Expert: John Willemsens aka Advayavadananda - 7/26/2004

Question
The Buddhist notion of Karma seems to suggest firstly, that there is a 'univeral morality' and secondly, that it operates and keeps score for each individual in this life, previous lives and future lives.
What is this 'universal morality?'
How does it operate?


Answer
Hello Allan,
In Advayavada Buddhism we believe that we experience as good, right or wholesome, indeed as progress, those events that are in agreement with the overall pattern and direction of overall existence, that it is for this reason that they are experienced as such.
Karma is, in Advayavada Buddhism, how dependent origination or pratitya-samutpada operates at the sentient level, including human choice and responsibility. Karma is neither the cause nor the effect, but the event as such. In the case of human rebirth, the event is the division or concatenate multiplication of the mother after fertilization of her egg or eggs by the father and the birth of the so-called new human being. And the main karmic activity involved is the wondrous event of physical love. The genetic and social factors transmitted to and inherited by the so-called new human being are all fully reflected at birth with minor changes or variations in its own set of skandhas. There are no so-called karmic seeds in the vijñana cluster that will ripen as yet in this or a future life, as is implied in the Yogacara vipaka theory. There is no evidence at all of an alaya-vijñana or store-house consciousness that might contain and carry such seeds forward into the future, nor of a patisandhi-viññana, the connecting consciousness encountered in Theravada ontology, nor of any other form of re-incarnation, transmigration, or of afterlife or resurrection.
Kind regards,
Advayavadananda.