The early Buddhist notion of karma focused on the liberating
potential of the present moment
Karma is one of those
words we don't translate. Its basic meaning is simple enough --
action. But because of the weight the Buddha's teachings give to
the role of action, the Sanskrit word "karma'' is packed with many
meanings and the English word "action'' can't carry all its
luggage.
This is why we've simply airlifted the original word into our
vocabulary.
But when we try unpacking the connotations the word carries, now
that it has arrived into everyday usage, we find that most of its
luggage has gotten mixed up in transit.
In the eyes of most Westerners, for example, karma functions like
fate -- bad fate, at that: an inexplicable, unchangeable force
coming out of our past, for which we are somehow vaguely
responsible and which we are powerless to fight.
"I guess it's just my karma,'' I've heard people sigh when bad
fortune strikes with such force that they see no alternative to
resigned acceptance.
The fatalism implicit in this statement is one reason why so many
people are repelled by the concept of karma, for it sounds like the
kind of callous myth-making that can justify almost any kind of
suffering or injustice in the status quo: "If he's poor, it's
because of his karma.'' "If she's been raped, it's because of her
karma.''
From this, it seems a short step to saying that he or she deserves
to suffer, and so doesn't deserve our help.
This misperception comes from the fact that the Buddhist concept of
karma came to the West at the same time as non-Buddhist concepts,
and so ended up with some of their luggage.
Although many Asian concepts of karma are fatalistic, the early
Buddhist concept was not fatalistic at all. In fact, if we look
closely at early Buddhist ideas of karma, we'll find that they give
even less importance to myths about the past than most modern
Americans do.
For the early Buddhists, karma was non-linear. Other Indian schools
believed that karma operated in a straight line, with actions from
the past influencing the present, and present actions influencing
the future. As a result, they saw little room for free will.
Buddhists, however, saw that karma acts in feedback loops, with the
present moment being shaped both by past and by present actions;
present actions shape not only the future but also the
present.
This constant opening for present input into the causal process
makes free will possible.
This freedom is symbolised in the imagery the Buddhists used to
explain the process: flowing water. Sometimes the flow from the
past is so strong that little can be done except to stand fast, but
there are also times when the flow is gentle enough to be diverted
in almost any direction.
So, instead of promoting resigned powerlessness, the early Buddhist
notion of karma focused on the liberating potential of what the
mind is doing with every moment.
Who you are -- what you come from -- is not anywhere near as
important as the mind's motives for what it is doing right now.
Even though the past may account for many of the inequalities we
see in life, our measure as human beings is not the hand we've been
dealt, for that hand can change at any moment.
We take our own measure by how well we play the hand we've got. If
you're suffering, you try not to continue the unskilful mental
habits that would keep that particular karmic feedback going.
If you see that other people are suffering, and you're in a
position to help, you focus not on their karmic past but your
karmic opportunity in the present: Some day you may find yourself
in the same predicament that they're in now, so here's your
opportunity to act in the way you'd like them to act toward you
when that day comes.
This belief that one's dignity is measured, not by one's past but
by one's present actions, flew right in the face of the Indian
traditions of caste-based hierarchies, and explains why early
Buddhists had such a field day poking fun at the pretensions and
mythology of the Brahmans.
As the Buddha pointed out, a Brahman could be a superior person not
because he came out of a Brahman womb, but only if he acted with
truly skilful intentions.
We read the early Buddhist attacks on the caste system and, aside
from their anti-racist implications, they often strike us as
quaint.
What we fail to realise is that they strike right at the heart of
our myths about our own past: our obsession with defining who we
are in terms of where we come from -- our race, ethnic heritage,
gender, socio-economic background, sexual preference -- our modern
tribes. We put inordinate amounts of energy into creating and
maintaining the mythology of our tribe so that we can take
vicarious pride in our tribe's good name. Even when we become
Buddhists, the tribe comes first. We demand a Buddhism that honours
our myths.
From the standpoint of karma, though, where we come from is old
karma, over which we have no control. What we "are'' is a nebulous
concept at best -- and pernicious at worst, when we use it to find
excuses for acting on unskilful motives.
The worth of a tribe lies only in the skilful actions of its
individual members. Even when those good people belong to our
tribe, their good karma is theirs, not ours. And, of course, every
tribe has its bad members, which means that the mythology of the
tribe is a fragile thing. To hang onto anything fragile requires a
large investment of passion, aversion, and delusion, leading
inevitably on to more unskilful actions in the future.
So the Buddhist teachings on karma, far from being a quaint relic
from the past, are a direct challenge to a basic thrust -- and
basic flaw -- in our culture. Only when we abandon our obsession
with finding vicarious pride in our tribal past, and can take
actual pride in the motives that underlie our present actions, can
we say that the word karma, in its Buddhist sense, has recovered
its luggage.
And when we open the luggage, we'll find that it's brought us a
gift: the gift we give ourselves and one another when we drop our
myths about who we are, and can instead be honest about what we're
doing with each moment -- at the same time making the effort to do
it right.