Social Karma

My karma is my action or behaviour. How I tend to act, have acted and still act. Karma matters because actions have consequences. I realise that my actions have been unwise and uncompassionate and accept a responsibility to "cleanse my karma" by acting in accordance with meditative insights. However, not all karma is mine. Each of us survives early childhood only because of the actions of adults. We are fed, taught and socialised. I was also indoctrinated, pressured, bullied and intimidated. Many of my actions were reactions to theirs. Thus, I tended to be solitary and resented being condemned as unsociable.

I cannot cleanse the karma of others. Bodhisattvas act for the enlightenment of all living beings but most living beings will not noticeably approach the realisation of their enlightenment in our life times. Politics addresses action collectively, not individually. We struggle to build an association for the free development of each. Thus, each will be responsible for his own actions but will not be impeded, indoctrinated or intimidated by the actions of others. This is probably as much as we can do to address the fact that many of our problems are caused by the actions of others.  

Practice of Consciousness

Thesis: Organismic sensitivity is necessary for consciousness.
Antithesis: The organismic responses of self-preservation and the pursuit of pleasure hinder the further development of consciousness.
Synthesis: The practice of consciousness, meditation, addresses hindrances to the development of consciousness.

Starting to address hindrances is as far as some of us have got. Imagine an entire planet whose entire population comprises only individuals whose consciousness and understanding of their natural and social environments is no longer impeded by any attachments, favoured self-images, uncontrolled thought processes, exclusivist loyalties, desire for self-promotion or self-aggrandisement, indoctrination, prejudice, divisive dogmatism etc, a planet where everyone realises, "I am a transient psychophysical organism sharing this environment with every other organism. I no longer identify myself with a particular religious tradition or armed nation-state perceived as in conflict with others. I aim to learn, work, contribute and share in social wealth but not to promote my individual interests or prestige at the expense of anyone else."

I believe that this outcome is possible but not that it will be reached by persuading millions to meditate - unless, of course, every individual member of the economic ruling class were to realise that they should abdicate power and should work to replace competitive accumulation with cooperation for need. It is far more likely that the majority will have to dispossess them. 

Meditating Matter

There is no one else here. I am alone facing a wall. Does anyone watch while we meditate? Potential watchers:

named gods like Indra and Krishna are myths;
unknown gods are hypothetical and must be presumed non-existent until proved existent;
the historical Buddha was a man and died a long time ago (we know him through his teaching; he does not know us; according to the teaching, he has not been reborn);
the cosmic Buddha is a principle;
the Buddha within is a potential;
neither is a person or conscious subject;
Jesus was another man who died a long time ago;
omniscience is arguably impossible (see below).

Jesus' disciples believed that he had been resurrected but their proclamation is insufficient reason for us to believe this. Like Krishna, he is sometimes vividly imagined. Thus, he has passed not from death to immortality but from history to myth. Therefore, we are not watched by gods, Buddhas, Jesus or any omniscient deity. 

No one is omniscient. Self is known only by contrast with other. Other is recognised as such only when it has been perceived and re-perceived, then recognised as having continued to exist independently of self between perception and re-perception. The consequent distinction between present and remembered perceptions entails an unknown future. Subjects of consciousness necessarily perceive an objective realm which is mostly unknown. No omniscient deity watches us meditate. 

Did gods give humanity reason and morality? Mythically, yes. Biologically, both the ability to reason and concern for others were naturally selected. Reasoning about the environment has obvious survival value. Our earliest ancestors were social, therefore motivated by collective, not just individual, self-interest. Also, we help others either because they bear the same genes or because they might help us in return. Psychologically, we experience that motivation as moral obligation. 

Society imposes on individuals both acceptable behaviour and linguistic usage. Sexual taboos prevented in-breeding, then patriarchal monogamy preserved property. Individuals internalise shame as guilt and speech as thought. Thus, we are variously motivated by reason, collective and individual self-interest, social pressure, shame, guilt and moral obligation. Morality is conceptualised and even experienced as divine commands. However, biological motivation preceded religious imagination. Socialised language-users personified and addressed their environment. Because human beings become self-conscious persons only in interpersonal interactions, they projected personal relationships onto the heavens.

    

Socially, we are both subjects and objects of consciousness. Immature subjects are conscious of being objects. Immature behaviour is for an audience or a camera. Mature subjects are simply conscious. Meditation is pure subjectivity or spirituality, without shame or deliberate thought. We neither perform for an audience nor address a deity. Thus, we begin to observe self dispassionately. I am accountable for my actions but not to anyone watching me meditate. I must address my states of consciousness. Painful memories are consequences of past actions, karma. The consequences are present but the bad karma can remain past. There is guilt only as consciousness of consequences. The Western Paradise may be Earth seen differently. Samsara is Nirvana. To use theistic language metaphorically, the Kingdom is within. We are not going anywhere. We are here. 

In purely secular terms, we are not there yet but have a long way to go. However, the potential for socialised production and distribution of abundant wealth is present. Rosa Luxemburg wrote:

"Being human means throwing your whole life on the scales of destiny when need be, all the while rejoicing in every sunny day and every beautiful cloud."

Trotsky, contemplating green grass and blue sky, wrote:

"Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, violence and oppression and enjoy it to the full." 

The present is the now of individual awareness and the time for collective action, a cross-roads and meeting place between meditation and revolution. (The Christian cross symbolises an eternal-temporal intersection but also a barbaric blood sacrifice. We can incorporate some though not all aspects of Christian mythology into a coherent world view with more effective symbols: 

(the seated Buddha;
yin-yang;
Thor's hammer;
the fish;
the clenched fist...)      

"Great Wisdom From Birth"

All (or at least most) of us have to be:

attached before we can be non-attached;
un-empathetic before we can be compassionate;
naive before we can be wise;
immature before we can be mature;
superficial before we can be profound
etc. 

We are not like the Isvara of the Yoga Sutras, a special kind of being, perennially liberated. Is it possible to have great wisdom from birth, as Dogen said the Buddha did? It is too late for us. We cannot change our pasts. Can we have great wisdom from birth in a future life? I do not believe that we will have future lives. The One is reborn in all beings but each being is a single organism, not a series of organisms.

Earlier and later subjects of consciousness have different bodies and memories. Conceivably the dispositions of an earlier organism are transmitted to a later organism through a psychic medium but where is the evidence that this occurs and would this alone suffice to constitute identity between earlier and later psyches? Instead, can we bring it about that future generations, whatever their initial dispositions, are helped to move towards wisdom as quickly as possible with a minimum of obstacles? Can we build the Western Paradise here? Yes, that is a realistic political goal. In fact, radical social transformation is urgently necessary in any case.

 

Inner and Outer

Two people converse. They see and hear each other. They also see their surroundings and hear other sounds. Thus, they share a publicly accessible, empirically discernible, objective, material realm. Each also accesses a private, inner, subjective, mental realm of memories, imaginings, thoughts, emotions, motives, apprehensions and anticipations. Thus, experience has two layers or levels which, however, are not ontologically equivalent.

Objects pre-existed subjects which generate their individual subjectivities. Despite its lack of objectivity, the inner realm is powerful, full of ideas, reasons and motives. We need to understand both realms, reducing neither to the other. We exist where they intersect. The entire content of the inner world is derived from natural and social environments. Language is social before it is internal. However, it is with the inner powers of intellect and imagination that we understand and set out to change the external world. Mind is creative, not passive; a god, not a mirror. It developed with manipulation, not as mere cognition.

The inner world includes dreams. Because, when dreaming, we seem to leave the body and to enter a realm where we can meet (dream about) the dead, it was thought that:

the inner world was inter-subjective or objective;
it touches the visible world;
we enter it temporarily in sleep and permanently at death;
it has other inhabitants. 

In fact, it is still inhabited by myths and fictions.

We understand the inner world through meditation, psychology and literature, the physical world through physics, chemistry and cosmology, the biological world through Darwinian analysis of natural selection underlying species diversity and the human world, I suggest, through Marxist analysis of economic realities underlying social appearances.    

Practice and Experience

When we meditate, we engage with the kind of practice and experience from which the rishis derived the "Atman is Brahman" teaching and the Buddha derived the "anatta" teaching, although the latter was backed up with philosophical analysis and argument. Thus:

practice and experience are more basic than teachings;
teachings are guides to meditative practice, as Marxist theory is a guide to political practice;
both experiences and teachings derived from them differ.

However, we can synthesise apparently contradictory teachings. "Atman is Brahman" means that each individual soul is identical with the transcendent whereas "anatta" means that there are no individual souls. However, the Upanishadic teaching can mean instead that each individual self is identical with the one universal self whereas the Buddhist teaching can mean that there are no separate selves. In that case, the teachings agree.

Buddhists do not refer to a universal self and rightly if this were taken to mean that the universe is a single person. However, it need only mean that the universe is conscious of itself through many individual selves and this formulation is consistent with materialism.  

Is Compassion the Nature of Reality?

Yes, according to a passage read to the Lancaster Serene Reflection Meditation Group. However, reality pre-existed consciousness whereas compassion requires it. I suggest that: 
 
someone who is one with reality is compassionate;
therefore, he simultaneously experiences both reality and compassion;
therefore, he tends to identify them, especially if he is influenced by idealist belief in the primacy of consciousness.
 
Meditation on reality shows us our karma (action and consequences) and how to cleanse it. Thus, reality resembles a compassionate teacher but is not a conscious teacher. Although most religions (responses to the highest transcendence) personify or idealise the transcendent, the most basic Buddhist concept is emptiness, not consciousness. "The nature of reality is emptiness" might be more appropriate. The realisation that every subject and object of consciousness is empty of permanent, independent substance may generate compassion for those whose suffering is caused by desire for permanence and fear of impermanence. However, mere emptiness, equally present both in conscious subjects and in unconscious objects, is not itself identical with compassion.

When a group of workers engages in conflict with an employer or manager, any of the workers who practises Buddhist meditation may also practise compassion towards the person with whom they are in conflict but should not let this obscure either the issues involved in the conflict or the need for solidarity with fellow workers whose attitudes may be far from compassionate. Compassion may be a kind of solidarity, with all conscious beings, but, if so, it must be differentiated from solidarity in a more specific sense. Compassion, "suffering with", motivated the Buddha to teach meditation to individuals of all castes whereas class solidarity is a common interest which, when fully realised, will put workers in control of production, thus ending the economic conflict of interest between buyers and sellers of labour power.
 
A Buddhist employer might:

accept pro-capitalist economics, therefore disagree with the political analysis presented here;
reason that the capitalist role, extracting surplus value from living labour, is essentially uncompassionate, therefore cease to be an employer;
reason that we must continue to act within the existing economic system until it is overthrown while avoiding both personal greed and an overtly oppressive or exploitative approach to employees.

Idealism is multifarious:

one conscious being pre-existed matter (theism);
many co-exist with it (Jainism);
the idea of goodness pre-existed instances of goodness (Platonism);
shared ideas, not economic relationships, determine social institutions (common sense);
greed, hate and delusion are beginningless whereas compassion is timeless (Buddhism).

Dialectical materialists, affirming that materially based consciousness generates psychological dispositions and that ideas reflect societies, not vice versa, can value consciousness and compassion without reifying them.
Although Buddhist teaching includes "no soul" and the transience of mental states, it also attributes a perennial robustness to basic motivations. The materialist view is that desire and fear begin anew in each conscious organism and end when the organism dies but that no empirically discernible medium transmits such motives from the last mental state of any dying organism to the first mental state of a particular later organism. The complex of attachments and aversions comprising a human psyche seems to end when the brain dies unless the individual realises enlightenment before death. Between realisation and death, there is consciousness without attachments and aversions. After death, I think, there is neither consciousness nor a potential psyche, unless Spiritualists can prove otherwise.

Barring an ecological catastrophe or thermonuclear war, many people will be born after I have died. Let us consider one of them. He will think of himself as "I", will not remember having been me and will not be regarded as identical with me but can be affected for good or ill by my present actions. These propositions seem to exhaust the entire karmic and moral point of the rebirth teaching. Between my death and that future person's birth, human beings will continue to interact. Some interactions will be direct or indirect effects of my actions. Some will be causes of his birth. It is unlikely that a linear causal sequence will directly link me to him but he and I are indirectly connected as parts of a single empirically discernible reality.

Other, supernatural, realms are the subject matter of religious teachings but are neither verifiably real nor mutually compatible. Catholic priests talk about Heaven, Hell and Purgatory. Zen monks talk about rebirth. Individuals receive these ideas from their traditions, not from their own experience. Catholic practice presupposes Catholic belief whereas Zen practice need not presuppose rebirth. For a Buddhist-materialist synthesis, I suggest recognition of: 
 
the value of meditation;
the possibility of enlightenment;
impermanence;
no soul, but also no rebirth;
materialism that is neither reductive nor mechanical but dialectical and historical.
 
This last aspect incorporates actions that are not only individual and moral but also collective and political. The only negation of traditional Buddhism is "no rebirth" but this is a logical extension from "no soul".