by Dalai Lama
The karma of the sentient beings who will be born in that universe are the cooperative conditions for that universe. When their karmic latencies begin to ripen, the space particles are activated, and they give rise to the wind element, the motion of pure energy. Fire, water, and earth elements sequentially and gradually arise after that.
I believe that the evolution from space particles into the manifold phenomena of a universe and those phenomena’s devolution into space particles at the end of a universe could be related to the Big Bang theory. However, I don’t think that there was one space particle in the center that exploded to produce everything. With further investigation, perhaps a correlation could be made between space particles and some theories of physics and astronomy.
The elements of an individual’s body are related to his or her personal karma and subtlest mind-wind. The larger external universe is the environmental effect of the collective karma of the sentient beings who enjoy it. The collective karma of the sentient beings who dwell in a universe influence the way the coarse elements evolve to form that universe. In other words, the universe and sentient beings exist in dependence on each other. Sentient beings cannot exist without the environment in which they live and that environment cannot exist without the sentient beings whose karma played a role in its creation.
The relationship between the mind and the subtle elements is the domain of highly realized meditators with single-pointed concentration. According to scriptural sources and the experience of highly realized yogis, someone who has subdued his or her mind and developed a certain level of control over his or her inner elements can also control the external elements. This accounts for the stories we hear of people who can walk on water, fly in the sky (without boarding a plane!), and travel beneath the earth.
The Laws of Nature and the Law of Karma and Its Effects
The laws of nature and the law of karma and its effects operate in their own domain, although they intersect at key times. Not everything in sentient beings’ lives and environments can be reduced to the functioning of either natural laws or karma. Natural laws function such that once particular processes are set in motion, they will produce certain effects. Karma enters the picture when sentient beings’ intentions and their happiness and suffering are involved.
For the most part the natural laws of physics, chemistry, and biology that guide the interactions of external elements are involved in the development of our world system. However, sentient beings’ minds, through the ripening of their karma, seem to exert influence at two points. The first is when the karma of the sentient beings who have the potential to live in a particular world system sparks the initial development of that world system. From the perspective of the scientific model, the collective karma of a huge number of sentient beings could influence the occurrence of the Big Bang. From the perspective of the model presented in the Kālacakra Tantra, the collective karma of all those sentient beings would stimulate the potencies of solidity, fluidity, heat, and motility existing in the space particles in between world systems so that coarse elements appear.
The second point at which karma could come into play is when the elements of a universe have evolved to the point where they can support sentient life. Here, karma could act as the instigating factor for previous inanimate forms to become the bodies of sentient beings — that is, mindstreams could enter these forms to produce sentient beings with bodies and minds. The evolution of various species would subsequently occur.
Another way to describe this process is in terms of substantial causes and cooperative conditions. Both are necessary whether we speak of natural laws or karmic law. A substantial cause is what actually transforms into the result; cooperative conditions are the causes that assist this process. For example, wood is the substantial cause of a table, and the people who built it as well as the nails that hold it together are cooperative conditions. Because everything that is produced must have previous causes that are concordant with it, I believe that the continuum of material existed before the Big Bang. This material was the substantial cause of the world system that developed after the Big Bang. Similarly, in the Kālacakra Tantra space particles existed before the formation of our world system; they were the substantial cause for all the material in this world system. Regardless of which model we accept, the karma of the sentient beings who will be born in that world system acts as a cooperative condition for these material elements to appear, coalesce, and form a world system. Karma could similarly enable them to become the bases for sentient life.
Karma and Our Present Environment
To review, there is a connection between the formation and evolution of the external world and the karma of sentient beings who will inhabit it. There is also a connection between the elements of the external world and those constituting our physical body. These, in turn, are related to subtler elements and subtler winds that themselves can be traced to the subtlest mind-wind. Karma — which primarily refers to sentient beings’ intentions and the paths of action they motivate — may be the link between sentient beings’ minds and the external world. Karma is related to the subtle winds in sentient beings’ bodies, which in turn are related to the five inner elements. These correspond to the five external elements in the environment. Understanding the subtle winds spoken of in the tantric texts will help us understand this relationship. This is my opinion; more research is necessary.
As mentioned before, only a buddha can know the intricacies of karma, which include how karma affects the evolution of a world system and the sentient life in it. For us limited beings, it is hard to know where natural laws stop and the law of karma takes over, where the law of karma stops and natural laws take over, and where the two influence each other. For that reason, we should avoid making hard and fast distinctions regarding the interface of these two. Nevertheless, some general guidelines can be discerned.
In terms of the origin and development of a particular world system, there are two times when sentient beings’ karma may exert an influence: at the very beginning of that world system when the coarse elements are arising, and later when the combinations of those elements are suitable to act as the bodies for sentient beings. In terms of the development of specific environments and climates in which sentient beings now live, karma could play a role in two ways. First, the karma of the people presently living in and experiencing a place — for example, Dharamsala, where I live — contributed to its development millions of years ago when it was forming. Only nowadays, in this lifetime, do they experience the effect. We may wonder: How could their karma have ripened so long ago before they were born here? An analogy is helpful. Before moving into a house, the future occupants design the floor plan and begin constructing it. Later, when the house is ready, they occupy it and experience that environment. Similarly, when this planet was forming, no sentient beings lived on it. But since there were sentient beings who would take birth here, their karma influenced the way the planet would evolve.
Second, a particular environment is influenced by the karma of the people who live in that place now but were not among the initial karmic contributors to the development of that climate and environment a long time ago. These sentient beings later accumulated karma similar to that of the initial karmic contributors and thus came to live in that place and experience that climate at this time. For example, after Dharamsala’s specific climate had already come into existence, another group of people accumulated the karma that could produce this sort of climate. This group did not have a direct connection to the development of Dharamsala’s climate thousands of years ago, but due to their actions, which were similar to the karma of the previous group of people, they came to live in this place. The karma of the first group actually contributed to the development of Dharamsala’s climate and environment. The karma of the second group did not contribute directly but participated in it, since they live there. Both groups of people created the causes to experience that environment, but in different ways.
To u
se an analogy, many people start a business in Europe. Another person in the same field intends to seek employment in the United States. However, she happens to be in Europe and takes a job in the company established by the other people. Although she joins it later, she still contributes to the company’s work.
Karma was not the only cause for Dharamsala’s climate to develop the way it did; the laws of inorganic, physical causality were definitely involved. Nature has a certain autonomy that does not depend on karma. The tree we see over there grew from its seed. I doubt anyone’s karma was involved in that. Similarly, the growth of some leaves today and others next week is due to the functioning of biological systems, not karma.
But this tree is in front of me and I can use and enjoy it. As soon as the tree is related to a sentient being and his or her happiness or suffering, the karma of that particular sentient being enters the picture.
Beautiful plants and colorful flowers grow in the garden where I live. They certainly are related to the karma of the sentient beings who use and enjoy them and who experience pleasure and pain in relationship to them. Human beings enjoy their beautiful colors and smell, bees imbibe nectar from the flowers, birds use the trees as their shelter, insects munch on the plants. The collective karma of all these beings contributed to the existence of these plants. This karma was created by the minds of the sentient beings involved. Nevertheless, since the plants consist of material substances, their growth depends on nature’s biological laws. Karma does not transform into the water and fertilizer that make the plants grow.
Natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes, and tsunamis are produced by the functioning of the laws of nature. Our karma does not make them happen. However, the fact that certain people are there when such events happen is due to their karma. A volcano explodes due to physical factors such as the build-up of pressure under the Earth’s surface; this is not the result of karma. But the fact that some sentient beings are near that volcano and are injured or even die as a result of its explosion is related to the karma of those sentient beings. Other sentient beings, who did not create the karma to be harmed in that way, are not near the volcanic explosion.
Similarly, droughts and floods can be understood in terms of external causes, but insofar as they affect sentient beings, those beings’ karma is involved. For example, a community of people that has intense and pervasive hatred may, in this or future lives, inhabit a place during a severe drought and famine. Their being present and experiencing suffering from this are effects of their karma. Similarly, people who consciously pollute the environment now create the karmic cause to suffer from living in a polluted environment in future lives.
Although we often speak of karma as actions created in previous lives, it also refers to the actions we do today. Our present motivations and choices directly affect the external world. We must not think that everything is due to our actions in previous lives and ignore the effects of our present actions. When we dump toxic wastes into our environment, we experience the result in this lifetime. When we do not share resources, the world becomes turbulent now. Our intentions and actions during this lifetime are causing global warming.
Karma, Instinctual Behavior, and Our Bodies
Both science and Buddhadharma agree that sentient beings have certain instinctual behaviors, but how they account for them varies. Science looks to genetic makeup for answers, while the Buddhist sage Bhāvaviveka said that calves instinctually look to their mother for milk because of latencies on their mindstreams from previous lives when they had acted in a similar way. One effect of karma is the tendency to do the action again, which accounts for many instinctual behaviors.
Nevertheless, certain instincts are related to the type of body a sentient being has. We are in the desire realm, where the bodily constituents of beings are such that desire is dominant. Thus we have many biological needs and desires, and our minds crave these.
Some animal species are vegetarian, others eat meat. This is not primarily due to karma, but to the physical conditions of their bodies — their genetic makeup and biological functions. However, the existence of these types of animal bodies on this planet is related to the general, collective karma of the sentient beings on this planet. The fact that a particular sentient being is born in a carnivore’s body is a ripening result of that person’s individual karma.
The functioning of the biological systems of an individual’s body relates more to natural biological laws than to karma, although karma is involved when that person experiences pain or pleasure from his or her body. Our discomfort when we have a cold is due to our karma. Our catching a cold depends on the presence of the virus near us, sanitation in the area, the state of our immune system, and to some extent our karma. However, our hand being the nature of matter and our minds being the nature of clarity and cognizance are not due to karma. These are simply the nature of those phenomena.
The possibility of having a specific combination of genes in a fertilized egg is one in seventy trillion. Why a particular sentient being’s mindstream is attracted to that particular zygote and is born in it is a result of his or her karma. My being born in this body is an effect of my karma, but my body itself is due to the sperm and egg of my parents. My height is due to my genes and diet, but my being born in a body with these genetic predispositions was influenced by my karma.
It is important to distinguish the role of karma vis-à-vis the general characteristics of a species and the experiences of an individual in that species. For example, it is doubtful that human beings having hair and fish having scales is related to karma. Human beings having hair is due to natural biological forces. However, my being born in a body with genes causing baldness is a result of my individual karma. Still, that the evolution of human bodies in general occurred the way it did — with the potential to be bald — was in part a function of the collective karma of the sentient beings who had created the causes to be born in these bodies, which includes me. As you can see, this is a complex topic! The extent to which the various systems of cause and effect — physical, biological, psychological, karmic, and so forth — are interrelated and influence one another is not easy to delineate.
Although Darwin’s theory of evolution does not address the issue of what sentience is or how beings’ mindstreams came to be associated with the various physical structures that are their bodies, it can explain the general physical evolution of the various forms of life on our planet. Buddhists would add that the karma of the sentient beings who will be born in those bodies influenced the types of sense organs and some of the features of the bodies in the various realms.
Some Buddhist scriptures and cultural legends describe other versions of evolution. According to the Treasury of Knowledge, the first human beings, whose minds were less afflictive than ours, had bodies made of light. But as their thoughts degenerated and they became greedy, their bodies became coarser and eventually were composed of material as they are now. Yet another view is the Tibetan legend that the Tibetan race came into being through the union of an ogress and a monkey. This is a compromise between the Darwinian theory that humans descended from apes and the scriptural view that the first humans had bodies of light!
More research is needed. I hope the above discussion will stimulate you to do further investigation and to understand the complexity of interdependence.
7
Revolving in Cyclic Existence: The Twelve Links of Dependent Origination
THE PROCESS OF REBIRTH in saṃsāra is illustrated by the Wheel of Life. This painting of the samsaric cycle of existence has its origins in the time of the Buddha when the king of Vatsā, Udāyana, presented a jeweled robe to the king of Magadha, Bimbisāra. Bimbisāra consulted the Buddha about an appropriate gift to send in return, and the Buddha recommended a painting of the Wheel of Life that has the verses below written on it. Upon contemplating the Wheel of Life, King Udāyana attained realizations.
Practicing this and abandoning that,
enter in
to the teaching of the Buddha.
Like an elephant in a thatch house,
destroy the forces of the lord of death.
Those who with thorough conscientiousness
practice this disciplinary doctrine
will forsake the wheel of birth,
bringing duḥkha to an end.
The wheel consists of a series of concentric circles held in the mouth of the anthropomorphized lord of death, who symbolizes our impermanent nature. The center circle contains a pig, snake, and rooster, signifying the three poisons of ignorance, animosity, and attachment, respectively. Each animal has the tail of another in its mouth, indicating that they mutually reinforce each other, although in some paintings the tails of the snake and rooster are in the pig’s mouth, showing that ignorance is the root of all afflictions.
The next circle has two halves: the left half (as we look at the painting) is light with happy beings ascending to fortunate rebirths; the right is dark with suffering beings descending to unfortunate rebirths. The imagery indicates that dependent on ignorance we create virtuous and nonvirtuous karma that lead to agreeable and disagreeable births.
These births are the five classes of being — devas (including asuras), humans, animals, hungry ghosts, and hell beings. They are shown in the next circle, which is divided into five sections. The outermost circle has twelve sections, each one illustrating one of the twelve links of dependent origination.
Above and outside the wheel clutched by the lord of death is the Buddha pointing to the radiant full moon: he shows us the path to nirvāṇa. The two verses cited above encourage us to follow this path to free ourselves from all duḥkha forever.