Lam-rim 44: Karmic Responsibility; Extreme Views; Free Will vs Determinism

We could raise an objection here. We could say that in the case of serving somebody a meal that he or she fatally chokes on, we have merely provided the circumstances for some negative karmic potential in the other person to ripen. In that case, the actual cause of the person’s death was his or her own karma, not our well-intended act; therefore, we would not be karmically responsible and would not experience any suffering as a consequence. We could make a similar argument in the case of not rescuing a person who ends up drowning: in neglecting to help, we have merely not provided a circumstance for the person to be saved. We might argue further that, due to that person’s previous karma, any rescue effort on our part might have failed. And in any case, that person obviously didn’t have the karma to be saved by us, as demonstrated by the fact that we didn’t even try to help. This is faulty logic. By the same line of reasoning, we could say that if we stab someone in the back, we’re only providing a circumstance for the other person’s negative karmic potentials to ripen. Therefore, if the person dies, we are not karmically responsible for his or her death and, so, will not experience any negative consequences as a result. 

What do you make of all that? Are we responsible? 

Participant: First of all, what happens to someone else obviously always has to do with his or her own karma. But that doesn’t mean that what we do has no consequences.

Dr. Berzin: Right. However, the point here is about providing conditions. If we provide the conditions for somebody to die by serving them food that they choke on, do we have any karmic responsibility?

Participant: We’re setting something into motion ourselves. So, what happens is a kind of consequence.

Dr. Berzin: So, what we do has consequences. Does that mean that even if we serve somebody food and they choke on it and die – and we had no intention for that to happen – we have done something that will cause us future suffering? Well, we can certainly say that it will cause us immediate suffering. Whether it has a long-term, karmic effect is another question. But, certainly, anybody to whom that happened would feel really awful, wouldn’t they? Something like that happened in my family. My cousin was driving the car, and her mother, my aunt, was sitting in the seat next to her. They got in an accident, and my aunt was killed. You can imagine the amount of guilt that my cousin felt. She lived, and she was hardly hurt. So, was she responsible, and would there be a karmic consequence? This is very interesting. 

Participant: I have a friend who was in an accident. Her boyfriend was driving the car. She was completely paralyzed from the neck down to the feet, but nothing happened to the driver, her boyfriend.

Dr. Berzin: So, it’s a similar type of thing. Obviously, the person, the driver, feels awful. But is there a karmic consequence?

Participant: In my friend’s case, the driver had no driver license. He was driving faster than a hundred kilometers in a place where it was not allowed. And my friend allowed all this.

Dr. Berzin: So, the driver was negligent. In the case of my cousin, there was no negligence on her part. It was a truck driver who smashed into her car on the passenger side.

The thing is, as Buddha explained in a text, a bucket is not filled by the first drop of water, nor by the last, but by a large collection of drops. Likewise, what happens in life is the result of a collection of many causes and circumstances; what happens is not simply the result of one act. Of course, it’s true that one of the laws of karma is that we cannot experience the results of actions we haven’t committed; therefore, whatever we experience is ultimately a result of our own previous actions. Nevertheless, everything impermanent or nonstatic in the universe arises dependently on many factors. Therefore, each factor is partially responsible for the outcome.

We’ve seen in our analysis of karma that so many different factors are involved in what we do. It’s no wonder that this is the most complicated topic of all and that only a Buddha would be able to understand it. We’ve seen that there is an initiation and a finale of an action; what the basis of the action is; whether we distinguish that basis; what our motivation is at each step of the act – before we start and then as we start, sustain and end the action; whether we do it intentionally or by accident, and so on. There are so many factors. Then there are our previous types of behavior that cause us to have anger, to be negligent or whatever. All these things are partly responsible for the outcomes. Now, I don’t know about cooking somebody a meal that the person then chokes on, but serving the meal provided a circumstance for that to happen.

The Two Extreme Views Concerning Our Actions

It’s important to avoid two extreme positions regarding the role our actions play in what happens to others: 

• To believe that our actions have no effect and that everything is determined by the other person’s karma and, therefore, that we will not experience any results from what we do. 
• To inflate the role our actions play and to believe that our actions alone are responsible for what happens. (For example, my cousin could think that her mother getting killed was all her fault. But, obviously, there was the karma of the person who hit the car with his truck.) 

This becomes very interesting. One could say that my cousin had the karma to provide a circumstance in which her mother got killed Or let’s say I had the karma to serve you something that caused you to choke and die. What does that come from?  Does it come from a karmic cause of my having killed in the past? Am I repeating a type of action that I did in the past but doing it indirectly, rather than directly?

Participant: If your action was intended to do something nice for the person but, instead, it becomes a circumstance for that person to die, is that repeating an action of killing?

Dr. Berzin: I don’t know. This is what I’m asking us to analyze. In the case of my cousin just driving a car or my just serving you food, there was no intention to kill. So, here, an action of killing was not initiated; yet, the actions of driving a car and serving food provided circumstances for someone to die. Were those actions a ripening of a karmic tendency to act as a condition for somebody to die? I don’t think so. I’ve never heard of that type of karmic tendency. 

My aunt being killed was a ripening of a karmic potential that she had, and the driver of the car that killed her was a ripening of a karmic potential he had. But I don’t think that my aunt’s karmic potential was so specific that it was to be killed in a car accident and, specifically, a car accident in which her daughter was driving the car. The suffering of unhappiness my cousin felt as a consequence of the accident was surely the result of some previously built up negative karmic potential. But the fact that she was driving the car was merely a circumstance for her mother to be killed and was not the result of some negative karmic potential she had built up. 

There Is No Conscious Factor within Karmic Potentials

The interesting thing here is that we don’t need to posit a conscious factor in the two karmic potentials to account for their ripening at the same time. It’s not as if my aunt’s karmic potential to be killed – whether in a car accident or in some other circumstance – had to know that somebody with the potential to kill her was present and vice versa. Sometimes people ask that: How does your karmic potential to hit somebody with a car meet with somebody else’s karmic potential to be hit by a car? How does that work?

Participant: But there’s never any explanation other than that it happens.

Dr. Berzin: Right. So, we can’t say that my karma to hit you with the car caused your karma to be hit by my car to ripen, as if my karma knew that “ah, here’s somebody coming with the karma to be hit by my car.” 

There Is No External Power That Orchestrates Their Ripening 

Nor is there a need to posit an external, omniscient, omnipotent being or power that orchestrates what happens and makes the karmic potentials of each person involved in an interaction ripen simultaneously (that also could be a possibility). Since, according to modern science, all phenomena in the universe are interconnected and are governed purely by the laws of physics, the Buddhist explanation concerning the interdependence of everything and the mechanism by which many complex variables can affect any event without there being a conscious controller harmonizes well with the modern scientific one. Just as physical objects interact according to the laws of physics, so too, events in general interact according to the laws of karma so that further experiences occur. 

Do you want to think about that?

Participant: Things are not controlled by some external power.

Dr. Berzin: Right. 

This is the thing that is so extraordinary – that somehow my karma to hit you with a car and your karma to be hit by me ripen simultaneously. Was this preordained? Was this predetermined? Was it fixed that it would be you who would be hit by my car and that it would happen at such and such a time? How would you analyze that? 

Participant: I know we’re speaking about the potentials of different persons and different potentials being coincidentally in the same situation making something ripen, but…

Dr. Berzin: Coincidentally? “Coincidentally” means that there was no particular cause – that the two potentials just happened to ripen together at the same time.

Participant: Sometimes people talk about “karmic connections.” What does this entail?

Dr. Berzin: Right. “I had a karmic connection to hit you with my car.” What is that?

If we have killed somebody in a previous lifetime, does that mean that we have built up the karma to kill that person again? Is the karma connected only to that one person – in which case, we would constantly be killing each other, back and forth? How do these things ripen? If I have the potential to be hit by a car because I hit somebody by a car in some past life, do I have the potential to be hit just by the person that I hit in my previous life, or do I have the potential to be hit by anyone with the karma to hit somebody with their car? This is an interesting question. And does this potential to kill someone have to be by hitting them with a car? The potential might have been built up in a lifetime before cars were invented.

Participant: If the potential to be hit isn’t specifically connected to the person we hit in the past, why is it different with a teacher or a lover?

Dr. Berzin: Right. Why is it different with a teacher or a lover – that you meet some teacher or lover with whom you had a karmic connection in a previous lifetime?

Participant: Do these karmas communicate with each other?

Dr. Berzin: That was this first point: karmic potentials don’t communicate with each other. There’s nothing, no mechanism or whatever, within a karmic potential by which it can communicate with another one so that they ripen at the same time. I wonder if you could say there is a karmic equivalent of quantum entanglement.

These are very difficult questions. And, actually, there are different opinions by various scholars about whether a karmic connection you’ve made with a certain teacher in a past lifetime is a cause for you to meet that specific teacher again in a future lifetime. There are also these déjà vu experiences in which you meet somebody and instantly feel a connection with that person, either a positive or negative one. That, we always say, is from a previous karmic connection. So, is everything so specific? Many texts say that, yes, it is specific. But then it becomes very complicated. Can karma ripen differently?

Participant: Differently in which sense?

Dr. Berzin: Differently in the sense that if time is beginningless and we’ve had infinite number of lives, then we’ve done everything possible to everybody. If we’ve done everything to everybody, then we’ve hit everybody with a car or a chariot or whatever. We could also argue that since everyone’s been our mother, we would have equally strong karmic connections with everybody. So, then is how strongly we feel connected to others a matter of when they were our mothers? If everybody has been our mother, and everybody has been our closest friend, and everybody has been our murderer and torturer, why do we feel a certain type of connection with certain people and not with others? Why don’t we feel the same connection with all of them?

Participant: Or why don’t we feel repulsion toward everybody?

Dr. Berzin: Well, I’m asking. Why don’t we feel all the emotions equally toward everybody if we have done everything to everybody?

Participant: It’s because of our delusions, our negative thoughts and lack of clarity.

Dr. Berzin: Is this why we find one teacher appealing and another one not?

Participant: When those negative things are cleansed, we have more equanimity toward everyone.

Dr. Berzin: Well, equanimity is the basis for love, compassion and bodhichitta. It is not specific to one being or another. So, if we feel a strong attraction to someone, does that mean that our attraction is based on longing desire? And if that is the case, how do we choose a spiritual teacher? Initially, we are going to do it based on attraction: “This one inspires me. This one makes me feel inexplicably happy when I’m with them.”

Participant: I don’t think one can really solve this, because karma doesn’t decay with time.

Dr. Berzin: Right. That’s one of the laws, or principles, of karma.

Participant: Ripened karma does, in a way.

Dr. Berzin: Well, if the karma has already ripened, it’s finished. 

Participant: I mean that there could be different, open stories with different people.

Dr. Berzin: There could be. But, also, a consequence of beginningless time is that not only have we done everything to everyone, we have also done everything to everybody countless times.

Participant: Positive and negative.

Dr. Berzin: Positive and negative – everything. 

Participant: Maybe this is where we could bring in relative truth in the sense that, with relative truth, the connection between specific causes and specific effects is linked to specific circumstances that give rise to certain kinds of karma giving rise to only certain kinds of effects and not to others. 

Dr. Berzin: Right. So, now we’re getting somewhere – circumstances. Circumstances come from everybody’s karma ripening every moment in a different way – so, not only our own karma but everybody else’s as well. And it’s not just karma that’s continually ripening. Remember, what are also continually ripening are the tendencies of the disturbing emotions that would cause somebody to be angry at this or that point or to have longing desire at this point or that point and so on. So, there is an incredible number of things ripening with absolutely everybody. So, how do these ripenings come together? 

Now we get into a real meaning of dependent arising – that the only way in which all of these potentials, tendencies and so on are able to interact and things are able to happen is dependently. Things are continually happening – and not just to us; they’re continually happening to everybody. Right? There’s never a moment when nothing is happening to us, even when we’re sleeping. So, whatever is happening in any moment is the result of an unbelievable number of things, not just karmic – which way we looked before we crossed the street, for instance. “I didn’t look when I was crossing the street,” or “I was looking at something else,” or “I was distracted because somebody beeped their horn,” or “I was distracted because there was thunder, and I got a little bit frightened.” So many things are ripening at the same time. 

So, when we start to think about dependent arising, we can’t be limited to thinking just about one little event in our lives and how it has only come from certain causes and certain conditions or about one little object in our house and how it’s come from all the work that went into making this object. The fact that everything happening throughout the universe is happening in terms of things ripening and things acting as causes and conditions is extraordinary. And how can that happen? Only in terms of voidness. 

If things existed encapsulated in plastic, establishing themselves independently of everything else, they wouldn’t be able to interact with anything else: they’d be isolated. Also, the fact that things are devoid of such self-established existence helps to explain why we don’t need to posit the existence of some conscious thing within them – as if they were internally programmed to interact with this or that (which would be like the result already existing inside the cause) – or some figure or power that’s external to them programming or deciding what’s going to happen. 

If you think about it, it’s really extraordinary how what is happening in the universe, not just in our lives, is happening in every moment in terms of causes and conditions – dependent arising. So, let’s think about that, contemplate that for some minutes.

[meditation]

Do External Causes and Conditions Necessarily Activate Karmic Potentials?

OK. There are two things that came to my mind. One is, if all the external causes and conditions for a karmic potential to ripen are present, will that potential necessarily ripen, or is something further needed on our sides, something besides the karmic potential? That depends on the karmic potential. Although Vasubandhu has a secondary explanation of the twelve links of dependent arising happening in each moment – with “moment” meaning a sequence of moments in an event – the main explanation is in terms of rebirth. When we are dying, what activates a karmic potential for us to take rebirth in a specific type of rebirth state is craving (thirsting), either not to be parted from feelings of happiness or to be parted from feelings of unhappiness, and also one of the obtainer attitudes, such as grasping for a solid “me.” So, that’s something more from our sides, something more than just the potential for a throwing karmic impulse. But what these activate is not the karmic potential to die but, instead, the potential to take a certain type of rebirth after we die. These are two different karmic potentials. And of course, without the karmic potential to die being activated, craving and an obtainer attitude cannot activate a potential for a throwing karma (what “throws” one into another lifetime). 

In general, a karmic potential is a potential to give rise to a result when the circumstances are complete. In the case of the dying, there are many contributing causes and circumstances, but I don’t think those circumstances include craving and an obtainer attitude. 

Now, of course, it’s true that if we haven’t built up the karmic potential to die in a crash – although I don’t think it can be so specific as to be a potential to die in a plane crash – then even if everybody else were to die, we would survive. But that just means that at the time of the plane crash, all the circumstances of us to die at that time were not yet complete. 

Participant: Do the karmic latencies activated by craving and grasping also include a latency for a completing karma, or do they only activate one for a throwing karma? 

Dr. Berzin: The karmic potential for a throwing karma and the one for a completing karma are two different karmic potentials. But do they get activated at the same time, and do they finish giving their results at the same time? Those are the questions.

In other words, in the context of the twelve links, craving and the obtainer attitude (which is often translated as “grasping”) are specified as what activate the karmic potentials so that a throwing karma arises. Would they also simultaneously activate other karmic potentials so that a completing karma arises? Well, is there completing karma without throwing karma? If there’s no throwing karma, there will not be any completing karma.

Participant: That is true. But just because the throwing karma is there doesn’t mean that a certain completing karma will necessarily ripen at the same time.

Dr. Berzin: That’s the interesting thing. Do both the throwing karma and the completing karma arise, ripen and finish ripening at the same time as each other? Or does the completing karma that arises at the time of death just complete the initial situation of that rebirth, such as what kind of family we’re born into, where we are born, what our physical appearance is like, whether our limbs are complete or not, and so on? And does it continue to ripen as our life progresses into what happens to us later on, like losing a limb or going blind? I would tend to think that it only affects the initial circumstance, because what happens to us later during that lifetime is the ripening of other kinds of karmic potentials.

Participant: How would those results be classified?

Dr. Berzin: Do you mean how they would be classified in terms of the twelve links?

Participant: No, in terms of different types of karmic ripenings.

Dr. Berzin: When we talk about ripened results, we’re talking only about the rebirth state, namely, the aggregate factors with which we are born, and they ripen from throwing karma. There are other types of results that arise once we’ve been born into a particular state, but we don’t technically call them “ripenings.” Of course, when speaking in general, we might colloquially refer to the arising of any type of result from any type of cause a “ripening,” but that is not technically correct. For example, there are results that are similar to their cause in terms of our instinctive behavior and those that are similar to their cause in terms of what we experience. There are also the comprehensive, or dominating, results, which are those that determine the general situation – the type of environment or society – that we are born into. But these results are not technically “ripenings.” That was a good question.

What then activates those potentials and tendencies? They become activated only when all the circumstances are complete. Of course, if we have purified ourselves of the negative potentials, then even if the conditions are there, they won’t be activated. 

Avoiding the Circumstances That Can Activate the Negative Karmic Potentials

So, what is necessary for karmic potentials to be activated, and can we avoid the things that activate them? Look at Thirty-Seven Bodhisattva Practices (verse 2). It says that when attachment to friends tosses us around like water and anger toward enemies burns us like fire and things like that, a bodhisattva’s practice is to leave their homeland or wherever it is that causes all the disturbing emotions to flare up so much. So, if we avoid the circumstances that cause the disturbing emotions to arise, can we avoid certain karmic potentials from ripening? 

There’s a list in lam-rim of six things that cause the disturbing emotions to arise. One of them is the company that we keep, the negative influence of others. How would that serve as a circumstance for various karmic things in this lifetime to ripen? If I keep the company of thieves or drug users, then the karmic potential for me to steal or to take drugs is likely to ripen very quickly. If I avoid those types of people, I can avoid activating that karmic potential. 

What about the secondary tantric vow not to spend more than one week among the shravakas? “Shravakas,” here, do not refer to Theravada practitioners but to those who would make fun of our tantric practice and who would discourage us, as Mahayana practitioners, from working to benefit others by saying things like, “You’re being stupid. You should just work for yourself.” Staying for a long time – one week or more – with such people could have a negative influence on us. So, avoiding certain circumstances is very important. 

How Can We Affect What Happens to Us?

This is the second point that came to mind: What can we do? If everything arises as a result of thousands and millions of conditions and circumstances causing thousands and millions of potentials and tendencies to ripen at the same time or to ripen sequentially – for instance, somebody built a car, then somebody sold us the car, and then we got into an accident with that car – is there anything that we can do to affect what happens to us?

Participant: Yes. You can prevent things from happening by completely changing your attitude.

Dr. Berzin: Right. So, we can prevent things from happening by changing our attitudes. If we change our attitudes, we can prevent certain negative karmic potentials from ripening.

Participant: But feeling like repeating a previous action still comes.

Dr. Berzin: The feeling still arises, but we’ve seen that just because a feeling of liking to do something similar to what we’ve done before arises doesn’t mean that we have to act on it. We could also avoid the conditions, the circumstances, that would be the most apt to cause the negative karmic potentials to ripen into actually repeating the action. 

It was interesting, a friend of mine pointed out a study about happiness. The study looked at two people: one who had won the lottery and one who had been in prison. The one who had been in prison had been there for something like thirty or forty years. In the end, he was found innocent and released from jail. The question was, who was happier? Was it the person who had won the lottery or the person who had wrongfully spent thirty years in jail? Both were found to be equally happy… or equally unhappy. There wasn’t a significant difference between these two people because the person who went in jail said, “Going to jail was the best thing that ever happened to me. Had I stayed out with the gangs and so on, even though I didn’t actually commit the murder, my life would have been horrible. Going to jail, I was able to complete my education,” which one can do in some prisons. 

So, it’s very funny how we can, either intentionally or unintentionally, avoid various conditions that could cause things to ripen. In that case, we might ask, “Well, was it my karma to avoid it?” That gets us into the question: Is there any such thing as free will? Is everything a ripening of karma? Are there any causes that are not karmic ones? That’s a difficult question, isn’t it? If I gain a realization, is that because I had the karma to gain that realization?

Participant: And because I had the karma to work hard.

Dr. Berzin: The karma to work hard? How does that happen? Then it becomes really very difficult, because that would mean that everyone would inevitably achieve liberation and enlightenment just by working hard.

But if achieving liberation and enlightenment is not inevitable, why should some be able to achieve them and others not, and also why should some be able to achieve them more quickly than others? These are very, very difficult points, especially if we take beginningless time seriously – namely, that there’s no starting point. There’s no one who started out with more advantages or more positive karmic potential than another one. So, where does it leave us? Do we just leave everything up to fate, or do we consciously try to do things?

Participant: We consciously try to do things. It’s a responsibility.

Dr. Berzin: That’s just it – from our point of view (this is what I’ve discussed in the lectures about free will versus determinism), we have choices. When we make a decision about what to do, we experience that process as being one of choice. A Buddha would know all the factors that are involved.

Participant: Then the result is inevitable, one that we don’t know. 

Dr. Berzin: Is the result inevitable? So, how do we reconcile this?

Participant: They’re incompatible. Causality and freedom are incompatible notions.

Dr. Berzin: Well, if you mean “freedom” in the sense of being able to act without causes, then they’re incompatible.

Participant: Well, what is freedom? If the act doesn’t completely derive from the previous cause and cannot be wholly explained by what happened before, then it seems as though it’s not completely caused.

Participant: You’re saying that causality has to be mechanistic.

Participant: Yeah. It’s mechanistic.

Participant: That’s not the same as causality. The principle of causality is not the same as a mechanistic one.

Dr. Berzin: Mr. Scientist, explain the difference to us.

Participant: Causality doesn’t mean that everything can be completely determined. Just because you know the order of a system at a certain point doesn’t mean that you can predict perfectly all the points that follow.

Dr. Berzin: Is this because of chaos theory?

Participant: It’s because of chaos and also because there are quantum phenomena that have an element of randomness.

Dr. Berzin: Right. So, when, for example, a photon goes through one slit rather than another slit in the double slit experiment, you can say what caused that result, but you can’t say that the result was inherent in the photon. Is that what we’re talking about?

Participant: And you couldn’t even predict it.

Dr. Berzin: But a Buddha could predict. 

Participant: That’s a problem.

Participant: But why could you not include this small window of free will into the whole system of causality?

Participant: I would be much more confident with that. I’m not proponent of a mechanistic model.

Dr. Berzin: Maybe “free will” is too strong a term. “Choice.”

Participant: No matter how small the choice is, choice qualifies as a freedom. That’s what free will is.

Dr. Berzin: So, do we have choice?

Participant: What you can do is not completely isolated from conditions.

Dr. Berzin: Right. To make a choice implies that there is somehow a “me” that has self-established existence separate from the universe in which cause and effect operate and that this “me” can make choices and act independently of any causes or circumstances. That would mean  they can choose whatever they want and that whatever they choose could not be the result of some reason. You could not even say “they can choose whatever they want,” because that implies their choice of something is for the reason that they want it.

Participant: But, it’s still a choice, no?

Dr. Berzin: So, you’re saying we have choice. But this is the interesting thing: What are the factors that are arising in each moment from their tendencies? If we look at all the mental factors that are involved in each moment – intention, positive emotions, negative emotions, attention, interest and so on – we can see that each of these arise from different potentials and tendencies and that each of these have different conditions that cause them to arise. So, where’s the result? What do we label the not-yet-happening result on? Do we label it just on the potential of the unripened karma? Or do we impute… I’m sorry, some of you don’t know what I’m talking about. The not-yet-happened result of a potential or tendency is an imputation phenomenon on the aspect of the potential or tendency that could give rise to a result when all the conditions are complete. Alright? But is the result an imputation just on that, or is it an imputation also on the conditions?

Participant: So, it would also be an imputation on the conditions, no?

Dr. Berzin: This is interesting. If it is an imputation on all the conditions, is it one and the same result on each of the conditions? Or are the results that are imputations on each of the potentials different? Also, is it an imputation on your potential to hit somebody with a car that such and such a person is going to be hit by you on such and such a date and at such and such a street?

Participant: A posteriori, you could say yes.

Dr. Berzin: A posteriori – so, after it has ripened – one could say yes. It’s like the double slit experiment. After it happens, you could say in retrospect that it would go through this slit and not the other one. If so, then it’s predetermined.

Participant: That’s the Samkhya position.

Dr. Berzin: Right. That’s the Samkhya position – that the result already exists inside the cause, just waiting to pop out when the circumstance is there. 

So, it’s very complex, isn’t it?

Participant: And is choice one of the variables?

Dr. Berzin: That’s an interesting question. Is choice just a variable? There’s also indecisive wavering between two choices. And does making a choice imply not on the basis of causes and reasons?

Participant: What came up to my mind was maybe an answer to the question I brought up earlier about karmic connections and karmic potentials communicating with each other. I think that maybe the answer is that we’re not speaking so much about karmic connections but about interdependence as a whole. Everything is interdependent. Also, choice is interdependent. In that case, it’s not that things are communicating with each other but that they are dependent on each other, so there’s some connection there, like quantum entanglement.

Dr. Berzin: Right. So, when we talk about dependent arising, it doesn’t mean that all the components that are involved in a causal matrix are communicating with each other.

Participant: That was maybe my point – that they are not communicating in the sense that they are like separate ping-pong balls communicating; instead, they are dependent on each other as part of a nexus.

Dr. Berzin: So, they don’t communicate ping-pong-ball-wise. 

For a plant to grow, do the sun, the water, the nutrients and so on need to communicate with each other in order to allow for the growth? You do systems analysis. Do the components in a system communicate with each other?

Participant: No.

Dr. Berzin: How do they interact?

Participant: Coming together and interacting is not prearranged. They don’t communicate with each other in order to come together. They just come together.

Dr. Berzin: So, things just come together. But the process is not random. They don’t come together without a cause. Otherwise, anything could come together with anything at any time. 

If I cross the street, could I be hit by anybody, or could I be hit only by certain people? And let’s not bring in beginningless life – that we have the potential to be hit by everybody. So that’s why I’m saying that what happens probably has to do with the karmic potential that was created most recently. But if it has to do with what’s most recent, what about karmic potential from a million lifetimes ago?

Participant: It’s not very convincing to say that it’s the most recent karmic potential.

Participant: Maybe it’s the most powerful karmic potential.

Dr. Berzin: The most powerful. Ah! It’s explained that things that are done with a very strong motivation will ripen more quickly than things done with a weak motivation. This, actually, is going to be coming up quite soon when we discuss when things ripen.

Participant: Maybe a related question is, why doesn’t everything happen at once?

Dr. Berzin: Why doesn’t everything happen at once? How could everything happen at once?

Participant: I think it’s the same question, in a way, as why our karmic potentials don’t ripen all at once.

Participant: That’s similar to the question about why this or that thing happens first.

Dr. Berzin: Right. Why does this happen and not that? Why this sequence and not that one? Why doesn’t everything ripen at once? Why isn’t there a time-out when nothing is ripening?

Participant: Maybe it’s that everything ripens at the same time but in different places or circumstances.

Dr. Berzin: There is one theory like that in quantum mechanics – that all the possibilities are ripening but in different dimensions. 

Participant: It’s not so much a theory but an interpretation, which is as equally valid as the standard one.

Dr. Berzin: What is that called?

Participant: The multiverse.

Dr. Berzin: The multiverse interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Participant: It’s not that everything happens but that all the possible outcomes of an event can occur in different universes.

Dr. Berzin: So, do you think that’s what’s happening? If that were the case, how could you ever achieve enlightenment, because in some different multiverse, you would not be enlightened?

Participant: Maybe some could not, but others could.

Participant: Could someone who became a Buddha in one universe know about universes where they hadn’t become a Buddha?

Dr. Berzin: I don’t know. 

What about this whole thing of the various stages of the bhumis, the stages from arya up to Buddhahood? An arya on each bhumi, on each level of mind, can manifest in a larger number of universes and can “shake up” (I have no idea what that means) a certain number of universes. First, it’s a thousand, then it’s a hundred thousand, and then it’s ten million or whatever the numbers are. The numbers increase exponentially. What in the world could that mean? Is this a multiverse theory? Does it sound like it?

Participant: Yeah, but it sounds like these universes are not multiple instances of the same sentient beings but of different environments.

Participant: Yeah, but in the mind, anything ripens with anything in every second. In the mind itself – everything is there. Everything. Do you understand what I mean?

Dr. Berzin: Are you saying that in our minds, there is the potential for anything to happen?

Participant: Anything.

Dr. Berzin: That would follow, given beginningless time. However, we would still have to have certain circumstances. I have the potential on my mental continuum to be able to fly because I have the potential to be a bird, but I don’t have the hardware, the type of body, that would allow that type of potential to ripen in this lifetime. It could be something like that. Well, yes, we would have to say that we have an unbelievable number of karmic potentials on our mental continuums. Certainly. 

So, the real question was, why does something ripen now? Is it due just to the external conditions? I think there have to be both external and internal conditions. We saw many of the components that have to be there, such as the causal motivating emotion before we get into doing an action, then the contemporaneous one with which we start, sustain and end the action (and does our anger increase while we’re doing the action, or does it decrease by the end of the action?). All these things have causes, don’t they?

Participant: But motivation is very powerful. Mind can create things, real things, in the phenomenal world, if you really have that concentration.

Dr. Berzin: Well, you’re talking about yogic powers where, through the power of concentration, someone can affect the elements and cause something to appear. That’s there in the texts. That’s explained. Does that mean that with willpower alone, we could cause something negative to happen to someone (which would be like casting a spell on them)? Well, some people can, apparently. 

Participant: I have a question just about the ripening of karma. There are all these stories about Buddha, for example, getting a splinter in his foot because he killed some person five lifetimes ago or about the arhat Mahamoggallana, I think it was, being violently killed because he killed his parents in a previous life. Would Mahayana accept that this happened like that?

Dr. Berzin: Mahayana would say that they weren’t experiencing the ripening of karma. They would say that, out of compassion, they were demonstrating how cause and effect work.

Participant: OK.

Dr. Berzin: Which sounds like a pretty cheap excuse, doesn’t it?

Participant: A little bit.

Dr. Berzin: But that’s the explanation. And it is a possible explanation.

Participant: Regarding the question about needing an internal cause, does there still need to be a disturbing emotion or something like that to act as a trigger?

Dr. Berzin: One of the schools says that Buddha did not have any karma to get angry. However, the Buddha did act as a circumstance for Devadatta to get angry at him. As a result, Devadatta went to a hell rebirth. So, this is what I’m asking: Is there a karmic potential to provide conditions for the ripening of someone else’s karmic potentials? And is there a karmic consequence from doing so? I don’t think Buddha experienced a karmic consequence as a result of having provided a condition for Devadatta to get angry with him, because then it would be that Buddha was a cause for somebody to go to a hell rebirth. That can’t work. So, now we’re left with complete confusion!

Participant: Different levels of interpretation.

Dr. Berzin: Different levels of interpretation. 

Our main question, here, the one we started with, is how responsible are we karmically for what we do, even if we just provide the conditions for somebody else’s karmic potentials to ripen? And what causes us to provide conditions for somebody else’s karmic potentials to ripen? There has to be a cause. It’s not that I “just happened” to be driving my car down the street that day and this person who was not paying any attention “just happened” to walk in front of me. What about a person that’s driving a subway train, and somebody commits suicide by jumping in front of the train – what caused that to happen to the driver? These are interesting questions and not very easy ones. 

So, what one’s left to conclude is not just to say, “Well, it’s so complicated only a Buddha could understand this,” but to understand that there are many, many different levels and degrees of responsibility influencing what and how things ripen as a consequence of the different types of actions that we do. And do we have free will or not? I think that one has to factor into that question an understanding of dependent arising and voidness. And what does having a choice mean? Does having a choice mean that there’s no cause? There has to be some cause. Nevertheless, from our point of view, we experience having choices.

Participant: And there are circumstances.

Dr. Berzin: And there are circumstances for the choices that we make – like what we choose to eat in a restaurant. Do we have a choice? Anyway, let’s take a few minutes to think about all we’ve discussed, and then we’ll end.

[meditation]

OK. One last thought is that, although we need to take responsibility for our actions and for what happens, even when we just provide circumstances for others – there will be consequences – we need to do so without feeling guilty. Guilt is not appropriate in these situations. Guilt makes the “me” into a big, solid thing (“I’m so bad”) and makes a big, solid line around what we did (“It was so terrible”) and around the person we did it to. Remember the voidness of the three circles that are involved – the actor, the act, and the object of the act. These arise dependently on each other, don’t they?

Participant: The word “guilty,” I think, is really misunderstood, and it is really, really bad.

Dr. Berzin: Well, the word “guilt” – it’s your fault, etc. – is part of the whole system of judgment and punishment.

Participant: Punishment is negative.

Dr. Berzin: Punishment is not part of the Buddhist explanation. Nevertheless, we’re responsible; therefore, we have to take responsibility for our actions. If everything were predetermined and there were no choices, we wouldn’t be responsible for what we did. So, to say that everything is determined is certainly not the solution to the puzzle. It’s not the way to figure out what Buddhism is actually saying. But, anyway, these are further things to think about.