What Are the Karma and Its Results That I Believe In?
Do you believe that karma and its results must return? If so, we must first examine what that belief is. The background image today shows an emperor parading naked as though he were wearing clothes. It is an image satirizing ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes.’ Through the core of this story, I want to examine belief in karma and rebirth.
Swindlers Who Made Invisible Clothes
The swindlers say they wove fabric from invisible thread, tailored it, and dressed the king in the resulting clothes. When a person sent to inspect the work says that no thread is visible, the swindlers claim that evil or stupid people cannot see it. Nothing is visible, but the person cannot expose himself as evil or foolish, so he agrees that the fabric is splendid.
The same thing happens when the next person arrives. The swindlers say they are cutting invisible fabric and that only good and intelligent people can see it. They ask the king, too, how magnificent the clothes are. The king likewise cannot say that he sees nothing. In the end, he goes out naked as though he were dressed. Only the honest child who sees things as they are says that nothing is visible.
Karma and Rebirth Are Also Invisible Clothes
As I see it, karma and rebirth are like the emperor’s new clothes. Someone says that rebirth and an afterlife exist, along with an invisible heavenly world above and a hell beneath the ground. Even though people cannot see them, they are ashamed to say they do not exist because others claim that they do. They join in, saying that they, too, see them and that they are magnificent.
An honest person who looks directly, however, must say that what is not visible is not visible. Consider rebirth, karma, the six higher knowledges and the knowledge of past lives, heavenly worlds, angels and gods, powers attributed to Avalokiteshvara and Amitabha, and powers attributed to a mysterious rock—none of which we can observe. People who insist that something beyond our observation exists are like fraudulent tailors making invisible clothes. Such stories have continued to be made in Buddhist scriptures and many other places, and humanity has believed them because others said they were true.
The Buddha Does Not Invent Unobservable Stories
I regard Buddhism as a religion that did not originally speak of such things. The Buddha is not someone who invents claims about unobservable matters in order to delude people. The Buddha’s foundation is radical skepticism, impermanence, not-self, and dependent origination. Such a person could not have spoken in order to delude people with things that are invisible and cannot be observed.
The System of Karma and Rebirth Attached in Place of a God
After the Buddha died, however, when Buddhism became the religion of a particular society, moral rules demanded by that society came to be attached to the religion. Buddhism has no god because it is atheistic and teaches not-self. A god under another name was then attached in place of a god. That is the system of karma, its results, and rebirth.
People say there is an invisible system in which an action produces its karmic result. They call it an excellent system and demand that we believe it. They say that if we believe, it will appear visible and feel as though it exists. This is the emperor’s invisible new clothes that people still believe in today.
Why I Strongly Criticize Karma and Rebirth
The Buddha does not make assertions about what is invisible and cannot be observed in the first place. Then how can I know that there is no afterlife when I have not died either? Even so, I speak passionately against karma and rebirth because people are believing in a religion of rebirth rather than Buddhism. Instead of believing the words of Jesus, they believe in heaven and hell; instead of looking at the Buddha’s teaching, they wear the emperor’s new clothes of karma and rebirth.
I say that Jesus discarded the old personal god and spoke of a natural god. The Buddha discarded not only a god but even attachment to an individual existence, and spoke of impermanence, not-self, and dependently originated existence as they are. We arise through relationships and disappear through relationships, living in a world governed by cause and effect. What matters is this present moment.
Being Observable Is What Makes It the Buddha’s Teaching
The Buddha’s teaching speaks about facts that can be observed as they are. Even though the teaching was transmitted long ago, when we observe for ourselves now, we can confirm that the world is impermanent, without self, and dependently originated. It takes observable facts as its standard, and if we follow it and examine, we can observe directly. The greatness of the Buddha’s teaching is that even when caught by a misguided thought, we can observe it and become free.
Yet people write countless fictional stories about the emperor’s invisible clothes—things that cannot be observed and are like dreams and beliefs—and then believe those stories to be the Buddha’s teaching. They are not the Buddha’s teaching. They are novels diligently written by swindlers.
It Is Time to Leave an Old Moral Device Behind
In an age when religion had to take responsibility for ethics and morality, stories about karma and rebirth performed that role. In the twenty-first century, however, we must discard them. Some ask how people can live without them. They imagine that a society where 90% of people are nonreligious must be like hell, and that without a guarantee that the result of every action returns to the actor, people will simply live wickedly as they please.
Do Not Become a Slave Who Is Good for the Sake of Reward
Behind that thought lies the belief that human beings are evil by nature. If the reason I act well is to receive a good karmic result, and the reason I avoid evil is to escape a bad result, that is a life of slavery. It regards human beings themselves as such slaves and as beings who are bad by nature.
Human beings are originally free. We must look clearly. We must stop living while insisting upon the emperor’s invisible clothes of karma and rebirth and break free from superstition. In the next discussion, I will examine further why the claim that a karmic result must return is a superstition, contrary to dependent origination, and non-Buddhist.
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