American Buddhist Perspectives
After the very kind, funny, and ego-inflating mention over at Zen Dirt, Zen Dust, it feels a bit wrong to blurt out a stream of consciousness / here’s what’s going on in my life / unedited by the Virgin Mary herself kind of post. But oh well.
In Life:
I’m very happily back together with my girlfriend, Julie. I still have no idea where I’m going in life, let alone where we are going, but it just works in a way that I’m going to hang on to as much as I can. So, as long as she continues to put up with my moody, busy, Buddhisty, introverted shenanigans (to borrow a friend’s term), we’re in good shape. I still feel myself craving both certainty and independence – haha – both, upon reflection, being totally unBuddhist!!
So: relationship = practice.
Also in life, I’m running my first marathon tomorrow. I’ve run 2 half-marathons over the years and numerous long runs (20 miles being the longest) over the last month or so in training. But I’m still uneasy. Sunday (read my last post) I tweaked me left knee a tiny bit and there is a real possibility of doing long-term damage if I’m not careful tomorrow.
Some have even suggested that I simply bag it, recuperate fully, and wait for the next nearby marathon and run that. When I think of my knee, that sounds great. When I think of the work and determination put into this race, it sounds awful. Is this me being foolish? Clinging to a mental construct (the ideal race) forged long ago? Or is it determination and fortitude? We learn to “sit through the pain” and “just watch it” in long meditation sessions, only moving when it becomes too much.
But we all have had times when we pushed just a bit too far and hurt ourselves, especially in physical activity.
For now I simply breathe and watch the pain and other sensations. I am also setting the conditions for healing. Ice, hot bath with Epsom salts, Camphor and Menthol (aka Tiger Balm) and an herbal mix made for injured horses (yep, horses).
KARMA
A while back, Bodhipaksa wrote on the topic of karma, which reinvigorated some of my thoughts on the topic. I wrote a bit on the topic even further back. My view is that karma/kamma (intentional actions in Buddhism) does shape everything in our lives. And, if we were awakened, we could see just how karma shaped our past and the lives of those around us.
This, to me, is pretty standard Buddhism.
But Bodhipaksa (and the great scholars Peter Harvey and Damien Keown) have all found one sutta in which the Buddha seems to say there are events in our life that are not due to karma.
Yet, just briefly (hoping to write more deeply about it soon), I think all have misinterpreted this short sutta. The Buddha’s point, I will argue, is epistemological and not ontological in nature. That is, he is rebuking people for talking about things that they don’t know, not necessarily speaking falsely about the nature of things.
When we have a stomach ache and know for ourselves that this is caused by overeating, it is wise to note this. Too much food – a physical thing – has caused the pain, also on the physical side of Buddhist analysis. If we have the awareness to know that our own intentional actions led to our overeating, only then is it wise to note this. If we do not know this and we still say, “oh, I’m in pain, it must be my bad karma,” then we are, “go[ing] beyond what [we] know by [our]selves and what is accepted as true by the world.”
Note that he says “true by the world” at the end, not true by the wise, or the noble (ariyans), or the worthy ones (arahants/awakened ones). When we speak of the condition of things, it is necessary to speak on the level of the world, those around us. It is wrong in this same way for a physicist to say that my stomach ache is due to Newtonian or quantum physics. In an ontological sense – speaking of the nature of things – the physicist is right! The pain is caused by atoms and electrons and all that stuff doing what they do. In the same way, the ascetics and Brahmins in the cited sutta are right about karma.
Since Bodhipaksa emphasizes this as a Tibetan or modern Western teaching, I thought I’d toss out a quote I found this week in Nina Van Gorkom‘s book, “Abhidhamma in Daily Life.” It comes from analysis of Theravādin teachings and scholarship through a Thai tradition.
If one is being hit by someone else, the pain one feels is not the vipāka (result) of the deed performed by the other person. The person who is being hit receives the result of a bad deed he performed himself; for him there is akusala vipāka through the body-sense. The other person’s action is only the proximate cause of his pain… When we have more understanding of kamma and vipāka we will see many events of our life more clearly. (p.27)
Akusala vipāka is the result of unwholesomeness or unskillful action. This is the analysis based on the Buddha’s own words at the very earliest stages of Buddhism. The pain in our stomach is also an akusala vipāka, but it is only right of us to say so if we know for ourselves that this is the case.
If we do not know that a particular circumstance is the result of our past karma, good or bad, it is wrong for us to say so. This, I believe, is the point of the cited sutta; not the idea that karma is but one of several (mutually exclusive?) forms of causation.
LABELS
The question of labels and reality have come up on a few people’s blogs lately. I’m running out of time to write now, but I will say that labels are important in Buddhism. PLEASE, for the love of your own progress on the path to enlightenment, read the Milindapanha. Or at least a carefully abridged version such as that found in Mark Siderits’ book “Buddhism as Philosophy.”
Labels in the realm of conventional truth are hugely important for getting things done. In this realm there IS truth and falsehood, correct and incorrect things we can say – conventionally. “I am a peanut butter sandwich” is a good example (thanks, Kyle, for your humor and being a good sport) of conventional falsehood.
“I am hungry, I am tired, I am tall, etc, etc” all are conventionally true, so long as they refer correctly to the state of things in the world (see above remark about Bodhipaksa’s sutta).
Conventional truths are GREAT. Buddhism is filled with them. So is the rest of our life. A major step forward in life is to live in conventional truth: to speak correctly of things at all times. So I take some exception with the statement in an otherwise brilliant post at Zen Dirt, Zen Dust, claiming that “Labels and constructs are, for the most part, a waste of time.” (it may be just quibbling on my part, but I do like to emphasize the good that is done when we use labels correctly)
Ultimately, though, we see that conventional truths are filled with a touch of delusion. Ultimately, there is no “I” to be hungry, tired, etc. All of the “stuff” we identify conventionally is really just concepts/labels placed on our experiences. In ultimate truth there are just the four paramatha dhammas (ultimate truths or experiences or phenomena), again relying on Van Gorkom’s work.
Exhale. Time to bathe and salt my achy knee and get on the road to Billings for the big run! Best wishes to all as always!
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