i dont personally believe in any form of reincarnation that has been described and dont find that to be any impediment to zen practice, which certainly emphasises the transcending of the ego (ie thru practice to find mind's true unattached nature - the so-called zen mind) which seems to me to be the central focus of the teachings - as stephen batchelor points out in his exceptionally lucid 'buddhism without beliefs' a problem with a belief in rebirth is that it raises the problem of an intrinsic self which in zen at least is regarded as part of the delusion from which craving and aversion tend to arise and cause suffering, the first noble truth simply being as i have understood it that 'there is suffering' - batchelor suggests that the buddha accepted the pre-existing and well established indian concepts of rebirth and karma much as you or i wouldnt have questioned newtonian physics prior to quantum theory or non-evolutionary theories before darwin - from that point of view rebirth and karma are part of a historical framework within which the buddha taught the path to escape suffering in the here and now which i take to be his central pragmatic and humane concern - personally i find this explanation to be consistent with the idea that the buddha taught on the basis that he did not ask followers to believe but to verify the facts thru their own experience

Many consider the notion of reincarnation to be a cyclical/pattern thing. There is no permanent, unchanging soul or atman that leaps from lifetime to lifetime, as clearly stated by the Buddha in multiple places. So my personal feelings are that we are reincarnated by the way our actions/volition carry on and live through others. Breaking negative patterns and transmuting them to good ones is important, because those patterns will affect what you pass on to other people, whether it's nurturing and uplifting energy or hurtful, counterproductive energy.

And of course there is the very obvious notion that are children are us and we are them. They are like continuations of the stream we are a part of. But there are many, many ways to look at reincarnation, like a jewel with many facets.

another way to look at this is to start by acknowledging that all things are conditioned - the inevitable result of the total sum of what has gone before - amongst which conditions are what we do and how we do it - and to recognise that our lives, which are no more nor less than our own unique moment to moment experience in the 'continuous present', can be affected significantly by those 'personal prior conditions', amongst which could be a relatively stable mind cultivated by meditation and a mind geared towards maitri (lovingkindness) - that is a concept of karma in the here and now which i can recognise and verify - and it provides a basis for acting towards others in a way which is good for them but at the same time good for me if only b/c it helps develop zen mind rather than our ordinary sem (small - tibetan) mind - as suzuki-roshi said of practice it can also mean "you will be good for others" - or as the dalai lama says there are wise selfish people and foolish selfish people, meaning that those with a serious spiritual practice were in the former category - on this view we are reincarnated in every new moment, every new day if you like - that is also an idea that thru practice seems verifiable to me now as a matter of actual experience

Seems to me to be a valid and very beautiful way of looking at things also.

i dig what nick is saying too. i'm not really worried about what i did in a past incarnation. to me, what does matter is that how i acted yesterday has a strong influence on how i feel today, and how i act today dictates how i will feel tomorrow.

maybe what i'm experiencing is a budding awareness of where i fit on the wheel, the cycle of karma. how my act of doing is creating karma.

i'm a very practical person, and the idea that cyclical/reincarnating life pertains to our being reborn again and again in our current lives seems to be the most helpful model, if only micro-cosmic relative to being reborn in a new body over and over. actually, the idea of reincarnating into a new body just seems antiquated. maybe our karma was so bad back in the day that it was the only way to really get anywhere, but nowadays i think we live in such a different world, one where people can change their lives from day to day.

so this kind of lifestyle might ease our suffering from day to day, but what mellon is saying is it won't absolve our karma, is that right? that kind of makes sense. Like our positive creativity eases our and other's suffering, but is not enlightenment and is not transcending karma, because we're still creating. hmmm. DOH!

alright, here's my last thought for this post, pertaining to not creating and therefore transcending karma. this seems really tricky, like the only way to accomplish it is to simply withdraw altogether, right? but really that's just not realistic or helpful in any way shape or form. in fact it just seems selfish, but maybe i'm just weird like that.

So can you transcend the creation of karma by acting without any intentions or agenda? By acting without thinking of doing right or wrong, just following what you feel is the path of truth? In this sense, youre transcending dualism, right? if you act without righteousness or evil in your heart, then are you finally NOT creating more karma?

There's two possibilities. The first is that there's no such thing as karma and future lives. In that case, this is really just a discussion about ethics. I'll table that, because it seems like the folks who don't believe in karma have that well in hand, and I don't disagree with what they are saying.

Then there's the possibility that there is such a thing as karma and future lives. If that's so, then maybe it works the way you propose, noisymonkey, and maybe it works the way I've been taught, and maybe it works the way the Hindus teach it, and maybe it works some other way we haven't thought of or heard of.

But it would be nice to know, wouldn't it. I mean, if your model for how reincarnation works is correct, then you're on the right track. But where did you get that model? Are you sure it's correct? Because if future lives are real, and if karma works, then it seems to me that it matters to get it right.

If you just come up with a theory for how you think it works, and that theory happens to be a lot more optimistic than any of the teachings that any of the major religions teach, it might be good to know whether or not that optimism is grounded in something real, or whether it's baseless.

To get to your last point, the way my lineage, which I am not asserting is correct, teaches the answer to your question is that the way you transcend the creation of karma is through wisdom. Wisdom meaning understanding the lack of a self-nature to things. Once you have deeply realized that - once you have perceived thusness - then you can transcend karma.

What you're describing seems to me not to make sense. Why would you do something without any intention? And if everything you did was without intention, would that be a good thing? It seems to me that a person who does nothing with intention is a sociopath. I don't think that's what you really intend, but I think that's what what you are saying means.

The teaching on thusness is that things come from causes, or to be precise, that there is no such thing as a thing that didn't come from causes. When you take something from someone, and then afterwards you have it, the taking and the having are not related. The taking created a negative karma, which you will experience later as poverty. And the getting came from a previous positive karma, where you were generous.

So a person who understands thusness does things with intention, but this person does not do things with ignorance. This person does not believe that the ends can ever justify the means, because this person realizes that there is no connection between the ends and the means.

Non-attachment is going about your daily activities knowing that when you do something kind, you may not see an immediate positive outcome, because the outcome isn't controlled by the action. And when you do something unkind, you may see a positive outcome, because the outcome isn't controlled by the action. But when you do something kind, the ultimate result will always be kindness returned. And when you do something unkind, the ultimate result will always be unkindness returned.

With this understanding, a lot of the things we do on a daily basis fall away, because we realize that they are pointless, or even harmful. And then we act with true intention, because finally we know what we are doing.

Yeah, I don't think what you did in a "past incarnation" is necessarily something you have to absolve. I think the idea is to use present moment awareness to see the root of your suffering, how it arose, to realize there is a cure, and to apply the cure.

I also tend to disagree with this notion of paying off karmic debt. A lot of Buddhism seems to focus on living in the present moment, recognizing that even the past only exists in the present as a thought in your mind, and being liberated from what came before by better living in the now. I think I also read Dr. Walpola Rahula saying that only volitional actions create karma, and so to act without attachment to the fruits of your actions is what frees you from karma in a sense. You do what you know to be right based on your experience of the world, and whatever happens beyond that is out of your control.

i think that noisymonkey may have been referring to acting without self-interest (including an interest in receiving good things in some future) or what suzuki-roshi refers to as acting without any "gaining idea", therefore spontaneously in accordance with our mind's true buddha-nature when it is free of attachments generated by the false sense of a separate self - as noisymonkey says "transcending the delusion of dualism and seeing the world as it actually is - as a zen practitioner that description of the goal of practice seems to me to be correct and wholly orthodox - within zen at least, any idea of making karmic calculations as a rationale for even conventionally good actions would i think be regarded as heretical and at odds with the whole critique of the then doctrinal buddhism by bodhidarma which as ch'an and then zen and through dogen zenji is the tradition which mr warner, and myself have found most useful as a model for practice - that can't fairly be described as 'just ethics' - indeed it is the antithesis of action based on a consciously determined code, alto it should be no surprise that the result of such truly selfless action should seem similar to what a 'mere ethicist might recommend - in any event a fascinating discussion, i have read with interest your perspectives - thanks

+1. These notions also remind me a little of wu wei, but I think that is more of Daoist thing.

agreed - which would make a lot of sense, if you view zen as the result of an admixture of the indian tradition and traditional chinese perspectives including taoism and confuscianism, the latter would certainly account for the strong pragmatic streak i sense within the zen tradition - indeed it is the down to earth back to basics ethos of zen that made it my preferred framework for practice, altho i find the tradition of pema chodron thru the chogysm trungpa rinpoche lineage to be equally engaging in that sense

Oooh, provocative! Debate debate debate.

Amoeba Records is rad. It can be a temple, a monastery, a place of zen. It does me just as much good as Buddha Camp. Sometimes. I reckon.

I'd like to know why you didn't go to Amoeba. And what you would've felt had you gone instead of sticking with the monky (sic) business.

Debate is good. :')

Anyway, yeah, I think that if you frame it in those terms, Nick, it makes more sense. The thing that I worry about with the philosophy you've put forth, though, is that it doesn't seem to provide any particular rationale for practice - it seems to provide a lovely diving board for the western mind into the extreme of nonexistence.

My lineage doesn't say that you have to pay back all your karmic debt - indeed it says that you can't possibly ever do so. What it says is that through the practice of wisdom, you can stop creating more debt, and at the same time essentially create a space in which the old debt no longer has any power to harm you.

So what you would do, understanding this philosophy, is pretty much the same as what you would do understanding the philosophy you just put forth. The difference is in the motivation. If you are attracted to practicing Zen without talking about karma and future lives, then there's no problem. If you aren't, and so you don't practice, that seems like a problem (unless you think that practice is unnecessary).

My own experience with Zen is that I was hugely attracted to it in principle, but could never get a handle on what it was for or why to do it. I think the classic Zen answer to this would be to dodge the question, but that doesn't help me, does it?

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make here is that the Zen philosophy is perfectly valid, and works, but it doesn't work for everyone, any more than the philosophy my lineage puts forth works for everyone. So when someone gets all Zen in a setting like this, I feel like it's useful to put forth my lineage's view as well. The point isn't to say Zen is wrong, but rather to attract the attention of people like me who might be attracted to Zen in principle, but for whom it doesn't quite fit.

Pema Chudrun rocks, by the way. That's yet /another/ lineage... :')

wait a second mellon, i think we're actually all on the same page here!

"So can you transcend the creation of karma by acting without any intentions or agenda -me

"So a person who understands thusness does things with intention, but this person does not do things with ignorance. This person does not believe that the ends can ever justify the means, because this person believes that there is no connection between the ends and the means.

Non-attachment is going about your daily activities knowing that when you do something kind, you may not see an immediate positive outcome, because the outcome isn't controlled by the action." -mellon

"i think that noisymonkey may have been referring to acting without self-interest (including an interest in receiving good things in some future) or what suzuki-roshi refers to as acting without any "gaining idea"" -nick (which nolan voiced his agreement with)

in trying to relate what i said to what mellon is saying, i think the word intention implies acting with some sort of idea that you are causing an effect that will affect you, "i do this because i intend the outcome to affect me in such & such way."

so basically i think we really are on the same page, just using different words. My "acting without intent" seems to be very similar to mellon's "non-attachment" (which by the way is much more accurate in what i was getting at) and last, nick's "acting without self-interest" (i like that much better too!)


"My lineage doesn't say that you have to pay back all your karmic debt - indeed it says that you can't possibly ever do so. What it says is that through the practice of wisdom, you can stop creating more debt, and at the same time essentially create a space in which the old debt no longer has any power to harm you." -mellon

That really is awesome. A peer of mine and i argue.. "ahem..." debate karma occasionally and i think this vantage point will help us reach an understanding of what each of us means.

"I think the idea is to use present moment awareness to see the root of your suffering, how it arose, to realize there is a cure, and to apply the cure." -nolan

occurring to me is the idea that the past lives in which terrible karmic debt was accrued are inconsequential because the karmic debt has manifested itself in everything i am and do in this current life. Which means, to me, that all the shit i have to settle is bound up right here inside me just waiting to be transcended. that is fucking awesome. that really simplifies a shit load of things for my meager little being.

Hm, as far as intention goes, the lack of a connection between the action and the immediate result is a good thing to understand, but it's only half the story. The other half is the connection between the action and its actual result, which might come much later in this life, in the next life, or later still.

The process of bypassing old past karma requires both practices, although if you only practice one, I think the first one, the one you mention, is more important. If you understand this, it frees you up to behave ethically, because you don't have to worry about the results. Failing to tell a cop "I was going 55" when you're pulled over going 65 isn't going to get you out of the ticket, so you might as well not lie.

But if you aren't aware of the future consequences of your actions, you might tell the lie just for fun. So whether karma is real, or just an ethical construct, having both sides of the picture is pretty important. At least, if you want to live in a world where people generally behave ethically... :')

Great article!