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)...

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.