In 2003, Richard Gere – as you know, he’s a Buddhist – invited the Dalai Lama to New York. He also decided to invite 20 former prisoners, all of whom had done some kind of meditation in prison, to meet His Holiness and to discuss their experiences with each other.
And he invited some people like me, who were working with people in prison – I was in San Francisco and I was running the prison project. It was a lovely day, a lovely meeting. He also invited two young Tibetan nuns who’d been tortured and sexually abused in prison in Tibet to give a talk. It was interesting to see the way they interpreted their experience.
One thing we’ve got to realize is that the view of karma is completely in the bones of their being. Buddhism’s been in Tibet since like 700, so for 1,300 years it’s been in the bones of their being. And of course, this view of karma has been in India for 3,000 years or something, coming from these Indian yogis.
In the same way, we can see that the neuroscientific view is completely integrated into every aspect of our life in the West, isn’t it? It’s so integrated, it’s totally a given: the neuroscientific view permeates every aspect of our life. Or just like in a Muslim country where the view of a creator is the view that permeates their lives. I’m not criticizing – it’s not good or bad, it’s just how it is.
In the Western view, the modern view, it’s assumed in all of psychology, in science, in education, in everything, that you are made by your mother and father, that your mind is the brain, and then all the analysis we do is based upon that one, of course – and it’s so integrated we don’t notice it.
Now, for those two young Tibetan nuns, the view of karma is completely in the bones of their being, since they’re born: their mind, their consciousness, is not physical, it’s not the handiwork of a creator, it’s not the handiwork of their parents, and that it goes back and back and back into countless past lives, and, crucially, that every millisecond of what they think and do and say is the process that programs their mind, that produces the person they become, now and in the future.
In other words, they have the view that they themselves are the main cause for everything they experience, everything they think, and everything that happens to them, both happy and suffering. It’s just how it is, it’s just the view of karma.
Of course, for those of us in our culture who decide to become Buddhist, it’s tremendously difficult to go beneath the surface of those words and start experiencing that as reality, because it’s really opposite to everything we’ve thought. But for these young women, this is the view they’ve had since they’re born, it’s integrated into their being.
So there they are, being abused, sexually, and tortured in prison. Now, no one wants that, but they have a way of interpreting it – you’ve got to realize this, they have a way of interpreting it – that enables them to go through their experience without losing their minds with despair or anger.
From the beginning of their experience, their view of karma kicks in and they’re able to use it to help them interpret that experience of being tortured and sexually abused; it totally becomes their practice every day.
Eventually they get released, and so there they are in New York, telling about their experiences. You could put it this way: it was evident to everybody in that room that if you wanted to quantify suffering, theirs was worse than everybody else’s, it was pretty clear, you know? Nobody else talked about being raped and tortured and sexually abused.
It was really clear their suffering was pretty intense, but what was really evident to everybody in the room was these young women didn’t have anger.
Now, this is hard for us in our culture: we think anger is a healthy, intelligent response to when bad things happen: how dare you do that to me, I don’t deserve it! I’d put it this way: if your mother and father did in fact create you, then it’s true you literally do not deserve to be harmed because you didn’t do anything to cause it – it’s a fact! This is exactly why we have so much anger!
It’s pretty clear that there is nothing that those young women did in this life to cause such suffering – they don’t even hurt flies! Taking this life alone as the framework, then of course they don’t deserve being tortured and killed. So therefore, of course, anger is natural – that’s our view.
But they don’t have that view! Their view takes into account many, many lifetimes: their view is that whatever they meet, whatever they see, whatever happens to them – all the good, all the bad – all of it is their garden, their life is their garden and they planted all of those weeds and all of those flowers. That’s the view that informs their experience, therefore they didn’t have anger.
Again, what’s anger? “How dare those torturers do that to me, I don’t deserve it!” That’s the emotion, the deep belief that drives anger, that is anger. But because of their view of karma, they’re able to work with the entitlement of attachment and the outrage of anger and to transform their experiences. It’s huge!
I’m not trying to say they were high bodhisattvas, but it was pretty evident by the way they talked that their view informed their experience, therefore informed their ability to deal with this suffering. They had a way of describing to themselves why it was happening.
At the end of their talk, there were tears – one of them was in tears – and she said quietly, “And, of course, we had compassion for our torturers, because we know we must have harmed them in the past” – and even more than that – “and because we know they will suffer unbearably in the future.”
This is because they have the view of karma!
When we have this view – not just intellectually, but really learning to use it to inform our entire life – first it brings ownership, which is like compassion for yourself; then it can bring compassion for others. Okay, people? Such a good example.
But I mean, a way to go! We can’t get there overnight. Those young women, since they were born, they’ve been informed by this view, have practiced it every day of their lives.
What I’m getting us to see here is that, all of us, every second, we’re informed by layers and layers and layers of conceptual viewpoints that we’ve had for many lifetimes – we just don’t realize it. Because of these ingrained views, we just think that what we see, that what appears to us, is the truth, you know? We don’t analyze, we don’t unpack. We need to do that, we need to recognize the conceptual viewpoints that are informing our lives – it’s so powerful, you know?