six7s,
Please describe a verifiable instance of
- natural karma (kamma)
- natural rebirth
Pragmatically, I view
samsara as the potential for the arising of suffering and
nibbana as the cessation of that potential.
Kamma is intentional actions of body, speech and mind that give rise to pleasant, unpleasant or neutral feelings. I am able to look back and see how many of my unskillful actions ripened into unskillful results, and how those consequences were not worth the relatively small amounts of happiness they provided. The reverse is true in regard to my skillful actions. These teachings not only make logical sense to me, but I have at least experienced a level of
kamma and rebirth in this life by observing my intentions translate into actions, my actions translate into results, my experience of happiness or unhappiness based upon those results, and how the being I am now is physically and psychologically different than the being I was in the past.
In my book: woo is woo is woo is woo
All woo encourages people - my neighbours, colleagues, friends, whatever - to switch off part of their brains and accept nonsense instead of reality
...
I would have thought that mainstream Thai Buddhism was one significant tradition...
I have discussed buddhism - in some depth - with a couple of otherwise intelligent Thais that I know quite well
Although reluctant to admit such blatant stupidity, they adhere to the notion that if you're born into a trashy neighbourhood, you obviously deserve to live there
So... please... tell me how/why buddhism ain't not just woo but dangerous woo that oppresses millions of people
While I am heartened by your efforts to discuss Buddhism with intelligent Thai Buddhists, I am disheartened that your conclusions about Buddhism seem to stem more from such discussions and your own perception of what is "blatant stupidity" instead of what the Pali Canon and knowledgeable teachers have to say on the matter. Being a practitioner of Thai Theravada Buddhism myself, I can assure you that while such ideas regarding
kamma are quite common with Thai people in general, they are more of a cultural interpretation of
kamma than anything else. Therefore, I think it is unfair to criticism Buddhism in general, and the doctrine of
kamma in particular, based upon certain cultural interpretations of what the Buddha taught that, in my opinion, are faulty. That said, perhaps it would be helpful to explore what the Pali Canon has to say about
kamma.
There are many misconception in regard to
kamma and the ways in which
kamma is said to work. To begin with, the Buddha said, "Intention, I tell you, is
kamma. Intending, one does
kamma by way of body, speech, and intellect" (
AN 6.63). The word itself simply means "action." Thus,
kamma is commonly defined as intentional actions of body, speech, and mind. Intention (
cetana) is a product of the aggregate of mental formations (
sankharakhandha). The cause by which
kamma comes into play is contact (
phassa). Furthermore, according to Nyanatiloka's
Manual of Buddhist Terms and Doctrines,
vipaka is "any... mental phenomenon (e.g. bodily agreeable or painful feeling, sense-consciousness, etc.), which is the result of wholesome or unwholesome volitional action (karma, q.v.) through body, speech or mind, done either in this or some previous life."
On a more simplistic level, volitional actions of body, speech, and mind (
kamma) produce fruits or results (
vipaka) as long as there is ignorance (
avijja), i.e., ignorance of the Four Noble Truths, present. With ignorance present, all intentional actions of body, speech, or mind are said to have the potential to ripen during this life-time (
dittha-dhamma-vedaniya-kamma), in the next birth (
upapajja-vedaniya-kamma), or in later births (
aparapariya-vedaniya kamma). Additionally, the commentarial tradition of Theravada denies that everything is the result of
kamma. According to them, there are five natural laws (
panca-niyamas) which operate in the physical and mental worlds. The five laws are seasonal laws (
utu-niyama), biological laws (
bija-niyama), psychological laws (
citta-niyama), kammic laws (
kamma-niyama), and natural laws (
dhamma-niyama)
*.
Consulting Nyanatiloka's
Manual of Buddhist Terms and Doctrines once again, he states that
kamma-produced corporeal things are never called
kamma-vipaka (
kamma-result) "as this term may be applied only to mental phenomena." Instead, they are termed
kammaja or
kamma-samutthana (
kamma-produced). This category would include phenomena such as the sense organs, and these phenomena are said to be conditioned through wholesome or unwholesome volitional actions in a previous existence. To summerize,
kamma is intentional actions of body, speech, and mind that are performed in the present moment, the present moment is conditioned by the results of past actions combined with the results of present actions, the psychological results are termed
kamma-vipaka and the corporeal results are termed
kamma-samutthana.
With all of this in mind, I believe that in certain contexts, it would be appropriate to think of
kamma as "habit energy" in that the potential effect of an action can be to strengthen certain physical and psychological reactions. This is especially true in regard to psychological reactions considering that
vipaka is limited specifically to "mental phenomena," i.e., corporeal things are never called
kamma-vipaka. While it is true that the teachings on
kamma state that
kamma leads to rebirth, and to some extent, certain mental and physical circumstances of future lives, the idea that a person "deserves" the results of their actions fails to take into consideration that such circumstances are the result of an impersonal process of causation. It is not a kind of post-mortem justice, and a person should not be resigned to accept any experience of suffering in the present.
As previously mentioned, a common misconception is that
kamma is a form of absolute determinism in that everything is the result of actions done in previous lives, but Theravadin doctrine clearly states that our experience of the present moment is conditioned by (i) the results of past actions combined with the results of present actions and (ii) the five natural laws that operate in the physical and mental worlds. This means that one always has some means to effect their current circumstances at any time in the form of their present actions. If a person is experiencing unhappiness in the form of being born into a trashy neighborhood, for example, they can always change how they react to such circumstances (e.g., being happy that at least they are not homeless, et cetera) or the circumstances themselves (e.g., improve the neighborhood, move, et cetera).
Classifying something as "woo" just because one does not accept the possibilty does not constitute a resonable argument that the concept itself is nonsense, or that people who accept such possibilities are shutting off their brains. While I admit that the literal interpretation of rebirth is difficult, if not impossible, to prove (all of the most convicing evidence I have seen in support of this possibility has been in the form of case studies and first-hand accounts), it has yet to be disproven. Perhaps consciousness is simply a by-product of electrochemical processes in the brain, but perhaps there is another dimension to consciousness that science has yet to discover. Either way, until science has found a way to rule out the possibility that consciousness can exist outside of the body or condition the arising of a new consciousness, rebirth is simply an unproven hypothesis.
Jason
. He quotes his teacher as saying that if you believe in rebirth you are not a true Buddhist. But his books are also fairly autobiographical, though he has led an interesting life.
