WSW 58: Appropriate Actions Despite Emptiness of Cause and Effect

We are up to verse 107 in the new translation; in the old translation – the more poetical one, which is loose, not literal – it’s in the middle of verse 107. We’ll read the old one first:

Our foe: our insistence on ego-identities truly our own, which we wish were secure and our butcher: the selfish concern for ourselves – like all things these appear to be truly existent, though they never have been truly existent at all.

When we look at the more literal translation, it reads: 

This butcher, a “true self,” the enemy, is like that. Seeming like it exists and exists, it never has existed at all. Seeming like it is true and true, it’s never been experienced as true anywhere. Seeming like it appears and appears, it’s beyond being an object that can be added or taken away.

This is referring to this so-called true self, which is actually false – it doesn’t exist at all, it’s the enemy. It’s “like that:” it seems to exist and exist. This is what I was just referring to: it feels as though it’s there – there’s a solid “me” that can be known all by itself, it can stand all by itself, that is establishing itself from its own side, but it never existed at all. “Seeming like it is true and true” – it seems to be truly there – “it’s never been experienced as true anywhere. Seeming like it appears and appears” – so the feeling appears and appears; it’s beyond being an object that can be added or taken away. In other words, because it doesn’t exist at all, how can you add it to something or take it away from something? It was never there to start with, this type of false “me.” When we work with this in our actual daily life, it’s always extremely important to not go to either extreme – to negate a conventional “me” completely. Because if you don’t have a conventional “me,” then you don’t do anything: you don’t care about taking care of yourself, you don’t care about doing well in school, for instance, or university, or doing well in your job, or taking care of your family or taking care of yourself or anything. This is very dangerous. Also, it leads to not caring at all about your actions, your behavior – whether you act in a constructive way or destructive way. We certainly don’t want to refute the conventional “me.” That would be what’s called over-refuting – refuting too much, getting rid of too much. But, on the other hand, you don’t want to make that conventional “me” into something that is truly and solidly there, all by itself. This is a very delicate issue that one has to learn to work with. 

The image that is always used is that of being like an illusion: it’s sort of there, it seems to exist, it seems to appear, but it’s not like that. We need to constantly remember that it’s not like that, particularly when strong emotion comes up. That’s when the false “me” comes up the most strongly. We become upset with somebody: “You did that to me,” “You don’t like me;” or “You like me so much,” “You love me so much” – “me, me, me.” Or we feel proud and arrogant, or we feel very insecure: “I’m going to make a fool out of myself, people are going to laugh at me;” “I’m not going to be able to handle a situation” – that’s the false “me” that we are worried about. We’re making a big thing out of “me” as opposed to just doing things, just living our life doing whatever we have to do, with a great deal of respect of course for cause and effect of what we’re doing, but not being so self-conscious, always thinking about “me, me, me.” When that strong feeling of a “me” comes up, we need to recognize if for what it is and not play into it – not believe in it, not believe that it actually exists that way. 

The text goes on: 

Whatever sharp weapons of karma that that (butcher) possesses, although they, too, lack self-establishing natures, like this (enemy) does, they dawn like the reflection of the moon in a full cup of water. These karmic causes and effects are assorted displays that are false, yet, while being mere appearances, hey, I tell you, “We must accept and reject (the appropriate actions).”

It seems as though we are somewhere in 108 and 109 in the other translation, the poetical one, so I’ll read both those verses: 

Although they appear to be concrete and real, they have never been real, anytime, anywhere. They’re not things we should burden with ultimate value, nor should we deny them their relative truth. As our grasping for egos and love for ourselves lack substantial foundations with true independence, how can they yield acts that exist by themselves? And then how can this cruel vicious circle of suffering, the fruit of these actions, be real from its core?

Although all things thus lack inherent existence, yet just as the face of the moon can be seen in a cup of clear water reflecting its image, the various aspects of cause and effect appear in this relative world as reflections. So, please, in this world of appearances only, let’s always be sure what we do is of virtue and shun all those acts that would cause us great pain.

This is referring to what I said just before, which is that when we talk about ourselves, this “me,” this false “me,” doesn’t exist the way that it appears – but nevertheless there is the conventional “me” and we must be very careful not to go to the nihilistic extreme of denying karma as well. It says, “Whatever sharp weapons of karma that that (butcher) possesses.” We build up karma – both positive and negative karma – from actions based on believing in this solid “me.” In other words, thinking in terms of “me,” a solid “me,” we could act with great desire and greed and attachment: “I have to get this and I don’t want to ever let go” and all of that with objects and people, or we could act with anger or we could act with naivety and do stupid, cruel things, just not knowing etc., so we could act destructively. But we could also act constructively based on the solid “me:” “I am going to help you so that you’ll thank me, you’ll like me, you’ll be with me” – still it’s based on a solid “me.”

Both of these things will ripen differently. Destructive actions will lead to unhappiness and suffering; in whatever situation that might arise, we’ll feel unhappy and not very nice things will happen to us. But as a result of the constructive behavior, we will experience what is known a worldly happiness – our usual, ordinary happiness – which never satisfies. It’s never enough, it never lasts, and we always want more and more and more. It involves the suffering of change – although temporarily it’s a little bit of happiness. We want to overcome both of those and for that we need to recognize what it says in the text. “Whatever sharp weapons of karma that that (butcher) possesses, although they, too, lack self-establishing natures, like this (enemy) does” – so these actions and the karmic results of our karmic actions and so on are not existing all by themselves as some solid thing that we feel guilty about or we’re afraid of what’s going to happen, as a solid reward for what we’ve done or punishment we’ve done. But although they “lack self-establishing natures, like this (enemy) does” – like the self does – still “they dawn like the reflection of the moon in a full cup of water.” This means that they are like an illusion: they appear to be solid and real, “like the reflection of the moon in a full cup of water” – but that’s not the moon. 

Similarly, that solid appearance of a negative karmic debt or a positive karmic aftermath or all this sort of things that happen through the force of karma – as it says in the text, “These karmic causes and effects are assorted displays that are false.” It’s like a display – like fireworks or something like that. It’s just sort of displaying like this or that happening, but they are false: they appear to be solid, but they aren’t. “Yet, while being mere appearances,” Dharmarakshita says, “hey, I tell you, ‘We must accept and reject (the appropriate actions)’” – so take them seriously. They are happening, they will affect you, they will affect your experience and therefore, although it’s not something solid, nevertheless it conventionally exists. That means that there are certain actions that we accept, like acting constructively – and we try to do that not based so strongly on selfishness: “I want this” or “I want that in return,” etc. – and we reject destructive behavior. This is very important.

The idea, I think, is straightforward; to be able to actually digest that and incorporate it in your life is much more difficult – especially when various things happen to you, like our friend just having a car accident of a car running over her foot as she was trying to cross the street. Well, this is karmic cause and effect. You can think in terms of, “Poor me, this horrible thing has happened to me,” and feel really depressed and awful; or you look at it as, “Okay, this is a ripening of various karmic causes of past life, having acted destructively toward others in addition all the actions of the person that ran me over and the people who built the road and the people who built the car and the traffic lights.” A million causes and conditions have all gone into this and so you deconstruct it. It’s not something so solid. That way, it’s something which is easier to accept, deal with and go on, without feeling bad about yourself: “Oh, I was such a terrible that this happened to me” or “How unfair it is that this happened to me” or “Poor me, everything terrible happens to me.”

It allows you not to get so depressed when things go badly and not to get so excited when things go well, but to be able to just sail through life and deal with it in a way that frees your emotions to be able to be kind to other people. It’s not that we are negating all emotions and then you’re like a robot; what you want to do it free that emotional energy that would go into feeling sorry for yourself or being angry about it or depressed about it – or blissed out, when things are going so well – so that you could actually direct positive emotions towards others. That’s the whole point. We have to realize, particularly in a Mahayana context, that when our emotions and our energy are tied up in feeling sorry for ourselves or being so pleased with ourselves, or angry or greedy or jealous or anything like that, it’s very hard to really be of benefit to anybody: to be kind, to be thoughtful, to be generous and so on. This is what we want to be able to do. 

Then, these verses are just giving more and more examples so I think we can go through them one by one. The next one, 109; in the poetical one, it is 110:

When our bodies are charred in a horrible nightmare by the world-ending flames of a stellar explosion, although this ordeal is not actually happening, we nevertheless feel great terror and scream. In similar fashion, unfortunate rebirths in hells or as ghosts are not actually real and yet we can fully experience their pain. Thus, fearing such suffering as burning alive, we must cease all these actions that yield this result.

The literal translation: 

When, in the dream world, there blazes an eon-ending fire, though it lacks a self-establishing nature, yet we’re still terrified. Likewise, though what occurs in the joyless hell realms and the like lack self-establishing natures, yet because of fear of being boiled, burned and so forth, we need to abandon (their karmic cause).

This is giving another example. I was using the example of the car accident – a car running over your foot, like a crushing hell – but here it’s using first the example of dreams. In the dream world, there could be eon-ending fire. According to the Buddhist description of the universe, there are many ways in which the universe will come to an end – it goes through cycles; but one way will be with a giant explosion and fire. Although we may experience that in a dream, “it lacks a self-establishing nature” – it’s not something which is solid – nevertheless we’re terrified, so you’re frightened by it. So, it actually does have some sort of effect, and you need to take that into consideration within the dream and you react accordingly. “Likewise, what occurs in the joyless hell realms and the like lack self-establishing natures.” (They’re not using the example of the hells as being of the same category of existence as dreams; from a Buddhist point of view, these other rebirth states are just as real as this rebirth, as human life.) The hells also lack a self-establishing nature – a nature that establishes its existence all by itself, from its own side – yet because we are afraid “of being boiled, burned and so forth” in these types of hells, “we need to abandon (their karmic cause).” You want to avoid acting destructively, which is going to be the cause for these horrible experiences. 

We can work with this on the level of the hell realms; we can work with this on the level of daily life as well. If we want to avoid some horrible accident, for example, we drive more carefully, just as a simple example; if you want to avoid all the pain of lung cancer, don’t smoke or stop smoking. However, the cancer and the smoke and the fast driving and the accident and all these things don’t exist as something solid all by itself; all of them have arisen from millions of different causes, all acting together. There’s a whole syndrome of experience and we give the word “cancer” to, on the basis of so many different people’s experience and different things in people’s cells and so on. Then you give word “cancer” to cover all of it. So, what is cancer? It’s what that word refers to, but actually people just experience every moment of their life in every moment of a sickness. Although it appears to be something which is very solid, it’s not like that; nevertheless, you take it seriously: we don’t want to experience this and therefore, if we are a smoker, we would stop smoking. In the case of lung cancer, it’s not so definite – you could get lung cancer from secondary smoke and other things – but I’m just using this as a general example. The example in the text is referring to the experience in the hell realms.

This is the main emphasis here in all these verses that are here and that will follow: that the understanding of voidness doesn’t negate or refute our understanding and respect for karmic cause and effect. In fact, as it explained in so many other texts, the only reason why cause and effect can work is because of voidness: because causes don’t exist encapsulated in plastic over here and the effect in plastic over there, totally unrelated to each other, just establishing themselves all by their own power. They are dependent on each other; they arise dependently on each other and on all sorts of circumstances and situations and so on. Because they are devoid of that solid plastic coat, then cause and effect works. 

What we really need to examine is, how do we regard our actions, which are causal actions? Do we see them as isolated, existing by themselves, or do we think in terms of the consequences of them? Here of course we’re talking about the karmic consequences of them, later in this life and in future lives, but we can think of this even on the level of what is known as man-made results, which would be the automatic things that come. Let’s say that we say something insensitive to somebody, or we come late, or we ignore them – do we think of that just in terms of, “Here’s the action and I don’t even think of the effect that it will have on the other person?” I think many of us don’t really think of how the other person might feel in terms of what we’re doing or what we’re saying. You just say it, you just do it, thinking only of “me” and thinking only of what I’m doing. “I want to say this, this is in my head, I have to say it” – that’s what we’re talking about here. That’s what we’re talking about. We experience somebody leaving us, ending a relationship – that is the result of causes; and then we just think in terms of that, solidly by itself: “Oh poor me, this has happened and this is so terrible,” etc. – as if there were no causes for it. We think that it establishes itself, all by itself – there it is. But that obviously is not the case either, is it? We need to take cause and effect seriously. Although causes and effects – just like the “me” – seem to exist all by themselves, by their own power, they don’t; they are like an illusion in the sense that they appear solid – like this example of a dream – but they don’t exist in that way. But nevertheless, we respond to them. 

The next verse, 110; 111 in the poetical one: 

When our minds are delirious, burning with fever, although there’s no darkness, we feel we are plummeting further and further into a black pit with the walls pressing closer the deeper we fall. In similar fashion, although our dark ignorance lacks self-existence, we nevertheless must by all means break out of its strangling constriction by putting the three kinds of wisdom to use.

In the more literal version:

When we’re delirious with a fever, even though there’s no darkness, (we feel like) we’re passing into a deep, long cavern and suffocating. Likewise, although unawareness and so on lack self-establishing natures, we must clear away their delirium with the three types of discriminating awareness.

This is just another example, with the same idea behind it. When we are delirious with a fever, we hallucinate and one of these hallucinations would be that we’re falling into a deep, dark, long cavern, but that’s not actually the case, that’s not real. It feels as though we’re suffocating but it’s not actually real. “Likewise, although unawareness and so on lack self-establishing natures” – this is what’s usually translated as ignorance. I’m unaware of how I exist, unaware of cause and effect and so on – that itself isn’t some solidly existing thing: “I’m so stupid, I’m so dumb” – yet we have to clear away the darkness of it. It’s like that example that it feels as though there’s a darkness there but it’s not solidly existent. When we have a fever, we’re falling into a dark pit; likewise, that darkness that our unawareness or ignorance produces seems as though it’s solid and real – it’s not – nevertheless, we need to clear it away. We clear it away with the three types of discriminating awareness: that’s the discriminating awareness that arises from listening to the teachings, here specifically on voidness; thinking about them; and meditating on them, in order to integrate them and make them part of our daily lives. 

Then, the next two verses go together, 111 and 112. We can look at it in the poetical version, 112 and 113: 

When musicians are playing a beautiful melody, should we examine the sound they are making we would see that it does not exist by itself. But when we’re not making our formal analysis, still there’s a beautiful tune to be heard, which is merely a label on notes and on players, that’s why lovely music can lighten sad hearts.

Why don’t we just do this one verse, because the next verse starts with “similarly.” So, 111: 

When musicians are playing a beautiful song and we analyze, there’s no self-establishing nature of the sound. Yet when we don’t analyze, a melodious sound, which is an accumulation, has been produced and then has relieved the torment in people’s minds.

This is using the analogy of music. We have musicians, they’re playing a beautiful song, with instruments and so on and the result of that beautiful music. You analyze the sound of the music, and the music is not just there by itself, is it? It comes from so many different kinds of causes. The musicians and the instruments and the action of playing and so on – so if we examine the sound of the music, which seems to be something solid, existing all by itself, then you find that it doesn’t exist. You can’t find a solidly existing piece of music that’s just there by itself. Yet when you’re not analyzing it – in other words, when you’re not scrutinizing every single note (because actually only one note plays at a time and so on) – and you stand back, there is a melodious sound, this very beautiful music. 

What is that music? What type of phenomenon is it? It’s an accumulation built up by a network of many causes working together: the musicians and the instruments and the action of playing and the air which carried the sound and the person who wrote the music – all of these types of things are producing the music. It’s an accumulation: it has risen dependently on the basis of causes and effects. Although only one note plays at a time – so we only hear one note at a time and the whole thing doesn’t exist all at once – we label it a “song;” it’s what the word “song” refers to. It relieves “the torment in people’s mind:” it has an effect on people. That’s the analogy – of music or a song.

The poetical version, 113: 

When we closely examine effects and their causes, we see that they both lack inherent existence: they can’t stand alone, either whole or apart, yet there seem to exist independently rising and falling events, which, in fact, are conditioned by various forces, components and parts. It is this very level on which we experience birth and our death and whatever life brings. So, please, in this world of appearances only, let’s always be sure what we do is of virtue and shun all those acts that would cause us great pain.

112 in the literal translation: Similarly, 

When we thoroughly analyze karmic cause and effect, although they lack self-establishing natures as being the same or as being different, yet, seemingly appearing and appearing, phenomena are made to arise and perish. And seemingly existing and existing, we experience various (things) arising and perishing. Yet, while being mere appearances, hey, I tell you, “We must accept and reject (the appropriate actions).”

Similarly to the music, we have the same thing in terms of karmic cause and effect: There are all the causes – like the musicians and the instruments and so on – so there’s the “me” that does an act and what we do it with and the action itself, like playing music; and then the effect would be the song, the music. So,

When we thoroughly analyze karmic cause and effect, although they lack self-establishing natures as being the same or as being different,

It’s not that because it’s the same as the effect. It’s not that the effect is existing inherently in the cause – it’s unmanifest and then it just sort of appears – like for instance, the music or the song sitting inside the violin and then it just pops out; it was sitting there all along and we’ve just made it manifest. It’s not that the cause and effect are the same. It’s not they are totally different, totally unrelated things, either, because obviously the song was produced by the singer and the voice and all of that, so similarly the karmic effect was produced by all the causes. The effect isn’t the same as the cause and they don’t exist differently either. Yet, although they’re neither the same nor different, they appear and things arise and they perish. Our various experiences arise, we do things, we experience the results; it arises, it passes, it goes on and on and it seems to exist and exist. We experience things arising the perishing but nevertheless, they’re just appearances: they appear to be solidly existent, truly existent, as things all onto themselves, but they don’t exist that way. Nevertheless, they do produce effects, and we experience them in terms of the conventional “me,” and therefore we have to follow with respect the laws of karma. We have to understand that there are certain actions that are positive to do and we accept them in our behavior, like restraining from hurting others and trying to help others and so on; and there are certain things that we need to reject, like hurting others, being selfish, being cruel, killing, lying, stealing, etc. All of these verses basically are referring to the same point, just from different points of view, with different examples, different analogies. 

I think that if we translate these teachings here about truly established existence from its own nature into an emotional feeling, it’s a feeling of heaviness. You make this into a real heavy thing that’s happened: “Oh, this relationship has gotten so heavy” or “This incident with my friend, it’s so heavy, what’s happened.” That I think is a good indication of what needs to be deconstructed. It appears to be heavy: it’s only appearing to be heavy – that’s the appearance – but it’s not really heavy because it’s arisen from a million different causes and it changes moment to moment. On the basis of all of that, we give it a name and it’s what the name refers to, like “accident” or “bronchitis attack” or whatever we want to call it. It’s a way of referring to it and it actually did happen, but it’s not this heavy thing that it appears to be.

Don’t make a big deal out of anything that’s happening: any mood that’s happening, any pain that’s happening, any incident that’s happening. In our minds, what we do is we take a photograph of the situation and we freeze it and then get stuck there; we make it into a big thing. That’s what we have to stop and realize, “Okay, it’s just a moment, it arose from this and that and go on.” If it’s a heavy mood that is not the type of mood that we would like to get into, or like to be in, just change it. You do that in the sense of saying, “So what? I don’t feel like this, but” – here’s where you bring in your motivation – “it’s going to be helpful to a lot of people” – I’m thinking in terms of my own work – “it’s going to be helpful to a lot of people, I don’t have time later to do this, I have other things I want to do,” and just do it. Also, I have a little bit of relaxation at the end of the day so it’s not as though I push myself forever. I am a Star Trek fanatic and I watch a little bit of that at the end of the day to relax, wind down. It’s not something that is destructive; it would be in the category of “neutral phenomena.” That’s part of the teachings on joyful perseverance: don’t push yourself to the point where you get overly stressed and then burned out. Know when to relax and put that as part of your routine. 

That brings us to the end of the class. We will continue with this next time. We don’t have terrible many verses left, so we’ll be finishing this fairly soon. We end with a dedication. We think whatever understanding we’ve gained, let it go deeper and deeper and act as a cause for reaching enlightenment for the benefit of all.