[Buddha-l] Website of the Arya Sanghata Sutra

[Jayarava]

--- On Fri, 31/7/09, Dan Lusthaus <vasubandhu at earthlink.net> wrote:

Think we must have been typing at the same time...

> In this Pali Sutta (the online translation has some problems), the issue > is not "diluting" karma, but explaining how -- contrary to a lot of 
> later Buddhist literature -- there is no one-to-one calculus between a 
> act and its calculus.

Although I agree with the point you make here, I'm not sure that this is the main point of the sutta. I think your example of the alcoholic is a bit too deterministic. The reason the trifling act does not send a person to hell is (in Thanissaro's translation)

"There is the case where a certain individual is developed in [contemplating] the body, developed in virtue, developed in mind, developed in discernment: unrestricted, large-hearted, dwelling with the immeasurable."

This is the key passage. The text is saying that karma ripening as painful vedanā in a person who is not a spiritual practitioner can be devastating. However if that same person had developed themselves through spiritual practices, then they might hardly be bothered at all.

The idea is that though spiritual practice cannot absolve us, it can make us more tolerant of pain. We become bigger, the pain happens in a bigger psychic context. Hence the Ganga (and this is obviously a very pre-modern Ganga) can absorb a salt crystal and still be drinkable. Being tolerant of pain is useful because we are less likely to be reactive and thereby create new negative karma - which is the sine qua non of Pāli Buddhist ethics.

It isn't carte-blanche, not a let out for unskilfulness (or incompetence)  however, because in order to be spiritually developed, to get the mitigating effect, one must be "developed in virtue". 

I think this idea of the possibility of partially mitigating the effects of karma must have played a part in the development of the later idea of total mitigation - if a little is OK, then a lot must be better. And also I think the religious concerns of the Chinese were different from those in India.

Regards
Jayarava