Karmic Causes and Consciousness

 

Karmic causes are discussed a great deal in the Buddhist and Bön texts. But how can we accumulate these? Virtuous actions such as generosity, not harming others, and so on, create positive karmic causes and bring joyful results in the future. But just talking about doing good deeds and avoiding bad deeds is not enough.

 

In our present life, we are experiencing here and now the fruits of what we have done in past lives. The past causes are not changed or transformed by our actions in this life because these have already been accumulated and their consequences are bound to come in the same way as the shadow that follows a body.

 

But we can affect future outcomes and future lives through our actions in the present that create new karmic causes. Therefore, in the present we can make a preparation for our future life. This starts with cultivating a good motivation.

 

Each of us, as an individual being, has body, speech and mind. Now, how do we develop good motivation in relation to these three? First, we should understand how we accumulate positive and negative karmic causes. We have eight types of consciousness and among them the most basic is the Kunzhi Namshe (kun-gzhi rnam-shes) or base consciousness.

 

We call it the basis of everything (kun-gzhi) because it is the basis for the transmission of all karmic traces or Bagchaks (bag-chags). It is called Alayavijnana in Sanskrit and all other consciousness evolves out from it. Second, there is the contaminated mind-consciousness or Klishta-Manovijnana (nyon-shes), and third, there is the mind-consciousness or Manovijnana (yid-shes). Finally there are the five sense-consciousnesses and that makes a total of eight Namshes or types of consciousnesses.

 

The Madhyamaka philosophy asserts that there are only six types of consciousness: the five types of sense consciousness and the mental consciousness. According to the Madhyamaka, there is ignorance here, so the contaminated mental consciousness (Klishta-Manovijnana), no special consciousness and so there are only six types, while both Chittamatra philosophy and Tantra and Dzogchen teach the work of consciousness and the transmission of the karmic causes related to these eight types.

 

How do these eight work? The five kinds of sense-consciousness work in connection with the corresponding sense-organs and sense-objects. All three, which are the sense organs, the sense object and the sense consciousness, must be present for it to become a sense perception.

 

But then this raw sense data has to be associated with memories (dran-pa) and the mind (yid) in order for this raw sense data to be organized into a recognizable object which can then be identified by a name. This work is done through the mental consciousness, and so the five sense consciousnesses act like servants, constantly collecting data, and are governed by the mental consciousness, which is like their lord or king. When the mind is a powerful ruler, it sends its five faithful servants to engage in various kinds of activities to their capacity.

 

The eye-consciousness captures forms, shapes, colors, and so on, and brings them back to its master. The ear consciousness and the rest works in a similar way.

 

It's kind of like bees, which takes nectar from flowers everywhere and return it to the hive to be used to make honey. Our perceptions are like this honey; the raw sensory data of the senses must be converted into perceptions by the mind.

 

Then, at the end of this process we are aware of the perception but not of the actual material, the raw sensory data, from which it was constructed. The sense-consciousness, like the worker bees, makes no judgment of perception as good or bad; it doesn't judge. It is the mental awareness that makes the decision good or bad.

 

And then the perception mixed with that judgment, the Kunzhi or basic consciousness, is imprinted on of how to make an imprint on soft clay. This reaction to the original cognition made by the mental consciousness is stored there and in our ignorance we do not focus on our actual immediate external experience but we focus on this data stored in the Kunzhi gespeicherten Daten and think of «self» what that is, we think it's appropriate or we think it's «mine» and so we pick it up and become attached to it.

 

Thus the focus of the attention is on the data stored in the Kunzhi and not on the reality. Thereby the five sense consciousnesses are like the servants running all over the world to collect wealth to bring back to the house of their master, the spiritual consciousness, which is like the king. He gathers together all this richness of the senses and agrees with it, and then he puts it in his treasury or storehouse; this is the Kunzhi.

 

But he does not enjoy this treasure; this is done by his wife, the Klishta-Manovijnana or contaminated mental consciousness. It is she who thinks: «All this is my treasure, I love it!» So this is how we collect karmic causes and these are deposited in the Kunzhi. But karmic causes are not just any material, so there are always additional rooms in the Kunzhi Warehouse for more. There is no limit here, because we have accumulated karmic causes over an infinity of past lives from beginningless time.

 

When we go to sleep at night, the five sense consciousnesses dissolve into the Kunzhi. During the waking state the five senses are focused on the outside world, but during sleep they return to the Kunzhi like a turtle withdraws its limbs into its shell when frightened.

 

During dreamless sleep there is only the presence of Kunzhi, but during the sleep there are also times when we have dreams. At this time the mental consciousness comes into operation again, but the five senses are still inactive. The material of dreams comes from within, from the Kunzhi, rather than from without with the senses. The most of our dreams at night are linked to the memories of the previous day, because this material was freshly stored into the Kunzhi.

 

But in deeper levels there are also traces of past life memories. Everything from there is in the Kunzhi, our entire past over countless lifetimes; nothing has been lost. So dreams arise from the causes that are stored in the Kunzhi.

 

The after-death experience of the Bardo is also very similar to the dream state. The Kunzhi is there all the time; it will be not destroyed by an individual death. All of the past karmic traces are in the Kunzhi Namshe and they are the causes of the arising of the karmic visions in the Bardo of existence, theSidpa Bardo (srid-pa bar-do).

 

In the Bönpo tradition we find Sutra, Tantra and Dzogchen, and in all three the existence of the Bardo between death and rebirth is taught. When our mind experiences the death and leaves the lifeless body, our mind stream continues to have experiences because the karmic causes in the Kunzhi Namshe still remain.

 

We can have gross thoughts connected to the passions as well as subtle thoughts connected to the movements of subtle psychic energy (rlung, Skt. Prana), and both can have effects. There is a union of mind and subtle Prana that appears here, and this union is necessary for the rebirth.

 

Some schools consider that it is the Kunshe Namshe, the storehouse or base consciousness, itself that takes rebirth, but the Madhyamaka denies this, claiming that it is the mental consciousness (mano-vijnana) that does experiences the rebirth.

 

In any case, this spiritual consciousness functions in the Bardo. We see and feel as we do in real life or in a dream. We feel that we are in a body with all its sense operations, even if it is not a material body but a mind-made subtle body (yid Ius). When we wake up from a dream, we know that the dream was unreal and not true. We realize it was just a dream.

 

But actually we are in the same conditions with the same feelings whether we are dreaming or waking. The same happens in the intermediate state of the Bardo.

 

There is no exact time limit for the Bardo experience; 49 days is just a custom. We have the same feeling in the Bardo that we have in the dream state. At that moment we think that the dream state is unreal and untrue, while the waking state is real and true. But they are both the same condition and arise from karmic causes.

 

Karmic causes lead to our karmic visions, whether in dream, waking, or Bardo. And they are conditioning our future rebirth. So we should be conscious and conscientious about accumulating positive karmic causes.

 

The accumulation of karmic causes by the mind (yid, Skt. Manas) is fundamental and crucial. The mind is the great gatherer. For example, we can have a perception, the mind judges it, and we have an emotional response of anger. The mind then collects these complex thoughts and places them in the Kunzhi Namshe. He memorizes this and keeps it in the vast Kunzhi Storehouse.

 

But how can we prevent this process? How can we prevent the association of emotional defilements with ignorance? Ignorance is the hardest thing to stop of all because we have been accustomed to ignorance over a long period of time. And she distorts everything; she distorts how we see reality, like a yellow dye on the lens of our glasses that yellows everything we see. This makes it very difficult to see things clearly. This distortion is the result of ignorance and passions.

 

All our different kinds of consciousness are mixed up with the habits of ignorance; only just before we attain Buddhahood do we finally purify this radical and fundamental ignorance. But otherwise it is very difficult to cleanse ourselves of it.

 

When we look at the world we don't see what is real, and we don't see what is already deposited in our karmic causes. Our vision of the outside world is really a projection of our own inner state; the outer forms we perceive are influenced and distorted by our mind. The external object that we perceive does not exist internally, so it is our ignorance that looks back on itself and conceives the object as substantial and real.

 

As a result of this misjudgment, the passions arise as emotional reactions and impulses. This is how all passions or negative emotions are generated. If ignorance were not present from the earliest beginning, passions would not appear. Now let's look back within ourselves and see how this ignorance works.

 

For example, if we intend to go to war, we should first know who our enemy is and what his capabilities are. We don't just jump right into the fight. So we need to realize what the emotional defilements are and how they work because it is through these defilements that we accumulate negative karmic causes. But there is also the possibility of accumulation of positive karmic causes through acts of generosity, the meditation on a Buddha image, and so on.

 

There are two main types of karmic causes here: collective and individual. For example, all human beings have the same karmic cause for human rebirth and for the human karmic vision.

 

That is why we, as humans, see the world in the same way. But the Devas, Asuras and Pretas see the world very differently from the way we humans do because they have different collective karmic causes for doing so. All we humans see the sea in the same way, but the sea looks very different to a fish or a Naga that lives on the water in its dimension.

 

We also have our individual karmic causes that put us beyond our individual existence and circumstances. For example there is a man and some people see him as a friend and others see him as an enemy even though it's the same man. This is in accordance with individual karmic causes.

 

For himself, he is none of those things. Nothing has an inherent existence, but everything depends on the causes of the perception. When a single human dies, his part in the collective vision of humanity will be dissolved, just as when the sun finally sets in the west, all its rays go but the sky remains. So even if the individual cause dissolves, the collective cause remains because all other people are still participating.

 

Even it is said that there are no rules in Dzogchen, there is no question of just going over everything and doing what we want. This is because, unless we are actually in the Natural State that the karmic conditions continue as long as the mind works.

 

Some teachings have a direct meaning while others have an indirect meaning. So when we hear the instructions given in Dzogchen texts, it is very important to understand the context. It is important not to confuse and mix up these different types of meanings.

 

So the main thing for us here is to accumulate the ten virtues in relation to our activities of body, speech and mind. To do this, we should first know the ten non-virtues and their causes.