Expert: John Willemsens aka Advayavadananda - 7/7/2007

Question
Hi, I thought karma was created by the mind (cause and effect), but when it came to future lives, karma was an a-moral natural force, thoughts being a mere factor, but not necessarily determintive, is this correct?  If so, what causes karma, is it natural or the mind?  If both, to what degree?  Thank you

Answer
Hello Marc,
Traditional Buddhism presupposes that the human being is composed of some five skandhas or clusters of which the physical rupa skandha disintegrates and dissolves and the non-physical arupa skandhas simply cease to occur completely at death. According to Advayavada Buddhism there is further no human rebirth other than by sexual reproduction and the so-called new life that is produced in this manner is again, or yet, formally composed of some five kandhas or skandhas. Sexual reproduction is by definition a karmic activity. Karma is, in Advayavada Buddhism, how dependent origination or pratityasamutpada operates at the sentient level, including personal choice and responsibility. Karma is neither the cause nor the effect, but the event or, better, the nexus of events as such. In the case of human rebirth, the nexus of events 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, pregnancy and parturation. 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. Instead, everything is already there in the skandhas or clusters of the so-called new being produced sexually by the parents, geared and ready to grow into an adult human being. Modern scientific investigation in the field of genetics must yet supply many answers. The kandhas or skandhas theory is but a very rudimentary presupposition of the actual process of heredity and mutation. Biophysics must in fact yet uncover how exactly a living organism, indeed any biological system, can generate, copy and eventually transmit its data. (from our website)
Kind regards,
Advayavadananda.