Review
We are going through the graded stages of the path. To give just a brief review here, we started with the precious human rebirth, appreciating that we have such a rebirth now and how difficult it is to get. We saw what the causes for a precious human rebirth are and what its importance is – namely, having the opportunities to further ourselves spiritually and being free from the hindrances that would prevent us from doing that. We need to take advantage of our precious human lives because they will be lost for sure.
We thought about death and impermanence. Death will come to everybody, and we don’t know when. The only things that are going to be of help in terms of future lives are the preventive measures of Dharma that we’ve taken to avoid worse rebirths.
We looked at the horrible rebirths that could possibly follow: as a trapped being in a joyless realm (so-called hell being), as a clutching or wandering ghost (so-called hungry ghosts), or as an animal, a creeping creature. We saw how horrible it would be to be born in any of those states. The lives of the beings in these realms, particularly the hell creatures and the wandering ghosts, last a very long time. We developed dread of being reborn in one of these realms – we really don’t want that to occur. It’s a healthy type of fear, one that motivates us to do something.
The situation is not hopeless, though, because there is a direction that we can put in our lives to avoid having worse rebirths. Putting that direction in our lives is what’s called “refuge.” We looked at what it actually means to go in the direction of the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. On the deepest level, it means ridding the mind forever of all its limitations, all the disturbing emotions, karma, unawareness, etc. – in other words, achieving a true stopping – and developing the true pathways of mind, which are the understandings of voidness, the four noble truths, etc. This is the direction we ought to go in. The Buddhas are those who have the true stoppings and true pathway minds in full, and the Arya Sangha are those who have them in part.
To go in that direction, the first thing we need to do is to avoid destructive behavior. That brings us to the topic of karma. That’s what we’ve been discussing.
We discussed the four general laws, or principles, of karma. For example, if we’re experiencing unhappiness and suffering, it is certain that that unhappiness is the result of destructive behavior, and if we’re experiencing ordinary happiness, it is certain that that happiness is the result of constructive behavior. That was the first principle, the certainty of karma. We tried to understand how to make sense of that.
Then we looked at what is involved in destructive behavior. We saw that there are many ways of describing what is destructive. According to Vasubandhu, all destructive behavior involves having no sense of values, which means lacking respect for positive qualities or persons possessing them, and having no scruples, which means having no restraint, no self-control, when it comes to acting negatively. Asanga defines these two factors a little bit differently as no moral self-dignity and not caring how our actions reflect on others. Behaving in such ways, whether physically, verbally, or mentally is destructive.
We then went over the ten basic types of destructive behavior that are described. There are, of course, many other destructive types of behavior besides these ten.
That led us to the discussion of the factors determining the completeness of a karmic action – specifically, the completeness of the pathway of a karmic impulse for an action.
The Four Factors That Make a Pathway of a Karmic Impulse Complete
We saw that the factors for completeness are those that need to be present for the karmic pathway of any physical, verbal, or mental action to be complete and to give the fullest result. If any of these factors are missing, the action is still destructive, and there will still be negative consequences, but the consequences will not be the same as when the action has been committed with all factors complete. Either the action is a less severe one, or it will deconstruct into another, less destructive type of action.
We’ve gone through the first of these factors, which is the basis. In the example of killing, the basis is a person – a human, animal, insect, or whatever – who could die. Even when no basis is present – for instance, shooting someone in a dream or in a video game or shooting at someone that we think is behind a curtain but is not – the action is still destructive. There is an intention to kill, and, certainly, there is aggression and hostility there as well. So, even though nobody gets killed, there will still be negative consequences.
The Second Factor: A Motivating Mental Framework
The next factor is the motivating mental framework (bsam-pa). This has three components.
[1] Unmistaken Distinguishing
The first component is the mental factor of distinguishing (‘du-shes). In the case of killing, we need to distinguish whom it is that we want to harm. In the case of stealing, we need to distinguish what it is that we want to steal. In the case of committing a sexual act with somebody else’s partner, we need to distinguish that the person already has a partner.
Killing the Wrong Person
What happens if we incorrectly distinguish the person we intend to shoot and we kill somebody else by mistake? What would that be? We intend to shoot a certain person, but the person we shoot turns out to be somebody else.
Participant: It depends on whom I wanted to shoot and whom I actually shot. For example, suppose I wanted to shoot my parents or a bodhisattva. That would be heavier karma, right?
Dr. Berzin: If the person is a bodhisattva or a parent, the action would be heavier. That’s another factor: the heaviness of a karmic action. Here, we’re talking about the mental factor of distinguishing. Let’s say I put out poison to kill the rats in my house, but the dog eats the poison and dies instead. Is that destructive?
Participant: Sure.
Dr. Berzin: Of course, it’s destructive. So, what kinds of consequences are we talking about here in terms of distinguishing? There would be no karmic consequences of killing the intended victim, the rat, because we didn’t kill the rat. That’s why it’s incomplete. However, there are karmic consequences of killing the dog.
Participant: But I had the intention to kill the rat.
Dr. Berzin: Right. With regard to the rat, there is the destructive mental action of thinking with malice but not the destructive physical action of killing it. So, you see, everything can deconstruct and change into something else
Participant: That’s the case with the dog also.
Dr. Berzin: I actually killed the dog, but without having the intention to do so and without distinguishing the dog as the intended victim. But here, with respect to the dog, it’s the destructive action of killing, but the karmic consequences won’t be as bad as if I had intended to kill the dog.
Participant: Can I give a historical example?
Dr. Berzin: Sure.
Participant: Stauffenberg. He’s very famous in Germany because he tried to kill Hitler. From my point of view, the action had a good motivation. Had he been able to kill Hitler, maybe millions of other people wouldn’t have died.
Dr. Berzin: He just wounded Hitler. So, is there any destructive action here? There’s a destructive mental action of thinking to kill and deciding to do so – that’s thinking with malice – and a destructive physical action of hurting somebody. The causal motivation, however, was to be able to spare others from being killed by Hitler.
Participant: Assuming that was his motivation.
Dr. Berzin: Right.
Causal and Contemporaneous Motivations
Remember, there are two phases of motivation that we have to consider. There is the causal motivation and the contemporaneous motivation. The causal one is what brought him to think about and decide to do it. The causal motivation could have been a very good one. The contemporaneous motivation is the one he had when he was actually pulling the trigger. When we’re actually pulling the trigger or throwing the bomb, there’s usually a great deal of hostility: we really want to kill the person. We have to differentiate those two phases. What makes the act itself destructive is the contemporaneous motivation. The causal one will have its own consequences.
If one is a bodhisattva, one is willing to take on the negative consequences of killing, as Buddha did when he killed the oarsman who was going to kill 499 merchants on the boat. One would voluntarily take on the negative consequences in order to save the others from dying as well as to save the perpetrator – like the oarsman or Hitler – from committing more destructive actions.
Participant: Also, Stauffenberg got killed. So, what would be the consequences?
Dr. Berzin: Stauffenberg getting killed is a man-made result. That’s not a karmic result of his attempting to kill Hitler.
Participant: But let’s say he were reborn as a human. What would be the result of his having tried to kill Hitler?
Dr. Berzin: We can look at the example of the Buddha. The example that is given is that Buddha got a thorn or a splinter in his foot. So, the result, in terms of negative consequences, was something very minor. But he also completed his first zillion eons of positive force, or positive potential, from having done what he did.
Participant: So, the result would depend on whether Stauffenberg was causally motivated by compassion or hatred.
Participant: It could have been both.
Dr. Berzin: No motivation is a 100% purely one thing or another.
You get the idea, though, that when we talk about an incomplete karmic pathway, we’re not talking about there being no results at all; it’s just that the results will be different than if the karmic pathway were complete. So, in the case of trying to kill the rat, there will be no karmic consequences of killing the intended victim since we didn’t actually kill that person or animal. Still, we killed somebody – the dog – so there will be karmic consequences.
[2] Motivating Intention
The second component is the motivating intention (kun-slong-gi blo, motivating aim), which is the wish to do something specific with regard to a specific object. In the case of killing, it is wishing to take the life of a specific being.
Killing Unintentionally
If we kill someone unintentionally when merely trying, because of hostility, to wound him or her with a gun, the loss of life could occur for two reasons. (1) It could be our fault – for example, we either had bad aim or were distracted. (2) It could be the victim’s fault – for example, the person moved. It could also be a combination of something we did and what the other person did. Does it make any difference?
Participant: Probably not.
Dr. Berzin: No, it doesn’t make any difference. In both cases, the action is destructive because it was contemporaneously motivated by hostility. And it’s one of killing since it resulted in a loss of life. The result would not be the same, however, as if we had intended to kill the victim.
Then we get the question: What about killing insects when driving? We don’t get into our cars with the thought, “I’m going to go out and kill a lot of insects.” That was not our intention, and we certainly didn’t think it over beforehand and decide to run over insects with our car so as to kill them.
Participant: In a way, I don’t care whether I kill insects.
Dr. Berzin: Right! You don’t care! Very good. Actually, you’re being naïve if you think that you’re not going to kill anything. But it doesn’t even enter our minds whether we kill insects when we drive our car. It’s not that we think that we won’t kill anything. Not caring, from a Buddhist point of view, means not caring enough to try to avoid killing anything when driving and so not being careful. But here, we don’t even take insects into consideration.
Participant: We try not to kill other human beings, but as our cars are so fast, thousands are killed.
Dr. Berzin: Right. So, we have accidents. That’s unintentional. But accidents happen.
Marianne, the car ran over your foot, going at what speed? Almost no speed. It was just turning the corner. And I’m sure the person didn’t aim to run over your foot. This gets very tricky. But, again, the severity is different, depending on the completeness of all the factors. The intention was to turn the corner and, in fact, the finale was that he turned the corner, but in the process of completing his act, he ran over your foot and harmed you. That doesn’t mean that turning the corner in your car is a destructive action that you must refrain from doing in the future. The person who ran over your foot may feel awful as the man-made result, but he will not experience karmic results in some future lifetime. Buddha said as much in order to refute the Jain extreme that to attain liberation you must stop lighting a fire, eating or even walking since it will kill small insects.
Participant: Can I add another trickiness? In Western psychology, you not only have conscious motivations; you also have unconscious motives.
Dr. Berzin: How would you analyze that from a Buddhist point of view? How would you differentiate those in terms of the 51 mental factors?
Participant: Attention?
Dr. Berzin: Attention! Exactly! You’re just not attentive to your motivation. The motivation is there – remember, the motivating framework includes the emotion and the intention. You’re just not aware of them.
Participant: There’s always a mixture, no?
Dr. Berzin: Right. When we turn a corner with our car, we might pay attention to the other cars but not pay attention to any pedestrians trying to cross.
Participant: A mind without samadhi is not going to be aware of many things.
Dr. Berzin: That’s true.
Participant: In a Dharma book, I came across a suggestion about what to do when driving a car and hitting the insects. The lama said you should recite OM MANI PADME HUM before you drive the car and then blow on the car.
Dr. Berzin: There are mantras like that. Does it make it OK? I don’t know. I wonder if this thing with the mantras isn’t just naïveté. I think the mantras are intended – whether it actually works this way or not – to somehow benefit the future lives of these insects. I don’t think it has anything to do with our own karma. If we were to do it as a Mahayana practice, that’s what it would be aimed at.
Participant: I’ve heard this story about the mantras as well. I think it probably came from Lama Zopa. I think they were driving during the night, and there were all these insects on the front of the car. He started saying mantras, and – according to what the people in the car said – no more insects landed on the front during the rest of the drive. That’s the story I heard. I don’t know if it is a practice.
Dr. Berzin: That I don’t know.
Let’s say you do care. Obviously, if you walk on the ground, you’re going to step on something. So, if you do care, and if you’re not naïve and don’t have hostility, and try not to step on anything, are you nonetheless committing a destructive act when you step on something unintentionally, when you do it by accident?
Participant: Yes.
Dr. Berzin: Why?
Participant: Because there’s still an act of killing.
Dr. Berzin: Well, I wonder. What would make it destructive? I’m sorry, I’m not filling you in on all the categories of destructive phenomena that you find in Vasubandhu’s and Asanga’s presentations. Is it destructive simply because it’s the nature of samsara. This is the third type of suffering, the all-pervasive suffering of continuing to have the type of aggregates – body, mind, and so on – that we do. No matter what, this body is going to kill something when it walks or when it eats. So, it perpetuates that all-pervasive suffering.
We could say that when it comes to cars, we don’t have to drive, but the way our societies are set up makes that very difficult. It’s very difficult to live without a car, especially in the United States, unless we live in a big city with good public transportation. So, just because of the way our societies are set up, we perpetuate samsara.
Participant: Even with public transportation, beings will be killed
Dr. Berzin: There’s no way of avoiding it. If we have this type of body and are eating, walking, drinking, and so on, we will kill things. But obviously, we don’t think about drinking some water in order to kill the tiny insects in it and decide to do that. But that doesn’t mean we stop drinking water. Remember, Buddha said to avoid the Jain extreme and follow a middle path.
Participant: Even if I’m vegetarian, the people who plow the earth to grow the corn and do everything else for me still kill things.
Questions
Providing Conditions for Destructive Actions to Occur
Participant: What if you’re just riding in a bus, not driving it?
Dr. Berzin: Ooohhh! Dangerous! What happens when you’re just a passenger? Will there be negative karmic consequences for you if the bus kills insects?
I’ll throw this back our vegetarian friend: What about eating the meat of an animal that was not killed by you – is it the same?
Participant: [Not the vegetarian speaking] It’s the same.
Participant: But the person who ate the meat had the intention to eat the meat. The person who rode the bus didn’t have the intention to kill insects.
Dr. Berzin: But she had the intention to ride on the bus.
Participant: But even if you ride on a bus, unless you are naïve, you know that the bus is hired because of you and others who want to ride on it.
Participant: Everybody who rides on the bus creates the karma of killing insects.
Dr. Berzin: Oh! Well, this is the interesting thing: Does everybody sitting on the bus create the negative karma of killing, or is it only the driver who creates that karma? So, it’s the same question: does everybody who eats meat create the karma of killing the animals or only the person who kills the animals and the person who explicitly orders the killing?
But you’re only providing conditions. You’re not in a causal situation; you’re not directly causing the animal to die or ordering it to be killed.
Now, does providing conditions bring about negative karmic consequences? That’s hard to determine. Look at Shantideva’s teachings on patience where he talks about setting yourself up as the target for someone to get angry at you: You say something that makes someone angry, but it’s that person, not you, who yells and behaves in a destructive way. Who, in that case, builds up the negative karma? This gets very tricky.
I walked across the street. That provided a condition for you to hit me with your car. Will I experience negative karmic consequences as a result?
Participant: It’s not the same. If no one ate meat, no one would need to kill animals.
Dr. Berzin: And if nobody rode a bus, then no one would need to drive a bus, and if no one drove buses, no insects would be run over by them.
Participant: Still, the karma is less because the bus driver is not driving for the purpose of killing, whereas the slaughterer is killing for the purpose of killing.
Dr. Berzin: OK. So, there is a difference. The bus driver is not intentionally killing the insects, whereas the slaughterer is intentionally killing the animals. But do those considerations affect the karma of the person who rides the bus or the person who eats the meat?
Participants: Yes. Because you provide conditions for something that you know is destructive.
Dr. Berzin: Well, what about crossing the street and being hit by a car?
Participant: But it’s the same. Nobody wants to get hit.
Dr. Berzin: If nobody ever crossed a street, nobody would ever be hit. That’s the absurd conclusion.
Participant: Driving the bus and crossing the street are the same: the driver doesn’t want to kill the insects, and the guy in the car doesn’t want to hit you. The guy who slaughters the cow wants to kill it. So, eating meat is a different kind of providing conditions.
Dr. Berzin: Still, you provided the conditions for their negative actions to occur. The person driving the bus and the one driving the car didn’t have the intention to kill anything, whereas the person who slaughtered the cow did. So, your eating the meat is a different kind of providing conditions – especially if you stand there and say, “Kill this cow for me.” But here, we’re talking about buying meat in a store. Most people are naïve; they never think that what they’re buying had actually been a live animal walking around. So, obviously, there are differences. But is it destructive behavior to eat meat?
Participant: Yes.
Dr. Berzin: Our vegetarian friend says yes.
Participant: My argument would be that the Buddha himself was a vegetarian.
Dr. Berzin: Buddha was not a vegetarian. At the end, he ate pork that was said to have been poisoned, and he died. That’s not a good argument.
What they say is that a monk or a nun should accept whatever they’re given, whether it’s meat or whatever. They say that even if a leper’s stump falls in your bowl, you should accept it.
Participant: That’s something different because it’s given. It’s given, and you provided conditions for somebody to give you something. But you should not accept meat if you know that the person has killed the animal just for you.
Dr. Berzin: Right, that’s part of the vows.
Participant: To say that you’re an active part of the slaughtering because you asked a person to do it is fine with me. I can accept that this is an “action.” But providing conditions? I must say, it really sounds odd – that providing conditions for the bus driver to drive the bus is an action. There are maybe fifty people in the bus providing conditions. Even if there are no people in the bus, he still has to get to the next stop.
Dr. Berzin: Right. So, he’s saying that it’s hard to say that providing conditions for the driver of the bus to hit insects is really a destructive action. As I say, I think it can be quite difficult to draw the line between providing conditions for a negative action to occur and causing it to occur. Traditionally, providing conditions for a killing is not considered a destructive action of killing.
But is there, in fact, a destructive action of providing conditions? This is why I brought up the example of patience. There are cases mentioned in the literature that seem to indicate that if we have provided the circumstances for someone else’s destructive behavior to arise, we are, in a sense, responsible for that destructive action. The example is that if I hadn’t set myself up as a target for somebody to get angry with me, they wouldn’t have gotten angry; therefore, I should be patient. That’s a standard technique for developing patience. However, it is unclear whether providing such circumstances will build up negative karmic aftermath and what would ripen as a result. Buddha, after all, provided the circumstances for his cousin Devadatta to attempt murder, but I doubt that Buddha built up negative karmic consequences from that.
For example, I had asked you, Mark, to take down the garbage. You took down the garbage and threw away not only the garbage but all the instruction books as well. Whose fault was that? It was my fault because I was lazy enough not to have done it myself. If I hadn’t asked you to do it, it wouldn’t have occurred. So, I take the responsibility on myself. And I’m patient… well, I was a little bit short with you, but you get the point.
So, was it a destructive action on my part to ask you to take down the garbage? Seriously. Analyze it. What was the motivation? The motivation was laziness. It was also naiveté – thinking that you would do it correctly. Also, I was negligent. I didn’t point out that underneath all the paper garbage were the instruction books and that you shouldn’t throw away the instruction books, just the paper garbage. Is it destructive? It’s naiveté, isn’t it? And I didn’t care about what you were doing, in a sense.
Participant: That’s quite difficult to determine.
Dr. Berzin: What I’m trying to point out is that providing conditions for an action to occur isn’t the same as causing it to occur. Eating meat is not the action of killing, so you don’t have the consequences of killing. Instead, you have the consequences of eating meat. So, maybe, in the future, you will be an animal that’s eaten, for example. This is what this whole point is about.
But let’s not get hung up on the meat issue, because that is a hot topic and there’s no way to talk about it unemotionally.
But providing conditions for somebody else is a very interesting thing to analyze. Is it the result of my karma that you hit me with your car? We’ve had this discussion: It’s not a result of my karma that you hit me with your car; it’s a result of my karma that I got hit by the car. Your hitting me with the car is a result of your karma. So, you build up the negative karmic potential from hitting me. Do I build up negative karma by being hit? No – even though I’m providing the circumstance.
We’ve hardly taken any time in our last sessions to meditate. Let’s think about it.
[meditation]
Any thoughts?
Participant: I thought about it the other way around. If I gave a lot of money to a monastery in order to allow a lot of monks and nuns to study, wouldn’t that build up good karma?
Dr. Berzin: Of course, it’s the karma of generosity.
Participant: I wouldn’t create the karma to study, but I would provide the conditions for them to study.
Dr. Berzin: Right, so you would get the positive karma of giving. Now, the strength of that would be even greater because you’d be giving the money for the monks and nuns to study. You wouldn’t be giving the money for somebody to build a weapons factory, to use an extreme example, or a basketball court. But those would still be actions of giving.
Also, the texts say if you build a slaughterhouse, then by providing the circumstances for animals to be slaughtered there, you build up negative karmic potential each time an animal is slaughtered there. But is it the same with eating meat? Do you build up negative potential for another animal to be slaughtered each time you eat meat? What if you stopped eating meat? Animals would still continue to be slaughtered. But if you destroyed the slaughterhouse you built, no more animals could be slaughtered there. The two examples are not the same.
The thing that came to my mind was our discussion about meat. I personally think that the only legitimate motivation for being a vegetarian is compassion, compassion for the animals – that you don’t want the animals to be treated miserably and to be slaughtered. It has nothing to do with not wanting to build up the negative karmic potential from killing.
Participant: Is this the only motivation that’s appropriate? For example, you’ve also talked about dread of lower realms – not wanting to create the karma to have a lower rebirth.
Dr. Berzin: Right. In the context of the initial scope, which is where we are, dread of going to the lower realms is what motivates us to avoid negative behavior.
Participant: That’s not compassion.
Dr. Berzin: That’s true. But would that work?
Participant: Yes.
Dr. Berzin: So, would you not eat meat because you’re afraid of being reborn as an animal?
Participant: Why not?
Dr. Berzin: Well, theoretically, “why not?” But does that make any sense? I really wonder. This is why we took a whole class to analyze whether there is a relationship between unhappiness and destructive behavior. Then we did a whole class discussing why we refrain from being destructive, why we respect honesty, why we wouldn’t steal.
Participant: It may be more advanced to do it out of compassion, but I don’t think that means that the other motivations are not legitimate.
Dr. Berzin: I agree.
Participant: It’s written that you will have negative results from eating meat, but it’s not written which negative results. It’s also written that because of the deeds that you have done – you told somebody to do a negative action and you rejoiced in it – you will experience negative results. So, to what extent can I say that I actually cause somebody to do something?
Dr. Berzin: This is what I said before: The act of eating meat can just be the destructive action of eating meat; it’s not the destructive action of killing. That I can accept – especially if you’re eating it out of greed or naiveté. Usually, it’s out of greed or naiveté, not out of hatred. So, sure, that could be a destructive action. Are you contributing to the person who’s doing the killing? That was our real question. And that’s what she was asking about: Are you actually causing someone else to do the action?
It says very clearly in the karma teachings that asking somebody to kill for you creates as much negative karma as doing the killing yourself. The general who orders the soldiers into the war builds up as much negative karmic potential as the soldiers who do the actual killing. However, the soldiers build it up from their destructive physical actions, that of killing, whereas the general builds it up from his destructive verbal action, that of giving the order.
The same is true when you ask somebody to steal for you or something like that. The only time it is not clear whether you build up the same negative karmic potential as the other person is when you ask somebody to commit inappropriate sexual behavior for you. That’s because the other person experiences the summation of the act, the bliss, and you don’t. One could, of course, argue about that. But, sure, if you actually order somebody to do something negative, you build up the same amount of negative karmic potential as they do. If you rejoice in that negative action, that also is negative. It’s like rejoicing in a positive act that somebody does: you build up the same positive force as they do in doing the positive action.
Is Accepting Something That Was Stolen a Destructive Action?
Participant: You said that the fact that somebody hits you with their car has nothing to do with your karma: the fact that you were hit is what has to do with your karma. So, it made me think that we should always be thinking about our own actions instead of judging and thinking, “Why did he do this to me?” So, we should concentrate on our own actions.
It also made me think about someone who steals some money for himself but who also wants to share it with other people, like his friends. If I am one of those friends and I am enjoying this money that was stolen, I don’t need to judge the person and say, “Look, why did you do this?” But if I use this money, if I enjoy it, then I am also creating negative karma by using this stolen money. I don’t need to judge him; I need to look at my own action. It’s the same thing as the example of the bus. The driver is not actually my problem. It’s that I am here, and I am enjoying the transportation that is killing animals.
Dr. Berzin: So, the fact that somebody hits me with their car while I am crossing the street is not the result of my karma: the result of my karma is experiencing being hit. Therefore, I need to pay attention to my karma and its consequences, rather than get angry at the other person for having hit me. They are, in a sense, just providing the circumstances for my karma to ripen.
But if a friend steals money and then shares the money with you, are you building up some negative karma by accepting what was stolen?
Participant: That’s not about providing conditions.
Dr. Berzin: Right, it’s not providing conditions for the theft: it’s enjoying what was stolen.
First, we have the bodhisattva vows. Remember, one of the causes for breaking the bodhisattva vows is to steal from the Buddha, Dharma, or Sangha. Another one is to accept an object from somebody that has been stolen from the Triple Gem. This, then, depends on distinguishing, knowing that it was stolen. There’s a big difference when you know that your friend stole something. They stole the television from the store and gave it to you. Now you watch the television with them. So, you enjoy it. If you knew that they stole it – that’s one thing. If you didn’t know that they stole it, it’s another. But that’s not the same as them keeping the television and just simply enjoying watching something on it with them.
Or let’s use a nastier example. Somebody illegally downloads a movie or a computer program from the Internet and then gives you a copy. Do you accept it? Now we hit home! I can see by the expressions on various people’s faces that now we’ve hit a sensitive point. Do you accept a movie that you know that somebody else has downloaded illegally?
Participant: That doesn’t count!
Dr. Berzin: Pardon? Is there a difference between watching it with them on their computer and putting a copy into your computer?
Participant: And it can get trickier. Suppose someone downloaded it illegally and wants to do me a favor by making a copy of the download for me. So, he wants to be generous toward me. But if I say, “Oh, no. I can’t take it because it’s illegal,” then I deprive him from reaping the benefit of doing me a favor.
Dr. Berzin: Now she’s making it even trickier. The person wants to be generous, so they offer it to you. Another bodhisattva vow is to accept something that is offered to you. Even if the item were stolen from the Triple Gem, would they be being generous? And if they offer it to you, how do you turn it down? That becomes tricky, doesn’t it?
If it’s a computer program, you could accept it and then throw it in the garbage. That’s one possibility. But if it’s something stolen from the Buddha, Dharma, or Sangha, do you accept it? I think you have to look at the definition of “accepting.” Accepting means to think, “Now it’s mine.” If you throw it in the garbage, you never accepted it as “mine”; you never considered it “mine.” You just received it from them and threw it in the garbage. Our lawyer friend would agree, I think, that that does not fulfill the definition of accepting.
Rejoicing, causing somebody else to do something – all of these are either negative or positive, depending on the action. And being the recipient of what somebody has stolen and so on – again, is that just a matter of being naïve, of just not knowing? “I know. But what difference does it make?” That’s being naïve and not caring. But if you don’t accept it, and you say, “You stole that! I’m not going to accept it!” you could lose a friend. They could get very angry at you.
Participant: But getting back to the example of the bus – would you get on a bus if you knew it was killing things or doing something else that was bad? Would you get on it? Your main objective is not to do the bad thing.
Dr. Berzin: Right. There are many people who will not fly in airplanes because of the pollution they create. I have friends who are like that. But where do you draw the line? I’m not going to get into a car? I’m not going to walk on the street? I’m not going to get up from my chair?
Participant: Jainists.
Dr. Berzin: Right, that’s the Jain extreme.
Participant 2: I think everything we do – even just breathing – has consequences.
Dr. Berzin: Right. But that doesn’t mean that everything we do has karmic consequences. We go up the stairs and, as a result, we get to the second floor. Arriving at the second floor is not a karmic result of climbing the stairs. That’s why I was saying some of our actions perpetuate samsara.
In the Short Run, We Seek to Minimize the Damage We Do
Participant: I think the only thing we can really do is to care and to try to see the consequences of our actions. For me, there are also the consequences to the environment and other beings to consider. The only thing that I can do is to do what will cause the least damage.
Dr. Berzin: OK, that would be part of the initial scope motivation – refraining from destructive behavior. What that eventually leads to is renunciation, the intermediate scope motivation. The only way to avoid destructive behavior completely is to renounce continuing rebirth with the type of body and mind that is inevitably going to kill things. We aim for liberation from that type of body and mind so that we can have a light body or whatever it is – which, of course, we have to have confidence in, and so on.
We try, of course, to minimize the damage as much as we can, but what we really want to do is to stop having this type of rebirth altogether because this type of rebirth, with this type of body and mind, is self-perpetuating; it’s just going to cause more and more suffering. That’s why this type of suffering, the all-pervasive suffering of uncontrollably recurring rebirth with this type of body and mind – which just by its very nature attracts suffering and continues to create more causes for suffering – is the deepest thing to renounce.
Participant: That’s the long run, but also there’s this short run.
Dr. Berzin: That’s what I said. That’s the long run. The short run is to minimize, definitely – and not to be naïve.
Participant: We have to care about the consequences of our actions.
Dr. Berzin: Right, we have to care about our actions and not think that there are no consequences.
Participant: This idea of consequences can be very broadly applied. For instance, because of all the electricity I use, I’m causing this oil disaster in Mexico. There’s really a connection. When we use electricity, oil, or whatever, there are consequences. Everything we do has consequences.
Dr. Berzin: But, again, whether these consequences are karmic consequences is another matter.
Participant: So, we should try to know as much as we can and then act accordingly.
Dr. Berzin: That is what I said: don’t be naïve. You try to minimize the suffering, while realizing that there’s no way to totally eliminate it unless you stop having this type of rebirth – and without feeling guilty about that being the situation. Of course, you don’t purposely step on ants, but if you walk in a field, on the grass or whatever, inevitably, you’re going to step on something.
Participant: Then I look at why I actually go somewhere. Is it just for fun? To compare, the Dalai Lama walks one kilometer to get to a teaching where there will be eight thousand people, whereas I go to a pub. He kills some ants by walking, and I kill some ants, but his killing the ants is actually quite worthwhile. The reason he goes is a much, much more beneficial one than mine.
Dr. Berzin: Exactly. I’m thinking of an example from my youth. When I was a young man, my father used to take us for a drive on Sunday. It was not to go anywhere in particular; it was just to go for a drive, to relax.
Participant: That’s America.
Dr. Berzin: That’s America! But this, I think, is a very good example. Why do we go out? Do we go for a drive – which means insects will be killed on the windshield – just to have some fun and relaxation, or do we do it to get to a place where we can help others?
Providing Conditions versus Providing Causes
Participant: I find it difficult to draw a line between providing conditions for someone to do a destructive action and causing them to do a destructive action.
Dr. Berzin: Can somebody answer that?
Participant: The difference is very unclear, because sometimes it seems that a very broad meaning is being applied – for example, if I send somebody to kill somebody else, I create the same karma as the killer. Other times, it seems that a very narrow, technical way of thinking is applied: I didn’t kill the animal, so I don’t have the bad karma. However, if I weren’t a buyer of meat, there wouldn’t be a guy who has to kill animals. It’s just unfair that he gets the bad karma and I don’t. Karmically, it’s unfair, regardless of the technical definition. It just seems unequal. In some cases, it’s like this; in other cases, it’s like that.
Dr. Berzin: There’s no arguing against that. Now, is it fair or unfair? There’s no reason why the universe has to be fair. Is it appropriate?
Participant: Not fair, logical.
Dr. Berzin: Is it logical? That’s hard to say.
Participant 2: If I don’t eat meat out of compassion for the animals, I should also not eat meat out of compassion for the people who have to kill them.
Dr. Berzin: Right. You also don’t want the people who kill the animals to build up the negative karma.
The difference between providing a condition and providing a cause, whether directly or indirectly, is given in the texts. Ordering somebody to kill an animal is a direct cause of that animal’s death after you give the order. Eating meat that’s been bought at the store only provides a condition, after the fact, for the animal to have been killed. So, there’s a difference.
Participant: When people build weapons, they don’t tell other people to use them for killing, but they provide conditions for people to use them.
Dr. Berzin: Right. So, are the people who produce weapons doing something destructive? They’re providing circumstances for others to use the weapons in the future. However, they’re not even indirectly causing people to be killed, because there is no implication that the weapons have to be used; they could just be used as a deterrent, as in the case of a nuclear stockpile. They would only build up negative potential if the weapons were used and killed somebody. But is there a difference in the karmic potential built up between the person who ordered the production of the weapons, the people who produced the weapons and the people who used them to kill others? That’s the question.
All of these things have to do with the heaviness and the completeness of the action. We’re not saying that none of these things are not destructive. All we’re talking about is how heavy and how complete the karmic action is and whether or not it devolves into a different type of destructive action. That’s all we’re talking about.
Participant: So, the distinction between providing a condition and providing a cause for someone to do something has to do with telling someone to do it.
Dr. Berzin: Right, to cause someone to do something means to directly order the person or to indicate with a gesture or something like that, that you want them to do it. You don’t have to actually tell them with words.
Participant: Is it in the scriptures?
Dr. Berzin: Yes, that’s what it says. It means you directly tell or indicate to them to do it. It’s in the abhidharma texts. It says that the general who orders the soldiers to kill builds up the same negative karma as the soldiers who do the killing.
Participant: And the president?
Dr. Berzin: The same is true for the president, for whoever orders. The order might go down a whole chain of command, but it doesn’t matter whether the person tells the soldiers directly or tells the lieutenants to tell the soldiers. That doesn’t really matter.
Directly Causing and Indirectly Causing
Causing someone else to commit an action can be done either directly or indirectly. I’m thinking of the Communist days in Czechoslovakia. The Russians didn’t have to tell the Czech officials to be really, really tough on the people because the officials knew that if they weren’t really tough, the Russians would bring the tanks out again. The Russians being ready to bring out the tanks was an indirect way of causing the local police to be really tough. Is that providing conditions or indirectly causing? I think it’s an indirect causing. Another example is arriving as a guest at the tent of a nomad whom we know will slaughter a sheep to offer us a feast and we don’t say anything to prevent that. I think that’s different from providing conditions for animals to be killed by being a meat eater and buying meat at the store.
Now, is it heavier to do it directly than indirectly? Probably. But doing it indirectly could be just as heavy, as in the case of the Soviets with their tanks in the camps.
Participant: You could also argue that indirectly is nastier.
Dr. Berzin: Yes. But to say it’s “nasty” is a value judgment. And is not being “nice” significant in terms of karma?
Participant: According to my instinctive understanding, yes. I understand that the definition is different, but many times you don’t really understand what the definition is based on. It’s just like this, and you have to accept it.
Dr. Berzin: The definitions here are probably based on what Buddha saw (well, thank you very much, how do we know?) and, obviously, what was written down. But I don’t know. It just says a Buddha is the only one that can see fully what the karmic consequences are. So, this is what he described.
Participant: Karma is the most obscure part of Buddhism.
Dr. Berzin: And the most difficult topic to understand. We’re never going to understand the specifics until we’re Buddhas.
What is the whole point of this? The whole point of this is not to argue as if in a law court. The point is to be aware of what we’re doing and to refrain from negative behavior. And if we’re going to do something negative, we at least try to minimize the negativity so that the factors aren’t all complete. We can at least not rejoice over it.
Participant: There seem to be networks. There’s you who provides conditions, there are people who do the actions…
Dr. Berzin: Right, there are networks. This is the whole point about karma: everything is interconnected, and nothing is solid. It’s very complex. To understand it requires a full understanding of the voidness of karma – namely, the dependent arising and functioning of cause and effect.
Anyway, I think that it is very nice that we’ve gotten a little bit animated about this. We’ll continue.