TOH_CHP9 - Cross River Meditation

Week – Karma and Rebirth

“I am the owner of my actions, heir to my actions. I am born of my actions and related through my actions. My actions will determine the fortune or misfortune in my life.” [1]

Kamma (Sanskrit: Karma) and Rebirth are closely linked concepts of the Buddha’s teachings. Despite modern presentations that the Buddha taught karma and rebirth only to relate to the prevalent beliefs of his time and are not useful or relevant teachings, understanding karma and rebirth is essential to these teachings.

The Buddha’s teachings on karma and rebirth refuted many of the common beliefs of his time and helped clarify the purpose and experience of awakening. Understanding these teachings as they were originally presented and in the context of The Four Noble Truths brings insight and clarity to the Eightfold Path and can help one recognize contradictory and confusing “Buddhist” teachings that are later-developed adaptations and accommodations to the original teachings.

Kamma and Rebirth are conditions arising from ignorance. Kamma means action. Kamma is in no way punishment as a result of arbitrary judgments from a supreme being. Kamma is not the consequences from a vague independent moral-ethical-spiritual system.

Kamma is not a condition imposed on you. You alone are the cause of your karma and you alone are the cause of rebirth.

Kamma should not be viewed simply as what is unfolding in your life. Kamma is the present unfolding of past intentional actions moderated by your present state of understanding and quality of mindfulness. As your present state of mindfulness and understanding animate your current actions, your current actions are moderating the effects of past actions.

What this means is the key to these entire teachings. Through mindfulness imbued with wisdom and motivated by Right Intention, the unfolding of karma can be inclined towards release and awakening.

Kamma does not pre-determine life. Mindful and well-concentrated intention within the framework of the Eightfold Path develops release from craving and clinging and cessation of suffering.

“Whatever one continues to pursue with their thinking becomes the inclination of their awareness. Being mindful of Right Intention and abandoning thinking imbued with craving, clinging, and sensuality inclines the mind towards release.” [2]

All of the events of life are not the result of individual karma. Most of what occurs in one’s life is simply worldly conditions and described in the First Noble Truth: there is stress. Reaction to impersonal events will create additional karma and further conditions mind.

Reaction arises from wrong views of self and it is wrong views that initiate and proliferate karma. Once all wrong views of self are abandoned further karma ends.

As with all the Buddha’s original teachings, karma is taught in the context of The Four Noble Truths with the goal of the cessation of suffering. In this context, karma describes the ongoing suffering rooted in ignorance and reinforced by wrong intention.

“Kamma should be understood (correctly). The cause of karma should be understood. The diversity (of the results) of karma should be understood. Cessation of karma should be understood. The path developing the cessation of karma should be understood. “[3]

Notice that these are the same words the Buddha uses to describe the truth of suffering. Kamma unfolding, whether experienced as pleasure or pain, is an aspect of dukkha and originates in craving and clinging. This brings Dependent Origination (ignorance resulting in suffering) and Right Intention into understanding and ending karma.

The Buddha continues: “Intention is karma. With intention one does karma through thought, word, and deed. And what is the cause that initiates karma? Contact.”

This again relates to Dependent Origination and the importance of unravelling the links of Dependent Origination. Through Right Intention supported by the other seven factors of the Eightfold Path the ongoing process of ignorance resulting in confusion and suffering can be brought to an end through wisdom and ensuing right actions (again, karma means action).

The Buddha continues: “And what is the cessation of karma? From the cessation of contact comes the cessation of karma. And how does one experience the cessation of contact? Through the Noble Eightfold Path.”

This shows that the driving force to continue confusion and suffering is described by the Buddha as karma. This is to point out the importance of being mindful of all thoughts, words, and deeds. This is the purpose of mindfulness in the context of The Four Noble Truths. It is your actions that will determine your awakening or continued confusion and suffering. The framework for recognizing, understanding, and refining your actions is the Eightfold Path.

Kamma is your ego-personality’s experience of craving and clinging within anicca. Kamma is the direct experience of the results of ignorance. Understanding karma is understanding dukkha. Understanding dukkha inclines the mind towards abandoning craving and clinging and begins to unravel the links of Dependent Origination.

With awakened Right View no attachment to the ego-personality is present and any experience is simply an experience in the world that is dispassionately observed with mindful presence.

Any event that occurs in the phenomenal world is an opportunity to remain dispassionately present with a mind settled in equanimity and to cease creating additional karma. Once a reaction to an event has occurred, further karma is established.

“A fool and a wise person are both characterized by their actions. It is through the actions of one’s life that reveals the fool or the sage. The fool engages in three things: bodily misconduct, verbal misconduct, and mental misconduct. The sage engages in three things: good bodily conduct, good verbal conduct, and good mental conduct.

“Thus friends, train yourselves as a sage in thought, word, and deed.” [4]

The state or quality of mind in each present moment determines the experience of karma unfolding. A reactive mind will further karma. A mind of equanimity will bring a peaceful experience of karma unfolding and avoid additional karma. The unfolding of karma is not inevitable.

While it is more desirable to experience the effects of karma pleasurably, to have “good karma,” all karma contributes to dukkha and rebirth. All karma is to be extinguished.

Holding the conscious intention to act in a certain manner to develop favorable karma will accomplish just that: develop additional karma. The result will be to forever perpetuate dukkha. This is why it is crucial to be mindful of Right View and the strong resolve, the Right Intention, to abandon all craving and clinging, and awaken.

Altruistic or compassionate actions taken without wisdom can often generate further kammic entanglements. This can be very subtle and difficult to recognize. For example, if an underlying motivation and intention for compassionate action is to fulfill a view of what it means to be a “good” person, even a “good Buddhist,” the resulting karma will be reinforcing the ego-personality.

Altruistic and compassionate actions that are an expression of an enlightened mind will always benefit all with no kammic entanglements or consequences.

This is not to say that one should not act with compassion and in accordance with the framework of the Eightfold Path. The Eightfold Path provides guidance against continued self-identification and continued “I-making.”

Holding the intention to establish and defend an ego-self leads to action and reaction that inevitably creates additional karma.

Holding in mind the intention to recognize and abandon craving and clinging will incline karma towards release. The life experience will naturally be more peaceful and meaningful.

Kamma is the experience of self in this present moment. Who you see yourself to be is the result of karma or past actions unfolding in the present state of your mindfulness.

Kamma is who you are in this moment in the phenomenal world. The more skillful your actions in the present, the more liberating will be your karma as life unfolds. Mindfulness of the Eightfold Path inclines you to Right Action.

By being mindful of the Dhamma and living with the integrity that arises from following The Eightfold Path, you directly impact karma in the present moment. You will change the direction of your life by changing your intentional actions and reactions.

The Eightfold Path is the framework for clearly seeing your actions, reactions, and unfolding karma. Your actions and reactions change as your thoughts become virtuous, your mind becomes less distracted, and wisdom deepens.

Holding the intention to abandon all clinging, craving, desire and aversion diminishes the distraction of dukkha. Abandoning clinging interrupts the ongoing establishment and defense of your ego-self.

Unskillful intentions and resulting actions will create additional karma. Right Intention will lead to cessation of unskillful actions and bringing an end to karma.

Right Intention is holding the strong resolve to put aside all clinging, craving, desire and aversion. Right Intention arising from Right View generates the moral and ethical actions of Right Speech, Action and Livelihood. The virtuous aspects of The Eightfold Path lead to the abandonment of desire. Right Intention arising from Right View informs a practice developing Right Effort, Right Mindfulness and Right Meditation.

At Saavatthii the Buddha said: “Monks, what a person wills, what they plan, what they dwell on forms the basis for the continuation of consciousness. This basis being present, consciousness has a lodgment. Consciousness being lodged there and growing, rebirth of renewed existence takes place in the future, and from this renewed existence arise birth, decay-and-death, grief, lamentation, suffering, sorrow and despair. Such is the uprising of this entire mass of suffering.

“Even if a person does not will and plan, yet if they dwell on something this forms a basis for the continuation of consciousness… rebirth… takes place…

“But if a person neither wills nor plans nor dwells on anything, no basis is formed for the continuation of consciousness. This basis being absent, consciousness has no lodgment. Consciousness not being lodged there and not growing, no rebirth of renewed existence takes place in the future, and so birth, decay-and-death, grief, lamentation, suffering, sorrow and despair are destroyed. Such is the cessation of this entire mass of suffering.” [5]

An awakened mind settled in equanimity will produce no additional karma. As no karma is created, whatever karma is left will simply ripen and fall away until complete liberation and freedom is realized.

The following three paragraphs bring previously developed teachings into the context of karma and rebirth.

The three defining characteristics of the phenomenal world are Anicca, Dukkha and Anatta. Within the environment of impermanence Dukkha arises. Dukkha arises due to clinging, craving and aversion. Clinging arises from a misunderstanding of the nature of self.

What arises as “self” (shown to be anatta, not a self) is an impermanent combination of factors known as “The Five Clinging-Aggregates. These aggregates are described as clinging due to the nature of “self” to cling to thoughts, ideas, and objects that further define and describe self. It is craving and clinging rooted in ignorance that establishes a self and creates Kamma and and the cycles of birth.

Anatta or “not-self” refers to the impermanent nature of the formation of a self that is subject to stress, disappointment and confusion.

The Buddha never taught that there is a self or that there is not a self. He avoided the issue as a focus on metaphysical questions would be a distraction from his stated purpose to bring “an understanding of dukkha and a cessation of dukkha. Nothing more.”

He taught that what is commonly believed to be a self is not founded in Right Understanding. It is this conditioned view of self that is to be abandoned if confusion and suffering is to end.

As the distraction of dukkha is always present to a deluded mind, then the awakened mind is a mind free of karma and free of the kammic manifestation of rebirth.

Once karma ceases there will be no more births. Without karma to create the unfolding need for continued existence, rebirth ends.

The Buddha’s understanding and teaching on rebirth differ greatly from the Brahmanism of the Buddha’s time and differs greatly with many of the mystical Buddhist religions. The Dhamma also differs greatly from the Hindu and Hindu-influenced beliefs that would arise well after the Buddha’s passing.

Many religions, including some Buddhist religions, teach morals and ethics as a way of hopefully having ever more pleasurable future lives, but never abandoning conditioned thinking and continued I-making. This is continued clinging to an idea of an ego-self and is specifically what the Buddha was referring to when he said:

“This was the third knowledge I attained in the third watch of the night. Ignorance was destroyed; knowledge arose; darkness was destroyed; light arose — as happens in one who is heedful, ardent, & resolute. Birth is ended, the holy life fulfilled, the task done. There is nothing further for this world.” [6]

Reincarnation is the belief that an individual and permanent soul travels throughout time as the same spiritual entity appearing in a different physical body life after life. This cannot be reconciled with the teachings of not-self, emptiness, dependent origination, the five clinging-aggregates and karma. The self that would reincarnate has been shown to be an impermanent aggregate of physical and mental factors sustained only in a present instant by craving.

The Buddha in describing Dukkha or suffering teaches: “Birth is suffering, sickness is suffering, old age is suffering.” The Four Noble Truths directly teach the cessation of suffering and the cessation of birth, death and rebirth. The Buddha did not teach a way of manipulating a more pleasurable future birth, he taught a way of leaving the recurring cycle of dukkha behind.

This brings up the notion of annihilation. Annihilation is an extreme view rooted in the ignorance of anatta. It is an ego-personality’s fear of annihilation that creates this doubt and reaction as the ego-personality is always vigilant about continuation. This creates a need of establishing the ego-self in the future.

A skillful way of considering karma and rebirth is to view karma driving the birth of this present moment. It is past actions that have brought you here. In order to complete the path, to end craving and clinging and to bring dukkha to cessation, giving birth to another moment of clinging to objects, views, and ideas is unskillful.

What is most skillful is to recognize the causes of continued confusion and suffering and to abandon those causes. The next moment holds the potential to be free of confusion and suffering. The next moment holds the potential for freedom from continued rebirth of anatta.

When you abandon craving and clinging your immediate future is free of confusion and suffering. The distracting questions rooted in ignorant views no longer arise. You are no longer experiencing the results of past Kamma and there is no longer any ongoing “birth” of confusion and suffering. Kamma has ended and the ego personality has ceased craving and clinging.

This is the most skillful way to consider birth, death, and rebirth.

As stated, the five clinging-aggregates are the vehicle for the “self” that experiences dukkha. This ego-self, or conditioned mind, is impermanent, or “empty” of any permanent and individually originated constituents. There is no “self” and no karma other than the conditioned mind manifested due to specific causes and conditions arising in the phenomenal world.

The Buddha never taught emptiness as a mystical realm that somehow is both empty but includes the phenomenal world. As with all of the Dhamma, emptiness was used in relation to suffering and The Four Noble Truths. He taught that one should “empty oneself of clinging” and that The Five Clinging-Aggregates are “empty” of any permanence or substance. He taught that one should “empty” the world of self, to cease “I-making.”

“Just as in the autumn a farmer, plowing with a large plow, cuts through all the spreading rootlets as he plows; in the same way the understanding of impermanence, developed and frequently practiced, removes all sensual passion… removes and abolishes all conceit of “I am.” [7]

This Week’s Dhamma Study

Continue with your meditation practice in the morning and early evening. If you feel comfortable with adding a few minutes to your practice do so. Ten to Twenty minute meditation sessions should be comfortable for you.
In meditation, remain mindful of your breathing as you dispassionately notice feelings and thoughts arise and dissipate. When you notice that you are caught up in your own thoughts and have lost awareness of your breath, put aside the focus on your thoughts and place your awareness on your breathing. Become aware of your mind from a dispassionate observational view, a mind-state of choiceless awareness always mindful of your breath.
Continue to develop wisdom by noticing your attachments to the people and events of your life, including yourself. Continue to generate the Right Intention to let go of all attachments and all impermanent views.
In your day-to-day life notice when you are engaged in Right Speech, Action and Livelihood and when you are not. Develop the strong intention to abandon all wrong speech, action and livelihood. As concentration deepens, non-virtuous thoughts, words and deeds become apparent.
Continue to develop Right Effort. Put aside time for a regular meditation practice and maintain a priority to your practice. There will always be life events distracting away from practice. Very rarely will these events be more immediate or important than putting aside some time twice a day for a period of meditation. Bring mindfulness into all areas of your life by staying focused in the present moment.
Keep a journal of any persistent thoughts and your awareness of the impermanence of all thoughts. Avoid being analytical. This is a dispassionate observance of thoughts and feelings as they arise and pass away. Take note of developing a more mindful presence in your life. Notice when you are fully present with another. Notice when you are not as distracted or reactive.
Write a paragraph or two regarding your Dhamma practice and write down any questions or insights into impermanence and how impermanence contributes to stress. Note your deepening understanding of how impermanence and clinging give rise to the stress and unhappiness of the ego-personality.
Write an additional paragraph or two regarding your understanding of the cause of karma and rebirth and the ending of karma and rebirth.
To submit your writing, please use this form: Contact – Cross River Meditation
Responses are generally within 24 to 48 hours.
Continue your Dhamma study with week ten.
Always be gentle with yourself and enjoy your practice!