[Buddha-l] Re. karma and consequences

[Robert Ellis]

Hi Jayarava,
I'm now going to respond to your earlier post on karma. Thanks to other people who have since responded too.

>>I understand the "equivalence" between karma and vipaka to be ...that unskilful intentions give rise to painful vedanā, and repeated intentions set up patterns which become habits. Personally this is my experience of unskilfulness to the extent that I've been aware enough to notice. <<

I'd like to suggest that what you have experienced is specific unskilful intentions giving rise to specific vedana, not the law of karma which claims this universally. I have no problem with people claiming that this is true in their experience so far, but the law of karma (again, in whatever precise form you=2!
 0put it) goes much further than this.

>>I'm still not sure what you mean when you say that faith is used to justify positions, which you presumably 
see as fixed in some way rather than provisional. Perhaps an example?<<
 
OK, American evangelicals are funding Israel due to a dogmatic faith position that israel must expand to its Biblical extent to trigger the second coming, and part of the result is the slaughter we saw recently in Gaza, which would not have been possible without huge American financial and political support. This is an example of faith in general justifying a dogmatic position with horrific consequences.

Here's another one using karma specifically. In Richard Hayes' 'Land of No Buddha' p.76, a Tibetan L!
 ama is quoted as saying that even Jewish children wh
o died in the Holocaust must have been reaping their karma vipaka from a previous life. 

You may consider these gross examples, but they make the point clearly. More subtle examples, using the more "liberalised" view of karma held by Sangharakshita which prevents one reading back current experiences as necessarily caused by earlier actions, would give rise to a subtler problematic, E.g. a child who believes they will necessarily suffer for their bad actions may be wracked by irrational guilt. This version of karma still goes beyond experience, so it seems clear to me that it can still be used dogmatically, even though I can't give such striking examples.

>>The argument that we must hold beliefs provisionally seems unremarkable !
 to me...hardly news.<<

My experience is that Western Buddhists (in the FWBO anyway) often pay lip-service to provisionality, but rarely apply it consistently. If you have agreed that many Buddhists hold a dogmatic view of karma, does this not by itself create a troubling doublethink within the Buddhist community?
 
>> Is the concern that practice will not root out even those views? But why would any view be exempt?<<

Of course, no view is exempt: except the Middle Way, which at least allows gradual and provisional ways forward. What concerns me particularly about Buddhist views is that they hold the gem of the Middle Way, but often ignore it and promote metaphysics instead. I'm glad that Buddhists are practising (as are!
  other people), but their practice is vitiated by mi
xed messages and lack of clarity about what they have to offer.

My posting is just too long here, and I can't get it through as it is despite editing. So I've chopped off the last bit and will put it in a separate post.
Best wishes,
Robert


Robert Ellis

website: www.moralobjectivity.net