No Karma — Emptiness And The Two Truths

by Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche

Karma is central to Buddhism, as far as this discourse has contended till now, and yet, on another level, the ultimate reality of karma is not recognised. At this point, the two levels of truth in Buddhism become relevant: empirical and ultimate reality. Karma possesses only relative reality by nature, and because of that, it is something we can transcend. Karma is something we need to overcome in fact. What this amounts to is aiming not only to overcome negative karma but also positive karma. Both kinds of karma lead to rebirth, and it is the exhaustion of our karmic propensities and tendencies that is the ultimate aim.

The Madhyamaka school of Mahayana Buddhism, we briefly noted, alongside the Yogacara school, was to have an important philosophical influence on the notion of karma as well. Founded by Nagarjuna in the late second-century ce, Madhyamaka thinking expounds the notion of two truths — the relative truth and the absolute truth. Karma is seen as real only in relation to relative truth, but not in terms of ultimate truth because the ultimate truth is emptiness. Karma in itself has no fixed nature. It is a phenomenon; it is not reality. Again we need to qualify this statement as an expression of the ultimate viewpoint. Karma does have relative reality. Nagarjuna’s fundamental point was that karma is really created through mental fixation, through our getting too enamoured with our concepts, ideas and thoughts, our mental projections, and our inveterate tendency to reify all that we think about. The objects of our thoughts are given a solid reality, whether they exist or not. This is called “mental imputation,” whereby we provide things with many more attributes than they actually have. Imputation or projection has a huge impact on our mental well-being, how we proceed to cultivate (or fail to cultivate) our feelings, and how we deal with our emotions and what we think about.

By contemplating emptiness, one can loosen the grip of mind’s fixation. Even in terms of karma, Nagarjuna states that if we fixate on it, which is our standard tendency — if we fixate on the agent, the action, and so forth — we will be unable to free ourselves of it. The result becomes quite the opposite because thinking along fixated lines leads to conceptual proliferation (prapanca). Basically, the mind starts to go haywire. Not only do we give more reality to what we see, smell, taste, and touch but we even start to imagine all kinds of things existing that do not exist. God and soul and things of that nature are examples of this, according to Nagarjuna. Merely the fact that we can think of something prompts our tendency to think that there must be an actual corresponding object of that thought. Apparently, it seems entirely logical for us to assume that if we are capable of thinking of such-and-such a being, that being must therefore exist — otherwise where would the capacity to think it come from? Western philosophers and theologians of the past have used this very argument to support the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient being, insisting that our endowment with this mental faculty, the ability to imagine an omniscient being, proves that such a being must exist.

Nagarjuna used what was later to become known as the “Prasangika razor,” which essentially refers to a chopping down of every philosophical position, a cutting at the root of all that we think. It is a ruthless examination of all claims to areal or true existence. He had followers that took his theories even further, such as Chandrakirti, and the Prasangika Madhyamikas, who employed a reductio ad absurdum system, reducing or demolishing every philosophical position to its fundamental inconsistencies, without taking a position themselves. The main point to be made here is Nagarjuna’s insistence that due to all things’ being dependently arisen, nothing has inherent existence, and therefore everything is empty. This is not a vision of pure emptiness, which would be the conclusion of the nihilistic view. Nagarjuna actually thought that the nihilistic understanding was completely errant, a lethal type of thinking, suicidal — like taking hold of a snake by the tail incorrectly, so that it swings around and bites our arm and poisons us. Therefore it is completely incorrect to interpret Nagarjuna as denying the existence of karma. In fact, he states that it is far better to revert to conventional ways of thinking, to believing things actually exist as commonsense people do, than to entertain nihilistic ideas that nothing really exists. This is a crucial point in understanding Buddhism. Because everything is interdependently arising, karma is also an interdependently arising phenomenon, lacking inherent existence, and thereby able to be overcome. Nagarjuna’s logic also explains why samsara and nirvana are dependent concepts. Without samsara there can be no nirvana, and without nirvana there can be no samsara.  This is elaborated upon in his main text Fundamental Verses on the  Middle Way (Mulamadhyamakakarika).

There are two main points to be made here concerning the application of Nagarjuna’s approach to karmic theory. On the one hand, he encourages us to relinquish our fixation on different things, on mental objects basically, and on the other, he warns against replacing this tendency with nihilistic thinking, which he sees as a serious pitfall. It should also be mentioned that some of Nagarjuna’s successors ended up criticising the Yogacarins themselves for fixating on some of their own platform ideas, such as the eight forms of consciousness.

In talking of Nagarjuna, we are talking of philosophy, which brings us to an interesting distinction often made in Buddhism between intellect and insight (prajna). People often assume that insight is generated through the study of philosophy. Of course, if one studies Nagarjuna, it will be profitable, but there is a way that is superior to the purely intellectual way to study, which is the contemplative way, or the meditative way. One is still thinking, going through the same process of reasoning and so on, but at a slower pace and using a variety of mental faculties and physical states and processes in order to stay focused on the subject, on the object of contemplation. Indeed, we need to realise that there are different ways of thinking. Even when we say we are “thinking,” in our normal everyday usage of the word, we are actually referring to “thinking” in many different ways. By thinking in a purely intellectual way, we may gain some insight, but all the other aspects of thought and being are not involved; it is a purely intellectual thing; it operates on its own. It is almost an intellectual exercise, but that exercise may end up being a more or less neutral activity,  from a spiritual point of view.

Even in seeking insight then, we are still reliant on our karmic resources and inheritance. We need to use our own available resources to gain insight or prajna. Yet it is often said that prajna destroys karma, destroys all karmic traces and dispositions. With the sword of prajna, everything is demolished. On one level, this is true, but this is on the ultimate level. On the relative level, prajna is also dependent on preexisting karmic causes and conditions. Therefore, certain individuals may be predisposed toward having greater insight than others. If this were not the case, all this effort would not matter in the least — everyone would have the same insights and the same level of insight, and everything would be the same from individual to individual. But this is not the case, of course. Understanding is always contingent upon the level of development of the individual. A broadly developed person, having undergone the type of self-cultivation that we have been discussing, having achieved a certain level of foresight, will have a more penetrating and far-ranging insight than someone without such a  background.

Often, if we are really pursuing insight in a purely intellectual manner, we become introverted. We think of it as a very solitary exercise because we are imagining ourselves going inside, going deep down in our thinking. The external world and other people and other living beings become a distraction and paying attention to them an annoyance. They all represent the same thing to us, which is time taken away from our deep reflection, the mission we so cherish. Because we are looking to unravel these knotty issues of life or metaphysics and we need this “time to myself,” we close off. Buddhism regards the kind of insight gained in this way to be of an inferior variety. Insight is very much enhanced when we become more caring and more loving and extend ourselves more to others. We will not be as closed-minded if we take this balanced approach. To this end, Buddha himself taught the meditation on loving-kindness  (metta-bhavana). He said metta-bhavana was crucial for the development of prajna or insight. In Buddhism, there is no strict separation of the cognitive aspect of our mind and its emotional and effective aspect. Our cognitive ability should be supported by the richness of our emotional repertoire, our emotional resources. In other words, if we are emotionally barren, dried up,  even our cognitive ability will be compromised, its effectiveness reduced. This is why the meditation of loving-kindness is said to help us think clearly and to see things clearly. Everything we do in order to gain proper insight produces good karma. We need to be aware on a number of fronts then: we need to make sure that our body is healthy, in a positive state, and emotionally, at the level of feelings, we need to make sure that we are not rigid and closed up. Paying attention to such things produces good karma, which in turn leads to gaining insight. Insight arises from creating positive karma and doing the types of things that overcome negative karma.

The followers of Nagarjuna are called “Shunyavadins,” or “exponents of the emptiness school,” where shunya means “emptiness” and vadin “exponent.” In fact, those who follow the Madhyamaka school of thought are considered to be Shunyavadins. At times, the Shunyavadins employed Nagarjuna’s ideas as a kind of weapon against the early Buddhists, suggesting that there is no karma. They point to Nagarjuna’s chapter on karma in the Mulamadhyamakakarika, in which he says there is no agent and no action. He even states that there is no nirvana. Various people then, and the Shunyavadins generally, suggest that karma need not be taken too seriously, as, after all, it does not really exist. If there is no agent and no action, then how can karma be produced? It is true, Nagarjuna states almost as much, in one sense — that karma is illusory. However, when he makes such statements, he is not suggesting that there is no karma whatsoever, or that there is no agent at all. Rather, he is approaching things from the ultimate point of view, which is to deny a self-existing agent.  There is still an agent though, just not a self-existing one, which is something that we have already discussed in relation to the Buddha. So there is no real contradiction here in any respect. Nagarjuna does not state that there is no agent or action. An agent is an agent because it has the capacity to perform actions; without actions, there can be no agent. So there is an equivalence here. He said the same thing about karmic cause and effect. We think that a cause has more reality than an effect because without a cause there will be no effect. Cause seems to have more reality in a way because an effect issue from a cause, but a cause does not issue from an effect. Therefore cause has primacy over effect. Nagarjuna disputed this idea with his notion of interdependent arising. Everything arises because everything is dependent on everything else. Cause and effect are seen as mutually dependent on each other, and agents and actions are regarded as mutually dependent as well. One cannot exist without the other. This is the right understanding of the emptiness of karma.

To see it any other way would be to diverge from Buddha’s middle view. To say karma does not exist at all, that it is completely illusory, would be one extreme, and to think that it actually exists, that karmic cause and effect have true reality, would be the other extreme. For Nagarjuna, karma does not have true reality because it is devoid of inherent existence, yet karma does manifest. It is a manifest phenomenon; to that extent, it is real, it exists. This may seem a somewhat pedantic distinction to make, but it is quite crucial to Shunyavadin thought, because if something has inherent existence, it cannot be removed, and in Buddhism, we aim to overcome karma. Karma can be overcome, it is said, and if something can be overcome, it cannot have inherent existence.

In the end, there is very little difference to what is said by the Shunyavadins and what the Buddha taught. It comes down to seeing things as real on the conventional level but not on the ultimate level. Karma has no intrinsic reality, but it is real on another level because we experience it. For instance, during waking hours, we have some type of reality — this is real — but when we are dreaming, while the dream lasts, it also has a  reality of its own. It is real while it is happening; in the context of dream, the dream is real as a dream. Similarly, our everyday life experiences, including that of our karma, are real to the extent that as long as we are not enlightened, they will remain real, and we will experience them that way. Ultimately,  though, they are not real, and therefore can be overcome. We are not tied to karmic reality in such a way that we are condemned to this eternal recurrence of the same dying, taking rebirth, dying, taking rebirth — an interminable cycle of life and death. There is a terminal point, according to Buddhism.

Until the veil of ignorance has lifted from us, we will continue to experience the hold things have on us, but this does not mean that all our experiences have some intrinsic reality. The Buddhist response to this question about the reality of karma is not black and white. As Nagarjuna himself said, one cannot simply answer in one direction or the other, with a yes or no. He would answer such questions by posing another question, “In what context?” Are we talking from the perspective of reality, or the perspective of appearance? From the point of view of reality, karma and everything else that we experience on this empirical level of existence has no enduring essence and therefore is not real. But to say that there is no reality at all is also untrue. Everything we experience we do so because karma is so intimately tied up with all that we do. It is there in the very fabric of our lives, in what we like and don’t like. Everything is appropriated in terms of our own subjective experiences and subjective level of being. These experiences leave imprints in our consciousness, which is akin to a river, a dynamic flowing event. Therefore, even though consciousness has no stability, only successive states, and nothing abides, it is still happening. There is still two-way traffic between incoming information being processed, leaving karmic imprints on the unconscious, and the outgoing reaction, where the imprints stimulate the individual to respond in a predetermined way.

These patterns created by ourselves throughout our lives cannot be jettisoned just like that, which is why Buddhism, and especially  Mahayana Buddhism, emphasises the nonduality of appearance and reality,  or relative and absolute truth. We need to straddle these two. We need to balance between relative reality and ultimate reality. This is viewed as being absolutely crucial. Even in the very profound view of the  Dzogchen teachings, in terms of conduct, everything has to be grounded in our everyday life experiences. We cannot be floating in some kind of  vague space of “things as they are,” or in the “reality of all things.” We start with the need for prajna, insight, in order to break through, in order to transcend our karmic bondage. However, the prajna attained should then allow us to gain this balance between what is relatively real and what is ultimately real. That is the main point because if we fall on either side, we will not be able to really attain full realisation. Without all the emotions and feelings and so forth that are associated with relative reality, the realisation of ultimate reality will not occur. This is made very clear. It is often said that as serious Buddhist practitioners, we are always balancing ourselves on this tightrope of appearance and reality. Indeed, this is why, even on attaining enlightenment, it is said to happen on two different levels — on the physical level and on the mental level. On the physical level, it is called  rupakaya, where rupa means “form” and kaya means “body,” so “form body.” On the mental level, it is called dharmakaya, which means, in this  context, “ultimate reality.”

The rupakaya or form aspect of the Buddha’s body corresponds to relative reality, and the dharmakaya corresponds to ultimate reality. The form aspect of the body is related to the cultivation of certain mental faculties and a certain emotional repertoire and range of feeling tones, and things of that kind — on the relative level. Buddhas have realised the form body because of the emotional cultivation discussed above, which is why they are said to remain in this world out of compassion. They are not tarnished by this world though, because they have also attained the formless body, the dharmakaya, or Buddha’s authentic state of mind. Thus it is said in Mahayana Buddhism that a true Buddha resides in what is called “non-abiding nirvana.”

Nevertheless, liberation cannot be secured if it were not for karma. That is the view. So through cultivation of ourselves, we attain the form body of the Buddha in relation to our mental faculties, emotional faculties, and physical factors. In addition, through cultivation of insight, we attain the formless aspect of the Buddha’s being. These are said to result from two types of accumulation: the accumulation of merit and the accumulation of wisdom. In Buddhism, the idea is not to give up everything, as we often hear. While giving up some things, we should stock up on other things, so the two accumulations are spoken of. Through the accumulation of merit, we attain the Buddha’s form body, and through the accumulation of wisdom, we acquire the Buddha’s mental body, the dharmakaya. 

On one level then, karmic theory is not really designed simply to encourage people to create good karma and avoid the negative — to lead a moral life in other words. Liberation comes from shedding both kinds of shackles. Traditionally, negative karma is likened to being chained in iron shackles and positive karma in gold shackles. Even in gold shackles, we are not free; so to be free from all shackles is genuine freedom. This is stated in the original discourses of the Buddha as well as in the Mahayana.  Even so, we need to engage with our karma. There is no way around it. We try to overcome negative karma by cultivating positive karma, working toward the eventual overcoming of even positive karma. The Buddha defined three categories of karma: positive karma, negative karma, and non-producing karma. Non producing karma relates back to the origin of the idea as action. Bad people doing bad things creates negative karma, and good people doing good things creates positive karma, and those really striving to advance on the spiritual path, aiming toward enlightenment — their actions produce no karma, which is the reason that we can attain nirvana.