Clear Vision Trust

THE FRUITS OF KARMA

A karma consists fundamentally in a choice, though this choice will not necessarily lead to overt action or speech. But if a choice is not acted out what kind of effect could it have? The consequences that arise from karmas are technically known as vipakas (effects) or phalas (fruits). So what kinds of effect do karmas bring about? What is the nature of karmic fruit? It is often said that we 'reap what we sow', as though a karma automatically led to a specific result. But just as a good harvest depends not only on sowing but also on many other factors (such as the weather), so karmas take effect in accordance with the general principle of conditionality.

We have already established that Karma is a principle of moral agency and not a general causal principle. It follows that only those consequences informed by the moral impetus behind an action are results of karma. Many of the consequences resulting from what we do are better explained by other factors. For instance, if I throw a ball from a window it falls to the ground not because I am good, bad, or indifferent; it falls because that is what bodies do. This particular fruit, or consequence, will not be significantly affected by my moral condition; whether I am good, bad, or indifferent the result will almost certainly be the same, because it is governed by the utu-niyama, the physical inorganic order, and not the karma-niyama.

According to Brahmanism, the fruits of karma ripen only from lifetime to lifetime and not within the current life. So in our next life we will reap the fruit of the karmic seeds we sow in this one and, at the same time, sow further karma for our subsequent life. This means we have no hope of changing the pattern of our present life, but must trust that we will experience the 'rewards' of our good karma in the life to come. There is a considerable leap of faith involved in adopting this point of view. Buddhism expanded the range of options as to when karmas could ripen to include four possibilities: (1) Karma that has consequences in this life, (2) Karma that has consequences in the next life, (3) Karma that has consequences in some future life, and (4) Karma that becomes exhausted before taking effect.

The Culakammavibhangga Sutta (Majjhima Nikaya) describes how the relationship between karma and its consequences was understood in early Buddhism. It examines seven different actions and their opposites, and charts the consequences that follow from each in one's next life (see table below). It claims, for instance, that if we kill living beings, then, in our next life, we will be short-lived. It also claims that if we are of an angry disposition we will be reborn ugly. A direct correlation is made between karma and consequence in a 'punishment-to-fit-the-crime' sort of way. It is certainly all very neat. The kinds of consequences attributed to karma here are very diverse, embracing lifespan, physical health, appearance, social importance, economic situation, caste or class, and level of intelligence. Interestingly, apart from intelligence, none of the supposed consequences of one's karma relate to one's future character. To me this suggests a way in which Buddhist thinking about Karma was still deeply influenced by Brahmanical thinking. Not only is the psychological dimension of Karma not fully appreciated, but Karma is seen as the main (if not sole) explanation for the differences between people - why, for instance, some people suffer and others don't. In looking at the five niyamas, we have already seen that this is not always the case.

There are many stories in the early Buddhist tradition that superficially teach a rather literal relationship between karma and vipaka. For instance, the Udana ('Verses of Inspiration') records the story of Suppabuddha, a leper, who stumbles upon the Buddha delivering a discourse while out begging for scraps of food (from Udana). He instantaneously gains transcendental insight, but is killed by a mad cow immediately afterwards. Later, the Buddha is approached by some of his followers who ask why it was that Suppabuddha became a leper. The Buddha's reported answer is that in a previous life Suppabuddha had insulted a saint (arahant) by calling him a leper and spitting in his face. For this evil deed he suffered in hell for many hundreds of thousands of years and, as a residual result, was reborn as a leper.

While the 'poetic justice' suggested here may have a certain emotional, even aesthetic appeal, such a symmetrical understanding of the relationship between a particular karma and its experienced effect oversimplifies the complex and often messy nature of real events. We could see this model of Karma as a 'folk model' that worked in the sense that it discouraged people from acting unskilfully and spurred them to good deeds. Philosophically, though, it seems to ignore the different orders of conditionality. Such rather literal correlations between karmas and their effects may be better understood as illustrating the general truth that unskilful actions will have undesirable consequences and skilful actions will have desirable consequences, rather than being taken as exact descriptions of what actually happens.

Levels of Karmic Consequence

We have already noted that not all the consequences resulting from a morally informed action are vipakas. An action may have all sorts of consequences that have very little to do with the ethical condition of the agent who performed them. More than this, a karma can have a range of possible consequences that may or may not come about depending upon whether other conditions are also present. Following this reasoning, we can identify 'direct' results of karmas and more 'indirect' ones.

The most direct results of a karma are mental. In other words, through performing karmas (which are ultimately intentions), we change our minds and, bit by bit, reform our character. To understand this more fully, we need to return to the concept of samskaras or volitional tendencies. Because there is no fixed soul, no essential person, only a jumble of habits and tendencies, we identify our 'self' with those dominant habits and tendencies. If we have a tendency to become angry, we think of ourselves as an angry person; if we tend to be very quiet, we may think of ourselves as a timid person. In this way, we define ourselves in terms of the particular character traits and habits we experience most strongly. We could even say that what we are is no more than a habit.

Well, not quite. Since Karma is essentially about choice, we always have the option of not going along with our habits, and taking a different turning at the crossroads. The chances are that our karmic momentum will lead us to reinforce our present habits unless we consciously and deliberately work against them.

This is why it can prove very difficult to change. The weight of our previous choices seems to push us in a particular direction and it might take a lot of effort to resist this. But this is the workplace of spiritual life: in recognizing our habitual tendencies, realizing it is possible to resist them, and in making new choices about who we want to be. If we make a new choice, the possibility of a new habit arises and, ultimately, the possibility of a new self. However enmeshed we are in a particular set of habits, however unskilful we have become, there is always the possibility of change. Thus Buddhism expresses a supremely optimistic vision of human nature; it never gives up on anyone, but recognizes that, even in the most evil of characters, there is always the potential for redemption.

Not only does our previous karma have implications for our character, it also has implications for the kind of world we live in, or at least the way we experience that world. For instance, someone who experiences a lot of fear sees the world as dangerous and threatening, whereas for someone who is very confident the world seems mild and compliant. Neither of these perspectives can be fully 'objective', but we tend to believe that our way of experiencing the world is the way the world really is. Fundamentally, we create our own world and don't realize how much our own prejudices, desires, and habits distort our experience of it; we see the world in terms of our selves. Learning to disentangle what is the given in experience and what is our evaluation is a subtle and complex process requiring ever-increasing levels of awareness, honesty, and perceptiveness.

But our actions also have ramifications beyond ourselves. They may have all sorts of consequences for the physical world and for other people too. While these also arise partly in dependence upon the initial intention, their precise outcome is not determined by it. For instance, if Green murders Blue the most direct outcome is likely to be a fear of being caught, and perhaps a sense of isolation from society, even a sense of guilt. After all, Green is now a murderer. Given that our society has laws against murder, a further outcome might be that he is arrested, tried, and convicted. Depending on where he lives, he might even be executed. But this will not necessarily happen, and even if it does it is not simply the result of Green's karma. It may be that the police lack expertise in following up clues, so they never discover the murderer. Perhaps the prosecution makes a mistake in its preparation and Green is acquitted. All sorts of conditions could come into play such that Green does not end up getting caught or convicted, but this is not necessarily because Green has performed good karmas in the past. The world is not as neat and tidy as that. Instead, there is a complex interaction of karmic streams and other non-karmic factors which collectively produce a unique scenario. The karmas of the police have an important bearing on the outcome, as do the karmas of the barristers and the jury. Someone might be falsely acquitted or even falsely convicted, and these eventualities might say nothing about their moral condition.

This process is shown in fig. 3.

We can see that the chain of consequences can stop at a number of points and what keeps the chain intact may have more to do with the actions of others than it does with the primary agent. At the same time, without the initial act no chain would be formed. So in contemplating a particular course of action, the ethically responsible person must not only examine their present moral state but also consider the potential consequences of their conduct. This act of imagination can bring greater moral weight to our deliberations, otherwise we may find that our past actions return to haunt us. This is the theme of Thomas Hardy's tragic novel, The Mayor of Casterbridge. At the beginning of the story, Henchard, a poor journeyman labourer, sells his wife in order to make some money. This enables him to begin a new life and he eventually works his way up to become an important man - the mayor of Casterbridge. Everything seems to be going swimmingly until his wife re- appears and his dark secret is disclosed. This leads ultimately to his downfall.

While it is true that consequences that no one could have foreseen sometimes result from our actions, it is usually the case that a little thought could enable us to predict the likely outcome of our actions. Crucially, we need to take responsibility for our contribution to any state of affairs.

Do We Always Get What We Deserve?

According to the Dhammapada, "Not in the sky, nor in the midst of the sea, nor yet in the clefts of the mountains, nowhere in the world (in fact) is there any place to be found where, having entered, one can abide free from (the consequences of) one's evil deeds." (verse 240)

But it seems that many people commit evil deeds and don't suffer as a result. How can Karma account for this? Another sutta, the Mahakammavibhanga ('Greater Discourse on Karma' from Majjhima Nikaya 136), goes some way towards providing an explanation. Here the Buddha identifies four kinds of person: (1) someone who acts evilly and is reborn in an unfavourable realm (even in hell), (2) someone who acts evilly and is reborn in a favourable realm (even in heaven), (3) someone who acts skilfully and is reborn in a favourable realm (even in heaven), and (4) someone who acts skilfully and is reborn in an unfavourable realm (even in hell).

We need not accept the principle of rebirth to understand the problem being tackled here. It could be rephrased along the following lines: (1) someone who acts evilly and seems to suffer later on, (2) someone who acts evilly who seems to have a good life later on, (3) someone who acts skilfully and who seems to have a good life later on, and (4) someone acts skilfully and who seems to suffer later on.

The question at issue here is how someone could act skilfully and yet suffer as a consequence (even being reborn in hell), and, conversely, how could someone act unskilfully and seem to benefit (even being reborn in heaven)? These outcomes seem to contradict the principle of Karma: the claim that actions give rise to commensurate consequences. Not so, says the Buddha. It would be a mistake to draw such a conclusion before looking further into the matter. The Buddha further points out that the evil-doer who goes to heaven must have acted skilfully in order to do so, but at some time in the future will reap the consequences of their evil conduct. Similarly, the person who acts skilfully but goes to hell must have acted evilly at some time in the past but will later reap the positive consequences of their good conduct.

This sutta is valuable because it demonstrates awareness of the apparent contradiction between what we sometimes see around us - and even experience - and the doctrine of Karma. People who act well sometimes suffer, whereas people who act badly sometimes don't. The relationship between karma and vipaka is not a simple, linear one; we might not be able to trace the precise connection between a given karma and its vipaka, unless the karma is weighty. Our current experience is informed by our past actions, but precisely how each of those actions shapes the present might be indiscernible because the vipaka resulting from each distinct karma will often be quite subtle. It is more like baking a cake: we combine all sorts of ingredients and cook them, but when we taste the finished product we don't experience the ingredients separately. In the same way, our life has a particular flavour determined by the ingredients (past karmas) we have put into it. For the purposes of exposition, we single out a particular action and its consequence, but we don't normally experience life like this. Rather than imagining a one-to-one correspondence between a particular karma and its vipaka, we can think instead of experiencing an overall karmic momentum that has been set in motion by a large cluster of actions.

But the defence of Karma attributed to the Buddha in the Mahakammavibhanga Sutta only fully works if we accept rebirth. Let's say someone acts badly throughout their life but does not seem to suffer as a consequence - they are not burned by a fire from heaven, they don't lose their relatives, they don't lose their wealth, nor are they persecuted in any way (Dhammapada verses 137-40). Without the prospect of rebirth in an undesirable realm (duggati), they seem to have 'got away with it'. There is nothing more repugnant to the conventionally moral person than to see this happen, and it can be quite undermining. Let's say I act morally all my life yet I experience all sorts of suffering, calamity, and difficulty while my evil neighbour seems to live an easy existence. There seems to be something inherently unjust about this. It seems unnatural. In such circumstances, why should I bother being ethical? If I can comfort myself with the prospect that he will roast in hell as a consequence of his conduct and that I will soon be in heaven, I can perhaps be persuaded to put up with the present injustice. But if we don't accept rebirth - and many Westerners will not - does this sort of scenario undermine the rationale for living ethically?

It need not. The way of thinking just described is rather narrow in that it looks for specific rewards for good conduct and punishments for bad. This is to miss the point. It is a cliche that 'virtue is its own reward' but it is nevertheless still true. We should not see our ethical conduct as a contract or an investment, but aim to forget ourselves, at least for a moment, in going beyond our own needs and desires in order to respond to somebody else. This self-forgetting can be a tremendous relief from self-preoccupation. It can be liberating.

Through our morally positive conduct, we can not only benefit other people but also transform ourselves. The moment-by- moment decisions that we make slowly mould our character. If we always act from our best motives we will develop a clear conscience, perhaps one of the greatest boons one could hope for. The sense of guilt, of wrongdoing, that hangs over many people's lives crushes the spirit and can even lead to madness. Just as water corrodes iron, so our evil actions corrode our spirit and eventually destroy it (Dhammapada verse 240). Accordingly, simply because an evildoer is not punished in some tangible way does not mean that person does not suffer as a result of his or her actions.

But there do seem to be some contrary individuals who don't appear to suffer - even psychologically - as a result of their evil conduct. Don't they undermine the notion of Karma? Here I want to introduce an unusual way of seeing what suffering is. It may be true that such people don't consciously experience suffering - they don't feel remorse or guilt for what they have done and seem to lead an enjoyable life. However, someone who is insensitive to their own evil is, to that extent, inhuman. They are cut off from the world of ordinary human beings and from their spiritual potential. They are condemned to an impoverished existence in which they are no longer able to feel, because to feel deeply would also mean recognizing their own evil. This impoverishment is itself a form of suffering.

Let me use an analogy. In recent years, there has been a move within the Christian church to redefine Hell as the absence of God. Transposing this way of thinking, we could say that at least one form of suffering is being cut off from feeling deeply for other human beings and from one's spiritual possibilities. In other words, limitation is itself a form of suffering even though it may not be consciously experienced as such.

We may be able to accept that others do not always reward virtue, we may even be able to accept that evil is not always punished, but what about when virtue seems to get punished? This would seem the last straw for the notion of Karma. It is a perverse fact that many ethical people, even saints, suffer terribly at the hands of others. Yet, if Karma is true, this should not be so. Of course, we can always speculate that they are only suffering as a consequence of their evil conduct in a previous life, but this presupposes a belief in rebirth which for many people is counter-intuitive. So is it possible to hold to a belief in Karma and accept the persecution of saints?

I think it is. A fact that the basic account of Karma usually leaves out is that we live in a world of other people who themselves make choices, act out habits, and follow through their karmic momentum in various ways. They impinge on our lives. We do not live in a world where we simply act and then experience the consequences of that action. Instead, our world is a swirling dance of karmic streams interacting with each other; other people influence our lives and we influence theirs. Since we do not live in a cocoon protected from the effects of others' behaviour, unwarranted suffering becomes possible. The fact that we suffer at the hands of an evil person need not necessarily mean that we acted evilly in a previous life - or even in this one - it is just one of the hazards of living in a world in which there are evil people. It may even be that an evil person wants to hurt us precisely because of our moral integrity. This may be hard to accept. We generally need some explanation, even justification, for why we are suffering, and the possibility that it is somewhat arbitrary is cold comfort. But there are some events that seem hard to explain in any other way, such as natural disasters or the atrocities of psychopathic killers.

Having said this, we usually contribute to the situation so we need to take responsibility for this. For instance, the journalist Brian Keenan was kidnapped in Lebanon and held hostage for several years in appalling conditions (Brian Keenan, 'An Evil Cradling', Vintage, 1993). He did not necessarily 'deserve' that experience of suffering, it need not have been a punishment for his previous evil conduct, but he did choose to be in Lebanon at a time when he knew that Westerners were regularly kidnapped. So Keenan played a role, he was one of the conditions that gave rise to his capture, but his karma did not make it happen. The unscrupulous terrorists who kidnapped him played their part too.

The way in which our karmic stream is intertwined with others is brilliantly illustrated in J.B. Priestley's play An Inspector Calls (J.B. Priestley, An Inspector Calls and Other Plays, Penguin, 2001). An Inspector Goole turns up unexpectedly at a family dinner party and announces that a young pregnant woman, Eva Smith, has just died in hospital after drinking disinfectant. Rather drunk and dismissive, the family can't see what all this has to do with them. By a sequence of moves, Goole shows how each member of the family has played his or her part in leading Eva to the point of suicide. Birling, the father, her one-time employer, sacked her for asking for a pay rise. Sheila, his daughter, then had Eva dismissed from her post at a draper's for apparently laughing at a dress that Sheila had tried on. Gerald, Sheila's fiance, then took Eva as his mistress and eventually deserted her. Then Birling's son, Eric, after throwing himself at Eva one night while drunk, got her pregnant and then abandoned her. Finally, Birling's wife Sybil refused to offer help when Eva asked her charitable organization for assistance.

The whole family is implicated in the tragedy. One of the questions the play invites is: who is responsible? The family members are divided between those who see the implications of their own conduct and experience a moral awakening (Sheila, Eric, and initially Gerald) and those who refuse to accept any moral responsibility (Birling, his wife, and later Gerald). It's clear that the young woman chose to take her own life, yet it is also clear that the conduct of the Birling family was a significant factor in leading her to this point. Sheila and Eric see deeply into the situation and become morally transformed by their awareness. They are able to understand how their conduct formed important links in a chain that resulted in a terrible tragedy. The others seek to evade any responsibility. Goole concludes his interrogation in the following way:

"But just remember this. One Eva Smith has gone - but there are millions and millions and millions of Eva Smiths and John Smiths still left with us, with their lives, their hopes and fears, their suffering, and chance of happiness, all intertwined with our lives, with what we think and say and do. We don't live alone. We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other."

After Goole leaves, doubts are raised as to whether he was a real police inspector. Birling phones the police and discovers there is no such person. Along with Mrs Birling and Gerald, Mr Birling concludes that the whole thing was a hoax: there was no suicide, and the hospital confirms this. They begin to treat the whole affair as a magnificent joke. But Sheila can't.

"But you're forgetting one thing I still can't forget. Everything we said had happened really had happened. If it didn't end tragically, then that's lucky for us. But it might have done."

The play ends with Mr Birling receiving a telephone call from the police. He is told that a young woman has died on her way to hospital after swallowing disinfectant...

Even if the outcome had not really been suicide, the fact remains that each member of the family had acted badly and the 'fictional' suicide was a means by which they could begin to take moral responsibility for their actions. This is a thought experiment that we could make use of when considering our own ethical challenges. By forecasting the potential consequences of whatever we propose to do, we will be better able to make the most creative decision. If we act badly, this does not necessarily mean we are responsible for everything that results, but we should at least be aware that we contributed a necessary link in a chain of events that could lead to a tragedy like the one in Priestley's play. This is rather sobering.