Lam-rim 29: Ripening of Karma; Continuity between Karmic Cause and Effect

The Four Laws of Karma 

1. The certainty of karma, which is that if we experience suffering of pain, etc., it is certain that that suffering is the result of destructive behavior; and if we experience happiness, it is certain that that happiness is the result of constructive behavior, specifically, refraining from acting destructively when the impulse to do so comes up. 
2. The increase of karmic results – that from a small cause large results follow. 
3. Not meeting the karmic results without having amassed their causes. So, if we haven’t created a cause, we will not experience a result. 
4. There’s no loss of karmic results once we’ve built up their causes. The potentials and tendencies built up from these causes don’t go away by themselves; they will definitely ripen, unless, in the case of destructive potentials, we purify them.

We then started our discussion of the law of the certainty of karma. This is not an easy one to become convinced of. However, it really is essential to gain conviction in this because, if we were really convinced that whatever unhappiness we experience was the result of destructive behavior, we would then stop acting destructively. That conviction would not only help us to overcome naivety about the causes of our unhappiness, it would also help us to overcome laziness. We would then want to work very hard not to come under the influence of the disturbing emotions that cause us to act destructively and, therefore, to suffer. 

In that discussion of the certainty of karma, of behavioral cause and effect, we started our discussion of karma (las) itself. We saw that there are two presentations of karma in the Buddhist traditions in India, one by Asanga and one by Vasubandhu as modified by Gelug Prasangika. 

We decided that we would only speak about the simpler or, should I say, the less complicated presentation, which is Asanga’s. In it, karma is exclusively a mental urge, a mental factor. It is the mental factor that, like a magnet, draws the primary consciousness, along with the mental factors that accompany it – so, everything that’s going on in our minds – to an object and causes it to be engaged with something constructive, destructive, or neutral. 

The Feeling of Liking to Do Something, the Intention to Do It, and the Urge to Do It

We saw that what comes before and actually brings on an urge – in other words, any karmic impulse for a physical, verbal, or mental action – is a feeling of liking to do something and that what accompanies and continues with the urge is an intention. This is what we were discussing last time – the differences between a feeling of liking to do something, an intention to do it, and an urge to do it. 

Intention is defined by Asanga as “the desire to possess a desired object or state of mind or to engage in an action.” Gyaltsabje adds that it is “a mental factor that is a differentiating awareness that is aimed at a phenomenon that has been previously thought about and in which it has keen interest.” Gyaltsabje clarifies further, “The intention may be the desire to meet (with a desired object, state of mind or engage in an action that one has previously thought to meet or engage in), the desire not to be parted (from an object and so on that one has previously thought to meet or engage in) or having keen interest (in an object and so on that one has previously thought to meet or engage in).” So intention, in the sense that Asanga and Gyaltsabje delineate it, is limited just to intending to do what we definitely want to do.

I looked up the English definitions of these words, “urge” and “intention,” because there seemed to be some confusion about what they meant. The confusion is compounded by the fact that the same word, ‘dod-pa, is used in Tibetan for both “feeling like” doing something and “wanting” to do it.

According to the English dictionary, “intention” is “what one has in mind to do or to bring about; an aim, plan or objective.” We get closer to the meaning of the Buddhist term when we consider the connotation of the word “intention” in such expressions as “I intentionally did that.” Here, it is clear that we definitely wanted to do what we did; we did it on purpose. 

An urge, according to the English dictionary, is a “continuing impulse toward an activity or a goal.” That really is very close to what we’re describing here as “karma.” It’s something that actually brings us to that goal. 

These are the things we were discussing last time. Are there any questions about that before we go on? 

Participant: I can’t quite understand this idea of karma being an urge. You say, for example, that it was somebody’s “karma” to be run over by a car. Does that mean that there was an urge to get run over?

Dr. Berzin: There’s an urge that brings us into an activity, like crossing the street, which then leads to our experiencing being hit by a car. So, there was an urge to go into the street.

Now, there have to be circumstances as well (karma gets very complicated). Our karma doesn’t cause the other person to hit us: our karma is the cause for us to experience being hit. So, we’re not talking about causes for being hit; we’re talking about causes for experiencing being hit. Causes for being hit: the guy drove his car. We didn’t cause the guy to drive his car. Do you see the subtle difference there?

In terms of the sequence that’s involved here, what arises first is a feeling of liking to do something. So, first, I feel like going across the street. In the case of where I live, there’s a bakery across the street. I feel like going across the street and buying a loaf of bread. OK? That’s just the mental factor of liking (dga’-ba, Skt. priti) to do something. That’s a ripening of a karmic tendency to repeat an action that’s similar to what we have done in the past. That’s not karma, the mental factor of an urge. Then comes the urge that actually moves me down the stairs and across the street. That urge is accompanied by an intention to buy the bread, based on having made the decision to buy it. Then what happens is that, as I’m crossing the street, I am hit by a car. I experience being hit by a car. That experience is the ripening of yet another karmic tendency – namely, to experience a situation in which something similar to a previous action we have committed happens back to us. 

So, there are several things that are happening together. There’s the urge that brought me into the action of crossing the street. That urge didn’t ripen from a karmic tendency. What ripened from a karmic tendency was feeling like crossing the street, which is what then led to my experiencing being hit by the car. Now, as I was walking across the street, there was, of course, another urge bringing me across the street. And of course, there were many other causes involved – causes for that person to be driving their car at that time, causes for them to hit me, etc. There were also circumstances, such as the road having been built, the time of day that it was, and so on. There are many, many causal and circumstantial factors that are involved.  

When we start to really analyze karma, cause and effect, we see that what we experience is the result of an unbelievable amount of different causes and circumstances coming together. We can’t say that one thing alone is responsible for what we experience, for what happens. Everything is interrelated.

Participant: Which urge are you talking about? Is it the one that gets you out of your home to get to the bakery, the one that just gets you to go down the stairs, or the one that gets you to cross the street?

Dr. Berzin:  All of these urges help to bring about the circumstances, actually, for being hit by the car. 

We’ve also seen that, when we analyze the urges involved in an action, there’s one karmic impulse, or urge, that initiates the action, one that sustains the action, and one that brings the action to an end, that stops it. And in each instance, we’re actually doing something else in the sequence leading up to being hit by the car. So, when going down the stairs to get out of the house, there’s an urge to walk down the first step, an urge to walk down the second step, one to walk down the third step, and so on.

Participant: But which urge has to do with getting hit by the car?

Dr. Berzin: All of them. But experiencing being hit by the car is what’s ripening from karmic potentials and tendencies previously built up. OK, again, we have to get a little bit more precise. 

“I feel like going across the street to buy a loaf of bread.” Where’s that coming from? That is coming from a tendency, from a familiarity with that bakery, from the fact that I like the bread that they make, from my desire for bread, my hunger, which, of course, is based on having a human body, and so on. There are many causes and circumstances for me to have that feeling. So out of the habit… I’m using “habit,” here, in a colloquial sense, not a technical sense. So, out of the custom that I have of buying bread at the bakery across the street and because of my hunger and so on, the feeling of liking to go across the street to buy the bread comes up. That leads to the impulse to actually go down the stairs and to cross the street, accompanied by the intention of wanting to do that. Crossing the street, based on all the previous steps, then acts as a circumstance for yet other karmic potentials and tendencies to ripen, which in this case, is to experience being hit by a car. 

Cross the street is just a circumstance. But that circumstance of crossing the street at that time has to combine with many other causes and circumstances, such as a car coming by at just that moment and so on. But these don’t arise from the same karmic causes as the feeling of liking to do something, which, here, is to buy bread across the street. In fact, they don’t arise from any karmic causes from our side. They arise from karmic causes on the side of others – for instance, on the side of the person driving the car that hit us. Feeling like doing something ripens from a karmic tendency to repeat an action similar to what we’ve done before. But there are also other things that ripen from karmic potentials and tendencies, such as experiencing situations in which something similar to our previous actions happens back to us – the example here being experiencing being hit by a car. So, it’s not that I felt like being hit by the car. 

Later, we will see that other things also ripen from karmic potentials and tendencies, such as happiness or unhappiness, experiencing a particular rebirth state, experiencing being in a particular type of collective situation, and so on. There are different mechanisms involved in those ripenings. The feeling of liking to do something that I was describing simply has to do with repeating an action similar to what we’ve done before.

Participant: I’d like to use example of the driver who hits me with his car. You said it is not my karma that causes the driver to hit me.

Dr. Berzin: Right. My karma causes me to experience being hit.

Participant: I am reminded of something in Shantideva’s Engaging in Bodhisattva Behavior. If I remember correctly, he said, “My karma causes other people to do bad things to me.” How does this fit together?

Dr. Berzin: Shantideva was saying that if it was my karma that caused the other person to do bad things to me, I shouldn’t be angry with them; I should be angry with myself because the fault is in me. 

There are different ways of analyzing a situation, and the different ways of analyzing it are for different purposes. So, for developing patience, Shantideva is saying… well, we should really look at the exact verses. In the patience chapter, Shantideva writes, 

(47) Incited by my own karmic behavior, those who hurt me come my way, and if, by their (actions), these limited beings should fall to the joyless realms, surely, wasn’t it I who have ruined them? 

(48) Based on them, my negative karmic force Is greatly cleansed, because of my patience; but, based on me, they fall to the joyless realms with long-lasting pain. 

(49) Since I’m, in fact, causing harm to them, and they’re the ones who are benefiting me, why, unreasonable mind, do you make it the reverse and get into a rage?”

So, “Incited by my own karmic behavior, those who hurt me come my way.” You see, everything is interrelated. I – my karma – am not the cause for the person to hit me with the car: I provide a circumstance. Not only do I provide a circumstance for me to experience being hit, I also provide a circumstance for them to hit me. Each of us presents circumstances for the other. Being hit can happen only when the circumstances from both sides, along with many other circumstances, come together. For example, maybe it was foggy, maybe the person who was driving the car got distracted, or maybe I got distracted, etc. All these things have to come together. What we need to do is to avoid the two extremes. One extreme is that we alone are the cause; the other is that we have nothing to do with it. 

Shantideva, for the purpose of developing patience, is emphasizing our involvement in what happens, which, in this case, is that I’m providing a circumstance for the person to hit me. He says, “Incited by my own karmic behavior,” therefore, as a circumstance, “those who hurt me come my way.” They hurt me; so, it’s not just that they’re coming my way. This gets into a whole big discussion of whether or not it’s inevitable that they’re going to hit me. After all, other things could ripen.

“And if, by their (actions), these limited beings should fall to the joyless realms” – they hit me or whatever – “wasn’t it I who have ruined them?” The whole point of looking at it that way is to develop patience and to not get angry with them. So, it’s for a specific purpose that one analyzes and emphasizes this particular aspect

Then he says, “Based on them, my negative karmic force is greatly cleansed, because of my patience.” Here, he’s talking about after the fact. Now that they have hit me with the car – and presuming that I don’t die – I shouldn’t get angry with them. If I have patience, I cleanse my karmic force. However, “based on them, they fall to the joyless realm with long-lasting pain” – because they’ve hit me, for example. “Since I’m, in fact, causing harm to them, and they’re the ones who are benefiting me, why, unreasonable mind, do you make it the reverse and get into a rage?” The reverse would be, instead of being patient, getting angry (and if I get angry, then I’m the one that’ll go to a worse realm). Others benefit me, then, because they provide a circumstance for my developing patience. 

So, by being patient, I rid myself, at least on a provisional level, of anger. It’s not the deepest solution for getting rid of anger, but it’s a provisional one, a temporary one.

Participant: By being hit is the karmic potential used up?

Dr. Berzin: Not necessarily because the karmic potential could be to be hit many times.

Participant: Is he talking about cleansing the karmic potential to be hit by a car?

Dr. Berzin: No. He’s talking about anger and the karmic potentials from various things, not just anger, to go to a lower realm.

Participant: Is there any certainty that, if we’re hit by a car, the karma to be hit by a car is really gone and that we won’t be hit more times in the future?

Dr. Berzin: I don’t think there’s any way of knowing. A Buddha would know, but I don’t think we would know.

Participant: Is there some kind of mental training for being able to know that, now, this karma has finished?

Dr. Berzin: I don’t think so. 

Two Manners of “Ripening”

Karmic potentials can ripen (smin-pa), which means to bring about or produce a result. But there’s also a process of exhausting (zad-pa), in other words, a process whereby the ability of a karmic potential or tendency to give results – and there are many, many results that they can give – eventually wears out so that it no longer can give results. In other words, exhausting means being finished giving as many results as is possible and having no more potential for further results to ripen. I don’t think we would know when that particular karma to experience being hit by a car was actually finished. 

I know from my own experience that there was a karma that kept me in India. There was also a karma that kept me at Harvard. Then, all of a sudden, at some point, although I thought I wanted to stay at university for the rest of my life and, later, in India for the rest of my life, I just felt that the karma was finished. I no longer felt a drive – now, here’s this urge – keeping me there. There was no longer this drive keeping me there. So, then I no longer wished to be there. So, in that sense, it seemed to me that the karma was exhausted. But I don’t think that would be the case with being hit by a car. 

Purification – Overcoming Problems Provisionally

On the other hand, we can disable a karmic potential or tendency without it ripening into giving rise to a result by doing cleansing, purification practices. If we do, let’s say, Vajrasattva mantra 100,000 times and do it with all the factors of regret, perfect concentration, perfect motivation, and with the understanding of voidness and so on – most of us don’t, so it’s not so effective – then, in a sense, we clean off what we’ve accumulated so far. It doesn’t prevent us from accumulating more in the future, so it’s only a provisional cleansing. 

The only way, really, to get rid of all the karma is through the non-conceptual cognition of voidness. Then we no longer have the circumstances – grasping for true existence and so on – that cause the karmic potentials to ripen. If the circumstances are gone, we can’t say that we still have the potentials because there would be nothing to cause them to ripen, now or in the future. 

Note that when we attain the non-conceptual cognition of voidness, we attain a true stopping of the exhausted or purified karmic potentials and tendencies that had been built up through doctrinally based unawareness and doctrinally based disturbing emotions and attitudes. The exhausted or purified karmic potentials and tendencies built up through automatically arising unawareness and automatically arising disturbing emotions and attitudes are still left, however, imputed on the mental continuum. They still hinder and prolong the time it will take, with further non-conceptual cognition of voidness, for our accustoming pathway of mind (path of meditation) to attain a true stopping of the automatically arising variety of these factors. This is why one zillion (countless) eons of enlightenment-building positive force is needed to counteract these doctrinally based negative karmic potentials and tendencies and a second zillion eons of such positive force to counteract the automatically arising ones.]

Participant: Many people find that when something really bad happens to them, they can at least have the thought, “Now I know this karma is gone.”

Dr. Berzin: This is a very good example. It’s taught that when something negative happens to us, a way of dealing with it – so, not getting angry, upset, or depressed – is to think, “Thank goodness. Now that negative karma is gone. It’s ripened already, and it could have been much worse.” That’s a type of mental training, of mind transformation. It doesn’t mean that that karma has necessarily finished; nonetheless, it’s a method we can use. For instance, for developing patience, Shantideva focuses on one aspect. So, here, we focus on another aspect. These are all didactic methods, methods that we can use to help us to overcome problems provisionally.

Keep in mind that there are definitive meanings (nges-don) and interpretable meanings (drang-don). Interpretable meanings are those that are not to be taken literally; they require interpretation. They are suggestive of and lead to the definitive meaning. The only definitive meaning that we’re going to be led to is the understanding of voidness because that’s the only thing that will really get rid of the problems. 

So, all these other interpretations of karma – like Shantideva saying, “I provided the circumstance for them to go to a hell,” or like the example that you used: “Now my karma is finished; it’s ripened already” – will lead us further along in our understanding of voidness. How? Because they put our minds in a much more constructive, conducive state – I’m not depressed, I’m not angry, etc. – so that then we can go further. So, it is a step on the way to having a state of mind that’s more conducive to understanding voidness. It leads us further in that direction. So this is the Buddhist method. And it’s very effective.

Participant: I could imagine that some people would really cling to the ultimate truth and only feel happy when they are one 100% sure that now the karma is gone.

Dr. Berzin: Right. Some people can only feel at ease if they have 100% certainty that it definitely is gone. Well, it’s like speaking to a child. You say, “Yes, it’s gone,” and hope that they develop further in their spiritual training so that if it happens again – let’s say, being hit by a car again – they don’t get all depressed. Needing to have that kind of certainty is grasping at the true existence of the ceasing or stopping of something. 

As I said, this all has to lead to analyzing all of this in terms of voidness – which is not so simple. Somebody says, “I want absolute proof that it’s gone!” – well, you can’t say that.

Participant: As in the case of events or patterns repeating in your life – you can see that there’s karma that keeps giving rise to situations that are very similar. 

Dr. Berzin: Right. It could be that things are always breaking or that you’re always getting into unhealthy relationships or always getting physically hurt.

Participant: Or being beaten up by Neo-Nazis, as I was. 

Dr. Berzin: Right. Is that karma 100% finished? You can’t guarantee that it’s 100% finished, but at least it is burning off some of the karma. Some of it’s finished.

Participant: What about the third law – that it keeps increasing?

Dr. Berzin: That’s the second law, the increase of karmic results. We’ll get to what that actually refers to.

Participant: Would it be correct to say – using this example of these Neo-Nazis who beat me up – that if I got really angry and wanted to pay them back and then made plans to take some revenge, my karma would be worse? But if I decided to focus on compassion and to practice understanding why they did it, then it could get less and less?

Dr. Berzin: Yes, that’s true.

Again, we’re talking about karmic potentials. Karmic potentials are nonstatic phenomena (mi-rtag-pa’i chos-can); they change from moment to moment. So, they can get stronger or weaker, depending on our attitudes and on what we do. The strength or weakness of the results that ripen from karmic potentials is affected by many things. There’s a list of thirteen different factors that affect the strength of the ripening. So, for example, if we continue to do a similar type of negative action, thereby reinforcing it, the results will be greater, stronger. Whereas if, as in the case of being attacked, we develop patience and so on, the results will be weaker. The karma to experience being attacked wouldn’t necessarily go away altogether just because of that, but it would certainly be weaker. Also, the timeframe in which we would experience that result could be put off to way in the future, which gives us more opportunity to weaken the result even further. So, it works like that. 

The Voidness of Karma – Karmic Results Are Not Predetermined

In terms of the voidness of karma, what’s really essential is to understand that the Samkhya position needs to be refuted, which is that the result exists already inside the cause (we had this in Shantideva). It’s not that what will ripen from this karmic potential is predetermined. There is no fixed result just sitting there waiting for the right circumstance – for example, a person to drive the car – in order for it to pop out from the karmic potential. Instead, what ripens from a karmic potential is completely affected by everything that we do from the time that we build up that karmic potential. So, it’s a very dynamic system. It’s also not the case that what ripens is totally arbitrary and that anything can happen because what ripens is dependent on and affected by all sorts of circumstances.

Participant: It shows again how important the understanding of emptiness actually is.

Dr. Berzin: Right. It shows how important the understanding of voidness is. We might think that studying positions like the Samkhya one is ridiculous and irrelevant, but, actually, if we think in terms of the implication of the result being predetermined and existing already in the potential waiting to pop out, then we see that it’s very relevant, particularly in the discussion of karma.

Participant: Actually, this is the way I think.

Dr. Berzin: This is the way that most of us think when we start to think in terms of karma. And that is incorrect. 

Participant: Could you say that, without having understood emptiness, it’s not possible to really purify karma? 

Dr. Berzin: That’s correct. Without the understanding of voidness, you cannot completely eliminate karma; you can only weaken it. 

The reason for that is found in the twelve links of dependent arising. What activates karma so that it actually ripens? It’s craving (thirsting), grasping for true existence, and so on. If you get rid of all that with the understanding of voidness, then your mental continuum will not provide the circumstances for a karmic potential ever to get activated. And if a karmic potential can never be activated and can never produce a result, you can’t say that that potential is still there. A potential can only be posited if it can actually produce a result. So, without that deep understanding of voidness, the karmic potentials are only weakened. 

With Vajrasattva, what you can do is temporarily clean the slate, as it were, but that doesn’t mean that the negative potentials are never going to ripen. And, again, it’s theoretical how much you can cleanse just by saying 100,000 Vajrasattvas. Are you going to cleanse every negative potential you’ve built up since beginningless time? One starts to doubt that it’s that strong, even if each one of those 100,000 is done with a 100% perfect concentration. But you could certainly weaken the negative potentials. Conventionally, you could say you’ve gotten rid of them. But there are still subtle tendencies, so you could still build up the negative potential again. So, Vajrasattva practice doesn’t guarantee that you’re not going to act destructively in the future and build up more negative potentials. It just gives you a breather.

Participant: It’s like opening the window.

Dr. Berzin: It’s like opening the window and getting the stale air out – which is very useful, very necessary. So, in a sense, you start fresh. But it doesn’t guarantee that you’re not going to act destructively again. You undoubtedly will if you don’t have the understanding of voidness.

And let’s not kid ourselves. Who does 100,000 with perfect concentration and perfect motivation for the entire set of 100,000? I think hardly anybody. 

You can’t say that a negative karmic potential is purified just because it has exhausted. It’s not. There are certain karmic things that will exhaust and be finished after they’ve ripened, but that’s not what we’re talking about when we’re talking about purifying karma. Just because a negative karmic potential has ripened and has finished giving its results doesn’t mean that you’ve gone through a purification process. Purification gets rid of something that could ripen, that still has the possibility to ripen. That’s what you’re cleansing the mind-stream of. You have to differentiate here. The karma will, by itself, ripen and finish giving its result, but that doesn’t mean that you have applied an opponent to get rid of it. And it doesn’t mean that you’ve taken any steps to prevent building up more karma. 

Now, obviously, doing Vajrasattva with proper motivation and stuff like that doesn’t, as I said, guarantee that you’re not going to act destructively again, but it certainly can help, because, during the practice, you would have thought very strongly, “I don’t want to act destructively again.” So, it certainly helps you to act less destructively. So, it’s beneficial on many levels. 

Let’s spend some time just analyzing and meditating and trying to digest what we’ve been speaking about. 

When we talk about meditation here, what we’re really emphasizing a lot in this course is the type of meditation His Holiness the Dalai Lama emphasizes all the time, which is analytical. In analytical meditation, we try to understand and to discern that this or that is the way that things are by examining them very closely and thoroughly. It’s only when we try in a very active way to understand things and to make an effort to see them in certain ways that we can change our attitudes. 

Now, that doesn’t mean that we don’t have to quiet our minds as well with shamatha type of meditation. Of course we also have to do that. But that’s not the final goal – just to have a quiet mind. All sorts of non-Buddhists practice that as well; it’s not necessarily a Buddhist method. A quiet mind is something that is necessary for concentration, but concentration itself, as well as a quiet mind, is just a tool for being able, on the one hand, to access the various potentials and so on of the mind (to look at it from one point of view) and, on the other hand, to use the mind for analytical purposes – to understand. 

 [meditation]

Participant: In the case of being hit by a car, the karmic potential to experience being hit might have been built up five lifetimes ago, even though it’s only ripening now. How do I get the conviction that there’s a connection between what was done five lifetimes ago and what is ripening now?

Dr. Berzin: Well, this goes back to what we said earlier in this whole series, which was that the understanding of rebirth and beginningless mind is essential for this whole lam-rim… for the whole of Buddhism. One really needs to be convinced of rebirth and the begininglessness of the mental continuum. The mental continuum is going on from lifetime to lifetime. There’s no beginning. And what we experience now is not limited just to what we build up now. That means that there is an unbelievable store of negative and positive karma that has, over all these lifetimes, built up on the mental continuum. 

What is really difficult to understand is what causes something to ripen right now. And what causes something to ripen right now is an accumulation of an unbelievable amount of circumstances. All of those circumstances come, in turn, from their own causes. This is why only an omniscient Buddha, who knows absolutely everything and the interconnectedness of everything, is able to know what’s going to ripen right now. It’s like the example that I used once in a lecture about predicting the weather: There are so many different factors that are involved that it’s very hard to predict with 100% certainty what’s going to happen right now and what’s going to happen one day from now. 

So how do we become convinced of rebirth? Now we go back to the same question. It has to do with continuities.

Participant: That’s like the rebirth thing: You create a cause, then you experience a result.

Dr. Berzin: So what’s the link? If I created a cause in a previous lifetime, how is it that I experience the result now? Well, this is an essential question that is discussed in all the Buddhist tenet systems in India: What is it that carries karma? What is it that goes from lifetime to lifetime? 

Potentials and Tendencies Are Imputed Phenomena; They Are Neither Forms of Physical Phenomena Nor Ways of Being Aware of Something

All of this gets into the discussion of mental labeling – and not just mental labeling but also imputation in general. Karmic potentials are nonstatic phenomena, which means they change from moment to moment. They are neither ways of being aware of something nor forms of physical phenomena, like time, impermanence, tendencies, habits or the “me.” A karmic potential is a mere imputation on the mental continuum. It’s like what you have in the first integral in calculus. You have a series of points, and the first integral would constitute a line. So, a line is an imputation on the series of points. An imputation is a synthesis of a certain number of related components that constitute the basis for imputation. Potentials and tendencies are that type of phenomenon; they are a synthesis of many occurrences of a similar happening. From a Sautrantika point of view, we would that such imputations are objective phenomena or objective facts. No one needs actively to impute them for them to exist.

Let’s say we have committed a certain type of action many times – for instance, smoking a cigarette. There is obviously a tendency here to repeat the action. That tendency is a fact about the repeated behavior, as is the potential to repeat. The tendency and potential are imputations; they are facts about the repeated behavior that are the case whether or not anyone imputes them

According to Chittamatra, these karmic potentials and karmic tendencies are imputations on the foundation consciousness, the alayavinjnana. According to the other non-Prasangika Indian Buddhist tenet systems, they are imputations on the basis of mental consciousness. According to Prasangika, karmic potentials and tendencies are imputations on the continuity of the conventional “me.” But since we are explaining karma in terms of Asanga’s system, let’s just say that karmic potentials and tendencies are imputations on the mental continuum.

The most crucial question of karma, then, is, what connects a karmic cause and a karmic result? How is the continuity of the cause and effect relationship provided? And that’s a very complex analysis. That’s why I’m starting to explain it. I haven’t gotten into it completely, but you have the action. After that, you have a potential and a tendency, both of which are imputed phenomena. These are not forms of physical phenomena; they’re not ways of being aware of something. Each is a synthesis of what you might call a series of similar “karmic events.” That is how continuity is provided. So, you have to think in terms of what provides a continuity of similar ways of behaving. 

Participant: What about the neurons?

Dr. Berzin: The neurons? Well, there’s a physical basis for repeated behavior in this lifetime, such as neural pathways. Buddhism is not saying that there’s no physical basis. But neural pathways do not continue from one lifetime to another. That’s why the anuttarayoga tantra teachings assert subtlest life-supporting energy as the physical basis of the clear light mind that continues from lifetime to lifetime, with the conventional “me” as an imputation on it and, according to Prasangika, the karmic potentials and tendencies as imputations on that “me.” 

These are excellent things to think about. When we do analytical meditation, that’s what we’re doing. We are trying to figure these things out and to debate. It doesn’t have to be a formal debate, though. We discuss; we raise our doubts. And by discussing with each other, we try to come to an understanding. It’s only when we raise doubts that we can gain correct understanding. Just to say, “Oh, yeah, yeah. I understand it,” but we really don’t, doesn’t lead anywhere in terms of changing our behavior or our attitudes.

But the question about what provides continuity of the cause-and-effect relationship from one lifetime to another is the most central question. As I say, each of the schools of Indian Buddhist philosophy posits something different as providing the continuity. Except for the Prasangika-Madhyamaka, they all posit a findable, self-established something that goes from lifetime to lifetime, which means that there is something sort of stable, i.e., unchanging, there. This, in the end, has to be refuted. 

Participant: So, when you realize voidness, you realize there’s no continuity.

Dr. Berzin: Incorrect. You understand that there is continuity. As Nagarjuna would say, if things were not void, not devoid of true existence – if things were not empty – you couldn’t have continuity because then things couldn’t connect with each other. The analogy that I use is that they would be encapsulated in plastic, just sitting by themselves, established by their own power and, so, not dependent on anything else. They couldn’t connect, so you couldn’t have continuity of things.

Participant: So, continuity is imputed on single things

Dr. Berzin: Right. That doesn’t mean, though, that you could stop imputing continuity. Imputation doesn’t require somebody doing the imputing. We’re just talking here about what type of phenomenon something is – namely, an imputably knowable phenomenon.

Participant: Somebody else could connect the points in another way.

Dr. Berzin: Sure. But that’s irrelevant. 

Then there are tests to see what a valid way of connecting the points is and what an invalid way is. Different people can label somebody differently. You can label somebody a mother, a daughter, or a lover. All those labels could refer to the same person. It doesn’t mean that the person is not any of those. 

Anyway – food for thought.