Namaste I am free,
thank you for the lovely post
sorry for the tardy reply. things have been hectic and very transitory IRL.
Hello Vajradhara,
For me, one of the difficulties in understanding how karma works is when people refer to "good karma" and "bad karma".
for the record, i find such distinctions to be problematic as well. the Buddha didn't speak of "good" or "bad" karma at all, he spoke of "bright" or "positive" karma and vipaka and "dark" or "negative" karma and vipaka.
further more, most beings tend to conflate the separate ideas of karma and vipaka. karma means intention, in particular intentional actions, thoughts and words. the consequence (vipaka) of our intentional actions, thoughts, words (karma) is what is most often being referred to.
in terms of positive/bright or negative/dark the Buddhas criteria is pretty straight forward... if it helps you make progress along the path of Awakening and Liberation its positive if it hinders your progress its negative.
I can understand cause and effect perfectly, when the cause and the ensuing effect are directly related - You walk on to a busy road, you get hit by a car. You dont study for the exam and you fail.
By how does karma actually explain all the unexpected and uncontrollable events? Getting cancer when you have exercised daily, been sensible with food & never ever touched a cigarette, for example? If there is no direct cause for this effect then karma is not really just a "natural outflow of our actions" as you say.
within the Buddhist paradigm the vipaka of a being can ripen when the conditions are correct even if those conditions may not be present until a future arising. the most salient point regarding the ripening of vipaka, however, is that the fruit can be mitigated, even changed prior to it's ripening by our ongoing karma (intentional thoughts, words and deeds). what would have been negative can become positive and what would have been positive would have been negative.
It follows then, then there are some past accumulated karmas which manifest some events in our life - but who judges whether these events will be pleasant or not? Is pleasant the same as good? For example is it not true that pain and suffering can bring about spiritual growth?
such judgements are usually made by society, it can be difficult to discern the spiritual growth within a being, even beings that seem to have enormous challenges.
I am led to believe that all events that come to pass in our life are neutral in nature - neither good nor bad. For me, it does not make sense to say for example that a person is born blind because of past bad karma, because who is to say that she will not go on to achieve great things because of her blindness? Infact I know of exactly one such person who is currently an executive in a very large global organization and has done some great work in Accessibility technologies. I listened to one of her speeches in which she said "I thought it was a great misfortune for me to be born blind, but now I believe it is one my greatest gifts, because I would not have been able to do what I did if I was sighted".
So then, if events in themselves are neither good nor bad, then what is the point of classifying karmas as good and bad at all?
there is no point in so doing, indeed, such ideas subvert what the ideas of karma and vipaka are conveying, imo.
The whole edifice of what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is bad falls flat. Then it would follow that all actions too are neither good nor bad. It would then be okay to love or to hate. Then it would mean that I could actually go through life as a sociopathic killer or as a selfless nun and both paths would result in karma which has to be exhausted either way in the next life.
there is more than one next arising, however, and the negative seeds (karma) which are planted produce fruit (vipaka) which hinders our progress along the path of Awakening and Liberation.
until you value walking that path more than the cycle of rebirth, old age, sickness and death there would be no intellectual hinderance in engaging in either path once you do value the Dharma the choices clarify themselves within that paradigm.
I have also been wondering, would we have the freedom to choose the manner in which we exhaust our karmas - that is the lives we will live & the events that we will experience before we are born? So in effect the experiences that we go through in this life may be our own choosing?
I know I am missing something...but right now the fact that good=bad is confusing me and would love to hear everyone's thoughts.
by and large, no... the details, say, of our next arising are beyond our ability to influence. the Suttas relate, however, that Arhans and Bodhisattvas can do that very thing when they choose to take rebirth in this world system. as there are few of those beings roaming about it's pretty safe to answer in the negative... though it's a qualified one
to be honest with you i think one of the issues you're having is a fundamental philosophical paradigm difference. nearly every being that i've met in the Western Hemisphere has a Greek philosophical world view, namely that Aristotles A
OR NOT A is how logic and things work.... this is not a view which is shared by the Dharma traditions. the Dharma traditions posit the idea of A
AND NOT A which leads to a very different world view. the Buddhist teachings are not couched in a manner which is consistent with an A or not A approach as the Buddha taught to the individual audiences capacities... what he might teach you is something different than he might teach me.... leaving that aside, the very idea of diametrical opposites of "good" and "bad" simply find no ground rather the idea that phenomena are comprised of both "good" and "bad" aspects is the operating world view.
i'm not sure that the western and eastern world views can be reconciled except at an intellectual level and even then it's pretty difficult.
metta,
~v
