Kamma-vipaka = Tit for tat?
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Kamma-vipaka = Tit for tat?
by Dhammatube Channel on Sunday, May 8, 2011 at 5:59amTit for tat
Meaning: A blow or some other retaliation in return for an injury from another.
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/tit-for-tat.html
"Bhikkhus, for anyone who says, 'In whatever way a person makes kamma, that is how it is experienced,' there is no living of the holy life, there is no opportunity for the right ending of suffering. But for anyone who says, 'When a person makes kamma to be felt in such & such a way, that is how its result (vipaka) is experienced,' there is the living of the holy life, there is the opportunity for the right ending of stress."
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an03/an03.099.than.html
Tit for tat... Another school, the Jains, accepted the Vedic premise that one's actions shaped one's experience of the cosmos, but they differed from the Vedas in the way they conceived of action. All action, according to them, was a form of violence. The more violent the act, the more it produced effluents, conceived as sticky substances that bound the soul to the round of rebirth. Thus they rejected the Vedic assertion that ritual sacrifice produced good kamma, for the violence involved in killing the sacrificial animals was actually a form of very sticky bad kamma. In their eyes, the only way to true happiness was to try to escape the round of kamma entirely. This was to be done by violence against themselves: various forms of self-torture that were supposed to burn away the effluents (asava), the "heat" (tapa) of pain being a sign that the effluents were burning. At the same time, they tried to create as little new kamma as possible. This practice would culminate in total abstinence from physical action, resulting in suicide by starvation, the theory being that if old kamma were completely burned away, and no new kamma created, there would be no more effluents to bind the soul to the cosmos. Thus the soul would be released.
Despite the differences between the Vedic and Jain views of action, they shared some important similarities: Both believed that the physical performance of an action, rather than the mental attitude behind it, determined its kammic result. And, both saw kamma as acting under deterministic, linear laws. Kamma performed in the present would not bear fruit until the future, and the relationship between a particular action and its result was predictable and fixed.
These divergent viewpoints on the nature of action formed the backdrop for the Bodhisatta's quest for ultimate happiness. On the one side stood the Ajivakas and Lokayatans, who insisted for various reasons that human action was ineffective: either non-existent, chaotic, or totally pre-determined. On the other side stood the Vedic and Jain thinkers, who taught that physical action was effective, but that it was subject to deterministic and linear laws, and could not lead to true happiness beyond the round of rebirth. The Buddha's position on kamma broke from both sides of the issue, largely because he approached the question from a radically new direction.
... To begin with, every act has repercussions in the present moment together with reverberations extending into the future. Depending on the intensity of the act, these reverberations can last for a very short or a very long time. Thus every event takes place in a context determined by the combined effects of past events coming from a wide range in time, together with the effects of present acts. These effects can intensify one another, can coexist with little interaction, or can cancel one another out. Thus, even though it is possible to predict that a certain type of act will tend to give a certain type of result — for example, acting on anger will lead to pain — there is no way to predict when or where that result will make itself felt.
The complexity of the system is further enhanced by the fact that both causal principles meet at the mind. Through its views and intentions, the mind keeps both principles active. Through its sensory powers, it is affected by the results of the causes it has set in motion. This allows for the causal principles to feed back into themselves, as the mind reacts to the results of its own actions. These reactions can form positive feedback loops, intensifying the original input and its results, much like the howl in a speaker placed next to the microphone feeding into it. They can also create negative feedback loops, counteracting the original input, in the same way that a thermostat turns off a heater when the temperature in a room is too high, and turns it on again when it gets too low. Because the results of actions can be immediate, and the mind can react to them immediately, these feedback loops can sometimes quickly spin out of control; at other times, they may provide skillful checks on one's behavior. For example, a man may act out of anger, which gives him an immediate sense of dis-ease to which he may react with further anger, thus creating a snowballing effect. On the other hand, he may come to understand that the anger is causing his dis-ease, and so immediately attempt to stop it. However, there can also be times when the results of his past actions may obscure his present dis-ease, so that he doesn't immediately react to it at all. This means that, although there are general patterns relating habitual acts to their results, there is no set one-for-one, tit-for-tat, relationship between a particular action and its results. Instead, the results are determined by the entire context of the act, shaped by the actions that preceded or followed it, and by one's state of mind at the time of acting or experiencing the result.
In this way, the combination of two causal principles — influences from the past interacting with those in the immediate present — accounts for the complexity of causal relationships on the level of immediate experience. However, the combination of the two principles also opens the possibility for finding a systematic way to break the causal web. If causes and effects were entirely linear, the cosmos would be totally deterministic, and nothing could be done to escape from the machinations of the causal process. If they were entirely synchronic, there would be no relationship from one moment to the next, and all events would be arbitrary. The web could break down totally or reform spontaneously for no reason at all. However, with the two modes working together, one can learn from causal patterns observed from the past and apply one's insights to disentangling the same causal patterns acting in the present. If one's insights are true, one can then gain freedom from those patterns. This allows for escape from the cycle of kamma altogether by developing kamma at a heightened level of skill by pursuing the noble eightfold path.
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/refuge.html#act
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THe problem of this is that , Southern school aka Theravada school do not understand Emptiness ,which is central to the Mahayana Buddhism and Vajrayana .
In Mind-only school , its not the actions ,its the seeds in the mind-field (alaya-vijnanas) that with the right conditions ,initiated revenge and all this
One does not necessary cause harm to the other person , like cursing someone , without even effecting any actual physical contact with the other person , but the karma which brings about suffering is there
It just like an Projector .A projector display a image of someone you hate the most and you generate illwill ,malice towards that person .Did the person suffer ?unless you have spernatural power to made that person suffer , else its the projection on your mind that u seeded a heavy karma .The result is that you created an negative aura(modern day i denoted it as outlook) that made people despised you.
If you couldnt understand what this teaching is ,Ven hai tao have spoken before on the action create opposing force (fan zhuo yong li).Not to the action you create , but your subsequent undertaking
to make it simple ,if you on the way to job interview and you accidentally stepped onto a snail and cause it death .You filled with malice to despise the carcasses .This becomes a very heavy karma ,which caused you to have unsmooth Job interview or glitches on the way.However ,you feel remorse for this accidental action which caused death of the snail , the outlook of you changes which change the outcome of the job interview , and you may get the job .
Such workings of Karma is a very lengthy discussion which is found in the Yogacara teachings .That is why in Pureland teaching expounded by Ven Master Chin Kung
to harbour Good Intention , so your setback will be reduced to the minimal impact .
For a very interesting discussion , do feel free to ask the central teachings of Yogacara
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Whatever you said, about karma being volition/intentional/mental rather than physical, is already taught in Theravada.
And this article is written by a Theravadin venerable.
The teaching of karma is found even in the earliest form of Buddhism. Mahayana cannot make claims on it.
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Its an ongoing dialogue .well .this discussion will go on and on .
soon will even have to resort to digging visuddhi magga
and various good books on meditation , I currently trying to understand abit of Pak Auk Sayadaw Knowing and Seeing
Something u post to me on facebook :) An Eternal Now
According to Walpola Rahula, all the elements of the Yogacara store-consciousness (alaya-vijnana) are already found in the Pali Canon.[26] He writes that the three layers of the mind (citta, called "luminous" in the passage discussed above, manas, and vijnana) as presented by Asanga are also used in the Pali Canon: "Thus we can see that Vijnana represents the simple reaction or response of the sense organs when they come in contact with external objects. This is the uppermost or superficial aspect or layer of the Vijnanaskanda. Manas represents the aspect of its mental functioning, thinking, reasoning, conceiving ideas, etc. Citta which is here called Alayavijnana, represents the deepest, finest and subtlest aspect or layer of the Aggregate of consciousness. It contains all the traces or impressions of the past actions and all good and bad future possibilities."[27]
the teaching of bhavanga which acts as a storehouse of continuum of imprints and latent tendencies is taught in theravada