I think I’ve shown that the kammatic-nibbanic distinction should matter to the historian, textual scholar, or anthropologist trying to figure out what Buddhism has meant in other times and places. Contra Damien Keown, it is a helpful ideal type to understand how Buddhists have thought about their tradition to date. But should it matter constructively, to us, now?
Yes, it should – at least to us Buddhists, and to anyone trying to think philosophically with Buddhism today. Because, I would argue, there are things valuable about worldly life – and it turns out that there have always been Buddhists who agreed that there are, in practice if not in theory. At least some forms of the dichotomy turn out to reprise the key constructive problem of my dissertation – the role of external goods in a good human life – from an intra-Buddhist perspective. The Buddhism of the suttas, of Buddhaghosa and Śāntideva, turns out to be single-minded: only liberation is important. Buddhists will often identify that austere Buddhism as normative, the ideal to aspire to – and yet live a life remarkably different from that ideal. And I think that they are, at least to some extent, right to live such a life. I consider myself to be a Buddhist, yet I do not think the suttas are correct that worldly things are so irredeemably marked by suffering, impermanence and essencelessness as to be worthy only of transcendence. My view of the good, like Aristotle’s, is comprehensive and not revisionist: we are not fools to seek everyday goods like romantic love. Some of our existing goals are misguided, but it is not the case that we should surrender all of them to the reduction of suffering.
That many Buddhists have had such other goals, and even considered them part of the tradition, is not news to me, and probably isn’t to you if you’ve been following this blog. What I find particularly helpful about the kammatic-nibbanic distinction is the way it frames Buddhists’ more worldly goals in terms of karma. For in fact many Buddhists do think of their lives in terms not of nirvana but of karma – of acting well because it will be rewarded. This includes philosophical monks like Śāntideva: the Śikṣā Samuccaya has plenty of passages about how if you provide beautiful things to monks and stūpas, you’ll become rich and beautiful and surrounded by beautiful things yourself.
Typically, of course, karma is viewed supernaturally: the rewards of good acting show up in another life, or even through some magical connection within this life. But, crucially, it does not have to be viewed in tht way. As far as I can tell, supernatural conceptions of karma are false. But karma can also be taken as a way to articulate eudaimonism – the view that being virtuous is typically beneficial for the virtuous agent’s well-being – and I take this eudaimonic version of karma to be true. I agree with Dale Wright that stealing brings bad karma in that one who steals “will find compassion and intimacy more difficult, be further estranged from the society in which one lives, and feel isolated and unable to trust others.”
This is all to say that the Buddhism I advocate is a kammatic Buddhism – just one defined in naturalistic terms like Wright’s. As Jan Westerhoff notes, on a naturalized account, nirvana looks a lot like death. But unlike Westerhoff I take that as a reason to have goals beyond nirvana – goals which Buddhists have traditionally understood in terms of a framework of karma. (To my mind, texts like the Mahāvaṃsa show that Buddhists have sought such goals for a long time.) Hsiao-Lan Hu advocates a “this-worldly nibbana”; I prefer to think of this-worldly karma.
Now, in traditional Buddhist societies as I understand them, the paradigm act for good karma is upward giving: giving (dāna) to the saṅgha, especially to monks. (The Thai phrase tham boon, which just means “making merit” or “making good karma”, refers in practice to the act of giving food to monks.) The karmic benefits of this act – central to kammatic Buddhism – are usually understood in a straightforwardly supernatural way: giving to monks gets you a better rebirth. But the work of Maria Heim (née Hibbets) reminds us that Indian texts on gift-giving, including but not limited to Buddhist ones, place very high importance on the virtue of śraddhā (esteem): the upward gift expresses a joy in tribute to the esteemed monk. In this I see it as close to what Paul Woodruff calls the forgotten virtue of reverence, which “begins in a deep understanding of human limitations; from this grows the capacity to be in awe of whatever we believe lies outside our control—God, truth, justice, nature, even death.” (3) Giving to monks is a cultivation of humility, a way to remind oneself of one’s own flawed nature – which is a crucial part of self-improvement.
This, in outline, is the Buddhism I advocate: a naturalized Buddhism which is kammatic rather than nibbanic, in part because naturalizing makes the goal of nirvana/nibbana more questionable. It is a modernist Buddhism, but one that has room for Buddhism as traditionally practised.
Kamma and Nirvana both relate to Self, i.e. the illusion that consciousness is divisible into entities whereas it is the indivisible whole of which the many are inseparable parts. The actual problem to be surmounted is that of language which has become master instead of servant. We invent words then spend our time puzzling over what they mean. That is as ridiculous as a dog chasing its own tail though it be called philosophy.
i am a Westerner and, therefore, suspicious of supernatural claims — even though I engage in esoteric Tibetan Buddhist practices. For the same reason, i view karma as you do in the article above.– thought. speech, and action have an effect on the actor as well as on the subject of the action. And this effect spreads out and is moderated or accentuated by other ripples in the pool — until it takes a Buddha to see the linkages between causes and results. But I don’t think the goal of nirvana can be separated from karma. What is “good” karma is what leads toward nirvana. What is “bad’ karma is what leads away from that goal. Positive karmic action (upaya) worries about the leaves of the tree — the manifestation of negative actions in the form of confused, discursive thought and conflicted emotions — realization or the perfection of wisdom (prajna) cuts the root of confusion. The two aren’t opposed. ln fact, a traditional metaphor is that prajna and upaya are like two wings of a bird — they don’t operate independently.
The notions of Kama and Nirvana are drivel and nonsense and those who claim to be suspicious of supernatural claims whilst believing in both evidence the limitless human capacity for self-deceit (the most foolish of follies).
Hi Amod,
Thank you for all your posts, I learn from each one of them.
I wonder if it is possible to make 3 well supported argument, but then to overstep when putting them together.
You argue Kammatic Buddhism has traditional & scriptural roots. Then you argue naturalism is a defensible modern philosophy. Finally, you claim that the religious ritual of giving to monks is essentially a psychological practice.
Putting all of these together you end up with a position that is concerned with states of consciousness in this life and denies anything supernatural. It is, no doubt, inspired by Buddhism, but would it be recognizable to any practicing Buddhist is South East Asia, today or 500 years ago? Does it even have a place for a monastic community? Does it take the complete end of suffering seriously, as a real possibility?
You may throw in some refuge practice, mindfulness and a semi-committed belief in the 4 noble truths, but is that enough to make it Buddhist?
You had a beer, you took out the alcohol, the fermentation, the color, and the sugar. Left with water you still insist you are drinking beer because it is a liquid.
This is a question I ask myself all the time. My personal philosophy is very similar to yours, although I believe in the possibility of a naturalistic Nirvana in this world, given certain technological and medical advancements. But what has that to do with what the Buddha taught?
The most valuable lesson to be learnt from philosophy is that it is nonsense. As Wittgenstein observed, it is nothing more than a game of fantasy played with words. For most people, that is an idle pastime but those who earn their living by playing the game have a serious interest in its perpetuation (although fantasy leads in the opposite direction of their espoused intention).
When played seriously, vanity is the motive of the game the underlying purpose of which is to deceive oneself by deceiving others (all concealed by the pretense of seeking wisdom). For those less devious, the only winning formula is not playing and, as you suggest, technology and medicine assist in that. To the extent that people are obsessed by science, gadgets and longevity, they are able to avoid thinking about anything else and thus achieve mindlessness.
Westley: “You’re that smart?”
Vizzinni: “Let me put it this way. Have you heard of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates?”
Westley: “Yes.”
Vizzinni: “Morons.”
What makes you believe that anyone who has studied Plato, Aristotle and Socrates is any the wiser for having done so? Studying the works of these bastions of philosophy produces only the illusion of knowledge and serves no other purpose. This is evidenced by the present erudite discussion on the merits of Kama and Nirvana which is akin to debating the physiology of mermaids and unicorns.
At least Socrates had the honesty to admit he knew nothing unlike his successors.
Dear John Wonzy,
Yes, reason is bewitched by language when it looks for universal and necessary truths from the point of view of God. However, chasing knowledge and wisdom from inside a form-of-life (like 21st century America) is very much encouraged by Wittgenstein.
Adam is not defining Kama and Nibanna, but rather describing religious practices in his culture and others (“I think I’ve shown that the kammatic-nibbanic distinction should matter to the historian, textual scholar, or anthropologist”). That is part of Wittgenstein’s favorite topic – anthropology. There is nothing wrong with such a discussion. The section about naturalism would be pointless if Adam was trying to pin point the definition of the term. He is not, he is using it and we are understanding it, and that is precisely what Wittgenstein thought language was good for. Sure, on the margins there are probably misunderstandings and differences of opinions about this subject, but on the whole Adam’s meaning in this particular use of the terms is clear.
I can go on, but in short, Wittgenstein did not think most philosophical words are meaningless. Quite the contrary, their meaning is so clear in the contexts that they are used that there is no point in debating definitions outside of language-games. Get on with debating religion, science, math, technology. Get on with learning and improving forms-of-life. Get on with language-games, just stop trying to transcend them.
Firstly, I do not rely on Wittgenstein’s philosophy and only mention his name in passing.
Secondly, Amod goes beyond “describing religious practices in his culture and others” and concludes by advocating “a naturalized Buddhism which is kammatic rather than nibbanic”.
What Amod means by “naturalized Buddhism” is puzzling because I have not observed any evidence of Kama, Nirvana or Buddhism in nature. To the contrary, nature seems to rely on a dog-eat-dog system of competition more akin to unmitigated capitalism than Buddhism.
Amod, for those naturalists who are repulsed by the words karma and nirvana, I wonder if the discussion is clarified, and perhaps even taken in a new direction, by translating the words into English equivalents. “Action” is an obvious translation of karma. Translating nirvana is tougher; I might translate it as “quieted”.
With these translations, it may be easier to see that there is a role for ethical action and quieted mind in any form of Buddhism, naturalistic or not. Is this not what many Buddhists have taught: that quieted mind facilitates ethical action, and vice versa? And that both have mutually positive feedback loops with other goods and virtues such as insight, development, wisdom, and well-being (which Asian languages also had words for long ago)?
If so, what Jim said above is too simple. He said: “What is ‘good’ karma [ethical action] is what leads toward nirvana [quieted mind]. What is ‘bad’ karma is what leads away from that goal.” That’s true to some extent, but the feedback loop also goes in the other direction: A quieted mind can lead toward ethical action, especially when interacting with other goods and virtues.
Dualisms of ideal types (kammatic and nibbanic Buddhism, engaged and disengaged Buddhism, etc.) may sometimes be, as you said, “helpful”, if only as a thought experiment or (as is especially true of your scholarship, I think) to draw attention to something that has been underemphasized or ignored. But if we try to assume one of these ideal types as an identity, I think we will eventually find that the identity is too “single-minded” (to choose a term that you used above) and that we need the whole rich network of goods and virtues that we can find in Buddhism and elsewhere. (Perhaps we need some goods and virtues more at some times of our life history than at other times, just as someone may shift between lay and ordained, or worldly and cloistered, life.)
Your point is well taken. Traditionally, prajna (wisdom) — which comes from a mind that is not clouded by discursive thoughts and conflicted emotions — and upaya (skillful action) are taught to be like the two wings of a bird. They go together and mutually support each other. However, karma is generated by action that is based on dualistic view and is the result of upaya (generating good karma) or negative or unethical action (generating bad karma) — it is not skillful or ethical action itself.
My point was that, for someone on the path, good karma (positive result) is measured by what leads to further progress on the path. From a conventional view that measures what is positive and negative based on pleasure and pain, a divorce is negative and might be thought of as the fruit of unskillful or unethical actions. However, Pema Chodron tells the story of how her divorce — which was intensely painful — brought her to Buddhist practice. From the point of view of the Buddhist path, her divorce might be thought of as the a result of positive actions — that created a mind willing to be open and receptive to learning from pain.
Somebody (who was not a fool) once wrote “… for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so”. To the extent that this is correct, the notion of karma is superstitious nonsense (invented to inhibit the stupidity of the rabble motivated only by the carrot and stick).
Jim, thanks for the response. The “two wings of a bird” metaphor is nice and likely applies to many Buddhist concepts, but if we take all Buddhist concepts as a systematic whole we need another metaphor: something like a dragon boat with many rowers, each rower with two oars. The two oars of each rower are like the two wings of a bird, but there are many rowers, so the system is more complicated.
Amod said above that he advocates “a naturalized Buddhism which is kammatic rather than nibbanic, in part because naturalizing makes the goal of nirvana/nibbana more questionable”. I was suggesting that nirvana is no less relevant than karma for naturalized Buddhism, which may be more apparent if we avoid the Pali/Sanskrit in favor of everyday English translations for karma and nirvana, such as “action” and “quieted” or “quietedness”.
Still, what is right in what Amod said is that what is questionable today, or, to put it even more strongly, obsolete, is the conception of quietedness as a final goal. Instead quietedness becomes just another good in a rich network of goods and virtues, like an oar on a dragon boat, albeit a good that can be very important at certain times. Buddhist scholar Herbert Guenther pointed to the obsolescence of the idea of a final goal in his book From Reductionism to Creativity, which is an account of the development of Buddhist ideas from early Indian Buddhist thinkers to later Tibetan Buddhist thinkers. In the introduction to that book Guenther wrote:
“The truly innovative aspect of early Buddhist thought was its emphasis on mind—or, more properly, mentation (Skt. citta, Tib. sems)—and the conception of it as a feedback and ‘feedforward’ mechanism… Although it took a long time for Buddhist thinkers to free themselves from the idea of the thingness of mentation, the notion of it as process eventually had far-reaching consequences…. This idea of mentation as process has found its expression in the idea of ‘path’ or ‘way.’ Essentially, path is a dynamic notion, and its process character became ever more evident in the course of the development of Buddhist thought. The path thus became synonymous with the unfolding of an individual’s potential rather than being conceived of as merely a ‘way out.’ This latter connotation continued to dominate Buddhist thought only so long as a static world view prevailed, in which creative participation on the part of the individual was seen as minimal and where the only alternative to stagnation was escape into a ‘state’ that remains without consequences. This ideal state was that supposed to be attained by the arhant in early Buddhism. The emphasis on mind/mentation, not only as a dynamic factor, but as an operational system, is already present in early Buddhist thought, where it initiated a further probing into the dynamics of the system and paved the way for a new vision of reality and the human being’s embeddedness in it. This does not mean that the old model was simply discarded; rather the old model was incorporated into the new one and given a new meaning…. What in a static world view is the end, in a dynamic, evolutionary world view is always a new beginning.”
Guenther also said in the same book: “Any translation–interpretation points to a specific standpoint of inquiry.” He was a translator of Pali, Sanskrit, and Tibetan into English so he was speaking from experience. This is also highly relevant to the question of how to translate karma and nirvana into English. If I understand your previous comment correctly, you were saying that karma is a result and is not action itself. We can argue whether the word karma refers more to action or to result or to both, but if we choose to translate karma as “action” then we have taken a position: karma means action, not result. An action may imply results, but if we want to say what those results are, and even further to describe the multiple aspects of those results, then we have to use more than just one word: beneficial action, harmful action, neutral action, etc. And we will probably have to tell a story, such as Pema Chodron’s story that you mentioned above.
Hi Amod,
I just stumbled on this whilst reading your review of Evan Thompson’s book. I’m just going to paste in a few paragraphs from the chapter on karma and rebirth in my recently published book ‘The Buddha’s Middle Way’ (Equinox, 2019) that may interest you. I would certainly not describe my approach as ‘naturalised’, and I don’t accept the representationalist assumptions of that language, but there are many points of contact with your ideas, I think, and I’d be interested in your response.
‘Karma and rebirth is perhaps the most obvious source of absolutisation in Buddhist tradition, and for that reason has been the first target for those who want to make Buddhism compatible with scientific findings. It is the ‘supernatural beliefs’ involved in the acceptance of rebirth that are, for fairly obvious reasons, difficult to accept: we do not know what happens after death, and there is no evidence for rebirth that cannot be readily interpreted in other ways. Traditional Buddhist beliefs about karma are also more absolutised than might at first appear from those modern Buddhists who present them as merely “actions having consequences”. Yet both karma and rebirth, like other Buddhist teachings, are not fixed in interpretation, and can be understood in terms compatible with the Middle Way. They offer one way of approaching the question: ‘What are the effects of absolutisation on the one hand, or of practising the Middle Way on the other?’
Any general claims we may make about the consequences of better or worse judgements need to be provisional in nature. Whatever intuitions we may have on the subject, they do not justify us in ever making claims about what will necessarily happen in the event of a certain type of judgement or action. Causal relationships are complex, and they depend on our relating different categories of event to each other: for example that if I raise my hand whilst holding a ball and then let go of it, it will fall. But there may always be assumptions in our understanding of those categories and relationships that we have not taken account of. The statement “if I raise my hand whilst holding a ball and then let go of it, it will fall” may seem “true”, but not if the ball was made of something lighter than the surrounding atmosphere, or if there was no gravitational field. The examination of such claims is the business of science. Science follows a method compatible with the Middle Way, making theoretical claims only of a provisional kind, and that remain open to examination. Neither scientific method nor the Middle Way can justify us in making causal claims from an absolute and universal dogma about causal relationships.
On the face of it, though, the Buddhist view of karma seems to be just such a dogma. Though there is some variation in its interpretation, all schools agree that the karmic effect (karma-vipaka) of an action (including a mental action such as a judgement) must be morally proportionate to the action , that this effect may occur across lives, and that it is completely inevitable . Since the effects of our actions depend on a range of conditions apart from our own judgement, the only way this could occur is through a cosmic law of some kind that guarantees the precise way those conditions will always operate: one that can only be asserted to be operating universally through absolutising dogma.
Some traditional schools (such as the Yogachara) also insist, in addition to this, that all the conditions we experience are karmic ones, so that we necessarily deserve whatever happens to us. This, however, is clearly not supported by the Pali Canon. The Buddha points out that “some feelings…arise…from bile disorders”, or wind disorders, or changes of climate, or assault : in other words that there are biological causes, and actions of others, that contribute to the conditions we encounter as well as the results of our own actions. Elsewhere he also points out that we do not know whether we existed in the past, whether we did evil actions in the past, or what our precise balance of karma is : thus it cannot be concluded that all feeling is karmic.
However, this helpful recognition that karmic effects cannot be traced retrospectively, and that we cannot know precisely how it operates, does nothing to remove the remaining dogmatic assumption. That is the belief that all our actions will inevitably produce karmic effects. Our experience of the likely effects of absolutising judgement is sufficient to offer a well-justified general warning. However, the distinction between the absolute and the general is crucial if we are to avoid developing new absolutisations in our very attempt to deter people from them.
Perhaps the key point here is concerned with the comparison of karmic beliefs to scientific ones. If we maintain an edge of scepticism in our attitudes to scientific findings, and thus insist on provisionality even whilst acknowledging the justification of substantial confidence in such findings, we should be able to take a similar attitude to generalisations about the effects of absolutisation. The Buddha dramatises this point in a comparison with a boulder:
“Suppose, headman, a person would hurl a huge boulder into a deep pool of water. Then a great crowd of people…would send up prayers…, saying ‘Emerge, good boulder! Rise up, good boulder….’ What do you think, headman? Because of the prayers… would that boulder emerge…?”
“No, venerable sir.”
“So too, headman, if a person is one who destroys life… after death, that person will be reborn in a state of misery….”
Traditionally, this has been read as asserting that karmic effects are inevitable. However, the very use of the Buddha’s metaphor does not assert such absolute inevitability in the abstract, but rather places the likelihood of negative effects from an overwhelmingly disintegrative action into the same level of confidence that we place in commonly observed ‘natural’ causal relationships. It is not inevitable that a boulder will sink rather than rise up when thrown into a pool of water, just highly likely. We do not have to go into very fantastical scenarios to imagine the circumstances where the boulder might float, since there is some stone on earth that floats in some circumstances – pumice. Similarly, we should overwhelmingly expect that killing will result in negative effects (leaving aside the rebirth element for the moment). This is not inevitable, just so highly likely that we should place a good deal of practical confidence in it. It is exactly the same type of confidence that we should place on scientific findings that are consistent with all the evidence so far, such as anthropogenic climate change: namely, a strong but provisional confidence, in which the possibility of alternatives continues to be open, but practical reliance is nevertheless placed on the overwhelmingly likely explanation.
How might a general law of karmic effects be understood today? The impact of our judgements on the brain is an obvious way to understand it. By judging in one way, we create new synaptic connections, or strengthen existing ones, in a fashion that makes similar judgements a more likely option to be considered in the future. A frequently repeated judgement, such as the addicts’ judgement that getting her fix takes overwhelming precedence over all other considerations, sets up deeply entrenched ruts that it gets harder and harder to get out of. Absolutising judgements have negative effects, because they consist in such frequently repeated judgements, caught in a closed feedback loop. Provisional judgements have generally positive effects, however. They leave open alternative options that can help us to maintain mental states in which we have a variety of options in future.
However, the negative effects of absolutisation are not necessarily negative in the sense that they produce suffering. They are negative in the sense that our reliance on rigid and thus potentially maladapted patterns of judgement becomes greater. Whether rigidity causes you to suffer also depends on luck – the luck of changing conditions around you for which your rigid attitudes may or may not be adapted. The belief in a just world, a recognised cognitive bias of which absolutised belief in karma is often one manifestation, involves a deluded tendency to ignore that element of luck and regard all effects as just. The remedy to this is not to regard it instead as unjust, but to find a Middle Way in which both luck and the effects of our judgements are recognised as contributory ‘.
Thanks, Robert. Yes, this matches my approach – especially in thinking that karma-vipāka must be probabilistic rather than deterministic. (That’s an important distinction that Dale Wright makes in his original article on naturalizing karma, which I thought I’d written about but I realize now I haven’t.)
I use the term “naturalized” fairly loosely – mainly to imply a rejection of claims that are at odds with scientific evidence as scientists currently understand it.
Robert, in your first paragraph you said “I would certainly not describe my approach as ‘naturalised’, and I don’t accept the representationalist assumptions of that language”.
I doubt that what Amod means by “naturalized” is the same as what you mean by that word, because I’ve been reading Amod’s blog for a couple of years and have seen no indication that what he calls naturalism entails what you call representationalism—which, I know thanks to a Google search, you defined elsewhere in 2017 as “the belief that propositions made out of words could represent reality”. (Thank goodness for Google, without which I couldn’t be sure what you meant by representationalist, since the word has a very different meaning in consciousness studies, for example.)
Although I couldn’t find, in a quick Google search, a succinct definition by Amod of “naturalized”, the following phrases in his other blog posts point toward a definition: “informed by natural science” and “in terms of these worldly consequences and not in terms of supernatural ones”. Amod can correct me if I’m wrong, but by “naturalized” he means something like: adapted to plausibly fit with our most current knowledge, especially from natural science. Philosopher of science Michael Polanyi, for example, showed that natural science is not limited to propositions made out of words, so neither is (this kind of) naturalism.
Hi Nathan, Thanks for your semantic sleuthing, and I expect that your motivation is to avoid misunderstanding, which I applaud. The purpose of my post wasn’t to start a debate about naturalism, but rather to suggest other approaches to interpreting the Pali material on karma that I thought would probably fit with Amod’s. I merely put in that sentence to try to avoid having my own approach associated with naturalism, given the prominence that Amod gives to the term ‘naturalised’. I hope there are things we could agree about in relation to karma without having to use that language – perhaps on avoiding absolute interpretations of it?
Robert: Yes. I didn’t find anything really to disagree with in what you wrote. It all sounds reasonable enough. I saw in your other writings that countering absolutism is one of your themes, but rest assured that I’ve read far too many different kinds of philosophy to be attracted to what you call absolutism. I can’t even remember the last time I used the word. Also, I don’t like vodka. By the way, what you elsewhere call a middle way between absolutism and relativism reminds me of psychologist Michael Basseches’s writings on what he calls dialectical thinking (and similar themes from many philosophers).
I didn’t see Amod’s response before I posted mine; hence the redundancy. He must have posted right after I loaded the page and then I went sleuthing to try to figure out what you meant by representationalist! The time span between his comment and mine shows how much time I spent down that particular Google rabbit-hole.
It may be worth noting that although there has been a lot of talk about karma in this comment thread (including from me), the primary subject of Amod’s original post is a continuation of his discussion of Melford Spiro’s anthropological distinction between kammatic and nibbanic Buddhism.
I think your comment might actually have gone up before mine – there was a quirk in the system where I had to go back and “approve” my own comment after I thought I’d posted it. Sorry for making you go down the rabbit hole!
I wonder: What would be an alternative to the word “naturalized” that would convey much of the same meaning? “Critical” could be such an alternative: “critical kammatic Buddhism”. Dale Wright uses the word “critical” in the title of his article “Critical questions towards a naturalized concept of karma in Buddhism” and in its first paragraph, where he wrote:
“The Buddha warned that karma is so mysterious a process that it is essentially unfathomable, declaring it one of the four topics not suited to healthy philosophical meditation because it leads to ‘vexation and madness’. Nevertheless, it is essential that we engage in the processes of critical thinking about the concept of karma, thereby taking the same risks that many Asian Buddhists have also taken…. Westerners have faced doubts about critical thinking in this same sphere of culture, when early modern thinkers wondered whether moral conduct would survive critical reflection on the concepts of theistic judgment and heavenly reward. Most have concluded that the benefits of critical thinking about morality outweigh the risks, and that the possibility of further development and refinement in the sphere of human morality warrants energetic effort.”
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