The Buddha's teachings are a non-tribal religion. They recommend that we evaluate ourselves by our own current actions, rather than by the actions of other members of the group into which we’re currently reborn.

"One of the Buddha’s major accomplishments was to establish a non-tribal religion. His teachings were for everyone — regardless of tribe, caste, or nationality — who wanted to put an end to suffering. Since his time, those teachings have managed to spread throughout the world, transcending boundaries and divisions, because they treat people as responsible individuals, rather than lumping them into groups. They recommend that we evaluate ourselves by our own current actions, rather than by the actions of other members of the group into which we’re currently reborn.

We may be interconnected, but it’s not through what we are — or through the categories that other people would use to define us. It’s through what we, as individuals, choose to do to one another. In the Buddha’s terms, we’re “karma-related,” related through karma, for good or for ill.

That’s how we find ourselves born into particular groups of people. It’s not the case that first you’re born into a group and then, after joining that group, you assume the karma of its earlier members. The causal pattern actually goes the other way: First, through your own individual intentions, you develop a karmic profile. Then you’re born with people who have similar profiles in their individual backgrounds.

So, if a particular group — a family, a nation — suffers hardships, it’s not because the long departed members of that group created bad karma. It’s because the individuals currently in the group have similar bad karma in their own past. Even then, though, their karma is individual — as shown by the fact that hardships suffered by a group are rarely distributed evenly. Some people suffer greatly; others are barely grazed.

And remember: People are not always reborn into the same family, ethnic group, nation, gender, or even species. Sometimes you go from a class of oppressors to a class of the oppressed, and sometimes back. The Buddha’s image is of a stick thrown up into the air: Sometimes it lands on its base, sometimes on its tip, sometimes smack on its middle. We’re slippery characters, changing roles all the time."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Karma Is Individual"

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

We’re never going to get a perfect society, but you find that the wiser you are in your generosity, the more consistent you are in your virtue, then the better the world you create around you. And it can be done without force, without imposing your will on other people.

"Look at the Buddha. If anybody could have created a perfect society, it would have been him. But he saw that it was useless. There was a time when Mara came to him. The question had arisen in the Buddha’s mind, “Could it be possible to rule in such a way that you wouldn’t have to create bad kamma and that you could do nothing but good for all beings?” Mara shows up, and says, “Ah, yes, do that.” And the Buddha realizes that this idea of creating a perfect society is all a trick of Mara, because you’re using people for ends. And how skillful are those ends? Even if the ends are good, there’s a tendency to try to attain them in unskillful ways, to impose them on people. If you tell people that things will be good and they’ll be happy only if society is perfect, people would die before they could find true happiness. On the other hand, the solution is not a matter of simply accepting things as they are. It’s learning how to reshape them in a skillful way, starting wit...
Read more

The mind is proactive in its engagement with the senses and with the world. We’re not just on the receiving end of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations coming in. We don’t simply respond to the stimulus of other people’s actions. We’re proactive. We go out looking for things.

"One of the distinctive teachings of the Forest tradition is its emphasis on how proactive the mind is in its engagement with the senses and with the world. We’re not just on the receiving end of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations coming in. We don’t simply respond to the stimulus of other people’s actions. We’re proactive. We go out looking for things. This is in line with the Buddha’s teachings on intention. Our experience of the present moment is made up of the results of past actions, but also our current intentions and the results of our current intentions. When you look at the way the Buddha lines things up in dependent co-arising, our intentions actually come before our engagement with the senses. We intend to engage the senses, and that’s how we meet up with the sensory material that’s coming in. What this means is that our intentions don’t have to be shaped by what’s coming in. They don’t have to be pushed around by what’s coming in. We can be more skillf...
Read more

The real basis for a sense of connectedness comes through kamma. When you interact with another person, a connection is made. A connection of skillful behavior starts with generosity, and grows with the gift of virtue.

"The real basis for a sense of connectedness comes through kamma. When you interact with another person, a connection is made. Now, it can be a positive or a negative connection, depending on the intention. With generosity you create a positive connection, a helpful connection, a connection where you’re glad that the boundary is down, a connection where good things can flow back and forth. If it’s unskillful kamma, you’re creating a connection, you’re creating an opening that sooner or later you’re going to regret. There’s a saying in the Dhammapada that a hand without a wound can hold poison and not be harmed. In other words, if you don’t have any bad kamma, the results of bad kamma won’t come to you. But if you have a wound on your hand, then if you hold poison it will seep through the wound and kill you. Unskillful kamma is just that, a wound. It’s an opening for poisonous things to come in. The opposite principle also works. If there’s a connection of skillful behavior, a good...
Read more