Recently I was asked a question: if you see a guy who’s punching his four-year-old daughter, is that happening because of her karma?
This is a very common question – and it’s so hard for us. The view of karma is so simple to present, but it’s very hard for our mind because it has nothing to do with how we see the world.
The Buddha’s view is very simple: there are trillions of consciousnesses, mind possessors, sentient beings – humans, animals, dogs, all kinds we can’t see, spirits, hell beings, god beings – trillions of sentient beings; our minds are beginningless, and every millisecond of what we think and do and say is basically the process that produces the person we become. The Dalai Lama says it’s like self-creation.
Every millisecond of any negative thought or action we do programs our mind – sows seeds in our mind that will ripen in the future as my suffering, necessarily. And every single second, any action I do that’s virtuous and positive will only ripen as my happiness. That’s it!
So if we look at the world and we see someone suffering, it’s the fruit of their past negativity. If we look at the world and we see happiness, it’s the fruit of virtue. That’s the bottom line. It’s not a complicated presentation, but it’s kind of so shocking we can’t hear it.
So the little girl who’s getting punched is experiencing the fruit of her past negativity, no question. But also the little girl who has a lovely mummy and a lovely daddy and money in the bank and has got good teachers and never gets harmed, she also created that, and is experiencing the fruit of her past virtue.
We only tend to ask this question when we hear about the bad things because we can’t cope with hearing about bad things.
But karma refers also to any second in your life that anyone has done anything good to you, and to all your virtues: if we understood this, that would be blissful for us.
In other words, the flowers and the weeds come from seeds we’ve planted, but we somehow only focus on the weeds – the negative ones. Do you understand? It’s a big deal.
The trouble is we’re so used to the creator model of religion – that there’s a punisher and a rewarder – and that’s how we hear karma.
Buddha is not a creator. He thinks a creator is a dumb idea. He does not have a view like that: there’s no concept of a creator, and there’s no concept of punishment and reward. That’s how we hear it – but it’s not like that.
The thing is a lot of people who like Buddhism have no interest in karma, are completely bored by it, think it’s completely irrelevant, but if you want to understand the big picture in Buddhism – the big picture, the whole Buddhist worldview –you can’t possibly understand it unless you understand karma. It’s just not possible!
But you need to really squeeze your brain to get it clear because we hear it in a very cliched way. We hear about karma, and we just think it’s another variation of punishment and reward – that’s why we can’t cope with it, you know?
Then because we have guilt we kind of beat ourselves up. A friend of mine who teaches Buddhism is full of guilt: when he does purification practice, the regret, he says to himself, “Oh, I shouldn’t have done that, and I shouldn’t have done that.” That’s just coming from ego, that’s completely nonsense. And it’s the punishment mode: “I’m bad, you’re bad.” It’s so not relevant.
We’ve got to really think about karma properly, break it down, you know, it’s not easy. The teachings on karma are talking to the choir: they’re talking to Tibetan people for whom karma has been in their bones for 1,200 years, you know, it’s in their culture – it’s just part of who they are.
But because it’s a brand-new idea for us, we’ve got to really think it through, unpack it, put it in our own words to make it clear that it’s not anything to do with punishment – because there’s no punisher! The view we have of punishment and reward is ridiculous!
The Buddha’s view is more like you go to your doctor, and she says, “Don’t smoke, Robina.” You don’t then go, “How dare you tell me what to do!” You say, “Why not?” And then she’ll show you a video of cancerous lungs, and you are so grateful to her, that she showed you the mess that will come to you if you smoke.
Then Lama Zopa sits there and teaches that we’ll go to the hell realms for 42 eons if we do a particular negative action, and we just have a panic attack, instead of being grateful to him for telling us. We hear it as punishment, we hear it as punishment. It’s so ingrained in us, it’s so hilarious.
That’s a bit like thinking your doctor says, “Don’t smoke because I say so,” and, “Don’t smoke because I will give you cancer.”
But this is also an interesting point, and it’s so important to understand this – this is the Christian teaching, with respect. I asked my priest friend, “What defines something as a sin?” He said, “It is wrong by definition because God said it is wrong.”
I am not criticizing: if you have faith in a creator, you’ll live a good life and you’ll want to do God’s will and you know you’ll get punished if you don’t.
That’s how we think it works then in Buddhism – but it’s not! Buddha’s not a boss! The doctor’s not giving you cancer! The doctor’s just wise and will tell you what she’s found from her experience is the consequence of smoking. Well, Buddha the same: he’s telling us from his own experience the consequence of doing negative actions: “It’ll only harm you, Robina, and sweetheart, please don’t do it for that reason.”
We can’t hear that at all! We’re like babies, you know?
Hear it properly, because when you start to apply karma, it’s liberation: you start taking responsibility. It’s what we would call compassion for yourself, it’s what we would call self-compassion – you want to protect yourself.
Look how we are with health and food and nutrition: we look at every packet, at everything that’s in it, we would never touch that thing if it’s got some ingredient in it that’s not good for me. That’s not fundamentalist, that’s intelligence.
It’s the same with actions – virtue and goodness and suffering and negativity – same approach. Out of self-respect, you would not bear to want to kill or steal or lie, because it’ll only harm you – and that’s Buddha’s emphasis in the first stages.
In the first stages of karma, in the lamrim, there’s no discussion of compassion yet. Buddha says killing’s a natural law: people don’t like getting killed and that’s why it’s wrong – not because Buddha said. But why he exhorts us not to do it is because it’s going to harm you, Robina. We can’t hear this at all, we just hear it as punishment, you know, it’s so heavy.
So karma’s the first step, I tell you, you need to hear it properly. It’s self-respect, it’s taking care of yourself.