We really have this gut feeling of deserve and not deserve. Now, let’s analyze that as a philosophy. Let’s do that, people – it’s very fascinating.
For example, if Coral woke up in the morning and saw some weeds in her garden, she would never, ever, ever say, “How dare there be a weed in my garden! Who put a weed in my garden? I don’t deserve weeds.”
Look at the logic of why she wouldn’t say that: very simple, because she knows it is her garden. That’s the operative word: it’s her garden. She knows if it’s her garden, and she owns it, then what’s in it is what she put there. That’s logic, isn’t it, and that’s how we feel.
If she woke up in the morning and saw a cauliflower in her lovely garden, she would know that she planted that cauliflower, she owns that cauliflower, she is the cause of that cauliflower, and she wouldn’t say, “Oh, aren’t I lucky? Who put a cauliflower in my garden?” That’s schizophrenic – she would never say that. The operative word is it’s my garden.
I think it’s a great analogy. Our life is our garden: we created the cause from a past life; we found our way to this particular mother; we met this particular father; we have these particular experiences; and everything in this life up until now that we have experienced, good and bad, is the fruit of our past gardening.
This sense of ownership is what comes from having the view of karma – and this is when the profound shift happens. Of course it’s difficult because who’s clairvoyant? Nobody – we haven’t got clairvoyance yet. We can get it when we get shamatha – we can prove this to be true – but meanwhile, we have to take it as our working hypothesis. Of course it’s a tough one because this view completely smashes into the face of the instinct of the innocent victim: “I don’t deserve this.”
To say, “I don’t deserve suffering, but I do deserve happiness,” from the Buddha’s point of view there’s no logic in that, because it’s like saying, “I do deserve flowers but not weeds.”
I’m sorry, it’s your garden! You planted them! When you know this, then you can take responsibility for them, and then you can own them, and then you know you’re in charge.
When a bad thing does happen – say, for instance, serious accusations about something you’ve done wrong – that can be years of agony for a person who feels, “That’s not fair, how dare they say that about me, I didn’t do anything wrong.” And you go crazy, you want to sue them, and you go kill yourself because you can’t cope. That’s life!
But if we can begin to own the pain this is where the transformation can start. Of course this is a difficult one because we can’t see it to be true. We’ve got to hypothesize it.
The view of karma is also the basis of compassion for others. This is why I always tell that story about those two young Tibetan nuns: I tell it repeatedly because it’s such a perfect example.
For Tibetans, karma is in the bones of their being and has been for fourteen hundred years, and it’s been in the Indians’ for another fifteen hundred years before that.
We’ve never heard about this in the modern world: we have the view of Christians and creators and we go back to the Greeks. There’s no view of karma, so it’s new to us, but for Tibetans it’s completely a given. It’s a worldview that’s just highly established and they study it deeply in the monastic university system, which comes from the great monastic university system in India going back to the fifth century, which goes back to the time of the Buddha. It’s all there in the literature.
For these young Tibetan nuns, it’s just in the bones of their being – this view of karma – in the same way that it’s in the bones of our being that either God made us or Mummy and Daddy made us; in either case, we didn’t ask to get born. They don’t have that view.
These Tibetan nuns were invited by Richard Gere to New York back in 2003 – I always tell this story – when I was running the prison project, and I was based in California, and me and a bunch of other people who work with people in prison were also invited to this big meeting of about twenty former prisoners to meet the Dalai Lama – His Holiness was coming to give teachings.
It was a marvelous occasion, a whole cross-section of Americans, all of whom had done some kind of meditation in prison: Puerto Rican and Mexican, white and black, male and female, and some of them ex-prisoners that I had worked with.
He also invited two young Tibetan nuns who’d been tortured and sexually abused in prison. They were telling their story. It was very fascinating because they were not angry. This is the point I’m getting to about understanding the relationship between attachment and anger. They weren’t angry: in other words, they weren’t thinking or saying or believing, “Why is this happening to me? I don’t deserve it.”
Think about anger! That’s the philosophy of anger, people, listen to it: “Why is this happening to me? I don’t deserve it.” If you analyze that, it’s so profound: that is the philosophy of anger.
If you’ve got the view of karma like they do, they don’t have that thought. They’re not suppressing their anger – they don’t have anger because they don’t have the philosophy of, “I don’t know why this is happening to me, I don’t deserve it.” They have the view of karma. Think about this! You’ve got to unpack these concepts.
They were sad. Who wants to be tortured and sexually abused? Nobody. But they have a way of understanding it, they accept the karmic view, they know why this is happening. That informed their ability to bear the suffering, you know?
This is the point, finally. There were tears, there was sadness telling these stories – of course, it’s traumatic – but at the end, one of them said, “And of course we had compassion for our torturers because we know we must have harmed them in the past” – and, even more powerful – “and we know that they will suffer in the future.”
The view of karma is huge in Buddhism: if you study it properly, it’s there, you know? Many Buddhists don’t even like the view of karma, but you can’t take it away from Buddha’s view of the world: it’s just completely integrated into the whole Buddhist worldview.
If you have that view and make it real experience for you in every part of your life – you know why things are happening – then you would not have much anger. I remember the Dalai Lama saying he’s so sad now because more and more young Tibetans have anger, which means they no longer have the Buddhist view because they don’t have the view of karma. They have the view of the instinct of ego: “I didn’t ask to get born, it’s not my fault, how dare this happen to me?”
This view of karma is profound. It informs how we interpret our experiences. These young nuns know why torture and abuse happened to them, and then they have compassion. And that’s the real level of compassion in the Buddhist view, which is very intense for us.
We only have compassion for innocent victims. When you’ve really got this view of karma, and you get onto the bodhisattva path, the bodhisattvas have more compassion for the perpetrators because the victims are just finishing their karma, while the rapists and torturers are just beginning countless lifetimes of unbearable suffering. Because everything we ever think and do and say produces the person we become. This is the view of Buddhism.
Many Buddhists don’t even talk about karma, you know? I know, for me, when I first heard the Buddhist teachings, this is the one that I really knew I’d missed in my life. This is one of the most powerful ones for me: it helped me become strong, to give up being a victim, to give up anger as well as a sense of entitlement, which is what attachment is: I deserve only the nice things. It’s a profound view – not just superficial, but when you really put it into your bones it completely changes your life, it’s very fascinating.