Expert: Joe McSorley - 11/20/2009

Question
Hello, I have a question about karma. You see, I think I have a different interpretation of what Karma is than I have usually heard, and I'm not sure whether I'm right or wrong.

You see, I think that karma doesn't have anything to do with actions, and rather has to do with thoughts (ie, volition. The Buddha often said that by karma he meant volition, and the fruits of karma the result of volition - but you can have volition without action, no? You can will yourself to want to harm someone, but fail to do so. Would this produce karma, or not? I think so, if we take the Buddha's word for it that all volition makes karma). You see, to me it makes little sense that, say, killing someone would in some way affect you in a way that would make the result an absolute law (you might get apprehended by authorities, but at the same time many criminals go unpunished). To me it seems that it is the thoughts, of anger and frustration and fury, that would have a more permanent effect.

So, in short, I think that karma is basically mental habits. If we constantly will negative thoughts into being, then we will become a negative person, and the results of that karma will be that we are sad, depressed, or often angry because of our negative thoughts. If we will good and positive thoughts towards people, we will become a positive person and will be more likely to be happy. The Buddha said that "we are what we think" - does this imply karma, or not?

In short - would it be the act of killing someone that would harm a killer (be the fruits of their karma), or would it be their incredibly angry and corrosive mental habits that would drive him insane and keep him from leading a happy life? Which is karma?

Thanks a lot for your time ^_^

Cheers

Nicolaas

Answer
Dear Nicolaas,
 One of the first problems we have is knowing the Buddha’s own words.  It is my understanding that nothing was written down for almost 300 years after his death.  Also, immediately following his death there were literally dozens of different schools of Buddhism that proclaimed to teach the real thing.  Another problem is making a qualitative judgment about karma, whether it be of thought or action.  In the basest sense of the word karma means reaction or cause and effect, thought is reaction and thus karma.  Thought itself is an action and cannot be separated from action.  The idea of karma as good or bad is itself problematic.  The Dalai Lama talks about not hurting a mosquito that is biting him and perhaps shooing it away.  Well, if that mosquito now infects a village with malaria and causes great suffering what is the karma of his actions? Is there a ‘karmic’ price for him to pay as many would say about other actions?  The mosquito lives and the village dies, what is the greater good here? What is good for the insect is bad for the village and vice versa.  Perhaps the thought of wanting to kill someone is to stop Pol Pot as a genocidal dictator, is it good or bad?  It’s both and neither.  Then there are those who did things with the best of intentions and yet wreck havoc on their lives and others by doing so.  How you carry these things afterwards is karma because it may define you to yourself.  
  I don’t think the Buddha did say ‘we are what we think’ unless it was to say  ‘in normal consciousness we are caught in the illusion that we are what we think but the true self is beyond thought’.  Over and over Buddhism stresses to end the self-reflective process so we break the delusion of being who we think we are and see things as they are without the subjective self.  The qualitative state of thought, positive or negative, can be completely influence by physical processes.  Someone who is clinically depressed is not depressed because they create sad thoughts but the thoughts arise because the body chemistry is defective and thus the thoughts arise after the problem, they do not create the problem.  Thinking positive or negative thoughts are predicated on what the individual thinks to be positive or negative, there is not a universal foundation for these things but only a subjective view.  The individual does not know who it is that makes the judgments of good and bad, they are subjective interpretations and desires that are not rooted in true reality.  Having positive thoughts does not affect the ground of your existence and can be washed away by a tragic event.  In this sense the mind that is relative to positive and negative is always trapped in karma and defined by that state of cause and effect.  The self that is liberated is no longer grounded to positive and negative and is still untouched and complete no matter what the relative state is experiencing.  While in cause and effect it is also free from cause and effect and no longer conditioned by birth or death.  Any particular state we strive to maintain subjectively as positive will ultimately fail because it is not the true self trying to do so but the illusional self, the self that is divided to know itself.  A self that accumulates karma is not the true self but the conditional self.
  So, karma is thought in itself, as that which arises in reaction and is conditioned by that reaction.
 I hope this helps you. Take care,
        Joe