I’ve just finished a 7 week course at the Cardiff Buddhist Centre, led by Sagaradana and Celia. I wanted to record a few things that I found particularly helpful.

First, on the session about wisdom, Sagaradana asserted:

You only have to be wise enough to be kind.

I think he was quoting someone – I’m not sure who…

Another quote that, for now, I can only ascribe to Sagaradana:

Your task is to take down, brick by brick, the wall which you have built between you and love.

I was particularly drawn to the conception of Buddhism as providing some kind of “handbook” or “guide” for life. Both quotes should be read in this context: they are addressing the problem of how to live a good life, whatever that means.

With that in mind, I was particularly struck by the discussion we had of karma. This is a notion that I think is much misrepresented in everyday discourse, and was one that I felt somewhat uncomfortable about approaching in the class. Nonetheless I ended with a sense that there was something deep to understand here. Let me explain where I got to.

Sagaradana proposed, first, that we live in an “ethical universe”: that is, one in which “good” actions bring benefit to the actor, whereas “bad” actions bring damage. Distinguishing between good and bad is difficult, of course. But if we are willing to accept that notions of good and bad exist, a more profound concern is that karma seems to lead to a philosophy of “everyone gets what they deserve”. I think no one in the room was prepared to accept that, myself included.

After some discussion, though, I conclude that this concern arises from a misunderstanding. Let me give a specific, personal example: a few years ago I was in a workplace where I experienced bullying and toxicity; eventually I had to leave. I was left with a lot of feelings: sadness, anger, distress, resentment, bitterness. This experience was something I wanted to work through via meditation: I wanted to understand how I was to process this experience and to hold the memory of it inside me; the notion of karma was useful for me here.

To begin, Sagaradana made the point that “anger is karmically neutral” – it has no ethical implications or effects. Nonetheless, it often signals that an ethical decision is to be made. In this case my choice is this: I can choose to nurse resentment, bitterness, even hatred towards those who I perceive wronged me in that workplace. That process of nursing can feel incredibly sweet and potent but, at the same time, I’m keenly aware that it offers no hope of resolution or peace – the karma of this “bad” response causes me damage, whether I like it or not.

The alternative is that I seek to respond, insofar as I am able, with compassion towards those who I believe wronged me. I can be angry about what they did, but I do not seek to hate them. This is not a naive response: I do not, for instance, trust them to do differently next time, nor do I excuse what has happened, but, in the lexicon of Buddhism, I extend metta towards them as best I can. The karma of this “good” response yields benefit to me: I can feel the poison of the experience lessen each time I undertake this practice.

Some comments: first, although my experience was a very painful one, there are much worse – traumatic experiences bearing no comparison with my own. It is not for me to pontificate on how one should respond to serious trauma. I can only testify to my experience in this particular situation (and in others like it). Perhaps the Buddhist teaching of karma is useful in other situations, but that is not for me to say.

Second, it is clear that the notion of karma I’m discussing here is very restricted: it speaks only to the effect of ethical actions on the actor. It is, to my mind, a helpful notion within the “handbook for life” model of Buddhism. It is most definitely not a philosophy that can be used to explain, for instance, why some people seem to suffer inordinately while others do not. It does not allow me to point at a beggar in the street and conclude that they must have done something wrong in a past life to have ended up in penury in this one.

Let me explain why I think we can be confident that this broader philosophy is a misrepresentation of the Buddha’s notion of karma. The evidence lies within the two quotes I started with: both speak to the Buddha’s fundamental injunction that the purpose of life is to cultivate metta, loving kindness, compassion. We live so that we can love.

And this love is deeply practical. In the course of the session on karma, we read a story about the Buddha who, together with his friend, Ananda, visited a community of bhikkhus (monks). One of the bhikkhus was very ill with dysentry, and had been abandoned by his fellow monks – the Buddha found him lying in his own waste unable to wash or feed himself. The Buddha felt deep compassion for the ill bhikkhu and immediately started to clean him and care for him. The Buddha later chastised the other bhikkhus, saying, “Bhikkhus, when we leave our homes to follow the Way, we leave parents and family behind. If we don’t look after each other when we are sick, who will? Whoever would tend to me, should tend to the sick.”

The Buddha’s teaching of compassion directly contradicts the popular notion of karma being a philosophy of “you get what you deserve”. If the latter were the case, then the Buddha would have seen the sick monk and concluded that he had done something wrong to have ended up in his current state – compassion would constitute unhelpful meddling with the karmic scales of justice, and the bhikkhu should be left to get what he deserved. The Buddha’s compassionate response gives the lie to this mistaken point of view.

Putting karma in its correct place, we see it not as malign judgment on past sins but, rather, a helpful insight into how our psychology can cope with the dukkha (suffering) of life. It does not counteract the fundamental injunction to cultivate compassion, rather it reinforces it. We should be compassionate because that is what we are here to do, and the ethical universe in which we reside, will reward us with, for instance, increased peace of mind.

One final remark: All this has led me to wonder how it has come to pass that karma has become so dramatically misrepresented in modern discourse. My personal sense is that it is connected to people’s desire to turn Buddhism from a “handbook for life” into a religion that explains all of human experience. In this regard, the teachings of the Buddha can suffer the same fate as those of Jesus, or other great spiritual leaders: the profound wisdom that those great hearts share with those around them somehow gets corrupted by people’s desire for some kind of “explanation”: people don’t want to do the hard work of cultivating compassion and moving towards true enlightenment if, instead, they can simply sign up to a religion for some easy answers.

I am reminded of Kipling’s poem The Disciple, the first verse of which is:

He that hath a Gospel
To loose upon Mankind,
Though he serve it utterly—
Body, soul and mind—
Though he go to Calvary
Daily for its gain—
It is His Disciple
Shall make his labour vain.

Profound as Kipling’s words are, they are too cynical for me to end on them! For all that karma, for instance, can be mispresented, my experience of discussing and thinking about it, in a curious and critical way, has been very helpful. This process of shared inquiry and practice, which lies at the heart of the Buddhist method, is robust and powerful and I look forward to doing more of it.