Past Actions, Present Karma
Photo by Husha Bilimale
Is karma just a kind of cosmic monitor, warning us to be aware of our actions so that we don’t suffer the consequences, or is it something more ineffable and alive? What if suffering wasn’t a punishment, but a path to liberation? What if our every action could ripple not only into the future, but also into the past?
In this talk, Zuisei explores a provocative teaching from the Diamond Sutra, inviting us to see karma, suffering, and awakening in a new light.
This talk was given by Zuisei Goddard. See below for transcript.
Transcript
This transcript is based on Zuisei's talk notes and may differ slightly from the final talk.
Present Actions, Present Karma
This is from the Diamond Sutra:
Subhuti, if a son or daughter of a good family receives, memorizes, recites, and masters this sutra, and then explains it to others, they will be despised and scorned. Why? Because of the negative karma of their past lives. But by enduring others’ scorn, they will extinguish their past negative karma and attain the enlightenment of a buddha.
Good evening. Welcome to those of you joining the Ocean Mind Sangha for the first time–this ocean gathering of buddhas and bodhisattvas. Of noble friends who share a sincere wish to be and to stay awake, to bring a bit of light to the world, a bit of goodness. Or rather, to share and multiply the goodness that is always there, to let it be unobstructed.
I love words, I love language. I love the power that language has to shape our understanding, to shape our world—and I have great respect for that power. Take this word unobstructed. There are a number of Buddhist terms that use this prefix un: the unborn, the unconditioned, unfabricated, unchanging, the unbinding. These terms are compelling—to me, at least—because they connote, not simply the negation of a state, but also its unmaking. So, something that is unfabricated, for example, isn’t just real or genuine or spontaneous, but in a Buddhist sense, it’s also not created. By whom? By what? By me, by my mind or by anybody else’s mind.
This implies there is a state in which something exists of itself, by itself. It doesn’t need me to meddle with it. It doesn’t need me to make it into what it is. It's not affected by my ideas, my opinions, my judgments, my desires. Isn’t that wonderful? It’s authentic through and through, true to nothing but itself. So, unobstructed goodness permeates everything, like a drop of ink in water. Our role is to be the water.
Now, this passage from the Diamond Sutra which also deals with a number of words and concepts, we touched on during our brief study of the Vajracchedika Sutta, the Diamond that Cuts Through Illusion. This was our text for ango, the 30-day intensive training period we just finished last week. And I mentioned that this passage is actually a koan that students in our lineage take up as part of koan training. They take it up as a question: How is it, that my suffering now wipes out my past harmful karma? I left it as homework for all of you to sit with and contemplate, because the teaching that it offers is both profound and provocative.
I’ve looked at a number of translations of this passage and they’re all very awkwardly worded, maybe the original construction is awkward too. So this is a bit of a paraphrase, but the meaning is the same. The Buddha is telling Subhuti, one of his most prominent students, that those who study the sutra and share it with others will be scorned, will be reviled. And then he says, the reason for this is that they’ve done something in a past life. We don’t know what, but it was something that caused harm, and as a result, now they’re being harmed. But, the Buddha adds, by enduring that scorn, that person’s negative karma will be extinguished, and they’ll attain enlightenment.
Essentially: you’re suffering now because of something you did in the past. But don’t worry, because your suffering now will clear that past negative karma, and you will be free. That’s quite a statement, isn’t it?
And the thing is, the way karma works, this doesn’t apply just from life to life, something you did in a past life, and now you’re getting retribution for in this life. It’s also true from one moment to the next. I’m suffering now because of something I did earlier on, but if I bear this suffering now, that past karma will be cleared. As I said, it’s a provocative and potentially dangerous teaching. Dangerous because it could turn into victim blaming: You were bad, and now you’re paying for it. And dangerous because it could mislead us into thinking we don’t have to atone for and repair harm that we’ve caused. Neither is true.
Buddhism is not a guilt-driven religion. It’s very practical, very down to earth. And the teaching that my present suffering is due to past karma is one way to make sense of why bad things happen to good people, to find meaning or sense in what often appears to be a very unjust world. But more importantly, it’s a way to speak about the power of our actions, and about their reach.
We’re used to thinking linearly. I do something, and in the next moment, it has an effect. But this koan is saying differently. It’s saying I do something and it has an effect in every direction. It has an effect in this moment, the next, and the previous one all at once. That’s why this is a koan. That’s why this is an important dharma teaching and not just a moral injunction. “Be aware of your actions so you don’t suffer the consequences.” That’s all right to keep a group in line. But it’s not for liberation, for awakening.
What the Buddha was saying to Subhuti is that our every action radiates in every direction. And so what we do now, has the power to affect the future, certainly. But it also has the power to affect the past. That is why what we do, what we say, and what we think matters. That’s why it matters so much. I think it’s comforting to believe that when we act, that our actions are contained, and limited. It’s harder to appreciate that they’re really like a drop of ink in water. It permeates everywhere. But that’s excellent news! Because it means that it’s never too late to make amends, to make a wiser choice, to know our power and wield it skillfully.
I’ve shared with some of you that I’ve been reading a book about plants and plant consciousness. It’s all the rage right now—the argument whether plants are conscious, intelligent. We understand that they don’t have brains the way animals do. They don’t have neurons. Yet there are studies that show they can hear, they can count, they can remember. The author of the book, Zoe Schlanger asked the question, “Could it be that the whole plant is a brain?”
One plant, Arabidopsis—a kind of cress—can hear a caterpillar eating its leaves and send out a chemical to detract it. Venus flytraps count the seconds that a couple of their trigger hairs are touched before closing on a potential prey. If it’s two hairs within 20 seconds, that means there’s a fly in their trap, and not a speck of dust, or a piece of branch. Garlic remembers spring and patiently waits out the winter before sprouting. So to the question, “Could it be that the whole plant is a brain?” Some scientists will say yes, though not very loudly.
Well, I have my own version of that question: Could it be that the whole world is mind? That the whole world knows and cognizes—in ways more varied and more strange than the ones we know? The argument against plant or animal intelligence is that we anthropomorphize. The implication—which should feel familiar—is that we are at the center and that other creatures, other beings, might be made in our own image. But what if it turns out that we are like plants? That, being so much closer than we think, we’re like each other? That pebbles and puppies and roses and radios (remember those) are all expressions of this mind. So is space and time. The whole thing, nothing but mind.
What do we do with that? Well, pay attention, for one. Choose well for another, choose skillfully. That’s not a bad way to summarize the teachings of the buddhadharma, actually. Pay attention, and choose skillfully.
In the Kusala Sutta, the Buddha said, “Abandon what is unskillful and cultivate the good.” And then, as if anticipating that some of his students might protest, he said, “It is possible to abandon the unskillful and to cultivate the good. If it weren’t possible, I wouldn’t tell you to do it. If it were harmful or painful, I wouldn’t tell you to do it. It’s because abandoning what is unskillful and cultivating the good will lead to happiness and pleasure that I ask you to do it.”
This is such a wonderful teaching. It’s very human. Maybe, as he speaks, the Buddha senses that his monks need reassurance. Or maybe some of them have been complaining. You’re really telling me to practice lovingkindness—for everyone? But what if their actions are hateful? Isn’t it disingenuous to be kind in that case? Isn’t it naïve? It’s always cracked me up a little when people characterize Buddhism as soft, as crunchy (as in granola-crunchy, as in wearing sandals with socks—meaning, hippieish and therefore vague and ineffective). I think the buddhadharma is one of the most rigorous, most precise ways of engaging your mind, engaging your body, engaging the world. And maybe some of the Buddha’s monks knew that.
Do I really need to let go of all these thoughts? To sit here without moving and focus on the breath? Will this really be good for me, ultimately? Because it doesn’t always feel good, let me just make that clear. There are other ways to make merit. Sitting can be boring, it can be hard, it can be confrontative, overwhelming.
I’m just not sure this is the thing I’m supposed to be doing, when there is so much going on… everywhere. And the teacher says, No, no, it is good for you, I promise.
It is actually the most skillful thing you can do. All these many people before you have done it, and you can too. If you just stay with it, you’ll be able to reap the benefits. But you do have to be willing to let go. Of what? Of your need to know, the need to be right, the need to pin down, the need to measure and categorize. Because all those just get in the way… of what? They get in the way of the unobstructed. They get in the way of the bright, luminous, cognizant mind. Oh, I don’t know… and there is doubt.
Sharon Salzberg speaks of walk-away doubt. She tells the story of the Buddha’s enlightenment, after spending 49 days near the bodhi tree, after his awakening, he walks toward a village. And a merchant, seeing him on the way, and being struck by the Buddha’s radiance, stops him and says, “Who are you? What are you? Are you a god? Are you a celestial being?” And the Buddha says to him—famously says to him, “I am awake.” And the merchant just looks at him and says, “Yeah, maybe,” and walks away. Can you imagine? Can you imagine that merchant a few years later, kicking himself for that lost opportunity? That’s walk-away doubt.
Maybe there’s such a thing as enlightenment, as freedom, but not for me. Maybe there’s such a thing as lasting peace, but obviously not here. Maybe I can quiet my mind, but not now. No one stopping us but ourselves, that running story in our minds. Not me, not this, not now.
[…]
The other day, I was running with one of my blind running partners. I’ve now run with a handful of people, and they’re each unique in their own ways. The woman I was running with is a mother, maybe ten years younger than me, and recently religious after the death of her mother. And at one point during our run—I can’t remember exactly what prompted it, since she talks without pause except to breathe—she said to me: “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” The Christian definition of faith.
It reminded me of what I’ve said before, which is that in Buddhism, we could say that faith is the substance of things recognized and the evidence of things not yet seen. In other words, we have a sense of something, and we move toward it. This is what sets us on the path. We sense something beyond our sight, something that’s possible, though at the moment, out of reach. But we direct ourselves toward it, with the help of those who’ve gone before us, and what we come to see over time, with a bit of work, a bit of practice, is not another world but this world, newly radiant, not some mysterious, transcendent teaching, but our ordinary living—now writ large and somehow extraordinary. Preparing a meal, we now realize, is in fact, sacred activity. Walking the dog, listening to a conversation, and we know this, because our seeing is now unobstructed.
And still, that begs the question, how do we go from not seeing to seeing? How do we go from seeing before and after: “I did something in the past, and as a result, this is happening” to: “What’s happening now is everything, it’s all there is”? The answer is quite simple, in fact—embarrassingly so. We have to get out of our own way. That’s it; that’s all there is to it. Because it’s the I that gets in the way. And faith, for us, is trusting that we don’t have to be in the middle of everything. That the I doesn’t have to manage and control, direct and evaluate. That if we can let go, even a little, what we see is a wisdom that goes far beyond what we can measure or explain. When we take our seats, and turn the light around, and let go of a thought. It’s not because there’s anything wrong with thought. But because in the space before, and the space after, and the space under and beyond thought, there is a wisdom that we can’t access through thinking, through reasoning. Artists know this, mystics know this, buddhas know this, we know it, if we’re honest with ourselves. We know it; otherwise we wouldn’t be here.
So when we doubt, when the teachings seem obscure or distant, maybe we can open the hand of thought and give ourselves over to that wisdom. It’s perfectly natural to doubt, and up to a point, it’s healthy. But we don’t have to let ourselves be stopped by it. We don’t have to walk away.
This is Rilke, in his Letters to a Young Poet:
You must not be frightened if a sadness rises in front of you larger than any you have ever seen; if an anxiety, like a light and cloud-shadows, moves over your hands and over everything you do.
You must realize that something is happening to you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall.
Explore further
01 : Free Will and Karma with Zuisei Goddard
02 : Mysticism with Zuisei Goddard
03 : How to Choose What Helps, Not What Harms by Zuisei Goddard
Past Actions, Present Karma, a dharma talk by Zen Buddhist teacher Zuisei Goddard.