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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 packs in so many implications that 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 in everyday usage, we find that most of
its luggage has gotten mixed up in transit. In the eyes of most
Americans, 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 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 of us 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 symbolized 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 unskillful 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: Someday 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 skillful 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 realize 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 honors 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 unskillful motives.
The worth of a tribe lies only in the skillful 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 to more unskillful actions on
into 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.
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