Dang Zang

Last night a rather worthy – and not entirely unpleasant – TV program dealt with the run-up to Christmas from the point of view of three different “faith traditions”. My question, therefore, is: “what’s one of them?” The fact that the three concerned were Christianity, Judaism, and a very open-minded, friendly version of Islam did not bring me much clarity. I had an uneasy feeling that the term is being used to sweep diverging beliefs into a dark corner where we need not talk about them, as if they were a  mad cousin who has been shipped off to the mental home.

I do, certainly, realise that “faith” should be about something much more than mere “belief”; reducing somebody’s faith to a mere belief, or set of beliefs, might be useful in primary school, but it does not encourage insight into any mature kind of spirituality.

I find, however, it hard to accept that these “faiths” do not also imply certain specific, possibly conflicting, beliefs. What seems to happen in my own mind, and I suspect that this is what the use of the phrase “faith tradition” tends to do, is to reduce “faith” again, but in a different way. Rather than reducing it to a mere set of beliefs, “faith tradition” tends to reduce it to a set of traditional observances. My picture of the follower of a “faith tradition” (and I know I use brackets too often, but I can’t help also but wonder how many people think of themselves in those terms) is of someone who perhaps has some beliefs at the back of their mind, but these beliefs are held for reasons that have as much, or more, to do with tradition as with intellectual rigour. Once the reduction has been done – I would like to say “emasculation”, but I’m not sure if that word still has the right connotations – we can go on to say:

“Look, this lot light candles around Christmas time, that lot light candles to celebrate Hanukkah, and the other lot light candles at the time of Ramadan: ergo it’s all jolly nice and jolly similar and we can all be jolly friendly.”

Well, of course, being jolly friendly to one another would be a wonderful thing, and there ought to be more of it, and I applaud the points the programme was overtly making. Thoroughly. But I can’t help but feel that talk of “faith traditions” is selling real spirituality down the river.

OBC (Obligatory Buddhist Content): many Buddhists light candles at the time of the full moon in May.

This question often comes up, and did so just yesterday on e-sangha. I thought I’d repeat the answer I suggested to someone else a month or two ago, where the animal involved was a cat:

Dear …,

I do feel for you, as a cat lover myself. Many Western Buddhists have been through this. I can only offer you my opinion, based on discussions with quite a few other people.
1) You have already given your cat a far better, longer life than nature would.
2) The ulitmate critereon has to be compassion.
3) It’s obviously got to the stage where all that awaits your cat is more suffering.
4) *If* there is something “bad” about the euthanasia, take the consequences on yourself (the “bad karma”, if there is any, and the heartache) gladly out of love for your cat.

I have known people who have wished that they could be given the same release.

Like I say, only my opinion, but one that is widely shared.

Obviously, if you also know any prayers for the dead, they may help a bit, especially with your own feeling.

Best wishes to you both

It really gets up my nose when people start to put rules and speculations about the way karma works (suggesting, for instance, that you should leave the animal to suffer so that it can “complete working out its karma”) above compassion.

On a list I read (the kagyu group at yahoo – in fact I’m the “owner” which means that, technically, I’m the big cheese there, for which reason I make a deliberate effort not to dominate the conversations) somebody recently made a passing remark that reminded me of some of the stupid ways the “karma” doctrine is sometimes misrepresented.

It’s well known that Buddhism puts a lot of store by karma, in the sense that whenever we act (“karma” literally just means “action”) we create consequences; these consequences will rebound sooner or later. The idea is that actions leave traces in the “substratum of our being” (so to speak), and that these traces eventually, when conditions permit, draw us back to circumstances that correspond to the original action.

Well you may or may not feel that what I’ve just said makes sense. But what am I complaining about? Most of all I’m complaining about the suggestion – and you do hear this suggestion – that literally everything that happens to us is a result of our past karma. This is such a disastrous idea that even if it could be true (which it can’t) one would wish for people not to believe it. Consider this:

I smash you in the face! Don’t blame me! It’s your karma. You are the one to blame. Hey, really I’m the victim here, as your karma made me do something bad! Oh and while we are about it, it’s your karma, and therefore your fault, that you are poor, ugly, stupid, deformed, sick, uneducated, born in a family and social class that gives you no options. What bad thing did you do in the past? Obviously only the rich, beautiful and powerful have good karma, so they deserve to be rich and powerful. The poor, the starving, slaves and everyone else has clearly earnt a hard life. Ha ha! I larf, and I larf and larf out loud at your misfortune!!!

So it’s an objectionable idea. It also makes no sense. The very idea of karma is that we can act, and our acts have consequences. What happens next therefore *has* to be open ended – conditioned in part by karma, perhaps, but not determined by it to the last detail. I may act in an unexpected way – so may you.

The possibilities of what the future might become therefore shift, within the constraints of karma and karmic “seeds” which might germinate or might lie dormant. It is like being in a river with a very powerful current – karma.You can’t avoid being swept along by it, but you can still swim, and this can affect whether you are smashed against the next rocks or manage to find your way to the bank.

So the idea is nonsense because, if every detail of what happens is a result of past karma, we are not free to act, therefore we cannot be responsible for our actions, and the whole silly doctrine disappears up its own backside.

For Buddhists it should also be significant that

• according to “scripture”, events – death, for instance – can have several causes, of which karma is only one. Malice, environmental factors, and sheer bad luck are also possible causes, and
• all the Buddhist practices intended to “purify past karma” make no sense if karma has already fixed everything that is happening and is going to happen.

End of rant, and not even a picture!