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, as it has entered the scientific domain with the advent of Einstein’s Special Relativity.
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.”
As discussed in Post 15 on the Three Delicate Marks (Chinese: 三細相), the origin of karma is “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).”
Thus, the “action” referred to in karma is the mind’s movement. However, given that consciousness is also a state of fluctuating mentality, this implies that karma is innate in all conscious beings. For humans, it means that causation, suffering, and fruition accompany a person from birth.
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 why suffering is considered existential in Buddhism. Suffering is existential because aging, illness, and death inevitably follow birth. Of course, the impermanence of life is a phenomenon with which humans are familiar.
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).
However, the right conditions must also be present simultaneously for a cause to fructify.
The universe humans experience is no different. According to scientific evidence, the universe formed approximately 13.8 billion years ago. From the Buddhist perspective, it could have arisen if the right conditions were simultaneously present. One of the conditions scientists hypothesize is that the universe formed when the densities of matter and space were approximately equal. The universe remains today because the same conditions persist. When the right conditions cease to exist, the universe will also cease 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 deeds of body, speech, and mind.”
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 Abhidharma 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 (Romanized Sanskrit: bija; Chinese: 種子) 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.”
From all these Buddhist teachings, one understands that karma is the “mental intention” that is accomplished through the “deeds of body, speech, and mind.” How these actions fructify 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.” Furthermore, fructification may or may not be in the current life due to 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 is illusory and disintegrates at the end of each life. Instead, what follows you in the next life is your “karmic record.” Fruition, if it occurs 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 remains with a person throughout their life, it also persists 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 Buddha’s teaching on Causality explained, we now turn to how science, with the advent of Einstein’s Special Relativity, has acknowledged its existence.
In 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 “that one person’s past may be another’s future,” occurring across the “geography of spacetimes.”
However, Buddhism and science differ in what they regard as the driver of Causality.
In the video lecture “A Universe from Nothing,” Dr. Lawrence Krauss discusses 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,” its other side represents “energy and momentum of the universe.”
So, while the “geometric quantity” on one side of Enitein’s Equation explained “that one person’s past may be another’s future,” the other side of the equation indicated that the drivers of scientific Causality are energy and momentum. However, energy, as a quantitative property, is expressed numerically. A key question is: how can numbers or values serve as the momentum that drives Causality?
However, we know that, while everything is energy in the scientific universe, everything is mentality in the Buddhist universe. Furthermore, whereas science relies on inference to investigate the universe, the Buddha relies on direct perception. As discussed in Post 34, although inference and direct perception are mutually exclusive, they are also complementary, in that energy can help explain the same phenomenon that the Buddha teaches through mentality.
Indeed, if we apply this principle, then “energy and momentum” become “mental intention,” which, as mentioned earlier, is cetana and precisely what Buddha teaches is the driver of Causality.
In the next post, we will discuss one of the most well-documented and widely broadcast reincarnation stories on record: the reincarnation story of a WWII American pilot who was shot down in the Pacific by the Japanese.
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