Austria 2025 | Karma for Dummies

So we've studied or looked at dependent origination, and yesterday I was talking about how dependent origination allows us to see how karma flows. That there is old karma and new karma. The old karma is the vipaka, that's the word that's there in Pali, the fruit of previous actions. And those are ignorance, formations, consciousness, name and form, basis, contact, and feeling, terminated at feeling.

And we said that new karma is carried forward through craving, clinging, and becoming, and then activated at the birth of action. And that leads to suffering. So much there that many different traditions talk about karma, and like, oh, this is my karma, and the karma cafe is open 24/7, and you know, all these different ideas. And karma can be this esoteric subject, it can be this thing that is very nebulous, and you don't really know how things truly generate or come together and arise in terms of karma.

But I want to break down some of the ideas and core concepts of karma as per the suttas and on a broader scale as per ancient Indian understanding. So first, let's start with the basics. The basics is that the Buddha said, intention is karma. This is different from what maybe other traditions may say of karma. There is, for example, the tradition of Jainism, which at the time of the Buddha was a concurrent philosophy, and it was a rival philosophy.

And in the teachings of Mahavira, as per the suttas, remember this is a rival school, so we'd have to look into some of the Jain texts to verify this. But as per the Buddhist perspective on what Jainism says, it says that in Jainism the belief is that everything is karma. So all actions, whether intended or not, is karma.

And the distinction here with Buddhism is that it is intention that is karma. It is our intention. And there is a story that Bhante Vimalaramsi would talk about, the story of this one monk who was afraid to walk around anywhere, and he would just sit or stand in one position. And apparently the Buddha asked him, what are you doing? He said, every time I walk, there may be earthworms in the ground, there may be insects in the ground that I may be killing.

And the Buddha said, that is not your intention. You don't know for a fact if that's happening or not. So that rival philosophy said that everything is karma, and we inherit the karma of even things that we didn't mean. And so our purpose then in life is to clean up the karmic debris. It literally thinks that there is karmic debris, dust that we need to clean ourselves off from.

And we do this through ascetic practices, for mainly those who are Digambara, those who are monks, different kinds of monks. And for the lay people, they would do charity and good works as a way of cleaning up the debt of that karma. But the Buddha said, how do we really know how much debt we have left in our bank balance of karma? That was his question. It's better to see it in terms of our intentions.

What are intentions with relation to people around us, with ourselves and the world at large? So intention is karma. Intention is the starting point of all karmic action. And intention starts in the mind in the form of a choice to be made. And that process of choosing, that process of choice, is the active principle of thought.

Everything we think that is in the background of the mind in terms of thoughts coming and going, those are the passive thoughts. Those are the thoughts that are like the green of the grass. You can't change it. It is what it is. And those are old karma. Those are all vipaka. Those are the fruit of previous thoughts.

How we choose to relate to them in the present moment is the intention. Do we choose to engage with those thoughts, or do we choose to just disentangle ourselves from those thoughts and just observe the thoughts? That's the choice in every given moment. So that, depending on how we make the choice, will lead to the further propagation of that karma. Us wanting to control the stream of thoughts, by us wanting to control how thinking happens, we are directly engaging with it, which means we are using the fuel of our undue attention towards those thoughts and further energizing them, so that they continue and proliferate. But if the choice is rooted in the principle behind the Eightfold Path, which is all about letting go, all about surrendering into the moment, then our disengagement with that thought stream allows that thought to come and go without interference, without interaction.

And this can be understood in our lives with experiences. We take the experiences in our everyday life more seriously because they seem more real than just our thoughts in our mind. And then when we are in meditation, our thoughts seem so real. But I'm here to say that in both cases, it's not real. In the absolute sense, it is just experience.

And in the absolute sense, it's all just vibration. And I say that because that is what karma is. Karma is just vibration that's happening. Vibration in the form of light that is picked up with the eyes. Vibration in the form of sound that's picked up by the ears. Vibration in the form of atoms and molecules that are picked up by the nose and the tongue. It is then interpreted in our mind, in images, into sounds that we interpret as words, as music, as messages, whatever it is.

So karma, as that, is the vipaka that we're experiencing. But we choose to engage with it in such a way that it further propagates it, because we relate in the sense of me versus the world, or me with the world, or me in relation to the world. And this is, for all intents and purposes, inescapable so long as we are in relationships. And I have said before that the Dhamma is really the fabric of social interactions. Much as we say that we want to go into the forest and isolate ourselves and meditate in a cabin, we still need to depend on others for food and electricity and water and everything else.

Interdependency is the Dhamma, and that also means social interdependency. This is why the Buddha provided this merit economy, where the monks would actually go out into the villages and go for alms. And so in exchange for the food, what do the people get? They get merit. This is the merit economy. And so in that process, they may get a Dhamma talk or two. They may get a teaching. They may have a chance to interact with the senior monks and ask a question or two about practice or life or the world and so on.

So there is always exchange, and this is also karma. Relationships are karma. Relationships are the... I call them... I call it the wrestling ring, you know? Relationships are the wrestling ring. There's my corner, and there's the other person's corner, and we decide we come together, and are we going to dance, or are we going to fight? How do we relate to ourselves, how do we relate with our self-image, and how do we relate with the people that are there in front of us? This interaction is karma. You need to tango, two or more, to do something. And even before that, to say, okay, let's just say that we completely isolate ourselves.

Completely isolate ourselves. And we don't have to interact with anybody. Not our friends, not our family, not our partners, not our spouses, not anybody. And somehow, we are able to be self-sufficient. And we don't have to interact with the world at large. We don't even go on social media. We delete our Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and everything.

Even there, there is karma. Even there. Because it's our intention, right? That's karma. How we relate to ourselves is also karma. What we think of ourselves is also karma. The thoughts that arise about things are also karma. So karma, in that sense, we can say, is inescapable. It was the case for the Buddha as well. Buddha doesn't mean that they are some all-powerful being, or a fully awakened being doesn't mean that they are not subject to pain and despair and sadness and grief and all of these other things that we all experience at one point or the other.

So the Buddha, in this case, we talk about the traditional understanding of the Buddha, was said to have been beholden to the karma of his actions and beholden to the karma, which is the vipaka, the fruit of his actions, prior to his full awakening. Now, of course, this is another idealization here, but we'll break it down bit by bit. The understanding was at some point he was a professional wrestler in a previous life, and his signature move was the backbreaker.

This is what the Jataka tales say. So because of that, he had the intention of harming people by hugging them way too tight. And then in this life, as the Bodhisattva and the Buddha, he had to experience a lot of back pain. Maybe so, maybe not. Maybe another thing is he sat for too long while meditating. Right? I mean, that's a more practical understanding.

So what we do, even in this present life, has much more meaning in all of our circumstances and the consequences of our actions. And this is very important to note, because I'm going to come back to this understanding. We don't need to look back, why do we experience what we experience, because of some lifetime 700 lifetimes ago or 200 lifetimes ago or 10 lifetimes ago.

We can still look at it in terms of the context of our present life. Little bit esoteric, there is an ancient Indian understanding of karma which is called the three types of karma. There's what's known as Sanchita Karma, Prarabdha Karma and Agami Karma. And Sanchita Karma is said to be the storehouse of all the karma that we've ever had and we've ever produced in all of the lifetimes we've ever experienced up until this moment.

And Agami Karma is all of the storehouse for future lives. And Prarabdha Karma is the karma that is proportioned out for this life, that we have to experience as destiny, as fate, that we cannot escape. And it is understood that when, again, this is the idealization, when somebody becomes fully awakened, burnt out. And the Agami Karma is also burnt out. And so such a person who is fully awakened is beholden only to their fate.

Does that mean they don't have free will or choice in the matter? Some of the traditions say that. Some of the traditions say, in the idealized sense, the awakened being is no longer beholden to their own will. Only to the will of others. And so whatever happens, they do, according to what is wherever they're being pushed around.

And they go in this direction, or in that direction, or in this direction. But this is just one understanding. I'm just giving it to you to understand that there's so many persuasions of what karma is. And there's no need to go into that process of trying to burn out all our karma. Because that is a notion that people have: that in order for us to be spiritually awakened, we need to burn out all our karma.

And you're not fully awakened unless you've burnt out all your karma. And I've come across many people in spiritual circles, even within so-called Buddhist circles, where they say, oh, a fully awakened being no longer experiences karma, and therefore they've burned out all their karma. They don't live life. A fully awakened being no longer lives life if they've burned out all their karma. What's the point? Karma is also experienced in this particular moment. You were experiencing karma. You made a conscious choice to join this retreat, and now you're suffering the consequences.

That is the old karma that you're experiencing. That's the vipaka. So that will always be there. Every intentional action that we have will have some kind of consequence. But how does the consequence manifest itself? How does it arise? Does it happen haphazardly? Does it happen randomly? The idea here is that it happens due to certain causes and conditions.

And one of the beautiful ways of this being explained was explained to me by another participant who had come from Switzerland to Dhammasukha. And she said that she heard this from Venerable Upandita, who was a very well-known Buddhist monk. And he had a very interesting explanation about how karma comes to fruition. He said, if you think of karma as different seeds, for example, you have an apple seed, you have an orange seed, and you have a watermelon seed, or let's say a mango seed. So we keep it all trees.

And by the nature of that particular seed, it will grow at its rate. It will grow however it's growing, because of however it will germinate. You provide the right water, the right sunlight, the right fertilizer, the right nutrition for the soil when you plant the apple seed. And then for the orange seed, you do the same thing, but maybe there's not much there. And for the mango seed, you don't do anything.

You just put it in the soil and hope everything works out. Over a period of time, because the apple seed is nourished with proper sunlight, with proper water, with proper fertilization, and so on, it will grow. And possibly the orange seed will also grow into a tree. But the mango seed, having not gotten the proper nutrition, not gotten the proper water, not gotten the proper sunshine, will not germinate. It may germinate, but it will decay. It won't grow to its full potential.

This is how karma and causes and conditions work in terms of this analogy. The karmic seed is there. The karma is there. The action has been produced, and now there is the potentiality of that karmic consequence to arise. It's there in seed form. But unless the right causes and conditions are there for it to ripen, it will not arise.

So there are so many potentials for karma to arise. Even for the Buddha, there were so many potentials for that karma, different kinds of karma, to arise. But unless he was in the right place, with the right people, with whatever words were being said or not said, nourishing factors for that karma to germinate, that consequence of that karma to germinate, was not present.

So not every karma needs to be burned out. Not every karma needs to be experienced. But karma needs to be experienced insofar as it can terminate at experience. It terminates at experience, the fruition of it. Now, if we choose to take that apple seed, eat that apple, so take the apple from the tree and eat that apple and relish in that and say, oh, this is wonderful, I wish there was more, we take the seed from that and plant another tree.

That is the craving, the clinging, and the becoming that leads to the further propagation of further karma. But if you were just to eat the fruit and say, okay, this is great, that's wonderful, but I'm okay with it, I'm good, and you choose to just throw the seed away, don't care about it. If it comes, it comes. If it doesn't, it doesn't.

That's the attitude that we have with experience. The fruit of the apple tree is the experience in every given moment. The decision to enjoy it is the experience. It's the seeing, it's the hearing, it's the tasting, it's the touching, it's the feeling, it's the thinking that's going on. But then now I'm like, wow, this is a great apple. I wonder if I can get more of this. So I decide to nourish the seed. That's the craving. That's the moisture.

And the clinging, and the becoming. And eventually it will arise. It will re-arise. So we speak of karma in this way: action and fruit of action. The idea is every time we have engagement with the world and we want to control how that should be, we are actually more obsessed with how the fruit will come out rather than the action itself, rather than the experience itself. The same applies in meditation, let alone the rest of life.

When we meditate with an agenda, we are trying to direct our minds towards some imaginary fruit, a conceptual fruit. Due to people like me who talk about the fruit, you get inspired and you say, oh, this is very interesting, I want to experience this as well. But on the other hand, people like me also say, no, no, don't, don't, don't worry about the fruit. Don't worry about the fruit, because the fruit is in the action itself. If you are just acting with total flow in the experience, in the meditation, that is it.

When we talk about the cessation of suffering, the third noble truth, Nirodha, the Buddha also refers to the cessation of karma. And it is understood that the Eightfold Path is the cessation of karma, as it is the cessation of suffering. But in my mind and in my understanding and in my opinion, the highest teaching the Buddha gave is the Bahiya Sutta.

The instructions of the Bahiya Sutta are just so simple and yet so effective. They're deadly simple. It's like, it's so simple. Like, really? That's all I have to do? What about sitting and going through the jhanas and going through the hindrances and doing walking meditation and thinking about this and that and having this insight and having that insight? No.

So for those of you who don't know the Bahiya Sutta, or who want a reminder of what it is, it is definitely one of the suttas that I prize dearly because of the instructions that are in it. The story goes: there is a man named Bahiya who came from a Brahminical background, an Upanishadic background. So the Upanishads are Vedantic teachings. Vedanta is a school of Hinduism that is related with the soul or the self and consciousness, or Atman and Brahman.

And in there, there is a specific Upanishad which talks about the self as that which is the ears behind the ears, the eyes behind the eyes, the nose behind the nose, the tongue behind the tongue, the true seer, the true hearer, the true taster, the true experiencer of experience, behind experience. That is the Self with a capital S.

And so Bahiya of the Bark-cloth, that was the name that was attributed to him, Bahiya of the Bark-cloth, had this understanding of the Upanishads. And he believed himself to have been fully awakened. And so the mythology behind this is there was apparently a relative of his who was a deva in a different realm and said, no, no, no, no, you're not fully awakened. You still have yet to go.

So who do I find who I can go and be fully awakened with or through? He says there is the Buddha. Go to him, seek him, and ask him of this wisdom that will fully liberate you. So he goes to the Buddha and he says to the Buddha, oh great righteous one, I could die in the next moment.

Please give me a teaching that I can apply right here and right now so I can cease all suffering. What does the Buddha say? I'm on lunch. I have to go for lunch. And so he says again, please, please give me this teaching. And he says it a third time. And finally the Buddha relents and says, okay, alright, sit down, let me tell you this instruction.

But there's a teaching in that also, where the Buddha says, I have to go for lunch. Because the urgency that we have is a form of craving. It's like, I have to get it now. Yes, it's wonderful that you're enthusiastic and you want the teaching and everything else. But there's a craving in there. There's a conceptual framework in there. Like, I have to do this. I have to push to get there. I have to make every effort to get there. And what does the Buddha say? I'm on lunch.

Bahiya, remain in that. Then there is no you in that, and there is no you before that, and there is no you after that. This, just this, is the cessation of suffering. That's it, that's it. In the seeing there's only the seen, different from there is a seer behind the seen. In the hearing there's only the heard, different from there is a hearer behind the heard. In the sensing there's only the sensed, different from there is a sensor behind the sensed. In the cognizing there's only the cognized, different from there's a cognizer behind the cognized. In the experience there's only the experience. In the meditation there is only the meditation.

Different from there is an experiencer having an experience. There is a meditator who is meditating. Because when there is a meditator in the meditating, there is a control for how the meditation should go. And that is craving. That is new karma. When you let go of the control of every experience and just experience everything fully, as in the experience there is only this experience right here, right now, that is the cessation of karma as well, in that moment.

But the moment we decide we want to control, we want to identify with it, we want to do something with it, craving sets in. Clinging, satsun, becoming, satsun. And that is the further proliferation of that karma. Bahiya contemplated what the Buddha said. He sat down, and he contemplated, and he said, okay, in the seeing, there's only the seeing. In the hearing, there's only the heard.

In the cognizing, there's only the cognized. What does that actually mean? And he saw for himself, and he let go of the desire to control. He let go and saw that there is no controlling mechanism here. There is no controller here. There is just an impersonal process. And because of that, he let go. And it is said in the Sutta that he became fully awakened.

And then, of course, later on, he crosses the road, forgets to look both ways, and is killed by a bull. It happens. So the monks say, what do we do with Bahiya? And the Buddha says, he was one of us. Even though he was not fully ordained, even though he didn't go through the ritual and ceremony of becoming fully ordained, instructions, and because he didn't annoy me with further questions.

That's what it says. It's so important, this instruction. This instruction is the entire Dhamma. This instruction has everything in it. You need to know about karma, you don't need to know about dependent origination, you don't need to know about jhanas, you don't need to know about the four noble truths, you don't need to know anything. Look at Bahiya, he had no knowledge prior of anything related to the Dhamma. Just this instruction was enough, and that is the practice, that is the training: having an experience of seeing beauty around you.

It's just the seeing of beauty. There's an appreciation of beauty. There is a wonderful, look at this. This is wonderful. That's great. That's fine. Soak in the experience. Be there fully. When you're meditating, there is a hindrance. Okay, there is a hindrance. What do I do with this hindrance? I want to control the hindrance. I don't want it to be here, so I'm going to push it away. I'm going to use a strategy like the 6R's, or like the four R's, or drops, or just to relax.

But if I change my relationship to the vipaka, the fruition of that karma, as just that, and my entire relationship to it changes. Then I see it just as an experience. It comes and it goes. And I remain in that vast, empty, sky-like mind, free of any clouds and disturbances, which is always there. And so the only effort I do is to just return back to that. It is just to return to that.

And when I'm there, then there is just experience. There doesn't need to be a vantage point of an experiencer. There's just process. The last part I'll say about karma is from a sutta called the Moliya Sivaka Sutta. And this is very important also to acknowledge because we get caught up in karma and we say, oh, it was all karma, everything is karma, and it's because of this that I had to experience so-and-so. It's because of this I had to experience the death of my loved one. It's because of this I had to experience cancer. It's because of whatever happened in this life or in a previous life that I had to experience this particular problem, issue, situation, or joy, or celebration, or whatever it is.

And the Buddha pointed out, he said, is related to karma. But he said we should give space to other factors that are out of our control besides karma. And what he said: there are the humors of the body, which in Ayurveda are the vata, kapha, and pitta, which is essentially the bile, phlegm, and winds of the body, the humors, the three humors.

And he said there can be imbalances in that. And there could be too much of one, too much of another, or too much of a third. And because of those imbalances, that can cause disease in the body. That's the understanding he had based on the cultural milieu of whatever was said medically. But what he's referring to is when disease is there, when there is something going on in the body. It's not because of something you did in a previous lifetime.

It's not because of something you did in this lifetime. It's just how the body is functioning due to what is in the body or what is lacking in the body. Different imbalances in the body. This has nothing to do with karma. This is a factor outside of karma. Then he said, accidents. By nature of the fact that accidents are not intentional, they're not karma.

You're driving around and you just take your eyes off the road for a moment. And you forget to see the stop signal and you go, and then a car crashes. It's not wanting to crash at you. The person driving behind it is not wanting to crash at you. It's just that they didn't realize that you were not going to stop.

And they tried their best, but they crashed into you. That's an accident. It happens. That's outside of the purview of the factors of karma. Assault. Attacks from people. Verbal or physical or however. You may be walking down the road and there may be a person who is out of their wits and living a different kind of perspective on life, and then suddenly they go crazy and then they attack you.

You didn't cause them to do that. You didn't provoke them. They didn't say, okay, it's because this person said this and did that and that's why I'm attacking them. They just haphazardly attacked them. This happens with regards to the US with school shootings or robberies or whatever it is. This is assault. This is outside of the purview of karma.

Then there is what is known as environmental factors, the climate, how the climate is. You didn't cause it to rain. You didn't cause the clouds to part. Unless you have that siddhi and you can just do that. But generally we're saying environmental factors. You don't have control over that. That's outside of the purview. So, unintended consequences. Things that you don't have control over in terms of your intentions and karma that have a direct effect on the consequences and the fruition of that karma.

Give space for that as well. And this is important because otherwise we get in this loop that everything is karma and therefore I deserve everything that happens to me. And what about grace? Intuition. There's nothing karmic about intuition except for when you let go completely and come into that silent still space, and the voice of intuition arises. And because that voice of intuition is rooted in letting go, in surrendering, it's that grace that comes due to following the Eightfold Path, it leads to the cessation of karma, it doesn't add to it. you