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  • 2012-05/08 Group B#4 - Question on RebirthSayadaw U Tejaniya

Sayadaw U Tejaniya responds to a question about karma and rebirth during a reporting session at the IMS Dhamma Everywhere Retreat (full audio here).

This is the first time I heard him speak directly to this issue and I found his reply very confirming. Though he doesn’t explicitly speak to the literal interpretation and leaves open a range of interpretations on this issue, I asked him to clarify my own understanding later and questioned him if what was really important in the concept of rebirth was the moment to moment arising and passing away as opposed to what happens when this body dies, and he said yes.

The transcription is my own, I have not included every word and I ask that you forgive me for any discrepancy in the audio recording. The run time of the audio clip is just under 7 minutes, translation and all.

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Translation: MaThet (Moushumi) Ghosh

The questioner (Q) is a yogi/retreatant and the respondent (A) is Sayadaw U Tejaniya as translated by MaThet. Steve Armstrong, an American teacher in the insight meditation tradition, also a student of SUT, comments.

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Q: How does bad karma follow you, how does it know to attach to you? How does your bad karma in this life follow you in the next life if there is no self to identify to?

A: I’ll try to explain. You know that because of wrong view, there is nama-rupa. Yes? We know that. And this nama-rupa continues because of the wrong view. So wrong view is the cause for the nama-rupa to continue existing, yes? So, now, each nama-rupa arises to pass away. So the nama-rupa is gone. But because delusion is still present, the next nama-rupa arises. But where does this next nama-rupa get its qualities from? It gets it from the previous one which disappeared. 

[Translator: So there’s an example of a lighted candle, where the fire is given to the next candle. Where you know this candle is not that candle, but the qualities are passed on so there’s a chain of causation. So although the father nama-rupa lives and dies and then the son comes up, the son takes qualities from that father and then passes those qualities on to his son when he dies.]

Q: So it takes a “life of its own” and just follows you?

A: It has its feeling itself, so long as delusion (avija) is present. So that’s why an arhant no longer has that avija, and there is no longer cause and effect, nobody there, nobody who goes to nibbana. 

[Translator: I mean he’s explained about the avija in the other sessions, how dependent origination doesn’t happen one by one, it’s simultaneous. So you’re given a whole chain from avija to nama-rupa. And the moment avija is there, there’s already nama-rupa. It’s a cause and effect chain. It’s sort of like when the sun rises there’s light. It’s simultaneous. You cannot take one away without the other.]

Q: I thought it was a chain of cause and effect. It’s simultaneous?

S.A. It’s a chain of cause and effect but not a time change.

[Translator: All together.]

A: So there are two wrong views associated with this chain of cause and effect, this nama-rupa. 1) Thinking that the form—the conceptual form it takes in a lifetime, a person who is carrying this nama-rupa—carries on in another form after this lifetime and is a completely different person. That’s a kind of wrong view, that everything ends in this life. That this nama-rupa ends and it has nothing to do with the next. That’s one kind of wrong view. 2) The other wrong view is to think that the first nama-rupa is the last nama-rupa, that this person in this lifetime continues in different names for the rest of his lifetimes until he’s enlightened. It’s Joe who changed names to Nancy and so on … that’s wrong view … that there’s a soul so to speak.

Q: But the consciousness has a kind of ID marker that the karma can find and follow?

A: So, it’s like this: although this nama-rupa is not the next nama-rupa, the next nama-rupa still bears the effects of the last nama-rupa. So if this nama-rupa has a lot of kusala, then the next nama-rupa will inherit it, and depending on what this nama-rupa does with it, it will pass it on to the next one. So, you know, all this can change. Sometimes it’s going up, sometimes going down. Because each one has a minuscule part to play in the whole chain.  

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Quick glossary

Arhant: One who has attained liberation from suffering and the cycle of birth and death.

Kusala: wholesome, skillful, good, meritorious. 

Nama-rupa: (lit. ‘name and form’). Mind-and-Body, mentality and corporeality.

Nibbana (Skt: nirvana): liberation, the ending of suffering.

Paticca samuppada: dependent origination, dependent arising and so on is a key doctrine in early Buddhist thought and can be understood most simply as the process that leads from ignorance to rebirth.
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See also

Right attitude or right view (the opposite of wrong view) in Sayadaw U Tejaniya’s teachings - available in 11 languages on his site, free for downloading as “23 Points”

Posts on this Tumblr tagged with dependent origination

A progressive view on rebirth with link to Buddhadasa Bhikkhu essay on anatta and rebirth

Simply abide with the present moment

When we speak of practising with the paccuppanna dhamma it means that whatever phenomenon is immediately arising into the mind, you must investigate and deal with it at once. Your awareness must be right there. Because paccuppanna dhamma refers to the experience of the present moment - it encompasses both cause and effect. The present moment is firmly rooted within the process of cause and effect; the way you are in the present reflects the causes that lay in the past - your present experience is the result. Every single experience you’ve had right up until the present has arisen out of past causes. For instance, you could say that walking out from your meditation hut was a cause, and that you sitting down here is the result. This is the truth of the way things are, there is a constant succession of causes and effects. So what you did in the past was the cause, the present experience is the result. Similarly, present actions are the cause for what you will experience in the future. Sitting here right now, you are already initiating causes! Past causes are coming to fruition in the present, and these results are actually forming causes that will produce results in the future.

What the Buddha saw was that you must abandon both the past and the future. When we say abandon it doesn’t mean you literally get rid of them. Abandoning means the focus of your mindfulness and insight is right here at this one point - the present moment. The past and the future link together right here. The present is both the result of the past and the cause of what lies ahead in the future. So you must completely abandon both cause and result, and simply abide with the present moment. We say abandon them, but these are just words used to describe the way of training the mind. Even though you let go of your attachment and abandon the past and future, the natural process of cause and effect remains in place. In fact, you could call this the halfway point; it’s already part of the process of cause and result. The Buddha taught to watch the present moment where you will see a continuous process of arising and passing away, followed by more arising and passing away.

Ajahn Chah, Suffering on the Road

Source: ajahnchah.org

[K]arma is not something the self has but what the sense of self is. Just as the food that I eat is digested and becomes part of my physical body, so the intentional actions that I perform, as they become habituated, end up forming my character. That is why the Buddha emphasized intention so much – that was his revolutionary new perspective on karma, in place of old Brahminical emphasis on ritual and sacrifice….Habitual ways of thinking and acting not only construct the sense of self, they also transform the world that we live in, in effect. We relate to the world in certain ways and the rest of the world tends to respond to us according to how we relate to it. Our karma isn’t something external or internal but the medium with which we approach the world.
David Loy, Interview « Sweeping Zen, April 5, 2011

Source: sweepingzen.com

A practical view on karma, rebirth and nirvana from Ajahn Chah

The Buddha comprehensively investigated conditioned phenomena and so was able to let it all go. The five khandhas were let go of, and the knowing carried on merely as an impartial observer of the process. If he experienced something positive, he didn’t become positive along with it. He simply observed and remained aware. If he experienced something negative, he didn’t become negative. And why was that? Because his mind had been cut free from such causes and conditions. He’d penetrated the Truth. The conditions leading to rebirth no longer existed.

This is the knowing that is certain and reliable. This is a mind that is truly at peace. This is what is not born, doesn’t age, doesn’t get sick, and doesn’t die. This is neither cause nor effect, nor dependent on cause and effect. It is independent of the process of causal conditioning. The causes then cease with no conditioning remaining. This mind is above and beyond birth and death, above and beyond happiness and sorrow, above and beyond both good and evil. What can you say? It is beyond the limitations of language to describe it. All supporting conditions have ceased and any attempt to describe it will merely lead to attachment. The words used then become the theory of the mind.

From the Dhamma talk “Unshakeable Peace”, thanks to Steve Goodheart

For reference

Karma = cause and effect

Rebirth = perpetual birth of the ‘I’, through clinging

Nirvana = the unborn, the deathless

Source: ajahnchah.org

Unskillfulness and Sin | The Existential Buddhist

We are what we think. If we are to live skillfully we must first establish some degree of control over our unruly minds. This is where mindfulness comes in. If we’re heedless of thoughts we’re driven by them like leaves in the wind. If we’re mindful of thoughts, we can exercise discerning judgment about them. We can discern whether or not a thought is skillful and then decide whether or not to rehearse, practice, nurture, and reinforce it.

Thinking about actions as being unskillful rather than sinful allows us to take responsibility for behavior without the added burden of surplus guilt. We avoid unskillful behavior because we want ourselves and others to be happy, not because we’re afraid of Hellfire or God’s wrath. The only source of retribution we really need worry about is the one we ought to: Cause-and-Effect. This is true whether one believes in the Buddhist concept of karma, or the modern scientific understanding of cause and effect.

- Seth Segall, The Existentialist Buddhist | Dharma without Dogma

Source: existentialbuddhist.com