After actively reading the KARMA chapter in "Gates to Buddhist Practice" (pages 62-77)Respond to both questions:
(1) Give a quote from the reading that you can argue against or offer critical questions for. Do so.
(2) Give a quote from the reading that you can shout "Amen"/"AHA"/"INDEED" to. Why does it ring true to you?
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a)“However, if while doing purification practice we think, ‘I have so much bad Karma to purify’ or ‘I really want to attain buddhahood,’ our motivation isn’t pure. This kind of self-interested practice is less effective than generating pure compassion outside of formal practice” (70)
ReplyDeleteThis idea has been the primary thing I have been trying to grasp at with this class as it seems very contradictory. It seems like in order to reach enlightenment you have to not care about reaching it. It seems like you must do these actions toward reaching enlightenment but not for reaching enlightenment. How then could anyone reach it if you must try to reach it while at the same time not having that as any sort of motivation? How could you follow the eight fold path if by knowing that it is a tool for reaching enlightenment you are not truly following it?
b) “The third non virtue is having wrong view. Having wrong view means thinking in very contrary ways… Believing that it’s good to be bad or bad to be good is an example of wrong view.”(69)
Indeed. I think this finally settles the debate that we had during the first few days of class. Just because you perceive something to be different doesn’t mean that it is reality for you. Karma always is correct, always is present, and it doesn’t care what you thought to be true in your delusions, it acts base don how things are in reality. I also liked the math that was happening with doing ¼ of the act= ½ of the bad karma. And if 10 people do something instead of 100 karma points you each get 1000.
Returning to my place of victory. Take that Matt.
I admit, I lost. However, I will put more effort into my response.
ReplyDeleteAhem. Long rant approaching.
(1) "Believing that it's good to be bad, or bad to be good is an example of wrong view. So is disbelieving in the illusory nature of experience because we can't prove it and thus denying the basic truth that will ultimately produce liberation from suffering. For although we may not be able to prove that our experience is illusory, neither can we prove that it isn't." (67-68)
This is the first argument presented in text that literally made me object aloud upon reading it. To summarize this point: "You shouldn't disbelieve in this truth because we cannot prove it, because it is equally impossible to disprove it." I'm going to make an analagous argument: "I am God and that is the truth. Where is my proof? Well you can't disprove it!"
The notion that just because something is impossible to disprove it is correct is, frankly, totally absurd. This entire piece seems to go against the understanding I've had of Buddhism, as an analysis of suffering based on our experience. This entire notion of karma and it's various sub-points sounds more like random preaching than a carefully constructed philosophy.
This notion was also brought up near the start of the text, at the bottom of page 62 (the quote is too long to paste here). There the argument of the text is a bit more developed - "We can't prove that tomorrow is going to happen, but we're willing to bet that it will...in the same way, the inability to remember or foresee other lifetimes doesn't mean they don't exist."
This is true. Tomorrow might not happen. Other lifetimes may exist. Similarly, there may be a giant pink chicken that circles the planet Mars once every 132 years. Everything is possible, but not everything is probable. Historical trends show us that, with 99.99999% certainty, tomorrow will happen. No evidence indicates the presence of other lives (and no evidence indicates the presence of Mars-orbitting pink chickens!)...the probability of such events are somewhere around lim x-->(age of universe in milliseconds) of 1/x. This is also known as "so small, you can essentially call it 0".
The fact that 95% of the rest of the argument is based off of this randomly assumed "truth" that has no available evidence and that the reader has no motivation to believe as an act of faith, automatically invalidates it all.
Okay, end rant mode. I was just very, very dissappointed with this reading.
(2) "When we plant a seed - an act, a statement, or a thought - it will eventually produce a fruit, which will ripen and fall to the ground and perpetuate more of the same."
This is one aspect of this reading I do agree with. Every action we have will have a reaction. See: Newton's third law - 'The forces of two bodies on each other are always equal and are directed in opposite directions'...thus to do something (aka exert a force, even something like a pressure wave eminating from your mouth) means that there must be some effect elsewhere.
"Similarly, if a person in a group kills someone, each member of the group generates the same nonvirtue"
ReplyDeleteThis quote makes absolutly no sense to me and seems to contradtict some of the teachings we have been studying. Who decides what constitutes a group? Teachnically the whole human population is one big community. This would mean that if anyone commited a nonvirtous act, we would all suffer the karma, making it basically impossible for anyone to escape samsara. On the same note, it takes away from the idea of personal responsiblity for your actions. While I am not condoning simply standing by while someone gets brutally murdered right next to you, this seems like a way to shift the blame onto others for bad karma. Since its reciprocal is also apparently true (good actions commited by members of a group lead to good karma for the whole group) then all I have to do to escape samsara is stay neutral and live with monks to feed off of thier good karma. This clearly doesn't make any sense.
"This kind of self-interested practice is less effective than generating pure compassion outside of formal practice"
This is so true! I think that one of the main dangers of Buddhism and confession rituals in general is that too often people are only motivated by a desire to escape hell or suffering. It makes total sense for there to be a dimished amount of good karma for these people. At the same time however, it's really hard to act purely out of true compassion. Since humans are inherantly selfish creatures, I believe that the author should have also included advice on how to atain this state which will purify our karma.
"The subtle flaw of pride might arise: "I'm such a spiritual person," or "My tradition is the best one," or "Those poor folks who don't have a spiritual path!" When we make such judgments, we only produce negative karma." pg. 66
ReplyDeleteThis quote rang true to me because I really hate when people try to force their beliefs onto other people, regardless of whether or not the victim(s) agrees with what is being thrust upon them. This is perpetually shown throughout history and, personally, I think is one of the main contributors to suffering and conflict on a larger scale.
Unfortunately I couldn't find any sections that haven't already been discussed that I can argue against or provide questions for. I agree to both Alex's and Matt's points which were the two main places I saw as being kind of strange. The only real idea that I can think to argue against is the idea of constant generosity towards all living things. It seems to me that being conscious of not harming any living thing where ever one goes would create a lot of stress and anxiety. Especially if one spent most of the day at say Athenian, where there is a lot of animal life in the surroundings, I think one might begin to go crazy if he or she were trying to walk around campus while worrying about harming every single living thing he or she comes in contact to. That's when I realized that this constant awareness that can quickly and easily turn to basically paranoia is also a form of suffering and therefore harm. So, if we had to worry about the lives of everything around us, we would in turn be causing ourselves harm in the process.
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