QUESTION
Dear Venerable,
I hear about karma but just can’t understand it. It sounds like punishment to me, same as the Christian teachings that talk about punishment and reward. How is it different?
Love,
K
ANSWER
Dearest K:
The view of karma is so utterly different from both the materialist view and the creator religions’ views that it’s hard to even hear it.
Each of those views asserts that we’re the handiwork of someone else, either a creator or our parents. And those views — that someone else made us and therefore is responsible — are deep in the bones of our being.
The Buddhist view, which comes from Buddha’s own observation, and remember, it was the observation of the genius Indian yogis before him, is that everything we think and do and say is the main process that produces the person we become and our experiences.
The outside world plays a role, clearly, but our own past actions, which leave tendencies in our mind, are the main cause.
And because there’s no such concept as a creator, there’s no view of punishment and reward – there’s no punisher or rewarder!
All our happy experiences and all our unhappy experiences are rooted in causes that we ourselves created. As His Holiness the Dalai Lama likes to say, “Karma is like self-creation.”
So it takes time to think it through, to make sense of it: that we literally have created our own experiences, our own being. Eventually this brings a sense of responsibility; it lessens anger and attachment and brings more self-confidence.
Ego’s view is so ingrained: attachment and anger, the two main voices of ego, express it totally. Attachment totally assumes that I only deserve good things, which indicates that they have to come to me from out there somewhere, that someone has the responsibility to make me happy! And anger totally assumes that I do not deserve bad things, which again indicates that they come from outside, and how dare someone do something bad to me!
We have to look deep into these states of mind.
And this view of karma says that our mind goes back before this life; we each have our own past, and this also means that we have strong history with people: we meet again and again.
So one step at a time!
Much love,
Robina