (directed, willed) by the mind? Not acting out, not speaking out, it is still possible to produce karma (deeds with the power of producing a subsequent result) JUST BY THINKING. There really is mental karma. The RESULTS of karma are not karma, even though we in an offhand, shorthand way often refer to results as karma when we say, "It is my karma," referring to something that happened to us. That is never our karma, technically, but we all understand that what we think we're saying is, "This is a result of my deeds," and that may well be. Not everything that happens is due to karma. There are other causes. But most of the important things that happen to us that we notice and think are unfair, that's likely due to our bright and dark karma. This is a world of mixed results. To live in a world of predominantly bright results, there are karmas (acts) for that. Similarly, to live in a world of darkness and even worse suffering than we have here on the human plane (which is regarded as the lowest of the worlds one can be reborn in that is still considered "good"), there are deeds for that. Unless we get real with ourselves, privately, and recognize our motives, our intentions, what is impelling us to act, we cannot be surprised what we get as a result.

Remember, what we experience is not what we are doing now. We have a massive cache of past karma (from this and countless past lives even if we disbelieve those former lives and rebirths ever happened) that is trying to mature and come to fruition, to ripen and produce results.

The two names for karmic results are vipaka (resultants) and phala (fruits). The distinction seems to be, although we cannot prove it but remember Ven. Nyanatiloka (the Western translator of the Buddhist Dictionary) always making the distinction being mental-resultants and outward-circumstances. If we act, we immediately feel some way about it -- regret, remorse, anxiety about being found out or caught or punished, and so on, or rejoicing, approving, carefree or proud to be found out or recognized or rewarded, and so on, depending on the kind of action.

There is a terrible kind of karma, one that is possibly the worst of all karmas, and what is strange about it is that most of us most of the time would not even think there's anything wrong with in our Western society. What is it?

• What is the worst thing in the karmic world, the producer of the most amount of bad (unskillfulness, demerit, evil, misery)?

Wrong view (micchā ditthi), sometimes manifesting as the perversions or distortions (vipallassa). This is the one to be most wary of, for we will be held responsible for what we think, what views we cling to and act on. If we believe something is good because that's what people around us told us or it's the way we were raised, that DOES NOT make it good or okay. It is what it is, in accordance with the six roots mentioned above, and will produce corresponding results that are either welcomed and wished for or unwelcome and unwished for. Proceed cautiously before acting. A little or a lot of introspection helps.

• Outline of Buddhism

If there were just ONE primer to understand the complexity of karma in Buddhism, Wisdom Quarterly would say it is American scholar-monk Bhikkhu Bodhi's treatment of the subject here:

Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Buddha's Teaching: As It Is, Talk 5, "Rebirth and Kamma"

• Buddhist Audio Books (video), June 8, 2025; Bhikkhu Bodhi, "Rebirth and Kamma"; TEXT: Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation) (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Is karma real? Deeds cause results?

Karma (doing)? That's so dumb! Whatever I do, it'll never come back to me. I can get away.

Flying squirrel karma or phala? - Animal actions?

Previous video has squirrel who flies tiny plane. Real "flying squirrel" flies when tossed, then 😲

Born of the Fruits of Deeds

Teachings of Kamma, Rebirth, Saṃsāra

(Ud 3.1) Thus have I heard. At one time the Buddha was staying near Sāvatthī in Jeta’s Grove at the multimillionaire's monastery.

At that time a certain Buddhist monk was sitting close to the Buddha, legs crossed, with body straight.

As a result (vipaka) of past deeds (karma), he suffered painful, sharp, severe, and acute feelings, which he endured unbothered, mindfully with clear comprehension.

Narrating Karma and Rebirth

The Buddha saw him meditating mindfully enduring that pain. Then, understanding the situation, the Buddha expressed this inspired utterance:

“A monastic who has left behind all deeds (karma), shaking off the dust of past deeds, unselfish, unwavering, unaffected, has no need to complain.”

• Kamma Vipākaja Sutta (Ud 3.1)—Ven. Sujato (translation)
• Amazing video shorts: How to handle the cops (graphic)

Bhikkhu Bodhi, what is "karma"?

The Four Kinds of Karma with Bhikkhu Bodhi

(BAUS Chuang Yen Monastery) June 27, 2022: In this Dharma talk, Bhikkhu Bodhi discusses The Numerical Discourses (Anguttara Nikaya) AN 4.233-238, a series of sutras in which the historical Buddha explains the four kinds of karma (kamma, deed, action):

1. dark karma with dark result
2. bright karma with bright result
3. dark-and-bright karma with dark-and-bright result
4. karma that is neither dark nor bright with neither-dark-nor-bright result or the karma that leads to the ending of karma.

Bhikkhu Bodhi (BAUS, Carmel, New York, 6/18/22); Dhr. Seven (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly

Watching election results w/Jon Stewart

(@56kof) About this election, there's an old Turkish saying that goes like this: "When a clown moves into a palace, he does not become king. The palace becomes a circus." [Therefore, as we have been saying for eight years, "Elect a clown, expect a circus."] Worries and love from Europe

Jon Stewart and The Best F**king News Team take on election night 2024 | The Daily Show

(The Daily Show) Nov. 5-6, 2024: Jon Stewart and the Best F**kin' News Team are live with full election night coverage from Trump and Harris HQs and battleground states. #DailyShow #Election #JonStewart

(CBC News) The exact moment Trump won the election | About That

What is the cause of LUCK? (Karma)

But isn't it all chance and random chaos?

Is it chance (luck), or is it past karma coming to fruition to influence what happens now? There are many kinds of karma-vipaka (results of karma) and many fruits (phala).

We plant seeds all the time. We should consider what might happen as a result. Sometimes a past karma (the track laid down by a previous deed, a mental impression made by an intention) ripens to frustrate other things coming to fruition. We are spared. It is so complicated that it cannot be known.

• 

  Liquid Luck: Good Fortune

  What is karma? It is "action" or, more exactly, the "intention" (cetana) behind and motivating a mental, verbal, or physical act, a deed, therefore an "intentional action." We have volitions and impulses to do, and how we conduct ourselves is very important because that choice has the power to produce results now and in the future. Immediately, it may produce a feeling (such as remorse or elation) and later a "fruit" (phala). When have we done deeds? Only in the past. When can we DO deeds? Only now, only in the present moment. We are always choosing to wait or to act or what act. The Buddha pointed out that the underlying motivations guided by nongreed, nonaversion, and nondelusion produce beautiful results, "lucky" (fortunate) results, pleasant and welcome results. We do we want? Luck! When do we want it? All the time! What should we do?
• Blah, blah, blah, that's all spiritual, but we don't believe in the spiritual. We want the tangible. If only there were a "science" of luck. Enter Dr. Joseph Gallenberger: How much proof is enough proof? If it were science -- demonstrable, repeatable, tangible results -- we wanted, here we have it. "Luck" not good enough? How about magic? Enter Dean Radin.
• Yeah, okay, but what about easy magic for the rest of us non-scientists? Enter Jose Silva, now presented by Vishen Lakhiani (mindvalley.com). If Abraham-Hicks (the council of spirit being calling itself "Abraham" being channeled by Esther Hicks) and when Seth spoke we weren't listening, here's a chance at mind control, control of our own minds that is.

We can make good luck - Dr. J. Gallenberger

If a drop of water is place on the forearm, according to science, statistics, and probability, its path down cannot be known, cannot be predicted. There are too factors influencing it. So consider how many more are operating in our lives. Drop six or seven billion billiard balls on a pool table, all of them banging around, then try to know or predict the path of one of them.

The Conscious Universe

It's not clear if there's freewill -- science says no -- but some measure of will influences our lives. If it didn't, we would be fatalists simply experiencing results all the time and never forming new volitions.

However, even in this case, what are we experiencing the results of? Those things in the past are what give rise to subsequent experiences (allowing for some retrocausation as well). The present moment therefore becomes very important.

Supernormal Science, Yoga, and the Evidence for Extraordinary Psychic Abilities

.

What we do now has a tremendous influence even if the results are not seen soon enough for our liking. People in casual speech keep saying the slogan, "Karma's a b*tch" as a handy explanation when they like what's happening to someone else as they get their comeuppance.

"They caught the guy. They're throwing him in prison, a life sentence, throwing away the key. Ha ha ha, karma's a b*tch."

Do such people ever consider what else karma is? Often, it is a blessing, particularly for humans.

Being an animal is great. Move and I kill you.

Behold the animals. They've got it good, huh? Laying around the living room, eating Smart 'n Fancy snacks and meals, getting pampered, combed, allowed on the bed, given a private door (cut into the door) to come and go as they please. That's happening due to their past and sometimes present karma, as are their looks and pretty marks that make them lovable or unpopular.

And when they get abused by humans, go outside to kill or get killed, attack or get attacked, contract insect infestations or diseases, get threatened by tougher street animals, feral and wild ones, what is all that? That's the life of an animal. It is a miserable thing, yet we praise it saying, "They have it easy" when we at best are talking about a very small subset of creatures, not paying attention to the vast majority of species and individuals. Of all the dogs in the world today, most canines are miserable and short-lived, as with felines and fish and birds and reptiles.

Of all the humans, how are they doing? They have it the best so far as we can see. And if we pay unbiased attention (mindful, not avoiding the unpleasant or being drawn by the pleasant or confused by the neutral), we'll soon see most are not having a good experience.

Buddhism says the human plane is the worst fortunate plane. At the bottom of the human barrel begins the first plane considered the "downfall," the dreaded subhuman worlds. In these worlds, which includes animals, hungry ghosts, spirits, unseen beings of various sorts, and that's not even arriving at the planes that can properly be labeled "hells," where beings, having fallen in, experience the results of their unsavory deeds. It's not the end of the world, far from it. The world keeps going on and on, life after life, year after year, experience after experience.

The act of enslaving living beings is heavy.

So it's good, very good, to insert some skillful deeds (kusala karmas) in there while the getting's good. The getting is good right now on this human plane. It never gets better than now. Why would it be good? Karma's a B. It's good because of another slogan: "Karma: It's everywhere you're going to be." 🙂

• Dope Hub (Video 1); Binge Central (Video 2); Explaining Karma: Dhr. Seven, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Wisdom Quarterly

What is 'Right Action' in Eightfold Path?

Presence versus presents

Like right speech, there is a very simple way to think about right action: It is action (karma, conduct, deeds of mind, speech, and body, behavior) that gives rise to peace and happiness in self and others.

In the same way, right action is simply right intention as applied to action.

The Buddha provides useful practical guidelines. He defined right action as abstinence from three things: killing, stealing, and sexual misconduct [1].

The combination of right speech and right action gives rise to a set of guidelines that the Buddha recommends for ethical and wholesome behavior called the Five Precepts [2]. These Five Precepts form the center of ethics and morality in Buddhism.

The precepts apply to monastics and lay practitioners.  The Five Precepts are:

1. To abstain from killing
2. To abstain from stealing
3. To abstain from sexual misconduct
4. To abstain from bearing false witness
5. To abstain from intoxicants that occasion heedlessness.

Hey, Bean, is our radio show right speech? - FU!

The first three precepts are the practice of "right action." The fourth item, right speech, is so important that the Buddha named it as a precept of its own. The first four precepts might seem obvious while the fifth precept may surprise some

In one sutra delivered to a large group of monastics and laypeople, the Buddha explained the purpose of abstinence from intoxicants in this verse:

Because of intoxication

foolish people do harmful deeds,

and they make other heedless folk do such deeds.

One should avoid this basis of demerit,

delightful to fools, causing madness and delusion [3].

Wake and bake, Bro. Let's go to Goenka's and smoke out to be able to sit better. Huh huh huh

.

Shut up, you hor. I'm drunk! I'll knock you out.

In modern terms we avoid intoxicants because intoxication makes people do very harmful things.  However, beyond that, there is a deeper reason for this precept. That is the keen awareness in Buddhism of the close interrelationship between the mind, behavior, and suffering. For this reason, keeping the mind unclouded and uncompromised is an essential part of Buddhist practice.

There is a beautiful way to look at these ancient (pre-Buddhist) Five Precepts, and that is as gifts. The Buddha considers observing the Five Precepts a way of giving five great gifts to ourselves and others.

By observing the precepts, he says, “the noble disciple gives to an immeasurable number of beings freedom from fear, enmity, and affliction. One in turn enjoys immeasurable freedom from fear, enmity, and affliction” [4].

In that spirit, modern Buddhist teachers emphasize the active aspects of the precepts. Each precept is a call to refrain from harmful actions and also an opportunity to practice beautiful qualities.

The great Vietnamese Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, for example, lovingly encouraged one to use

1. the first precept (abstaining from killing) as an opportunity to practice compassion,
2. the second precept (abstaining from stealing) as an opportunity to practice generosity,
3. the third precept (abstaining from sexual misconduct) as an opportunity to practice true love,
4. the fourth precept (abstaining from lying) as an opportunity to practice loving speech and deep listening, and
5. the fifth precept (abstaining from intoxication) as an opportunity to practice nourishment and healing [5].

In other words, the Five Precepts are an opportunity for beautiful living.

But wait, there’s more. The Five Precepts are the core of virtue (sila), and virtue is a gift that keeps on giving. For laypeople, the Buddha lists five benefits of being virtuous:

1. A virtuous person does not lose wealth because of heedlessness.
2. A virtuous person gains a good reputation.
3. A virtuous person approaches any assembly confident and composed.
4. A virtuous person dies unconfused.
5. A virtuous person, after death, is reborn in a good destination [6].
6. For those reasons, the Buddha declares a lay person who possess the five precepts as one who dwells in self-confidence [7].

Do as I say, not as I do. And don't talk back!

Students of religion may be tempted to equate the Five Precepts with “moralistic strictures,” standards of conduct set for people by God. However, being nontheistic, there is no such thing as moralistic strictures in Buddhism, given that there is no God to impose anything upon us.

Instead, the reason we practice virtue in Buddhism is because virtue is highly conducive to our own happiness and good fortune, our progress and contentment here and now.

Western Buddhist monk and author Ajahn Munindo has a beautiful way of putting it. Paraphrasing the Buddha, he states:

“It is wisdom that enables

letting go of a lesser happiness

in pursuit of a happiness

which is greater” [8].

In Buddhism, the practice of virtue is precisely that, having the wisdom to let go of the lesser happiness of nonvirtuous indulgence for the greater bliss of blamelessness and confidence, and as you shall see later, the even greater bliss coming from compassion, samadhi (profound stillness in meditation), and nirvana.

• ACTIVITY: Reflect on this post with Angela

REFERENCES

1. Saṃyutta Nikāya 45.8.
2. Pali term: pañca-sīla.
3. Dhammika Sutta (Sutta Nipāta 2.14).
4. Aṅguttara Nikāya 8.39.
5. Thich Nhat Hanh’s Five Mindfulness Trainings on (learnreligions.com/thich-nhat-hanhs-five-mindfulness-trainings-449601).
6. Aṅguttara Nikāya 5.213.
7. Aṅguttara Nikāya 5.171.
8. This is Ajahn Munindo’s rendering of Dhammapada Verse 290, which reads, “If by renouncing a lesser happiness one may realize a greater happiness, let the wise person renounce the lesser, having regard for the greater.”

• Chade-Meng Tan, Buddhism for All (buddhism.net), Dec. 24, 2023, featured image by Colin Goh; edited by Seth Auberon, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly