Are the laws of Kamma Revealed or Deduced?

Exploring Theravāda's connections to other paths - what can we learn from other traditions, religions and philosophies?
Shonin
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Re: Are the laws of Kamma Revealed or Deduced?

Post by Shonin »

Individual wrote:But since you learned this from the Buddha, that makes it revealed.
Reading something in a book or hearing it in a talk is not what is usually meant by 'revealed' nor how it is defined in the OP: "...or is it simply implied that the Buddha had the law of kamma 'revealed' to him through meditative absorption?"
5heaps
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Re: Are the laws of Kamma Revealed or Deduced?

Post by 5heaps »

Shonin wrote:I'm not sure what you mean by "experience various characteristics about those events".
although we certainly can and certainly do conceptualize about the difference between for example stone and wood, there are pre-conceptual experiences also. these are seen directly, without the aid of logical signs, categories, thoughts, ideas.
Or both movements may have been produced by a separate, unseen cause. This is how magicians are able to perform illusions - because we have only perceptions not direct access to some kind of objective truth. So, how would direct perception of causality be possible? What would it be like? We don't directly perceive characteristics or causal relationships we infer or impute them.
the so-called magical tricks are instances of direct cognition not taking place. if direct cognition took place, there would be no need for inference. therefore this example is one where the sense organs and sense consciousness were by definition not in a state where direct cognition was possible, and what was being watched is as you say, an imputed logical sign (sometimes less correct, sometimes more correct). does this necessarily mean there are no instances of direct cognition at all? no direct cognition of billiard balls touching ever?
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Hanzze
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Re: Are the laws of Kamma Revealed or Deduced?

Post by Hanzze »

_/\_
Last edited by Hanzze on Sun Oct 31, 2010 7:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Just that! *smile*
...We Buddhists must find the courage to leave our temples and enter the temples of human experience, temples that are filled with suffering. If we listen to Buddha, Christ, or Gandhi, we can do nothing else. The refugee camps, the prisons, the ghettos, and the battlefields will become our temples. We have so much work to do. ... Peace is Possible! Step by Step. - Samtach Preah Maha Ghosananda "Step by Step" http://www.ghosananda.org/bio_book.html

BUT! it is important to become a real Buddhist first. Like Punna did: Punna Sutta Nate sante baram sokham _()_
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Viscid
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Re: Are the laws of Kamma Revealed or Deduced?

Post by Viscid »

5heaps wrote:no direct cognition of billiard balls touching ever?
We see the billiard ball moving towards the other billiard ball. We see them touch, hear a 'clack!', we see one of them halt and the other take off.

We make the inference that there was some sort of 'force' which went from one ball to the other in order to make it move, that cause and effect took place. We do not directly perceive this force, however, as there is nothing to perceive. We just imagine it.
"What holds attention determines action." - William James
nowheat
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Re: Are the laws of Kamma Revealed or Deduced?

Post by nowheat »

Viscid wrote:I was pondering just how The Buddha would have come to certain realizations about the nature of Kamma and how it behaves. Do the texts explain this, or is it simply implied that the Buddha had the law of kamma 'revealed' to him through meditative absorption?

It occurs to me that had the Buddha knowledge of past lives, as it is stated in some text somewhere, that he would be able to deduce the behaviour of Kamma. He would see how he lived one life, how he died, and what was the resultant life he was reborn into. This would mean however, that no one can be assured of the law of kamma unless they too have certain knowledge of a chain of previous existences.
Thanissaro Bhikkhu offers some interesting insights into kamma and how the Buddha came to see it in the introduction to his "Wings To Awakening" which you can find here: http://www.archive.org/details/wingstoa ... 00thanarch" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

:namaste:
Sylvester
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Re: Are the laws of Kamma Revealed or Deduced?

Post by Sylvester »

Shonin wrote: Noticing a correlation between events does not necessarily imply there is causation.

Hee, hee. Do I see a fan of David Hume here?

I agree about the inferential knowledge. If it were a priori knowledge, that would have meant that the Buddha would have had to see ALL of his past lives. Not at all likely, if "a beginning cannot be conceived".

I wonder about 5heaps' suggestion -
the past of the mind is seen directly.
Not vide phassa with svabhava past dharmas, I hope?
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Viscid
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Re: Are the laws of Kamma Revealed or Deduced?

Post by Viscid »

Sylvester wrote:Not vide phassa with svabhava past dharmas, I hope?
I had to go research wtf you're talking about here:
...the Sarvastivadins say that the momentary dharmas have an inherently existing essence (svabhava) that persists through all three times, past, present and future. Dharmas thus have a permanence of a sort (see Abhidharmakosa 5, 25 ff.). This might seem a peculiar reversal of the ordinary Buddhist emphasis on transitoriness, but it seems that the Sarvastivadins say that past and future dharmas cannot be absolutely non-existence in so far as they can continue to be objects of consciousness, through memory or expectation. (see Williams, 2000, p. 114). When a dharma is remembered or anticipated, according to the Sarvastivadins, it is the ever-existing svabhava of the dharma which is brought to mind. In addition, the Sarvastivadins thought that it was necessary to assert that past dharmas continue to exist in order to explain causal and karmic continuity. That is, how can a momentary dharma from a past life, for instance, exert an influence on the present consciousness if it does not somehow still exist? The Sarvastivadins say that it is the svabhava of the otherwise momentary dharma which continues and has this karmic influence. Sautrantikas, by contrast, reject the continuing existence of past dharmas, arguing that the momentary wholesome or unwholesome past mental evens have karmic result by modifying or 'perfuming' the subsequent causally connected series of momentary mental events. The image used is of a seed planted in the mental continuum which later comes to fruition as a karmic effect. The unwholesome or wholesome dharma does not last for more than a moment, but it deposits a trace which is reproduced in all subsequent mental dharmas of the continuum until it comes to maturation as a karmic effect.
(From Buddhism, Knowledge and Liberation by David Burton, page 90.)

I'm going to side with the Sarvastivadins here. To me, it seems that the past "dharmas" must have a continuance if they are to be recalled in the present. We know now that memory is encoded and retrieved in some complicated fashion within our brains, however the experiences belonging to past existences are not. They therefore must have a continuous existence 'out there' if they are able to be retrieved and recollected.
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Sylvester
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Re: Are the laws of Kamma Revealed or Deduced?

Post by Sylvester »

I hope the universe has enough disk space to store all those past dharmas for recall in future...
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Viscid
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Re: Are the laws of Kamma Revealed or Deduced?

Post by Viscid »

Sylvester wrote:I hope the universe has enough disk space to store all those past dharmas for recall in future...
The universe performs regular backups.
"What holds attention determines action." - William James
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Re: Are the laws of Kamma Revealed or Deduced?

Post by Sylvester »

Drats! Does that mean material from E-Sangha can still be retrieved as svabhava past dharmas?

Maybe I should invoke some Yogacara yiddams to extinguish that alaya once and for all.
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Viscid
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Re: Are the laws of Kamma Revealed or Deduced?

Post by Viscid »

Sylvester wrote:Maybe I should invoke some Yogacara yiddams to extinguish that alaya once and for all.
:roll:
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rowyourboat
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Re: Are the laws of Kamma Revealed or Deduced?

Post by rowyourboat »

If a video camera picks up a visual image [ends] and it is transformed into electricity [ends] which in turn is transformed into a radio wave [ends], picked up by an antenna [ends], reverted into an electrical signal [ends]and shown on tv as visual image [ends], can we say that the original visual image is permanent? Clearly it is not. What we experience is simply information being transmitted through different forms of energy. If you throw a metal ball into wet cement a hemispherical imprint will form. This does not mean that the ball continued in the cement.

Similarly the arising of the eye and the visual object [ends] gives rise to eye consciousness [ends], which in turn give rise to contact/phassa [ends], inturn to feelings/vedana [end], sanna-indentification [ends], sankhara/mental fabrications [end] and so on. This does not mean there is a being there doing it. It is simply causally arisen -because without the original cause the next cause, which can only arise if there is the first cause (specific conditionality- idapaccayata), cannot arise.

specific cause gives rise to specific effect
without that specific cause, that specific effect doesn't arise

There is an interesting concept of 'sunyatabhumi'- the total domain of emptiness as understood by a Buddha:
'there is no seer' (no self)
'there is nothing to be seen' (nothing self existent)
'there is nothing worth seeing' (everything is dukkha and/or asubha)
'there is nothing that is conceived of, that is not seen' (imagining things which are not there happens out of avijja and tanha)

I really like the last one.

with metta

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Shonin
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Re: Are the laws of Kamma Revealed or Deduced?

Post by Shonin »

I'm going to side with the Sarvastivadins here. To me, it seems that the past "dharmas" must have a continuance if they are to be recalled in the present. We know now that memory is encoded and retrieved in some complicated fashion within our brains, however the experiences belonging to past existences are not. They therefore must have a continuous existence 'out there' if they are able to be retrieved and recollected.
The experiences of past existences that occurred in this life ARE the memories encoded in our brains. We have no reliable data on how or even if the experiences of previous lives are recalled. Therefore, your conclusion is entirely unsafe.

Also this seems to raise other philosophical problems such as:
If the past continues to exist now, where does it exist and in what sense can it be said to exist?
Everything that exists is subject to impermanence. What if someone changed it?
If it's unchangeable then this violates impermanence.
If the past exists now, it isn't the past anymore, it's the present.

The Mahayana philosopher Nagarjuna decimated this sort of essentialist thinking.
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Viscid
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Re: Are the laws of Kamma Revealed or Deduced?

Post by Viscid »

Shonin wrote:The experiences of past existences that occurred in this life ARE the memories encoded in our brains.
Right, of this life, but not previous lives. We can safely imagine there is a physical mechanism for the storage and retrieval of our current-life memories. We cannot imagine, however, a physical mechanism which can retrieve memories of past lives, as our biological brains has had no physical contact with the conditions to which those memories were formed.
Shonin wrote: We have no reliable data on how or even if the experiences of previous lives are recalled. Therefore, your conclusion is entirely unsafe.
I'm making a leap of faith here with regard to the validity of claims regarding past life recollection, so yes, my conclusion is unsafe.
Shonin wrote: Also this seems to raise other philosophical problems such as:
If the past continues to exist now, where does it exist and in what sense can it be said to exist?
Everything that exists is subject to impermanence. What if someone changed it?
If it's unchangeable then this violates impermanence.
If the past exists now, it isn't the past anymore, it's the present.

The Mahayana philosopher Nagarjuna decimated this sort of essentialist thinking.
'Where does the past exist?'
I think that is as silly a question as asking 'where does our universe exist?' An event exists relative to events past and future to it.

'Everything is impermanent.'
I can't help but believe that the 'permanence' of the past is dependent on the continuance of samsara. End the cycle of rebirth and end the past and future.

'If the past exists now it's the present.'
No argument here. The past may 'exist' insofar as it can be recalled.

I'm not adamant on these points, it's just me thinking through the problems myself.
:namaste:
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Viscid
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Re: Are the laws of Kamma Revealed or Deduced?

Post by Viscid »

In the end, it looks like I'm going to have to thoroughly read Nagarjuna to have a sharper understanding of these philosophical arguments within Buddhism.
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