Empty karma

[icarus]

Oh.

I get it.

When the Buddha taught, he wasn't teaching people who'd never heard of karma about karma. Everyone in India believed some theory of karma.

He was teaching people who knew about karma about emptiness. He taught an understanding of karma where everything is interdependent, so there is no original cause. Therefore, karma is empty.

Comments

[magic-8ball.livejournal.com]

I have no idea what you just wrote. But it looks deep, and I'm kicking myself for not paying more attention in Eastern philosophy class.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Oh.

Um.

When Buddhism is taught in countries that don't have the idea of karma (20th century U.S. & Europe, 1st century China) the buddhists spend a lot of time explaining karma. So people think that karma is one of the fundamental teachings of the Buddha.

But when you look at his audience in 6th century B.C. India, they were mostly Hindus who believed in various ideas of karma. So his teachings on karma were a refinement of the idea of karma.

If you look very, very carefully, he really used karma to teach something else: emptiness.

[magic-8ball.livejournal.com]

Oh. Well that makes perfect sense, actually. It would be kind of like if St. Patrick had used boiled meat (instead of three-leafed clovers) to teach the Irish about the trinity. Boiled meat was totally familiar to them, though 20th century Americans generally avoid throwing a brisket in a pot of boiling water for half a day.

Or maybe that's a bad analogy. But I get what you were saying.

[enname.livejournal.com]

Ah, I was going to ask, but you've already explained. Then I was going to ask about emptiness, but realised that I would be asking you to do what you were saying that the buddhists were being asked to do regarding karma. Even though I know some about it. Woah, perhaps I shouldn't have had that coffee.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

Let me take a wild stab: Karma is a response from the past to the present. Your past acts reflect or form who you are now.

Empty karma: But there isn't one person/thing/source to point a finger at and say "And THIS is the reason that xxx happened," and then hold a grudge about it foreverafter. We are all responsible for what we do to each other; we are the universe and we interact within it and everyone's karma shapes everyone else's.

Something like that? I've never heard the term "empty karma" before.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I made the term "empty karma" up. It's just the title of the post.

But there isn't one person/thing/source to point a finger at and say "And THIS is the reason that xxx happened," and then hold a grudge about it foreverafter. We are all responsible for what we do to each other; we are the universe and we interact within it and everyone's karma shapes everyone else's.

Everything depends upon something else. When you break down the "THIS" -- let's take something very simple: lighting a match. You think that the person who lights the match causes the fire. But the person depends upon having a match in the first place. And there can be no interfering causes --there can't be a windsotrm and the matches can't be wet. Then, too, you need oxygen in the right proportion for the match to light at all. And before you have fire, you have a spark, so isn't the spark that causes the fire rather than the person holding the match? Then, to light a fire you need tinder to touch the match to. Not one of these causes and conditions are more important than another. You can't point to a single one and say, "This is what caused the match to be lit."

There is nothing in existance that doesn't have this web of interconnecting causes and conditions. That net of causes and conditions is karma. It's not just past life stuff, but ordinary stuff in the present, too.

Even what we think is tangible and real, like fire. If you keep tracing it back, this caused this caused this caused this caused this, it all falls apart. Nothing has an independent reality. While things exists in reliance on something else, what that implies is they don't have an inherent reality of their own.

So interdependence implies that all of this existance we have is like a rainbow. It's beautiful. It's ephemeral. It's delicate. And it's something empty, that we can see through. When we see through it, there is nothing to cling to. Our suffereing comes when we want to grasp and keep the rainbow instead of simply enjoying it. Appreciating rainbow.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

This is really beautiful. Thank you.

[aerynvala.livejournal.com]

Thank you! That is the best explanation I've ever heard for this whole thing. And I've been coming up against these concepts all my life and wow do westerners find ways to totally miss the boat on what karma is. :)

[greenling.livejournal.com]

Because there is everything, there is nothing? Hehe. :3

One of these days I'm going to have to read the source texts of this thing, or somewhat closer to, to see how they match up to what I've gotten from it from listening to people talk about their religion.

[birggitt.livejournal.com]

And today, with this post and this thread, you has made me ponder about things I usually don't think.
Thank you =D