Time and again

Posted: January 4, 2010 | Author: Doug | Filed under: Buddhism, Dune, Theravada | Leave a comment »

A quote from Frank Herbert’s “God Emperor of Dune”:

From that welter of memories which I can tap at will, patterns emerge. They are like another language which I see so clearly. The social-alarm signals which put societies into the postures of defense/attack are like shouted words to me. As a people, you react against threats to innocence and the peril of the helpless young. Unexplained sounds, visions and smells raise the hackles you have forgotten you possess. When alarmed, you cling to your native language because all the other patterned sounds are strange. You demand acceptable dress because a strange costume is threatening. This is system-feedback at its most primitive level. Your cells remember.
-The Stolen Journals

This post was inspired after reading Lafcadio Hearn’s book Kokoro, written in 1895. In one chapter, he explores the Buddhist notion of the endless cycle of rebirth. For some background, consider this quotation from the Theravada Buddhist text, the Danda Sutta (SN 15.9) of the Pali Canon:

At Savatthi. There the Blessed One said: “From an inconstruable beginning comes transmigration. A beginning point is not evident, though beings hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving are transmigrating and wandering on. Just as a stick thrown up in the air lands sometimes on its base, sometimes on its side, sometimes on its tip; in the same way, beings hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving, transmigrating and wandering on, sometimes go from this world to another world, sometimes come from another world to this.

“Why is that? From an inconstruable beginning comes transmigration. A beginning point is not evident, though beings hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving are transmigrating and wandering on. Long have you thus experienced stress, experienced pain, experienced loss, swelling the cemeteries — enough to become disenchanted with all fabricated things, enough to become dispassionate, enough to be released.”

This is based on the Buddhist belief of “Big Time”: universes upon universes, lives upon lives being reborn over and over by virtue of their desire to live and their craving of self. The term kalpa refers to “eons”, but can mean millions, billions, or even trillions of years depending on interpretation. Rebirth after rebirth, endless migration, endless wandering. For a living being, each volitional action, thought or deed,¹ like seeds scattered in a field, comes to fruition some day, and over the span of eons, that’s a lot of seeds. As Hearn writes:

The peasant toiling up some steep road, and feeling the weight of his handcart straining every muscle, murmurs patiently: “Since this is ingwa [因果, inga or "karmic retribution"], it must be suffered.” …The incapable or vicious man is reproached with his ingwa; and the misfortunes of the wise or the virtuous are explained by the same Buddhist word.” (pg. 223)

Hearn then expresses his increasing belief in the Buddhist view of the world, in contrast to the beliefs imparted by his upbringing:

After long dwelling in this psychological medium, you find that it has penetrated your own thought, and has effected therein various changes. All concepts of life implied by the idea of preexistence, —all those beliefs which, however sympathetically studied, must at first have seemed more strange to you, — finally lose that curious or fantastic character with which novelty once invested them, and present themselves under a perfectly normal aspect. They explain so many things so well as even to look rational; and quite rational some assuredly are when measured by the scientific thought of the nineteenth century. (p.g 224-225)

From here, he diverges into the notion of inheritance as a way of justifying pre-existence. He explains:

So likewise are those vague impulses to wander which come and go with spring, and those vague depressions experienced in autumn, — survivals, perhaps, from an epoch in which human migration followed the course of the seasons, or even from an era preceding the apparition of man.

For him, much of our behavior is inherited by our shared genetic ancestry, by biology and so on, which in his way denies the notion that we learn entirely by cognition and experience. Later, he quotes from imminent scientists at the time to bolster his belief that Buddhism and science accord well in showing that what we call the “self” is a composite being, with much of it inherited from the past.

As science progresses, and “Eastern thought” is more understood, he then writes:

But with the acceptance of the doctrine of evolution, old forms of thought crumbled; new ideas everywhere arose to take the place of worn-out dogmas; and we now have the spectacle of a general intellectual movement in directions strangely parallel with Oriental philosophy…And today for the student of scientific psychology the idea of preexistence passes out of the realm of theory into the realm of fact, proving the Buddhist explanation of the universal mystery quite as plausible as any other.

Lastly, Hearn writes a nice exposition of karma and rebirth in my opinion:

To Buddhism, this is a temporary composite of illusions. What makes it is the karma. What reincarnates is the karma, — the sum-total of the acts and thoughts of countless anterior existences, — each one of which, as an integer in some great spiritual system of addition and subtraction, may affect all the rest. Like a magnetism, the karma is transmitted from form to form, from phenomenon to phenomenon, determining conditions by combinations. The ultimate mystery of the concentrative and creative effects of karma the Buddhist acknowledges to be inscrutable; but the cohesion of effects he declares to be produced by tanhā [Pali word for "craving"], the desire of life, corresponding to what Schopenhauer called the “will” to live. Now we find in Herbert Spencer’s “Biology” a curious parallen for this idea. (pg. 240)

It is true that Japanese culture, like much of Asia, is deeply influenced by the notion of Big Time and the fruition of karma everywhere. As mentioned in a past post, a famous saying in Japanese is sode furiau mo tashō no en (袖振り合うも多生の縁 ), which means “even when the sleeves of two people brush together, this is the result of a past life”.

Themes of the mind-boggling and incomprehensible in Buddhism appear quite a bit in the Mahayana Buddhist texts. In the Infinite Life Sutra, the Buddha explains that the Pure Land of Amitabha and all of its splendor is due entirely to Amitabha’s immensely good karma:

Ananda answered, “The consequences of karma are inconceivable.”
The Buddha said to Ananda, “Inconceivable indeed are the consequences of karma, and so are the worlds of the Buddhas. By the power of meritorious deeds, sentient beings in that land dwell on the ground of karmic reward….”

Or very frequently in the Lotus Sutra, the Buddha talks about past deeds committed in the incomprehensible past lead to circumstances during his time. In the Devadatta chapter, the Buddha states that in a past life Devadatta, who betrayed him in this life, was once his teacher, and that despite falling into Hell, would emerge again one day and become a Buddha himself:

The Buddha said to his monks: “The king at that time was I myself, and this seer was the man who is now Devadatta. All because Devadatta was a good friend to me, I was able to become fully endowed with this six paramitas, pity, compassion, joy, and indifference, with the thirty-two features, the eighty characteristics, the purple-tinged golden color, the ten powers, the four kinds of fearlessness, the four methods of winning people, the eighteen unshared properties, and the transcendental powers and the power of the way. The fact that I have attained impartial and correct enlightenment and can save living beings on a broad scale is all due to Devadatta who was a good friend.”

Then the Buddha said to the four kinds of believers: “Devadatta, after immeasurable kalpas have past, will attain Buddhahood. He will be called Heavenly King Thus Come One, worthy of offerings of right and universal knowledge, perfect parity and conduct, well gone, understanding the world, on itself worthy, trainer of people, teacher of heavenly and human beings, Buddha, World-Honored One.

There’s a beautiful sense of gratitude, and forgiveness in this passage by the Buddha, and that the Buddha holds no animosity even after Devadatta tried to kill him.

But it’s still hard to grasp such vast time, so many deeds committed in the past, many of which have come to fruition, while many still have not. After reading Hearn’s writings, I remember sitting on the bus on the way home from work and pondering the possibility of universes and worlds before this one, where I sat on a similar bus on the way home from my job, doing the same things as before. It was a really powerful moment.

When Buddhism speaks of kalpas and vast eons of time, it’s hard to grasp knowing the finite age of our own universe, but if we were take into account a possible, endless chain of pre-existing universes, worlds and lives contained therein, suddenly those Buddhist notions of time and distance aren’t so far-fetched, though incredibly humbling.

Namu Amida Butsu

¹ From the Theravada Pali Canon, the Nibbedhika Sutta (AN 6.63):

“Intention, I tell you, is karma. Intending, one does karma by way of body, speech and intellect.

---