Enlightened Hiccups – How Our Buddha Nature Interacts with Karma

A teaching given by Dungse Jampal Norbu at the 2011 Nyingma Summer Seminar

Lately I’ve been exploring the subject of karma and have become increasingly fascinated by it. Teachings on karma connect closely with all that we study. But precisely because karma is mentioned in so many different contexts, it’s not always clear what we mean by this word.

Karma is cause and effect. This sounds so simple, but at the same time, it is very profound. In our experience, have we ever seen something that did not have a cause? Have we ever seen something that did not have an effect, either subtle or obvious? For all of us the answer will be “no.” A cause, and the conditions connected to that cause, lead to an effect, which in turn leads to another effect. The previous effect becomes the cause of the next effect. This is karma. On one level, it’s really that simple, but not only that simple.

It’s quite easy to misunderstand karma. We may have the impression that it’s some kind of conscious force, which it’s not. Or sometimes we hear the word used synonymously with “fate.” In our culture, you’ll see this reflected on bumper stickers or television. Unlike karma, “fate” involves a level of intention, a certain degree of overall purpose or design. The result of fate is supposed to provide meaning, or fulfill some predetermined goal. Karma doesn’t really have a purpose. It’s just describing the way things are.

What karma does fulfill is the act that came before it. That’s it. This is neither good nor bad, positive nor negative. We do refer to “good” and “bad” karma based on how it affects us subjectively as sentient beings, and whether it serves the purpose of helping us on the path to attain enlightenment and find freedom from suffering. An individual may suffer or benefit from karma, but karma itself is not inherently “good” or “bad.”

The word “fate” also carries some notion of inevitability. In a way, karma is also inevitable because there will always be an effect. But, by definition, you can never avoid your fate, whereas you can change your karma.

Though karma is not predestination, specific causes do lead to specific effects. A seed leads to a shoot, not to a burger. Cause and effect happen in a continuum, an ongoing series of events. However, all of these “cause, effect, continuum”are empty of an intrinsic nature.

In one of the classical analytic reasonings about ’emptiness,’ we ask, “What is the point at which a seed becomes a shoot?” There’s a seed, and at a given point the shoot comes halfway out of the seed, then fully out of the seed, and then the husk is discarded. But you can’t really pinpoint when the seed becomes a shoot. In a continuum, if the cause is the same as the effect, then nothing changes, nothing happens. If the seed is already in the shoot, then the seed doesn’t change at all. But if the seed is not the shoot, if it’s separate from the shoot, then how can a seed become a shoot?

Through examining this process of seed to shoot, one finds that there is no inherent shoot in the shoot, or shoot in the seed, or seed in the seed, or seed in the shoot. They’re not one, they’re not separate, they’re not both, and they’re not neither. The only way it’s possible for them to function in this way is if they’re empty of an intrinsic nature: they are not permanent, not singular, and do not exist from their own side, independently. So interdependent origination plays a big role in this reasoning.

This lack of intrinsic reality allows a lot of openness and potential for us to change our karma, to make a decision to interrupt the karmic pattern. Karma isn’t “real” in the sense of being intrinsic. Yet we cannot deny that karma still functions. This is how everything works in our relative world. If karma were static and things were real, solid, and unchanging, nothing would be able to function, because there could be no change from moment to moment. So this point of karma being empty of an intrinsic nature is a key understanding.

Continues with Part 2 next week.