This is part two of three of my series on “Learning the Self,” one of my Ten Fields of Zen. In the first episode I discussed why we “study the self” in Zen, and what “self” we’re talking about if – according to the teachings – the self is empty of any inherent nature! Now I’m moving on what is meant by “studying” or “learning” the self. This part of our practice has two essential aspects. Karma Work is taking care of your Phenomenal Self – becoming intimately familiar with your own body and mind and learning to live in accord with the Dharma. Realization of your True Nature involves seeking out, questioning, and seeing through your belief in an inherent self-nature, thereby awakening to your True Nature.
Read/Listen to Part 1 or Part 3
Quicklinks to Article Content:
The Two Aspects of Learning the Self: Karma Work and Realizing Your True Self-Nature
Karma Work: Taking Care of This Precious Life
Taking Responsibility for Your Karma
The Two Aspects of Learning the Self: Karma Work and Realizing Your True Self-Nature
Now that you have some sense of what Zen is talking about when it refers to “self,” what’s involved with Learning the Self? This part of our practice has two essential aspects. Karma Work is taking care of your Phenomenal Self – becoming intimately familiar with your own body and mind and learning to live in accord with the Dharma. Realization of your True Nature involves seeking out, questioning, and seeing through your belief in an inherent self-nature, thereby awakening to your True Nature.
These two aspects – Karma Work and Realization – are intimately related and support each other, and both are indispensable. If you neglect taking care of your everyday life and trying to change your behavior for the better (Karma Work), Samadhi and Realization will either elude you because your life is a mess, or any experience you have of the nondual aspect of Reality will remain shallow and disconnected from your embodied existence. On the other hand, if you neglect cultivating a deeper sense of, and intimacy with, your True Nature (Realization), your work to become a better person can get bogged down or discouraging – because, frankly, it never ends. Realization reminds you of the sense in which your life is already complete and precious just as it is.
Sometimes people think (or hope) Zen or Buddhism is all about Realization. I don’t know whether you’ve ever had any of the following thoughts, but many of us have:
“Maybe, no matter the state of my life, no matter how much unresolved stuff I have from the past or how much conflict is happening in my life now, I can just meditate, access deep peace, and make it all go away.”
“Maybe, through insight or practice, I’ll reach some mind state or attitude where nothing bothers me anymore.”
“Maybe, if I meditate hard enough, I’ll end up with a permanent sense that everything is precious, luminous, and empty, and I’ll no longer be inspired to do anything selfish. Surely awakening will rid me of my delusions and bad habits – so there’s no need to struggle to change them in the meantime! After all, the process of wrestling with Karma is so messy and slow… I’d rather just meditate and think about profound teachings.”
Unfortunately – or fortunately, depending on how you look at it – such hopes to avoid Karma Work by focusing primarily on spiritual Realization are false, for at least three reasons.
First, applying spiritual teachings or practices in order to alleviate your immediate discomfort, but not taking the practice any further, is called spiritual bypassing. Spiritual bypassing is like taking a pain reliever and ignoring the underlying condition that’s causing the pain to begin with. Fortunately, there are plenty of tools in Buddhism for addressing your underlying conditions, and those tools are part of the Karma Work aspect of your practice.
Second, even if you gain some insight into the absolute dimension of Life, do you then always have that larger perspective? Do you constantly experience equanimity or joy? No. It’s true that over time you may end up with deeper and deeper faith in the Reality of the Independent Dimension. You may perceive Suchness more and more often, or feel fairly grounded in your Buddha-Nature. But for ordinary mortals (that is, all the people I’ve ever met), Samadhi is not some permanent attainment. You can’t rely on some particular mind-state or attitude to inspire and guide all of your actions. Instead, you have to establish new habits and ways of operating in the world that will carry you even when you don’t “feel” enlightened – that is, Karma Work.
Finally, even if you attain some insight or experience, enlightenment isn’t a place you go to, or a badge you wear because of something you understood in the past. Enlightenment arises in how you meet each moment. Unless you put it into practice – manifesting it in your everyday life – enlightenment doesn’t even exist. It can be very difficult to bridge the gap between what you’ve Realized and the nitty-gritty of daily life, and doing this is Karma Work.
I’ve heard people say Karma Work is about the “relative world,” while Realization is about the “absolute.” There’s some truth in this statement, in the sense that relationships between beings and things are part of the relative aspect of Reality. From the absolute perspective, there are no separate beings and things that can be said to interact, and discriminations such as good and bad, right and wrong, don’t apply. Still, it’s problematic to speak in a way that implies you can do some work in a “relative world,” which exists separately from some sublime, if confusing, “realm” of the absolute. Relative and absolute are two aspects of the exact same Reality.
Your work on Karma should be informed by, and reflect, absolute truth; this is what results in compassion, selflessness, and equanimity, because you’re empty of any inherent, separate self-nature, and all phenomena arise and pass within one, seamless, luminous Reality. And your awakening to absolute truth should never be disembodied and removed from the relative Reality of life. If your spiritual insight feels disconnected from the mundane experience of everyday life, your work isn’t done. You have to learn to manifest your insight about the absolute, or the insight is incomplete.
On the positive side, working on your Karma supports your Realization, and working on Realization supports your Karma Work. Karma Work leads to greater self-acceptance, stability, moral behavior, generosity, trust, and openness. Because of the work you do on your Karma – as incremental and messy as it can seem sometimes – you can become better able to sit still, face things, calm your mind, and open to insight. Realization, in turn, can lead to pivotal insights which realign your whole being and make it easier to see through and resolve your Karmic issues. Also, when you awaken to your True Nature, you recognize how you are not fundamentally defiled by your Karma. This can make Karma Work feel like less of a duty, a penance, or an endless self-improvement project, and more like the joyous activity of a Bodhisattva.
Karma Work: Taking Care of This Precious Life
Traditional Buddhist teachings about Karma can be useful for your practice, even if you only take them as potent metaphors. Many Buddhists in the world believe in literal rebirth – that you are reborn in the world in some form, human or otherwise, after your death – but this belief isn’t necessary for practice. The imagery and cosmology of Karma and rebirth can function for us as illuminating myths, or stories which effectively convey important truths, even if they aren’t factual.
According to the Buddhist view, then, Karma is a universal law of cause-and-effect when it comes to your willful behavior. Certain choices you make lead to negative results, such as choosing to break moral Precepts or spending your life pursuing pleasure while neglecting spiritual practice. You may experience negative results in this life, such as alienation from other people or facing existential fears on your deathbed, or the negative results may be felt in your next life, when they shape the circumstances of your rebirth. There are elaborate teachings on the different “realms” of existence you might find yourself reborn into, including a hell realm populated by beings who have nurtured hatred or acted violently in their previous lives. On the other hand, of course, certain choices lead to positive results, such as moral behavior and generosity. These choices might cause you to be reborn as a human being in fortunate circumstances, or perhaps in the heaven realm.
The important thing to remember about the Buddhist cosmology of Karma and rebirth is that it is descriptive, not proscriptive. Any Buddhist teachings about Karma are a kind of general observation about how things tend to work out. They don’t imply the existence of a supernatural power – deified or otherwise – that metes out rewards or punishments according to a universal rule book. Instead, the laws of Karma operate impersonally. This is reflected in the Buddhist cosmological imagery, where, after death, beings appear before the deity of the death and the underworld, Yama. Yama holds up a mirror to each person, and this is enough to determine which realm they will be reborn into.
According to original Buddhism and the other religious traditions of the Buddha’s time that shared the belief in rebirth, spiritual practitioners could either aim to ensure a fortunate rebirth or to avoid rebirth altogether. Avoiding rebirth was viewed as the highest goal, and indeed the Buddha is said to have proclaimed, “This is my last birth,” upon his enlightenment. If it seems strange that you might seek not to be reborn, consider that rebirth is not like everlasting life. With each birth, you forget everything. You once again experience all the joys and sufferings of life, are once again separated from your loved ones, and once again lose everything you care about – as if it’s for the first time.
In any case, in the Karma and rebirth scenarios, whether you’re seeking a good rebirth or aiming to avoid it, your present life is viewed as a precious opportunity. Given your human form and your encounter with the Dharma, you have the chance not just to enjoy your good fortune but to to “purify” or “clean up” your Karma. The term “Karma” technically refers to your willful actions, but it’s also understood to include the effects of those actions. You are living with the effects of your past actions, which then condition your behavior – in essence, becoming causes. Your life is an unfolding of Karmic causes and conditions, and from the traditional point of view, the chain of causation you’re a part of extends back untold lifetimes. To avoid rebirth – or even just to keep your chain of causation moving in a positive direction – you need to identify your negative Karma and try to stop perpetuating it, plus generate positive or liberating Karma by forming or strengthening good behaviors.
How is this imagery of Karma and rebirth useful to you in your practice? Regardless of whether anyone is literally reborn after death, and regardless of how such rebirth might work or manifest, you can observe a kind of “rebirth” within your own life. A classic example is how a certain “self” might get “reborn” when you find yourself around people with whom you have a difficult relationship. One minute you’re doing just fine, operating as a reasonable and kind person. Then you step into proximity with your fraught relationship and you feel resentful, reactive, and defensive. Memories and feelings come flooding back based on past experiences. Because you haven’t yet dealt with the Karma underlying your troubled relationship, a self is reborn into a less-than-ideal realm.
The concept of Karma is a helpful way of framing the relationship between your choices and the states of your body, mind, and life. Central to the teaching is the idea that you always have a choice you can make to move your life in a positive direction. No matter what circumstances you find yourself in, your choices matter. You “clean up” as much of your negative Karma as you can in this lifetime, minimizing harm and trying to leave the world a better place than you found it. Clearly, doing this affects the future in a positive way, whether you are technically reborn after death or not. It’s very easy to see the law of Karma operating when someone does the opposite – carelessly generating negative Karma and causing harm, when they die leaving behind strife, trauma, and toxic residue on almost everything they touched.
Taking Responsibility for Your Karma
This first step in Karma Work is cultivating a willingness to take responsibility for your Karma as manifested in your Phenomenal Self. Another way to speak about this situation is to use the possessive “my Karma” to refer to the way past causes and conditions manifest as your particular body, mind, heart, tendencies, conditioning, habits, etc. I find it helpful to think of all of this as your “Karmic package” – the whole ball of matter and energy and momentum that comprises your “self” in a conventional, practical sense. Some of your Karmic package you can readily recognize as being the result of your past actions, but a lot of it ends up feeling like an inheritance you didn’t ask for. You may like some of your Karma (e.g. strength, health, intelligence, determination), but there’s probably a fair amount of it you’d rather not have (e.g. physical or mental disabilities, a tendency toward anger, depression, or anxiety, or a distrust of other people).
When you’re doing Karma Work, it’s best to let go of trying to sort out which aspects of your Phenomenal Self “you” are responsible for shaping, and which you should blame on genetics, culture, conditioning, past experiences, luck, or the behavior of others. Traditionally, the term “Karma” applied only to the effects of your willful behavior, but notably traditional teachings also tended to attribute every aspect of your life – even things like being born with a handicap or suffering injustice – to your actions in a past life. I find it’s most helpful if you acknowledge there are infinitely many causes which have resulted in your Phenomenal Self and simply focus on what it is you have any influence over: Your choices.
Karma Work means to take responsibility for the Karma you’ve got and get to work on transforming it as best you can. Working out where that Karma came from – who is to blame for it – is of extremely limited usefulness. Occasionally, you might end up with an insight like, “Oh, I’m like this because my mom did such-and-such,” or “The abuse I suffered has caused me to be anxious.” This is useful only insofar as it allows you to understand, accept, and work with your Karma. If such insights leave you stuck in self-recrimination or resentment of others, they are worse than useless.
It’s not even helpful to get stuck in self-blame, although you may indulge in this because you erroneously think it’s a way to take responsibility for your Karma. In my Zen lineage we regularly recite a “Karma verse” which goes like this:
All harmful Karma ever committed by me since of old,
On account of my beginningless greed, anger, and ignorance,
Born of my body, mouth, and thought,
Now I atone for it all.
After taking responsibility in this way, the teaching tells us to “sit up straight in the presence of the Buddha.” There is no room for shame, self-loathing, a sense of inadequacy, or comparison to others. In Buddhism, greed, anger, and ignorance are called the “three poisons,” or the basic cause of all your selfish and harmful behaviors. In the Karma verse you admit that you perpetuate the three poisons through your actions of body, speech, and mind, but you also say the three poisons are “beginningless.”
Even if you can identify negative aspects of your Karma that you bear some responsibility for – like anger issues, addiction, or the need to control or judge other people – can you explain how that negative Karma began? Some kids are born with a tendency to react with anger, while others are introverted and shy. Who knows why? Some people can engage in certain activities and partake of certain substances without an issue, while others have a strong tendency toward addiction. Who knows why? Maybe you have a compulsion to control or mistrust others, but chances are good that this aspect of yourself is a reaction to negative childhood experiences. If it is, why did the people who hurt you end up the way they were? Probably their own negative childhood experiences! And so, you trace the cycle of suffering back and back and… eventually it’s impossible to find a place to lay the ultimate blame.
However, you are not a victim of your Karma. That is one of the central messages of Buddhism. Change is possible. Greater freedom is possible. You can live a wiser, more compassionate, and skillful life. It’s not easy, but everything you do matters. Every choice you make in this moment conditions the future. It is very difficult to change habits of body, speech, and mind that have been built up over a lifetime, but you might think of each choice you make as a drop in a bucket. Eventually, inevitably, the bucket will fill.
In the next episode, I’ll discuss how we do Karma Work.
Read/Listen to Part 1 or Part 3
