What to do about "Karma"? (film)

COMMENTARY

Why would anyone in her right mind move to the secluded Himalayan foothills to live in caves or caverns, alone, striving, practicing for calm and insight?

To traffic beings for slaughter/slavery=heavy karma

What is karma? A deed, which the Buddha defined as an "action" or, more accurately as the intention (cetana) behind an action, the motivation, impulse, volition, guide, ambition. Therefore, to burp in public is disruptive and impolite, but it might just happen.

Intentionally burping to disrupt someone's talk or to offend others, that is the karma of interrupting or offending. Taking a sharp knife and stabbing someone is a good deed motivated by skill and compassion. so long as it is done when practicing healing, perhaps as a surgeon or old time barber. Taking that very same blade and piercing a living being is some of the worst karma. It's the very same action but a very different motivation.

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  Cayce could see karma as cause

  There are in a sense only six kinds of karma manifesting in infinite complexities and nuances. The general six are those classes of actions motivated by greed (liking, lust, desire, avarice, craving), hatred (disliking, aversion, fear, revulsion), delusion (ignorance, wrong views, blindness, confusion); nongreed (letting go, generosity, charity, sharing), nonhatred (love, kindness, compassion, conscientiousness, joy in their joy), or nondelusion (wisdom, knowing-and-seeing, right views, understanding). Results (vipakas and phalas) are not punishments or rewards because no one is standing in judgment dishing out consequences, comeuppances, crowns, or gold stars. Indeed, karma is very strange in how actions find their results, infinitely complex, one of the Four Imponderables. So it is always good and to one's advantage to have a greater store of skillful karma and less unskillful. Think of a cup of water spiked with salt. It becomes very salty and undrinkable (intolerable). How to make it drinkable (tolerable) again since we cannot take out that salt now dissolved into the mix? Easy! Increase the water. Pour water (skillful karma) into the mix to dilute the salt (unskillful karma), until there's so much good that there's no trace of salt at all.

This is the distinction between the action we see from the outside and the intention we don't see motivating it.

But we ourselves, if we are mindful, patient, and honest with ourselves may be able to discern our motives. Then we can see what results and fruits (vipaka and phala) are to be expected when those deeds ripen. It is a regularity or law of the universe, the Buddha taught, that actions beget results, whether they are consequences to endure or delights to enjoy. "Karma is a B," they say.

Who's Karma? In this Tibetan film, it seems to be this nun or ani, who reminds us of Maria in The Sound of Music, the loveable troublemaker and rule breaker with a kind and innocent heart. What are we going to do about the problem Maria? Just enjoy her. She may have much to teach monastics who start to harden or ossify like the back of an unhealthy and inflexible elderly woman. Wouldn't it keep her younger if she relaxed, lightened up, and enjoyed Karma and Maria's antics?

Now why would anyone choose to be a hermit, ascetic, recluse, withdrawn and intensively practicing austerities as if they were penance? There is a very good reason -- to quickly make an end of suffering by reaching the path of calm-and-insight. Most are in no such hurry, so we live as laypeople. But some ascetics are well-motivated and follow a course of conduct others can hardly understand. Even among ordained people, it must be unusual to ever meet someone taking up the 13 "sane ascetic practices" (dhutangas) the Buddha recommended.

The Buddha, being wise about people, did not ask people to become wandering ascetics or shramanas like him and be miserable. Seeing the wisdom of morality, silence, mental withdrawal, stillness, concentration, and living in the company of noble friends (kalyana-mittas), which refers to monastics on the paths of awakening -- from the first stage (stream entry) to full enlightenment (arhatship). Such friends are rare, extraordinarily rare, in the world.

Among these the Buddha is the best friend of beings, showing them the way to freedom, liberation, awakening, and the deathless state of peace (nirvana). People fear it, thinking it will cramp their style and hedonistic pursuits. But as the Buddha said, he would never recommend to someone to let go of a higher thing for a lower thing.

Butcher Cunda: terrible karma of killing animals

However, letting go of a lower thing for a higher thing, that he would recommend. Leaving a wealthy life of beauty, power over others, youthfulness, pleasure, and a heavenly destination -- who would call that a "lower thing"? The Buddha would. Why? He would because he points the way to a "higher thing" -- letting go, something that cannot be lost, power over oneself, deathlessness, supersensual pleasures (bliss, joy, contentedness, sukha, piti), and a destination beyond rebirth and beyond the reach of any suffering whatsoever. What wise person could fail to see the advantage of what the Awakened One is making available. Still, most of us will not believe and will be afraid of any suggestion we let go of anything. It's mine! I need it. I earned it. I must have it and never lose it!

How silly we. It is not ours (as even "self" is not ours). It is not needed but a hindrance. Was it earned or was the result of previous good karma wasted on it? I do not have to have it and losing it, no matter what, is inevitable. Therefore, would it not be much wiser to let go of the lesser and go forth from the home life to the "left home life" of a nun, a temporarily ordained monastic, or at least an intensive retreatant meditating in earnestness to taste the fruits of letting go and being free?

There is a reason why for hundreds of thousands and even millions of years of life on the human plane some have opted to abandon the lay life of a householder on a spiritual quest seeking the meaning of things and freedom from the mundane. The goal of such wise one was spiritual liberation and peace. Some find it.

The others gain samadhi and mystical powers, psychic abilities, seeing other realms, a higher rebirth, and peace in this very life. If they choose and continue to develop their wisdom, they gain the final liberation the Buddha was pointing at.

Before the Buddha, and therefore before Buddhism, there were already

wandering ascetics who renounced the world, lived on alms, and meditated.

• TEXT: Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Wisdom Quarterly