Introducing Karma
Karma is a Sanskrit word which means “action”, but mainly here, we mean “conditioned action”. What we call “individual karma” refers to the innumerable ways in which for better or worse our past actions have conditioned our present experience of life, and the ways in which our present actions will condition our future.
What we call “collective karma” refers to the innumerable ways in which the mass amalgamations of a group of people’s actions have created our present, and that our present actions will create our future. In terms of the general state of our world, that would be the mass co-creation of all living beings, but the same collective principle also applies to smaller groups like families, workplaces, cities, countries, etc, all of which have their karma at play.
From a Buddhist point of view, karmic conditioning is why we have our personalities, various habitual patterns, predominate kleshas and also positive mental states, why we experience or react to things the way we do, why we have some talents and other struggles, preferences, basically our entire make up as people. While we can definitely look at this within this lifetime alone, from a Buddhist view, karma plays out over innumerable lifetimes and is even why we’re born where and when we are, in the bodies we have, etc.
The basic principle is that our mind creates our actions, and our actions create our world.
There’s a famous Buddhist saying that says “If we want to know what we’ve done before, look at who we are now. If we want to know what we will be in the future, look at what we do now.”
At the root, when we say that karma is conditioned action, we mean it’s conditioned by that basic root ignorance we’ve discussed. Ie, the solidification into self and other, solid patterns of thought and klesha, and then actions that arise from them.
What is unconditioned? Our buddha nature, noble truth zero!
This is very important, because it means that karma does not “go all the way down” so to speak, it’s not who and what we are at our deepest most ultimate nature. What we are is free: is wisdom, openness, and compassion. Because of this, we can change, and we are not “stuck” with our karma or doomed to keep replaying unhelpful cycles. Ultimately, we can be free from karma and klesha altogether, which will be the third noble truth.
It also means that our buddha nature is not created by good karma, nor destroyed by bad karma. It’s more like the unconditioned sky which is accommodating all the different kinds of weather, all of which arise due to causes and conditions…
Action that is free from karma and coming straight from buddha nature is called “buddha activity”, because it’s NOT stuck in karmic patterns or limited in any way, but is just free flowing wisdom and compassion doing whatever needs to be done. We’ll talk about that more in the third and fourth noble truths.
That said, as long as we’re within the basic dualistic framework, experiencing life in terms of self and other, solid thoughts, and actions that arise from them, we’re within the karmic process.
Within karma, what we call “good” or “positive” karma are actions that will ripen into happiness, and what we call “bad” or “negative” karma are actions that will ripen into suffering. The Tibetan terms are gewa and migewa, and the Sanskrit are kusula and akusula. They can be translated a lot of different ways, and my favorite is “skillful” and “unskillful”. We also see “wholesome” and “unwholesome”, and often “virtuous” and “unvirtous”, though those tend to be very loaded terms with a lot of connotation that isn’t really the idea here.
In Buddhism, we’re saying that what is “skillful action” or good karma are actions that will lead towards happiness, and what is “unskillful action” is action that leads to suffering. It’s a beautiful translation, because of course, we all want to be happy and nobody wants to suffer, so the question is, are we going about it in a skillful way (that will actually accomplish that), or an unskillful way which won’t? I’ll say more about that in a moment.
The other important thing to say out front is that when karma ripens in the present moment, this present moment is open. This is an extremely important point. The present moment is where we have freedom, choice, agency, and when a past karmic pattern ripens, it is NOT already creating more karma---that comes from where we go from there…
Let’s give some practical examples to bring this down to earth:
On the positive karma side, I, like lots of us, have karmic tendencies that draw me to meditation. It’s something I enjoy, and have planted lots and lots of karmic seeds of doing many times in the past.
So, today, I had the thought “OK, time to meditate”. That would be past karma ripening. That moment is open, because I then had to decide whether or not to meditate.
I’d just finished some online meetings, and my mind was a little juiced up, so I decided to start with some mantra practice, walking around my apartment for a little while, before then settling down into my sitting practice. At the end of my practice, I dedicated the merit to all beings, first bringing to mind those who rely on my support in any way in the dharma (ie, everyone who comes to my programs and classes, etc), which I always do.
That would be an example of a positive karmic seed ripening, then going with it, and further creating more positive karmic seeds. We also call positive karmic momentum “merit”.
Zooming out a little, from a Buddhist point of view, that fact that I was born at a time when the dharma is alive in the world, human and able to practice and all, would also be karmic ripenings…and so would being born in Texas of all places, to a musical family, and having had a go at that for a while, etc., etc.
On the negative side, when I feel fatigued, and spend too much time rotting away listening to podcasts instead of deeply and genuinely resting, then gradually drain away my inspiration, and end up just kind of low level bummed out, then don’t end up engaging in as much practice and other positive activities as I could were I better rested, that would be an example of a negative karmic pattern that just keeps causing more suffering.
Zooming out farther, the whole array of dharma, podcasts, illnesses in the world, family, social, and political situations in the context of this whole example, would all be collective karma at play.
In the next article, we’ll look closer at how karmic actions are formed, seeds are planted, and at how we experience their effects.