view of karma and causality.
The strong view of karma, which is central to Buddhist practice,
specifically demands belief in rebirth--volitional actions in past
lives act as causes for results in future lives. This notion of past
and future life is not merely psychological, but is biological--actual
bodies are involved. This requires the existence of a "mental stream"
which is embodied differently in different lives, in other words a
strongly dualistic position in the sense of the mind-body problem.
A "modernized" view that re-birth is "merely psychological", i.e.
refers to a cycling between various mental states, has been called
"dharma-lite" on Alexander Berzins excellent and authoritative web-site.
Rebirth is a central, core belief in orthodox Buddhism. For example,
denial of this idea is a non-renewable root-downfall of the Bodhisatva
vow (see [Course XVII of the Asian Classics Institute.
In the Theravada tradition of Burma, re-birth is considered to be the
chief ethical "engine" for popular Buddhism-- see Melford Spiro's
excellent survey of Burmese Buddhism
He describes some Burmese Buddhists as maintaining book-keeping
records of positive and negative karma. One of the goals of keeping a
positive balance is the desire for a better future re-birth. Spiro
describes the majority of Burmese women he surveyed as desiring a male
future birth, and the majority of males as desiring to be re-born as a
rich-man--or, if a dog rebirth is necessary, at least to be the dog of
a rich man. Views like this, which appear to be both natural and
ubiquitious in many Asian cultures, are unacceptable and unbelievable
in many Western contexts. Worse, it acts as a chief obstacle, or
hang-up, for contemporary "Western" Buddhists. (I use the term
"Western" as a synonym for "modern", as many of my ethnically
non-western friends from India, China, etc. have a similar point of
view).
The question I raise here is where there is a need to provide some
revision of this classical Buddhist (actually Indic) doctrine in the
light of modern views of causality> In other words, is it justified to
hold a more psychologically based, rather than ontologically based,
understanding of "rebirth". And, given the central role of re-birth in
both Theravada and Mahayana practice, would this reformulation justify
the term "fourth yana?"-- retaining of the four thousand years of
detailed observation and experimentation about human conciousness
without the additional cultural components which may not be strictly
necessary or strictly correct.
One way of highlighting this problem is with the recent observation of
the brightest gamma ray burst in human history coming from 7.5 billion
light years ago (and across half the universe). This event bathed the
earth in visible light, and also high energy gamma rays. It is quite
possible that some extra cancer deaths could be attributed to this
event in the entire worlds population. I will use this event, which
originated at a time before the earth existed, as a causal, but
non-voltional example of Karma in order to examine the strong view of
Karma. Would one's death due to a chance "hit" from a 7.5 billion year
old gamma ray, whose original cause came far before the earth itself
had formed, be considered as a result of previous volitional activity?
As far as I understand it. the strong view of karma, "hard-core
dharma" in the words of Alexander Berzin, is a core aspect of the
Bodhisatva vow in Mahayana Buddhism, and would attribute ones death in
this way to previous volitional karma. "future lives" that few believe
to exist.
From a neurological point of view, it seems that all thoughts,
actions, behaviors, and bodily postures contribute, perhaps in the
common theory of Hebbian memory (i.e. the modification of synapses by
experience), to the biological structure of the brain and hence the
mind. Clearly, past voltional acts, at least in this present life
therefore can and will manifest with some greater or lesser
probability in the future of an individual, and avoiding bad results
would appear to provide an ethical basis for behaviour even in this
limited sense. Why is not a purification of the mental stream of this
one life, which we are sure exists, not sufficient as a basis for
ethical behavior?
This is not a new idea. In fact, I would go so far as to say that this
is the actual position of a great many "Western" Buddhists. However,
Alexander Berzin calls this weak karma position "dharma lite", in
comparison to the orthodox Buddhist position of full karamic
causality. He, along with other authoritative figures is clearly
pejorative in comparison to what he calls full tilt dharma --the
orthodox Buddhist position of literal re-birth and strong karmic
accumulation.
The reason commonly advacned for this strong position is that Buddhist
morality is critically dependent on the notion of re-birth. Otherwise,
perhaps we could live a hedonistic life, and then take the brief
consequences only at the point of death, if then. Or, we could commit
suicide to avoid suffering--both of these positions are stated in
various sources I have read.
I am a very puzzled by this position. Why is not the (weak) karmic
consequences of this present life not sufficient to justify morality?
Especially in the light of Shantideva in the Bodhicaryavatara, who
says:
"Discounting the reckoning in future lives, Even this life is
unfulfilled The servant does not work And the master pays no wages"
Is it really necessary to "worry" about consequences in future lives
if it is obvious that there are significant consequences in the
present life?
These problems were highlighted by Lama Samuti Marut, in his recent
audio teachings in Rockport Mass. (The Asian Classics Institute Course
XVII, March 11-15, 2008) where he expounded the strong karmic position
with the example of an old "Greek women who might smoke four packs of
cigarettes a day, but never gets lung cancer." I raised this question
with him, especially since the ACI XVII course covered the "root
downfalls" associated with violating the Bodhisatva vows. Root
downfalls 9 and 19 were the most serious, and both of them had a
serious consequence associated with them--in particular, No. 9
required full subscription to the strong karma--past lives view.
The penalty for "root downfall", according to these teachings, cannot
be undone be re-taking the Bodhisatva vow, and results in no
possibility of reaching the first Bhumi (even) of the Bodhisatva path
"in the present life". This is a serious citation--no way out by going
to traffic school to erase the violation!
As Lama Marut explained it, and as Alexander Berzin and the orthodox
canon of Buddhism also explain it, the idea of past lives involves a
"mental stream" which is continuous across multiple biological lives,
and whose existence is justified by the familiar Buddhist argument
that all effects require a proximal cause -- so, the first thoughts of
this biological life can only occur in terms of causal origination in
a previously existing mental stream. I asked why "genetics" that codes
the structure of brain at birth was not a sufficient "cause" to
explain the first mental activity in this life. Lama Marut explained
clearly that there is no identification of mind with body--the mental
stream exists independently of the biological brain.
Interestingly, the Dalai Lama has addressed this identical point. He
says that there is a "gross mental stream" which is conditioned by
biological birth, development of the brain, and so on, but there is
additionally a "subtle mental stream" which is trans-biological. So,
in this view part of the mental stream is being consigned to a
materialistic and biological context, but part is still reserved as a
dualistic view of the "mind-body" problem.
This raises two problems. First, is this strong form of mind-body
dualism acceptable to modern thinking? (It is not to virtually all
scientist that I know.) Secondly, the inductive form of logic used
here seems to me to suffer from a serious logical flaw in the use of
induction.
For "proof by induction" in mathematics, we assume that some
proposition is true for some number n. We then show that this implies
the proposition is true for n+1. Since n is "arbitrary", we have then
shown the proposition to be true for all n. But there is one critical
statement required in addition: the proposition must also be true for
some specific n to "start the induction."
By analogy, Buddhist logic, which requires a continual chain of cause
and effect in the (partially) dis-embodied "mental stream" does
evidently create a logical necessity of "continuity", as in
proof-by-induction, but also, critically, requires the initial
existence of a dis-embodied "mental stream" that is not embodied, IN
THE FIRST PLACE.
No mental stream that exists across biological lives -- then no
validity to the claim that continuity of mental stream is a proof of
re-birth. In other words, the logic of continuity inductively requires
a previous mental stream to exist across biological existences, but
one has to assume that a "mental stream" can possibly exist in the
first place to "start this induction." But, this is in effect a form
of "dualism" in the language of the mind-body problem: it requires a
"mental stream" to exist that is dis-embodied, i.e. has no "brain" or
other structure anchoring it. This is a position that is rejected by
most contemporary scientists, including myself.
Returning the the gamma ray burst of March 19, it is very hard to
imagine that a potential old Greek smoker, who had accumulated just
the right number of DNA defects in a life-time of smoking, and who
developed cancer by picking just one more final insult to her genome
from a precise hit from one of the gamma rays from that 7.5 billion
year old burst, was suffering from any previous karma at that moment.
Similarly, the meteor hit 65 million years ago that perhaps led to the
end of the dinosaurs, and the rise of vertebrates on earth would have
been necessary for any of us, including the historical Buddha, to
exist.
In fact, it seems as if we need to consider the possibility that
- Many events in our lives are random and have causes that could not
possibly be linked "our" previous volitional acts, while others,
perhaps highly significant, can be linked to our own volitional acts
in this present life.
- The (weak) karmic consequences of volitional acts and thoughts in
this one life provide a sufficient moral and practical ground for
Buddhist practice.
- The structure of mind, which has as its most advance current model
that provided by Buddhism, especially Tibetan Buddhism, applies only
to this one life.
- This position of "dharma lite" is evidently unacceptable to Buddhism,
and explicitly is a root violation (No. 9) of the Bodhisatva vow.
- Does there need to be some revision of classical Buddhist doctrine in
the light of modern views of causality?
