This book examines the karma and rebirth in the light of our contemporary culture. Originally these beliefs were an essential part of the cultural baggage of Indian Buddhism, but the author distinguishes "two voices" here. The first, the folk voice was derived very much from pre-existing ideas. "It offered a fairly crude and simplistic model that was able both to account for suffering and to spur people into living a good life through fear of a nasty rebirth and the promise of a pleasant one." (p.131) It thus contributed to social stability and control. The second, the canonical voice was more subtle and psychological, though by no means unambiguous.
The author treats traditional beliefs sensitively and thoughtfully, with a concern to "cut away the bark with a view to revealing the vital heartwood underneath - ... credible beliefs that serve a useful spiritual function" (pp.8, 16). However, in the course of a somewhat repetitious discussion, it becomes clear that the misinterpretations to be found in the first voice (above) have a common origin. This is the belief that everything that happens to a person is karmically determined and a consequence of volitional intent. Thus "karma is often equated with the general Buddhist principle of dependent origination (pratitya samutapada). It is regarded as 'the master Law of the Universe', the law of causation." (p.12).
From this it is only a short step to describing karma as "a 'retributive principle', an 'iron law' underlying a 'just' universe that punishes wrongdoers and rewards the virtuous. So if anything bad happens to us it must be because we ourselves have done something, either earlier in this life or in a previous one, to have 'deserved' it (p.13) ... This understanding of karma is found, for example, in Tibetan Buddhism." (p.30). In the next sentence Nagapriya says that the Tibetans " seem" to believe this. But such a claim surely deserves a full discussion ? The author makes clear the seriousness of its implications when he quotes from an interview in which Lati Rinpoche was asked whether he believed that all the Jews who were murdered in the holocaust deserved their deaths. Rinpoche replied:
The victims were experiencing the consequences of their actions performed in previous lives. The individual victims must have done something very bad in earlier lives that led to their being treated in this way (p.31).
"A dangerous misunderstanding", as Nagapriya remarks, but I would have expected a much fuller and more forceful examination of its widespread social implications. Such retributive notions of karma flourish in conservative cultures and give credence to widespread social injustice. If your children are sick it is bad karma, and not bad environmental conditions and inadequate medical services. If you are consigned to the "under-class" or the wrong race, then that is your karma, and not something sustained by a specific social culture which is by no means immutable. In the course of history whole peoples and nations have simply deserved what they got, and they enjoined to accept the justice of their fate.
The foregoing understanding of karma was categorically denied in several texts (e.g. p.36, from the Milindapanha: - "The pain which due to kamma is much less than that due to other causes. The ignorant go too far when they say that everything experienced is produced as the fruit of kamma"). Crucial here are the five Abhidhamma modes of causality : (1) physical-organic (uti-niyama); (2) biological (bija-niyama); (3) non-volitional mental (mano- or citta-niyama); (4) volitional mental (kamma- or karma-niyama); and (5) - and the most unclear and problematic - spiritual (dhamma- or dharma-niyama). My own example would be an airplane crash where all the niyamas may have had some causal effect: metal fatigue, the pilot's attention being distracted by a stomach upset, or maybe by anxiety about a sick friend, or the wilful negligence of a ground technician may have contributed to the tragedy. But, unless this were a terrorist incident, the karma of the passengers can virtually be excluded from any explanation. Nagapriya spells out the implications of this canonical version of karma:
In reality, there are not five distinct orders of conditionality. Every experience comprises a vast network of conditions; our previous moral conduct will often have a bearing on our present experience, but in many situations non-moral factors will exert a more decisive influence. The teaching of the five niyamas thus presents a more complex and subtle account of why things happen as they do than the crude view of karma criticised above. We need also to remember that the actions of other people may be more decisive in any given situation than our own karma stream; it may be their evil or their goodness that causes us to suffer or benefit, rather than our own (p.39).
The author concludes that "it does not seem appropriate to assume that people are suffering as a result of their previous karma. This is [only] one possibility." And a causal stream is commonly too subtle, complex, and problematic for the karmic thread (if there is one) to be readily distinguished at all. Karma is thus reduced here to a psychological phenomenon.
At
this point in the book I began to experience disappointment at the
absence of
any exploration of the social implications of the above more
sophisticated and
canonical understanding of karma. This would not have required a
substantially
longer book, since there is at present considerable repetitiveness and
meandering discussion that could have been rendered into a more concise
and
compact text. Moreover, in my view, the treatment of karma as an
historical
phenomenon and a subject of social theory should be no mere optional
extra in a
contemporary study such as this.
Institutions,
and society at large, are shaped by complex conditioning forces (such
as
physical geography) of which the karma of their members is only a part.
And the
social dynamic is more than the mere aggregate of individuals, but is
expressed
through cultures, institutions, and social structures. To emphasise
that point
it is more accurate to refer to societal
karma. The intent of
past generations remains embedded in the inertia of cultural norms and
social
institutions and is eroded more – or less – slowly by subsequent
generations. The persistence of such societal karma can be impressive,
as in
the case of the endurance and re-emergence of national and other group
identities
submerged by centuries of alien rule. A particularly powerful
expression of
societal karma is ideology, by which I mean a collective belief system
that
sustains and consolidates the group identity of those who adhere to it.
These
preliminary reflections suggest that this is a very significant and
fruitful
field that still awaits Buddhist enquiry.
Various
implications of the canonical understanding of karma are explored in
subsequent
chapters, including “the importance of intention” and “levels
of karmic consequence.” In view of the elusive complexity
of the niyamas and
the karmic stream acknowledged earlier, the
treatment here sometimes feels academic – like the mechanistic
tabulation
of the relationship between karma and vipaka (effects).. “Do we always get what we deserve? “No, not
always in this life, anyway,” concludes the author (55), but then he
suggests
that since we are unable deeply to the feel the consequences of our
actions “this impoverishment is itself
a form of suffering” (64).
The
discussion around the Buddhist claim that “human character is
malleable” (49)
is relevant not only to progress along the spiritual path but also to
the long
running Western debate about nature vs. nurture in education,
criminology and
the like. “Buddhism says that the personality is malleable. There are
no limits
to the possibilities for individual transformation,” and the author
then goes
on to cite the Pauline conversion of Silas Marner in George Eliot’s
novel of
that name (50). However, in the final chapter he concludes:
Moment by moment we recreate ourselves through what we
think, say and do. Over time we develop distinctive habits: a
recognizable
“self” that makes us most likely to perpetuate those habits rather than
adopt
others. We get stuck in a rut. That is how most of us experience our
lives most
of the time: trapped in patterns of thought and behaviour that we can
neither
break out of nor see beyond (140).
This
fruitful contradiction might have been examined further. Socially
engaged
Buddhists have characterised Buddhism as a “radical conservatism”
(Sivaraksa,
1990). How
radical and how conservative will depend upon both the objective
conditions
attaching to particular cases and on the inclination of the observer.
And just
as individuals are swept along and helplessly repeat the same mistakes
over and
over again, so it is with social cultures. Surely the most poignant
example of
the working of karma is to be found in the fate of the Easter
Islanders. At one
time they prospered in their luxuriant Polynesian island, but were
obsessed
with the ritual building of mighty stone monuments. The statues of
competing
clans were rolled from the quarry on great roads of tree trunks across
the
island. The consequences of the increasing deforestation must have been
evident. However, such was the karmic intensity of the need to sustain
ritual
belief and of each clan to compete against the others that they went on
to the
bitter end. The soil deteriorated, and by the time the first Europeans
arrived
in1722, the population had sunk to a squalid and impoverished handful,
engaged
in perpetual raiding and cannibalism to stay alive. Many would argue
that our
contemporary societal karma is likewise driving us heedlessly to
planetary
destruction. Governments and peoples seem powerless and unwilling to
make any
adequate response to the deepening ecological crisis. Is the karmic
momentum of
our shamelessly acquisitive culture just too strong to turn aside? Is
not this
the most important single question that we need to ask ourselves about
karma?
The last third of the
book is devoted to the knotty question of rebirth. As Nagapriya
observes, “it
is fairly easy to accept the doctrine of Karma, at least as expressed
in the
second [canonical] voice … But the same is not true of rebirth. We have
to stretch
our imagination a lot further if we are to take this on. Not only is it
not
immediately verifiable but it also raises a number of questions which
traditional Buddhism has not decisively answered” (131).
As to the evidence for
rebirth, “research on past lives tends to fall into three categories:
children’s
claims of past life memories, birth mark matches, and past-life
regression of
adults.” However, although Nagapriya does take account of the
“scientifically
credible” research of Dr. Ian Stevenson, there is one important body of
evidence of which he seems to be unaware. My own inclination to believe
began
only when I discovered the case notes of Dr. Roger Woolger, an
initially
sceptical “past lives” therapist, and his colleagues (Woolger, 1990).
Since
then the range of professionally validated evidence in the files of a
growing
number of such specialists makes it difficult to readily dismiss
rebirth as a
cultural bygone.
Nagapriya concludes that
the evidence he has examined “is certainly not compelling, but at least
some of
it is plausible and hard to explain using established knowledge … It would not seem unreasonable to believe in
rebirth in a literal sense; at the same time, someone who does not
accept it
could not be accused of refusing to face incontrovertible facts …
Perhaps the
most honest response would be agnostic: we don’t really know … This
state of
uncertainty throws us back to the reality of this
life” (116-7).
This has large implications:
If
we discard rebirth as
conventionally understood, the traditional Buddhist way of describing
our human
predicament and the nature of the spiritual enterprise must be
re-envisaged. No
longer are we aiming to break free from the wheel of birth and death
but rather
to shake off our spiritual fetters in this very life. (137)
In
this respect
Nagapriya reminds us of “the provisional and instrumental nature of
beliefs
within Buddhism.” He implies that belief in rebirth may be seen as a
“skilful
means” (upaya)
appropriate to its time and place, rather than simply dismissed
as a religious dogma (138).
In
conclusion, this is a
helpful primer which sets out and examines the canonical understanding
of karma
as against the
widespread folk beliefs which frequently substitute for it. The
examination of rebirth is less satisfactory but does arrive at a
well-argued
agnostic conclusion. Throughout, judicious use is made of scripture
whilst
avoiding the thickets of Buddhist scholasticism. The general
inclination is
sceptical and agnostic. whilst at the same time positive and in keeping
with
the pragmatic, non-dogmatic spirit of Buddhism. The occasional examples
drawn
from Western literature are a welcome feature. On the other hand much
of the
material could have been more concisely organised, and the absence of
any
adequate treatment of societal karma is regrettable.
Sivaraksa,
S. (ed.) (1990). Radical Conservatism: Buddhism in the Contemporary
World.
Bangkok
: The
Sathirakoses-Nagapradipa Foundation, 1990.
Williams,
P. (1989). Mahayana Buddhism: the Doctrinal
Foundations.
London & New
York
: Routledge.
Woolger,
R.J. (1990). Other Lives, Other Selves: a
Jungian Psychotherapist Discovers
Past
Lives.
London:
Aquarian.
Ken
Jones is a Zen and Ch’an practitioner of thirty years’ standing. He is
a founding member and current
Secretary of the UK Network of Engaged Buddhists, and a member of the
Think
Sangha. Jones has facilitated numerous workshops and retreats on
different
aspects of socially engaged Buddhism and has published widely. His
latest book is The New Social Face of
Buddhism (Wisdom Publications, 2003).