Expert: Joe McSorley - 7/7/2007

Question
Hi, I understood karma to be created by the mind (cause and effect) but in terms of future lives, I understood karma to be a natural and a-moral force, where deeds were a mere factor in determining outcome.  Is this true?  If so, what creates karma, is it mind determined or a-moral and natural determined, if both, to what degree?  Thanks.

Answer
Hi Marc,
  Karma or Karmic law is one of these nebulous terms that is thrown about and can mean just about anything.  There are vast philosophical explanations from Indian schools of Buddhism as to what it means along with a variety of new age justifications and rationalizations of what it means. I hear this term bandied about like it has some real concrete meaning and I don’t think it does.  I think it is an over working of the fundamental idea of karma. We have to define what karma is.  I was taught that the term originally comes from Jainism and meant “ reaction to action”.  What that meant was that our minds stir up or react to outside stimulus and that it is a false view of the world.  The idea was to keep the mind still and to see things without creating thoughts, to see things directly.   Any time we see something we create a thought in regards to that thing.  Now we see what we are thinking about the thing and not the thing itself.  We carry this residue of thought with us whenever we encounter anything.  In doing so we do see things as what they are but rather we see them in relationship to our past thought about it.  The karma is the carrying of the thought and not seeing things in the present without our minds clouding it.
Karma now has come to mean causation in regards to reincarnation but I think that this is a very problematic idea.  Buddhism teaches that the self is ultimately empty so what can reincarnate?  This creates many arguments among different schools of Buddhism so I won't go into that here.  I think that what karma really means is simply cause and effect.  If you hang out with thugs you will eventually end up in trouble, if you eat the wrong foods you will eventually get sick.  It tries to explain the causal relationship between things whether it be pure physics or mental states; there is still a cause and effect.   Most of us follow the same thought patterns over and over, do things the same way but expect different results.  We ignore our karma by doing so.  If you have been raised in an exceptionally disruptive household you will have learned to do things and to reason in a faulty manner.  It is the cause and effect of one’s upbringing.  What one needs to do is to recognize their karma, what ever that be, and break through it, to free oneself from the confines of their own egotistical view of reality and to see a more complete reality.  
  I cannot find a good argument to support the idea of reincarnation.  I am sure you can find others who will strongly disagree with me and have a boat load of Buddhist texts to back them up.  Zen is know as that which does not rely on words and letters.  In other words it does not spend time speculating on others ideas of reality but tries to awaken here and now.
   I hope this helps you.  Take care,
            Joe