Karma: Empowering Compassionate Action
“While knowing the full extent of the workings of karma is identified by the Buddha as an imponderable, there is much that we can understand that will allow us to take an active role in shaping our future while holding our present circumstances with compassion.”
As our human family faces multiple challenges resulting from an accumulation of our past collective actions, it is a good time to reflect on how we might make our current actions contribute to a more wholesome direction in the future. As an extension of the series on the 12 Links of Interdependent Origination, we studied (in a past Sukhasiddhi Sundays series) the law of karma and the role intention plays in its unfolding. While knowing the full extent of the workings of karma is identified by the Buddha as an imponderable, there is much that we can understand that will allow us to take an active role in shaping our future while holding our present circumstances with compassion.
Karma is the law of cause and effect as it relates to thoughts, words, and actions. For every action we take, inevitably there is a result that will arise at an unknown time. Our experiences are determined and shaped by previously planted karmic seeds. Every time we engage in an action of body, speech, or mind, karmic seeds are planted in our storehouse consciousness. This consciousness flows in a stable way from one lifetime to the next.
When the time has come for karma to ripen, the results of previous karmic actions arise and shape our experience on both micro and macro levels.
The network of causes and conditions that shape our experience is infinitely complex. In addition to our personal karma, our lives are also shaped by collective karma. Some of these karmic seeds ripen instantly while others can take lifetimes to manifest. To have a clear understanding of the full extent of karma is beyond the capacity of the intellect of an ordinary being. The Buddha taught it to be one of the four imponderables. That said, having an understanding about how we create karma and how it operates can allow us to gain perspective during both joyful and challenging times. It provides a framework for understanding our circumstances and invites us to hold those challenges with lovingkindness and compassion. It also allows us to hold the joys with appreciation and use them as inspiration for engaging in beneficial activity.
The inevitability of karma can sometimes feel disheartening and it's easy to feel defeated if we believe that everything is fait accompli. The gift of understanding how karma works is that we can reflect on the causes and conditions that brought about current circumstances and learn how we can shape the future we’d like by engaging in beneficial actions now that will bring about a beneficial result in times to come.
“The gift of understanding how karma works is that we can reflect on the causes and conditions that brought about current circumstances and learn how we can shape the future we’d like by engaging in beneficial actions now that will bring about a beneficial result in times to come.”
In addition, there are ways we can purify karma that has already accrued, through the practices of Chenrezig and tonglen. The practice of Chenrezig is a means of awakening to our innate compassion for ourselves and all beings. He is also a central part of the tonglen practice that we do at Sukhasiddhi Foundation.
This special tonglen practice comes from the female yogini, Niguma, who is the source for many of the Shangpa Kagyu practices. This exquisite practice is a profound means of holding all of life’s suffering in loving kindness and compassion while transforming it and our relationship with it by illuminating our suffering from the inside out with wisdom and compassion.
About the 12 Links of Dependent Origination course:
A genuine understanding of the 12 links of dependent origination allows us to recognize the fundamental cause of our suffering, to see how that suffering is perpetuated, and offers the motivation to undertake the practices needed to uproot it.
“The application of these teachings can bring a sense of groundedness and direction during a time when the circumstances of our life may seem beyond our control. While we cannot control what arises in our life, we have a choice in how we respond to it and this in turn will flavor our experience of the next moment.”
The teaching is fundamental to understanding the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, and to understanding that in each moment two levels of experience are arising simultaneously- ordinary or conventional reality, with all of our conditioned thoughts and patterns, and ultimate or genuine reality - shunyata in sanskrit - which is translated as openness or emptiness, the way things genuinely are. Both are true, and recognizing truth of both realities is the path out of suffering.
Through imagery, video, explanation, meditation and personal inquiry, Lama Döndrup presents this profound teaching in a way that allows it to be applied to our moment-to-moment experience, the current lifetime and our experience from lifetime to lifetime.
The application of these teachings can bring a sense of groundedness and direction during a time when the circumstances of our life may seem beyond our control. While we cannot control what arises in our life, we have a choice in how we respond to it and this in turn will flavor our experience of the next moment.
12 Links of Dependent Origination: An i
n-depth exploration of the essence of the Buddhist teachings
Self-paced course
Approx. 7 hours in six sessions (each session approx. 75 minutes)
Led by Lama Döndrup
Each session begins with opening prayers and a mantra, followed by a short meditation, a teaching accompanied by imagery and video, a guided period of reflection, and then questions for personal reflection.
A deep and profound dive into our experience.
Accessible on the Teachable app
$50
