(Prologue: I’ve got first-hand experience that a real understanding of the laws of karma can substantially change our lives for the better. I created this weblog to share information and personal experience with others. May it be of benefit!)
A head like “These two are inseparable” evokes the idea of lovers. In the case of this webpost, the pair of lovers are the two components that create karma, namely, intention and volitional action.
On May 06’12, I wrote a post that offered the view that, of these two components, it is not the volitional action per se that causes the accumulation of karma. It is the intention behind the action. Please click here if you wish to review that webpost.
On May 10’12, having received some e-mails around this topic after I published the webpost, I wrote to Jay Lippman, a senior dharma teacher to ask him about this. Please click here for a biography of Jay.
While we end up realizing that we are saying essentially the same thing, the way we come to that conclusion is interesting. Jay’s focus is slightly different than mine. He focuses on the fact that the intention and volitional action are inseparable. My focus is on the component of intention.
I ask Jay:
To me, it is the intention behind the action that creates karma, not the action per se. The action can be the same. The only difference is the intention.Is this correct?
Yes. The action along with the negative or positive intention must be together. Actions can be negative or positive or neutral. Motivations, or intentions, can also be negative, positive or neutral. If you slap someone but your reason for doing it is to genuinely help them, then its (sic) not necessarily a negative action accumulating negative karma, its a positive action accumulating positive karma.
If you have the motivation to help someone, but you never actually do anything to help her, then there is no karmic action and thus no karmic consequence.
Your intention affects the karma produced by the action. If you throw a rock over a wall and the rock kills a bug, you had no intention to kill that bug, so there is no negative karma of killing associated with that action of throwing the rock.
Whether the volition or intention is to cause harm or to cause benefit makes a difference in whether the action results in negative or positive karma.
The actions of great bodhisattvas like Trungpa and the Dalai Lama are in a different category. Their motivation is always completely pure. They never cause harm even when it might appear that way to us. But the full issue of karma and advanced beings is beyond what I know. All I can say is that according to the teachings, when a person achieves Liberation they are freed from Karma. Karma is the operation of relative reality. When one is liberated from relative reality one is free of karma, or you could say, one’s karma is completely purified.
Thanks for carrying on this exchange.
To me, this is a crucial point in understanding this most vital and important topic (i.e. karma and karma vipoca).
You say If you slap someone but your reason for doing it is to genuinely help them, then its not a negative action accumulating negative karma, its a positive action accumulating positive karma.
I’m saying: If you slap someone and your reason for doing it is to harm them, then this is a negative action accumulating negative karma.
Aren’t we saying the same thing???
yes we are. My only point is that there must be the actual slap as well as the intent {i.e. the volitional action and the intention are inseparable}.
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