In this post, we discuss Causality. While Causality is Buddha’s consequential doctrine that affects all conscious beings, it is no longer the exclusive domain of Buddhism because, with the advent of Einstein’s Special Relativity, it has entered the scientific domain.
One of the key concepts in Causality is Karman.
Karman (Chinese=業), according to The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, is “in Sanskrit, “action”: in its inflected form “karma,” it is now accepted as an English word, a term used to refer to the doctrine of actions and its corresponding “ripening” or “fruition (Vipaka), according to which virtuous deeds of body, speech, and mind produce happiness in the future (in this life or subsequently lives), while nonvirtuous deeds lead instead to suffering.”
The significant thing to understand about karman is what Buddha teaches in his doctrine known as the Three Delicate Marks (Chinese=sa三細相). In the Three Delicate Marks, Buddha teaches that “Because of unenlightenment, the mind moves, named as karma. There is no motion when enlightened. When there is motion, there is suffering. Fruition is inseparable from causation.” (Chinese=依不覺故心動。說名為業，覺則不動，動則有苦. 果不離因故).” So the “action” referred to in karma is the mind moving.
Given that the definition of consciousness is a fluctuating mentality, and a moving mind is a fluctuating mentality, what Buddha teaches in the Three Delicate Marks applies to all conscious beings. So, while Buddha deems a “no motion” mind enlightened, as the enlightenment experience of Adyashanti confirmed, he deems a conscious mind unenlightened. Therefore, unenlightenment is innate in humans because they are born with consciousness. Similarly, by saying, “Because of unenlightenment, the mind moves, named as karma,” and “when there is motion, there is suffering. Fruition is inseparable from causation,” Buddha makes it very clear that humans have karma, suffering, fruition, and causation not because they have eaten a forbidden fruit but because they are born with consciousness.
In other words, unenlightenment, karma, suffering, fruition, and causation are innate and existential to humans. In his doctrine known as the Eight Sufferings (Romanized Sanskrit=astakuhkha; Chinese=八難), Buddha lists birth, aging, sickness, and death as the first four. This is the meaning of existential suffering. Suffering is existential because aging, illness, and death inevitably follow birth. Of course, humans understand the impermanency of their lives well.
However, existential suffering in Buddha’s conscious universe starts not with humans but with its first conscious being: the smallest epiphenomenon known in Buddhism as “neighbor-to-emptiness dust (Chinese=鄰虛塵). The lifespan of “neighbor-to-emptiness dust” is so short that Buddha describes it as “born here, annihilated same here (Chinese=當處出生，隨處滅盡) in Śūraṅgama Sūtra (Chinese=首楞嚴經),” comparable to the lifespan of gluons in the quantum filed at one million billion billionith of a second. Given that Buddha’s universe originated from a fluctuating mentality known as non-luminosity, everything in it has consciousness. Therefore, everything in it is impermanent.
The Romanized Sanskrit term for Causality is hetupratyaya.
Hetupratyaya (Chinese=因緣), according to The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, is “In Sanskrit, “causes and conditions,” or “causality,” one of the cardinal teachings of Buddhism. In the Buddhist account of this causal process, Hetu designates the main or primary cause of production, and Pratyayare the subsidiary factors that contribute to the production of an effect, or “fruit” (Romanized Sanskrit=phala; Chinese=果), from that cause. In the production of a sprout from a seed, e.g., the seed would be the cause (hetu), such factors as light and moisture would be conditions (pratyaya), and the sprout itself would be the result or “fruit (phala).”
Condition (Romanized Sanskrit=pratyaya; Chinese=緣), according to The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, refers “to the subsidiary factors whose concomitance results in the production of an effect from a cause.”
The doctrine of Causality states that nothing happens by chance because everything is causally related (Chinese=沒有機緣巧合, 只有因果關係).
In other words, the right conditions must also be present simultaneously for a cause to fructify. The universe humans experience is no different. The universe could only have arisen about 13.8 billion years ago because the right conditions for it to occur were present then. One of the conditions that scientists theorize is that the universe arose when the density of matter and the density of space were roughly equal. The universe arose more than 13 billion years ago because these conditions were present at the time, and the universe is still here because the same conditions still exist. When the right conditions disappear, the universe also ceases to exist.
According to The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, Buddhists consider Karman “as mental intention (Cetana) or intentional acts: the Buddha specifically says, “action is volition, for after having intended something, one accomplishes action through body, speech, and the mind.” In other words, the “action” that caused karman refers mental actions, not physical actions. At the most fundamental level, the “action” is the consciousness that comes with life.
Cetana (Chinese=思), according to The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, is “in Sanskrit, “volition,” or “stimulus;” one of the omnipresent mental factors (Mahabhumika; Sarvatraga) that accompanies each moment of consciousness; intention directs the mind towards either salutary (kusala; Chinese=善), unsalutary (akusala; Chinese=不善), or neutral (avyakrta; Chinese=無記) objects.” Furthermore, “intention motivating a deed plays a significant role in the positive or negative karmic weight of the deed itself.”
Cittasamtana (Chinese=心相續), according to The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, is “in Sanskrit, “mental continuum.” It is employed in the Abdhidarma tradition to clarify that there is continuity between an action (Karman) that an individual undertakes and its eventual effect (vipaka), as well as continuity between one lifetime and the next, without going so far as to posit a perduring self.”
Vipaka (Chinese=果報), according to The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, is “in Sanskrit and Pali, lit. “ripening,” thus “maturation,” “fruition,” or “result,” referring specifically to the “maturation” of past deeds (Karman).” Vipaka refers to any mental phenomenon that occurs as a result of morally wholesome or unwholesome volitional actions performed by the body, speech, or mind, either in this or previous lives. Fruitions can be divided between those that occur during the lifetime in which the deed is performed, those that occur in the lifetime immediately following the life in which the deed is performed, and those that occur two or more lifetimes later. Although the fruition is the result of a wholesome or unwholesome act, the vipaka is itself always morally neutral and manifests itself as pleasant or painful that is either physical or mental.”
Alayavijnana is another crucial teaching regarding Causality in Buddhism.
Alayavijnana (Chinese=阿賴耶識/藏識), according to The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, is “in Sanskrit, “storehouse consciousness,” or “foundational consciousness;” the eighth of the eight types of consciousness (vijnana) posited in the Yogacara school. All forms of Buddhist thought must be able to uphold (1) the principle of cause and effect of action (Karman), the structure of Samsara, and the process of liberation (vimoksa) from it, while also upholding (2) the fundamental doctrine of impermanence (anitya) and the lack of a perduring self (anatman). The most famous and comprehensive solution to the range of problems created by these apparently contradictory elements is the alayavijnana. The alayavijnana provides that solution as a foundational form of consciousness, itself ethically neutral, where all the seeds (bija) of all deeds done in the past reside, and from which they fructify in the form of experience. Thus, the alayavijnana is said to pervade the entire body during life, to withdraw from the body at the time of death (with the extremities becoming cold as it slowly exits), and to carry the complete karmic record to the next rebirth destiny.” “The alayavijnana thus provides continuity from moment to moment within a given lifetime and from lifetime to lifetime, all providing the link between an action performed in the past and its effect experienced in the present, despite protracted periods of latency between the seed and fruition.”
When all these Buddhist teachings are taken together, one understands that karma, the “mental intention,” is the driver that starts the cycles of causality. How the cause fructifies depends on whether “intention directs the mind towards either salutary (kusala; Chinese=善), unsalutary (akusala; Chinese=不善), or neutral (avyakrta; Chinese=無記) objects.” However, fructification may or may not be instant because of cittasamtana, “the continuity between an action (Karman) that an individual undertakes and its eventual effect (vipaka), as well as continuity between one lifetime and the next, without going so far as to posit a perduring self.”
If the fructification happens in the future, then Alayavijnana, the “storehouse consciousness,” “withdraws from the body at the time of death (with the extremities becoming cold as it slowly exits) and carry the complete karmic record to the next rebirth destiny.”
In other words, the “you” in another life refers not to the physical “you” in the present life, which disintegrates at the end of each life. Instead, what follows you in the next life is your “karmic record.” Fruition, if it happens in a future life when conditions are right, will be experienced by the then physical body carrying “your” karmic record.
So, what is the “karmic record?” The karmic record is a record of one’s memory. Just as one’s memory stays with the person all this life, it also continues across lifespans. After your “storehouse consciousness” “withdraws from the body at the time of death,” the record of your memory takes residence in another body in its next lifetime.
How the body will end up in the next lifetime depends on whether the intention was “morally wholesome or unwholesome.” Wholesome intentions end up in “good destiny (Romanized Sanskrit=sugati; Chinese=善趣,” while unwholesome intentions end up in “baleful destiny (Romanized Sanskrit=durgati; Chinese=惡趣)” in Samsara.
Samsara (Chinese=輪迴), according to The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, is “in Sanskrit and Pali, “wandering,” viz., the “cycles of rebirth.”
There are two types of Samara, and their Romanized Sanskrit names are pariccedajaramarana and parinamikajaramarana.
Pariccedajaramarana (Chinese=分段生死), according to The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, is “in Sanskrit, “determinative birth-and-death. This is Samsara as experienced by ordinary sentient beings taking rebirth within the three realms of existence (Romanized Sanskrit=Traidhatuka/Trailoya; Chinese=三界). The main causes and conditions that lead to determinative birth-and-death are contaminated action and afflictive obstructions.”
Parinamikajaramarana (Chinese=變易生死), according to The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, is for “those beings (who) have overcome the afflictive obstructions, ….. may still be subject to cognitive obstructions.” Since those who have overcome the afflictive obstructions “have already some measure of enlightenment, when they undergo rebirth and death in the three realms of existence (Romanized Sanskrit=tridhatuka, Chinese=三界), these occur as a “transfigurational birth-and-death of the mind-made body (Romanized Sanskrit=manomayakaya, Chinese=意生身), not a “determinative birth-and-death” of the physical body.” “While such beings may then appear to be reborn, these rebirths are actually transfigurations of their mind-made bodies, which may be manipulated at will to change their appearance or to extend their life span indefinitely.“
With Buddhist Causality explained, we now turn to science to learn what it teaches about Causality.
n this video, The Geometry of Causality, astrophysicist Dr. Matt O’Dowd made the following opening remark, “The special theory of relativity tells us that one person’s past may be another’s future. When time is relative, paradoxes threaten. Today, we peer deeper into Einstein’s theory to find that the immutable ordering of cause and effect emerges when we discover the causal geography of spacetime.”
Indeed, Einstein’s special theory of relativity has confirmed Buddha’s teaching that there is an “immutable ordering of cause and effect.,” and “that one person’s past may be another future” occurring over the “geography of spacetimes.”
However, what is the driver of Causality in special relativity?
In this video lecture, A Universe from Nothing, Dr. Lawrence Kruss talks about Einstein’s Special Relativity equation. About 19:30 minutes into the lecture, Dr. Krauss explained that while one side of Einstein’s formula is “a geometric quantity,” the other side of the equation represents “energy and momentum of the universe.”
So, the drivers of scientific Causality are energy and momentum. However, energy, being a quantitative property, represents numbers and values. How can numbers and momentum be the driver of Causality?
However, in the scientific universe, where everything is energy, and in the Buddhist universe, where everything is mentality, energy and mentality are complementary because the scientific means of knowledge (word-based) and Buddha’s means of knowledge (direct perception) are complementary. Therefore, energy can be used to explain Buddha’s teaching using mentality. If we apply this principle, then “energy and momentum” become “mentality and momentum.”
In other words, both sides of Einstein’s Special Relativity completely explain Buddha’s Causality. While the left side of the equation affirms that a person’s past can become another’s future over time and space, the right side explains Buddha’s teaching that the driver of Causality is cetana, or “mental intention,” which scientists can call “energy and momentum.”
In the next post, we discuss a well-documentary of a little boy who said he was an American pilot shot down by the Japanese during WWII in a battle in the Pacific. His recollections of his past life amazed those who served with the dead pilot and his family.
You can find the short version of this reincarnation story at Reincarnation of James Houston Jr.
At about 11:30 minutes into the video, you can find an exchange between father and son that will probably shock you.
It goes something like this.
When the father was cleaning up the yard and the son was playing a lead, Bruce Leininger, the father, said to his son, James Leininger III, “I just love you to bits.”
James replied, “Well, I knew you would be a good daddy when I picked you.”
Bruce, “What?????”
James, “When I found you and mommy, I knew you would be good parents.”
Bruce, “What do you mean when you found us?
James, “I found you and mommy in Hawaii.”
The narrator then commented, “James told his father that he saw them in a pink hotel in Hawaii, which was where the Leiningers were staying when they decided to have James.”
In other words, James Houston Jr. found the Leiningers before James was born and decided that he would like to be incarnated as their kid!
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