KARMA: The 10 Courses of Action

Seth Auberon, Ashley Wells, CC Liu (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly; Ven. Nyanatiloka (Anton Gueth) UPDATED AN D EXPANDED by Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven, CC Liu

 

Mental-karma is important as are deeds.

"Karma" refers to deeds able to produce results in the future.

 

"Courses of Action" (karma-patha) are a little different. This is a name for a group of ten kinds of karmic actions -- either unwholesome or wholesome -- the Buddha taught as particularly important to living beings.

 

The Buddha was not known as the Buddha, one of his many epithets, in ancient India. Nor was he "Buddhist," a "god" (deva), or a Brahmin (priest). He was known as a karma-vadin ("teacher of karma," teacher of the efficacy of deeds to produce results).

 

The Buddha's teaching concerning karma is that deeds have the efficacy to produce corresponding actions, effects, consequences, results. This is not cause-and-effect, however, if only because the results are usually exponentially larger than the original deed. One "killing" does not produce one "being killed" later on.

 

How well the Buddha knew! (xiangjiaocao)

That is because the seed, potentially, or karma laid down in the mind/heart is a citta, of which there are countless millions in a moment. Cittas have the potential to act as death-proximate karmas leading to rebirth, and when they serve this function, the result is very bad. Similarly, all skillful karma produces disproportionate results as well, which is beneficial and welcome by living beings experiencing the result.

 

Not all karmas can serve as death-proximate karmas (the thought-moment passing through the mind at the exact moment of passing from one life to yet another life), but "courses of action" (karma-pathas) can. That is why they are called "courses." Like corridors or pathways, they can lead to a consequence, welcome or unwelcome, directly.

 

There are three kinds of deeds -- those of body, speech, and mind -- be they unskillful or skillful:

 

I. Ten Unwholesome Courses of Action

• There are 3 bodily actions: killing, stealing, sexual misconduct;
  
• 4 verbal actions: perjury, slandering, harsh speech, babble;
  
• 3 mental actions: covetousness, ill-will, wrong views.
  

Unwholesome mental courses of action comprise only extreme forms of defiled thought: The greedy (rapacious) wish to appropriate others' property, the hateful (antagonistic) thought of harming others, and the holding or clinging to pernicious wrong-views.

While milder forms of mental defilement are also unwholesome, they do not constitute "courses of action."

 

Karma "courses"

Karma is following us everywhere we go. It's everywhere we're going to be.

 

The American Theravada scholar-monk Bhikkhu Bodhi -- the most famous translator of large collections of Buddhist sutras -- explains (in "Rebirth and Karma," from Recording 5 of The Buddha's Teaching: As It Is) that these ten are called "courses" of action rather than ordinary karma.

 

As mentioned above, this is because they have the power, in and of themselves, to lead to rebirth. They are courses or corridors leading to particularly unfortunate or fortunate future states.

For example, even a relatively minor good intentional-action can lead -- IF it serves as the death-proximate karma -- has the power to get one into a heaven. There are many heavens, and not a single one of them is eternal, so rebirth in a heaven is not the goal of Buddhism. But it is a welcome rebirth, a fortunate destination, while cycling through samsara. Samsara is the ongoing Wheel of Rebirth and endless disappointment.

II. Ten Wholesome Courses of Action

• There are 3 bodily actions: avoiding killing, stealing, sexual misconduct (or preserving life, protecting what belongs to others, avoiding harm);
  
• 4 verbal actions: avoiding perjury, slandering, harsh speech, foolish babble (or honest, reconciling, gentle, and wise speech);
  
• 3 mental actions: unselfishness, goodwill, right views.
  

Both lists repeatedly occur in the texts (e.g., in AN X.28, 176; MN 9), and they are explained in detail in MN 114 and in the Commentary to MN 9 (R. Und., p. 14), Atthasālini Tr. I, 126ff.

Ven. Saint Sivali

Ven. Sivali: shining example of good karma

An enlightened monastic from the time of the Buddha, Venerable Sivali, is remembered and venerated as having unbelievably good karma -- a store of "merit" (punya) that benefited many and for everyone to emulate.

 

There is no reason to "envy" Ven. Sivali his good fortune because he created it, and we ourselves can also create it. We can accrue a vast store of merit by good mental, verbal, and physical deeds, actions that benefit ourselves and others. Such deed will follow us through this life and future lives, redounding with welcome results whatever we are doing almost anywhere we find ourselves, until we realize enlightenment. They also help in this realization. Karma, it's everywhere you want to be (and it will even be there helping everywhere you don't want to be).

 

We are always generating karma, albeit we are rarely doing it consciously or with any appreciation of what we are doing and what the result will be when our deeds come to fruition for us.

 

And we are always passing away and being reborn. But a rebirth as a human is extraordinarily rare. It is a precious opportunity to make merit with reverberating with pleasant, pleasurable, and welcome karmic-results and effects (vipaka and phala).

 

"King of the 'Gods'"

Sakka is St. Michael (saintmichaelwarrior)

Sakka, the king of the devas, also made incredibly good karma -- sufficient not only to be reborn in a celestial world in space (one of the many "heavens") but as king of it and king of the four kings in the celestial world just below his world. In his world, he is lord of lords, the "lords" being the 33 deva rulers he oversees as chief among more or less equals.

 

Wisdom Quarterly has often shown that Sakka's fame extends around the Earth, a terrestial world in space which he protects from titans and nagas and other inimical forces. Why does he visit Earth, assign the regents of the Catumaharajika-deva-loka to guard, and get updates on human progress every fortnight?

 

It is because Sakka is a stream enterer devoted to the Buddha and the protection of the Dharma in the world for as long as possible. In Christendom he is known as Saint or Archangel Michael, in India as Indra (in fact the name "India" may derive from Indo, one of Sakka epithets), in Taoism as the Jade Emperor, in the Yarsanism (Islam) religion of Iraq and Iran Pir Dawud the deva (called Yazidis or Yezidis)...

Eight Week Sutra Study (Dharma Punx)

Wisdom Quarterly; Ven. Dhammananda (Dharma Punx/AgainstTheStream.org)

Alabaster Buddha statues as far as the eye can see (LarryE251/flickr.com)

.

Buddha woodcut (Daklub/flickr.com)

Eight Week Sutra Study: An Extended Investigation of the Sutras with Ven. Dhammananda is a class that begins Friday, July 11, 2014 at 7:30 pm at Against the Stream in Hollywood.

It will examine the root teachings of Buddhism on the nature of consciousness, perception, reality, the arising of suffering, and the practice that leads to liberation.

This examination will be facilitated by the reading of three significant Buddhist discourses or sutras: (1) Greater Dialogue on the Removal of Craving, (2) Dialogue on Right View, and the (3) Greater Dialogue on Dependent Origination. Complete copies of the sutras will be provided for everyone.
 
The first sutra begins with a disciple of the Buddha expressing his belief that day-to-day human consciousness is reborn upon death in a new body. This is followed by the Buddha’s response and a discussion about the co-dependent arising of phenomena.
 
Right view is the first step of the Noble Eightfold Path. It is the right understanding of life in line with the Four Noble (Ennobling) Truths. This dialogue was delivered by Sariputra, the Buddha's chief male disciple "foremost in wisdom," who begins with a discussion of wholesome nutrition for the body and mind. He then gives a remarkable analysis of right view and self view using the style of the Four Noble Truths and 12 factors of Dependent Origination, one of the central teachings of Buddhism.
 
The Greater Dialogue on Dependent Origination is the Buddha’s explanation of this central teaching. The two preceding sutras (on craving and right view) provide a solid foundation for this detailed presentation about how things come into existence or originate.
 

The iconic Dharma punk rock meditators of Against the Stream with and without mohawks

 
All three sutras are examples of the Buddha’s astonishingly profound understanding of reality and the human condition. The teacher, an American monk ordained in the Sri Lankan Theravada tradition will give a commentary on each discourse as it is read, welcoming and encouraging questions and group discussion. More

• Sutra Study Eight-Week Series
• Fridays 7:30-9:00 pm, July 11-August 29
• Against the Stream, 4300 Melrose Ave., Hollywood 90029
• By donation, dana, divided evenly between teacher and ATS

Ven. Dhammananda Bhikkhu was born in the Rocky Mountains, Colorado, and became a Buddhist at 14, attended college in Boston, Massachusetts. He had a secular career as an analyst underwriting commercial transactions for financial institutions throughout California. After graduating he moved to South India where he taught for several years studying yoga and meditation with TKV Desikachar.. He is a resident monastic at Maithri Vihara, a Buddhist temple and meditation center in nearby Sun Valley, which teaches "pristine Theravada Buddhism," mindfulness of breath meditation, and insight (vipassana). As an Engaged Buddhist serving the community, he is an active participant in devotional services, and his principal teacher is Ven. Aparekke Punyasiri Thero, abbot of Maithri Vihara.

Vesak celebration, NoHo (May 28, 2014)

Wisdom Quarterly; Abbot Ven. Sirinwasa, Sarathchandra Buddhist Center, No. Hollywood

The Sri Lankan Theravada center has ongoing meditation and Dharma classes

Sunday, May 18: Vesak 2558 (2014), 10717 Oxnard Street, North Hollywood 91606

 

For a Vesak celebration in every state in the USA this month, track down the nearest Thai (Yellow Pages), Sri Lankan (Sinhalese), Burmese (worldwide), Laotian, Cambodian (Khmer), Vietnamese, Indonesian, or American Theravada Buddhist Center (such as IMS or Spirit Rock or other Insight Meditation centers). There are now countless Buddhist Websites and centers (Wiki) to be found using StartPage.com or Facebook.

• World Buddhist Directory (BuddhaNet.info)
• Buddhist Radio, LA: Alan Watts two-hour special (KPFA, 8:00-10:00 am, May 18, 2014 from Roy of Hollywood's Something's Happening, Pacifica Network)

Mother's Day: The Buddha's Three Mothers

Ashley Wells, Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly (AN 2.32)

Mother's Day in America in 12 comics from The New Yorker (newyorker.com)

 

The birth of Siddhartha with Mother Maya

The historical Buddha had three mothers in that final rebirth when he made an end of all suffering.

Most people will have heard of Siddhartha's second mother, his birth-mother, Maha Maya Devi ("Great Queen Maya"). She was a queen, the wife of his father a [rich Afghan Chieftain] King Suddhodana, whose riches derived from the Silk Road that brought wealth, merchants, and spiritual travelers to the faraway capital of Kapilavastu, the Buddha's hometown.

Birth mother: Queen Maha Maya Devi

Maya's beauty was like a "dream," and in fact the name maya derives from the Sanskrit and Pali word for "illusion" (taken in Mahayana-Hinduism as māyā, two religions that so influenced one another as to be the same thing with different deities, one buddhas the other avatars]. An illusion, of course, is fleeting. She passed away seven days after giving birth to Prince Siddhartha. There are reasons given for this -- the most spiritual being that she only took a human birth as a volunteer to give birth to him. We enter life knowing on some level those individuals who play the role of parents, partners, relatives, friends, and enemies. But that is a truth bigger than most can digest.

• 

  The Maya of Mesoamerica are related

  The words "Maya" -- the name of Native Americans from Mexico and Central America with that famous "calendar" -- and "Gautemala" in Mesoamerica derive from the name of the Buddha's mother and his surname Gautama and mala (garland). See Rick Fields' How the Swan Came to the Lake: A Narrative History of Buddhism in America in which these and many more connections are drawn showing Buddhism's arrival in the Americas long before the Conquistadors and Catholicism.

Maya, Mariah (Mary), a queen in heaven

And she was reborn as a devaputra (born-among-devas) in Sakka King of the Devas' celestial realm, the World of the Thirty-Three in space. There her former son Siddhartha, after becoming the Buddha, thanked and repaid her for her help in this life by teaching her the liberating-Dharma. The other devas of that world also benefited, although Sakka their ruler was already a stream-enterer and therefore a devoted follower of the Buddha.

Our parents do so much for us that, according to the Buddha, the only way we can ever repay them is by teaching or leading them to the ennobling Dharma.

 

Repaying our Parents (sutra)

Wisdom Quarterly translation (AN 2.32)

Shravana Kumar carries his aged and poor blind parents on his shoulders (Ramayana) More

 

Come on, dad. You, too, mom. Get on up here!

"Truly I say, meditators, there are two people who are not easy to repay. Who? Mother and father. Even if one were to carry one's mother on one shoulder and one's father on the other for a century, and one were to look after them by anointing, massaging, bathing, and rubbing their limbs, even as they defecated and urinated where they sat [the shoulders], one would not by that pay or repay one's parents. Moreover, if one were to establish mother and father in absolute sovereignty over this great Earth, which abounds in the seven treasures, one would not by that pay or repay one's parents. Why is that? Mother and father do much for their children. They care for them, they nourish them, they introduce them to this world.

 

"But anyone who rouses one's unbelieving mother and father, settles and establishes them in conviction (saddhā); rouses one's unvirtuous mother and father, settles and establishes them in virtue (sīla); rouses one's stingy mother and father, settles and establishes them in generosity (danā); rouses one's foolish mother and father, settles and establishes them in wisdom (paññā): To this extent one pays and repays one's mother and father."

Ven. Thanissaro (Geoffrey DeGraff) summarizes: This sutra (AN 2.32) shows that the only way to repay parents is to strengthen them in four qualities: confidence (faith), virtue (morality), unselfishness (generosity), and wisdom (discernment). To do so, of course, we have to develop these qualities in ourselves, as well as learning how to tactfully employ them in being an example to our parents. As it happens, these four qualities are also those of a kalyana-mitta or "noble friend" (AN 8.54), which means that in repaying our parents in this way we become the sort of person who would be a noble friend to others as well.

The Other Mothers

Foster mother: Maha Pajapati Gotami

Many will also have heard of the Buddha's foster or stepmother related by blood, Queen Mahā Pajāpatī Gotami (Sanskrit Gautami). As Mother Number 3, she was Queen Maya's sister and co-wife. 

Both were married to King Suddhodana. She stepped forward to care for the newborn Siddhhartha to the detriment of her own son, Nanda, the Buddha's brother (they shared a father, their mothers were sisters, and she nursed and adopted him at age 7 days, which would seem to make her a little more than a stepmother or Nanda a half-brother; she also had a daughter, the Buddha's rarely mentioned half-sister, Sundari Nanda) -- She was the mother of Nanda, but it is said that she gave her own son to nurses and herself nursed the Buddha.

 

Not his mother: Princess Bimba (Yasodhara)

She is much more famous in this world than Maya because Pajapati (Sanskrit Prajapati) went on to become the first Buddhist nun. The Buddha's brother and sister also ordained and became enlightened.

This was in addition to Siddhartha's wife, Rahulamata ("Rahula's mother"), Princess Bimba Devi, much more popularly known as Yasodhara.

Rahula, Bimba, Siddhartha

What we are never told as we hear the story of the Buddha's life repeated is the fact that he did not "abandon" his family. Far from becoming a deadbeat father, having a good old time in the wilderness as an extreme ascetic, he saved his family: He came back enlightened and led his mother, father, wife, son, brother, sister, foster mother, cousins, and extended family members to liberation, to enlightenment and nirvana. He even remembered his birth mother and visited her where she was reborn. Such was the reverence of the Buddha for his parents, and many monastics followed suit. For example, there is the famous case of one of the Buddha's chief male disciples, Maha Moggallana, visiting his mother in hell to help her.

Of course, the Buddha's former wife, now the Buddhist nun and famous disputant Ven. Bhaddakaccānā, is not the Buddha's mother. How could she be the Buddha's mother? She was their son Ven. Rahula's mother.

First Mother

Questionable quote (Lotusing/flickr)

No, the Buddha's "first mother" is a stranger story of rebirth. In brief, it runs as follows. One day the Buddha was walking down a road with his monastic disciples when he passed an elderly couple. The man called out to him, "Son! Your mother and I have been missing you! It has been a long time since you visited us!"

The monastics thought this was very strange. Stranger still, the Buddha approached them and spoke to them in a very kindly way with gratitude. The monastics were confused, Why is the teacher letting these strangers talk to him this way and addressing him as "son"?

The Buddha later explained that for many (500) lives this couple had been his parents. Over and over, the karma of the three being such, they were born together. She raised him over and again. And here she was in that last life running into him apparently out of the blue but not really by accident. The nuns and monks may have been surprised to hear it but, in fact, the Buddha taught something far more surprising:

So long is this samsara -- this "continued wandering on" through births and deaths -- that it is difficult to ever meet anyone with whom one has not already shared all relationships. Look around; those people have already been one's mother, father... How much gratitude do we owe them? While this seems preposterous, it seems so only because we do not know how long an aeon (kalpa) is, how many there have been, or how many times we have already been reborn, how many existences we have already lived, how much we have already suffered. We have little to no idea. For if we knew, we would not be so eager to continue to cycle and revolve in ignorance again and again.
 

Kwan Yin as Mother Goddess (D)

In that final existence, the Bodhisattva (the Buddha-to-be) had taken rebirth in a special way to accomplish his goal of becoming a world-teacher Supremely Enlightened Teaching Buddha, and Maya had volunteered to serve the world-system in the capacity of giving birth to such a great being.

But here in the world, already existing, was the Bodhisattva's long time mother, his mother many times over, and now she had again found him. Our mothers, even when they do not give birth to us this time, are all around (fathers too). Our nurturers are here, and still they nurture us -- sometimes they attack us perhaps due to our lack of gratitude or their lack of understanding -- and stranger still we, too, are former mothers and fathers of others. Such is the incomprehensible working out of karma, an imponderable (acinteyya) thing.
 
Happy Mother's Day to all the moms -- and we mean ALL of them including you -- from Wisdom Quarterly.

May Day: Int'l Workers Day (video)

Pat Macpherson, Ashley Wells, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly

(Fourman Films/Counterfire.org) What is "May Day," May 1st? Not much in America, even though it started here. But today is a very big deal in the rest of the world.

VIDEO: Haymarket Revolution, how May Day began

• How Int'l Workers Day began, explained by 8th grader
• VIDEO: Feminism and the Disposable Male (opinion)

Retrospective on Radical Feminism (audio)

Seven (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly; Moira Rankin, Deborah George, From the Vault (FTV 409)

According to author Masha Gessen, Pussy Riot's Nadia was inspired by the radical history of women's liberation in the West. It inspired her to awaken a movement in Russia (AFP).

 

Russia's Pussy Riot

Guest host Lynn Ballen, producer of KPFK (L.A.) Radio's "Feminist Magazine," introduces "A Retrospective on Radical Feminism."

It was produced in 1980 by Moira Rankin and co-produced by Deborah George for Sophie’s Parlor Collective, the oldest women’s radio collective on the air at Pacifica’s youngest station, WPFW in Washington, D.C. Composed of interviews, actions, and music, it includes:

• AUDIO podcast: PLAY in new window (or download)

Oh, ladies, do behave! (MO)

Alix Kates Shulman, activist and author of Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen, is interviewed and reads from her book, Burning Questions. 
Fannie Lou Hamer, founder of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, recalls the physical abuse she suffered in prison in a 1966 KPFA (Berkeley) interview. 
Joan Byron, a member of The Furies, [which as part of the Lavender Menace was] one the first radical lesbian separatist groups describes, their reasons for organizing. 

Anais Nin, From the Vault (FTV 408)

Betty Friedan renounces her position on the lesbian issue she had dubbed the "Lavender Menace" and supports the sexual preference resolution at the 1977 United States International Women’s Year Conference in Houston, Texas. 
Carol Downer, one of the founders of the Los Angeles Feminist Health Clinic, speaks about the need for women to control their own bodies and have access to abortions. 

Manhandled Femen topless activist (femen.org)

Edith Barksdale Sloane, Executive Director of the National Committee on Household Employment, is interviewed about the need for basic services for women. 
Donna Keck, a founder of Women: A Journal of Liberation, speaks about race within the women’s movement.
Activist Cynthia Washington speaks about all the aspects of oppression including racism, classism, elitism, sexism, and ageism.

From the Vault is presented as part of the Pacifica Radio Archives Preservation and Access Project, funded in part by an award from the GRAMMY Foundation and the National Historical Publications and Records Commission at the National Archives and Records Administration, and past grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ford Foundation, and the American Archive funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, along with the support of Pacifica listeners. It also thanks its partners and collaborators at the Pop-Up Archive, Amara, Other Minds Archives, George Blood Audio, and the California Audio Visual Preservation Project.

  

PURCHASE a copy of this program or learn more about the historic archival recordings used within this episode. Buy a CD copy by phone at Pacifica Radio Archives: (800) 735-0230 extension 262. 

• PHOTOS: favorite funny women

Karma O Karma! (action)

Ashin Narada (Sitagu Int'l Buddhist Academy), Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, Wisdom Quarterly

Karma Man to the rescue by cartoonist-comedian Dan Piraro (bizarro.com)

 

“All beings have karma as their own, as their companion, as their inheritance.”

Karma is the law of causation in a moral (sila, virtuous, ethical) sphere. Rebirth is its corollary.  

 

Karma and rebirth are fundamental and interrelated teachings in Buddhism.

These two doctrines existed, mostly kept from the public, in India prior to the Buddha. But it was the Buddha who formulated and explained them in the manner we have today. Seers (rishis) clearly knew of them from their own meditative attainments, but what they made of, what they deduced and concluded

What is the cause of the inequality that exists among people?  How do we account for the unevenness in this ill-balanced world?

"Karma Man" (i.imgur.com)

WHY, WHY, WHY ME? Why is one born into luxury, endowed with excellent mental, moral, and physical qualities, and another raised in poverty and abject misery? Why should one be born a millionaire, another a pauper? Why is one a prodigy, another an dimwit? Why is one born with virtuous characteristics and another with criminal tendencies? Why are some artists, mathematicians, linguists, and musicians from the cradle while others toil congenitally blind, deformed, or inept? Why are some blessed and others cursed from birth?

 

The ripening of karma is, of course, not the only reason why things happen. But it is constantly there sustaining and modifying conditions. We may be helped or harmed by others, pulled from misery or thrown into it unfairly. ("Fairness" plays in both directions, though we rarely complain aloud about our unearned gains and advantages, and we bask in the pity and sympathy others may bestow on us in our presumed helplessness and how "unfairly" we are being treated by the world as if everyone were born equal in merit and opportunity).

Either there is a definite cause for this inequality or there is not.  If there is not, the inequality is accidental.

Good sense precludes us from attributing this inequality to blind chance or chaotic accident.  Rather one senses that in this world nothing happens to anyone who does not for some unknown or unclear reason or other deserve it.

 

But "deserve" is a troublesome word, connoting that the universe or society or others are trying to "teach" us something, when it is simply the impersonal working out of actions attracting their consequences and/or us meeting ourselves again and again. We may be trying to teach ourselves something, but the impersonal world without is simply going along as it wishes. To impute a purpose or plan out there is dangerous and misleading. To see one in here may be helpful and may accord with pre-birth agreements or plans to undergo types of experience in one or more lives.

Our lives are shaped by our intentions/volitions rooted in benefit (nongreed, nonhatred, nondelusion) or harm (greed, hatred, delusion). When our hearts/minds are purified of these harmful elements, joy follows us like a dependable shadow.

 

Usually the actual reason or reasons why things happen cannot be comprehended by ordinary intellects. The definite invisible cause or causes-and-conditions of the visible effect may not be confined to the present life. What is happening to "us" is not happening because of who we are but rather who we have been, often very-very long ago. A cause may be traced to a proximate or remote past birth. With the aid of past life regression, hypnosis, telesthesia, and retro-cognitive knowledge, it may be possible for a highly developed seer to perceive events that are ordinarily imperceptible to the physical eye. Buddhists speak of such a possibility.

The majority of people ordinarily attribute inequality to a single cause such as the will of an all-powerful creator being, gods (devas) at play, or Fate. In place of the whim of an almighty being (an uncaused cause), or the caprice of the universe, the Buddha explained the impersonal law of karma as the cause of many significant events.

How do modern scientists account for the inequality among people? Confining themselves to sensory data, they attribute inequality to heredity (genetic dispositions) and environment (social and chemico-physical causes). In 1926 the distinguished biologist Julian Huxley wrote:

“Some genes control colour, others height or weight, others fertility or length of life, others vigour and the reverse, others shape or proportions. Possibly all, certainly the vast majority, of hereditary characteristics are gene-controlled[?].For mental characters, especially the more complex and subtle ones, the proof is more difficult, but there is every evidence that they are inheritable, and no evidence that their inheritance is due to a different mechanism from that for bodily characters. That which is inherited in our personality and bodily peculiarities depends somehow upon the interaction of this assorted battery of genes with which we are equipped at fertilization” (The Stream of Life).

What questions can science even tackle?

How or why we are thus equipped is not discussed, as science has little to say beyond simple empiricism. To say that it is mere “chance” is the same as saying that there is no reason for it at all.

One may be read to admit that the phenomena revealed by science are partly instrumental as mechanisms more than actual "causes." Could mechanisms be solely responsible for the subtle distinctions that exist among individuals? Why should identical twins physically alike by virtue of inherited genes -- enjoying the same privileges and disadvantages of upbringing -- be temperamentally, morally, and intellectually different?

Heredity alone cannot account for the vast differences we observe. Strictly speaking, it would account more plausibly for a few of the similarities than for most of the differences.

The minute chemico-physical germ (fertilized ovum) inherited from parents, thought to be about 30 millionth of an inch across, explains only a portion of a person, that is, the physicalfoundation.  With regard to the more complex aspects, one can search and search the environment and still not find a satisfactory explanation. Karma -- when understood correctly rather than assumed to mean immediate mechanical cause-and-effect as postulated by Newtonian physicists -- provides just such a satisfactory, and at least personally verifiable, explanation.

Sex, Intimacy, Communication on Buddhist Path

Seth Auberon and Gary Sanders, Wisdom Quarterly

"Adore," the next "Lolita" with tables turned on boys by cougars (Gaumont/zimbio.com)

Sex, Intimacy, and Communication on the Buddhist Path

Don't stare at my chest; it's censored!

A unique series will explore what the Buddha taught as principles for lay practitioners regarding relationships and sexuality. The format will include meditation, Dharma talks, and open discussions.

 

Facilitator JoAnna Harper will also leap forward 2,600 years to a growing population of non-monastic Buddhist practitioners living life in the world of sensuality, desire, and intimate sexual relationships. Relatively little is found on these topics in Buddhism. 

 

Sex on the brain (GM)

But this class series is a beautiful opportunity to discover our own relationship to these sensitive topics on how to live life fully while causing less distress to ourselves and others around us.

This four-week series covers the third precept -- not causing harm with our sexuality, renouncing clinging through voluntary celibacy, how a strong mindfulness practice can open us to greater intimacy with others and deepen our communication skills.

• Four-Week Series with JoAnna Harper
• Mondays starting Oct. 7, 7:30-9:00 pm
• Against the Stream, Melrose

COST: $20 per evening, plus dana for the teacher. $10 discount if paid in advance. Scholarships and work study are available and no one will be turned away for lack of funds. INFO/REGISTER

JoAnna Harper (spiritrock.org)

JoAnna Harper has been exploring and practicing multiple traditions since 1999.  In 2005, her focus landed on Buddhism and Vipassana (insight meditation) in particular, which is the basis of most of her current teachings. She facilitates adult and teen weeklong silent retreats, day longs, and weekly classes; she also works with at-risk youth and others in institutional and school settings. She has been trained in council facilitation through the Ojai Foundation, is a graduate of Noah Levine's Against the Stream teacher training program, and is currently in the Spirit Rock/IMS/IMC four-year teacher training. She is a grateful mother of two children, CJ and Harris, who are her main inspirations.

• 4300 Melrose Ave., Hollywood/LA (parking around center)
• Chairs, mats, and cushions provided.
• Against the Stream.org or (323) 665-4300
• Donate to the ATS scholarship fund