Also, distinguishing facts from interpretations is not a straightforward matter, but a philosophically loaded one. Personally I think it would be better if we let go of the idea of facts, but instead thought in terms of more or less justified interpretations. It is the dualism between facts and interpretations than can blind us to the recognition that our ‘facts’ are just another set of interpretations. At the same time not all interpretations have the same degree of justification.

You are quite correct. I meant the phrase ‘everything we experience’ to mean, ‘experience’, a point which I also learned from Ms Hamilton, though perhaps that’s a bit subtle for breakfast radio. By reality I mean the dhammas which are marked by the three lakkhanas, and yes I understand that dhammas are mental events! I guess the value of speaking of reality here is that it has a colloquial meaning and also a canonical one: ‘things as they really are’ = reality, though I guess it risks substantialism, if that’s the word.

I’m not sure how to change the font, but I’ll investigate.

Vishvapani

You say “Everything we experience, it says, is impermanent and constantly changing.”

Yes, but so what? Heraclitus knew this too. It has been a constant feature of the Western intellectual tradition since Classical times, to observe that “everything changes”. With what result?

The Pāli texts make a slightly different point which is that it is your *experience itself* which is impermanent and constantly changing. In fact “the Buddha” never applies paṭicca-smuppāda to objects (with a single minor exception that doesn’t really affect the argument). What arises and passes away, according to the seldom quoted concluding stanza of the Chariot Simile (SN 5:10; PTS S i.136), is only dukkha. Sue Hamilton shows that dukkha equates with all experience prior to bodhi. Objects don’t come into it. At least not until after the Abhidharmikas became interested in ontological questions and start treating dharmas as objects.

The Buddhist teaching is not focussed on objects, but on what it calls mental (including cognitive and affective) processes. So when you say “That’s true of our possessions, our relationships and our bodies” in a way it’s beside the point. What’s imporant, in the early textual tradition at least, is that it is true of our moment to moment experience whatever the object which stimiulates the arising. And, crucially, it is true even when the object itself does not perceptibly change (which is quite a lot of the time).

In conversation with Nāgabodhi I gather that this point of view is quite consistent with the MBSR approach to well-being.

When you say happiness is about “how we can live in accordance with reality so that happiness naturally arises” I’m not sure what you mean by “reality” (though I’m pleased at least to see that you do not capitalise it). If by reality you mean the observation of Heraclitus, I have to say that it did not exactly transform Western society. If we are talking about experience (as a dependent construct) then in what sense does “reality” apply?

Regards
Jayarava

PS the font colour in the comments area is such a light grey that they are practically unreadable! I had to write this in Notepad and paste it in. Please consider using a higher contrast colour.

Indeed: I guess the implication of what I am saying is that the way we have been trying to keep up in the rat race has been very bad for everyone, even in good times. We need to find ways to think more productively about work and the economy. These concerns have been aired a good deal but they have been squeezed out of public debate by the recession (Will Hutton is an influence on what I said). This is such a big topic that the Tftd 2:45 mins was really a bit of a squeeze.

Vishvapani

“The winds affect me because my sense of who I am is connected with what I do and because I still care too much about what others think of me.”

really struck a chord with me. I have also been guilty of careing too much about what other people think of me. This has in fact been preventing me from making an important life-changing decision that I know deep down is the right thing to do at this time.

Today I have made that decision. I now care a little less!

Thank you for sharing that insight Vishvapani. It has really helped me.

However, they have not done this. Instead, as your article illustrates, they claim to know the “real” meaning of karma. They have not abandoned the “misunderstood” traditional view of karma as cosmic justice, but merely repackaged it so as to make karma appear more palatable to a Western audience. Karma is explained to newcomers in the terms you have just given above, but as they progress and have increasing investment in the group, then the traditional metaphysical trappings of karma turn out to be still attached to this re-interpretation. The cosmic justice system is still there, but its “real” meaning, whenever the going gets tough, is said to be just moral consequences within experience. Thus at the same time Western Buddhists seem to manage to believe on the one hand that Buddhism only appeals to experience, and also on the other that everyone gets their just deserts, and it would be a good idea to believe in rebirth if we could only get over our sceptical Western conditioning and manage it, even though these beliefs are incompatible both philosophically and practically.

I’m afraid there’s only one word to use to describe this way of proceeding, which I have arrived at not hastily, but only reluctantly after 20 years experience of Western Buddhism – and that’s dishonesty. Newcomers are given a frankly misleading idea of what Western Buddhists believe about karma. You can have a reformed Buddhism to help the Western public, or you can hang onto a belief in karma, but you can’t have it both ways and insist that the Western public will really be helped by a belief in karma, when what they need is just a recognition that the effects of their actions often shape their characters.

What’s more, I think that the discussion of the effects of his actions on the psyche of someone like Ratko Mladic needs a more serious and realistic framework than can ever be offered by karma. Use the term ‘karma’ in this connection and people will immediately assume that Mladic will get his just deserts. But will he? Even if he gets a life sentence from the ICC, he may remain blithely unaware of the full effects of his actions on others for the rest of his life. It will not necessarily result even in mental suffering, and it is just a gross over-simplification of the complexity of moral effects to assume that this is inevitable. And how could we ever judge what is in any sense ‘just’ or the proportionate effect of previous choices? Mladic may change completely and no longer ‘deserve’ his punishment, or, of course, die long before he experiences that suffering. I’m sure that Mladic is experiencing the effects of his actions on his character, but whether they are painful in anything like proportion to those actions only he knows, and we are in no position to assert any universal laws about what his experience or that of anyone else is like.