06.30.2023 Unlocking the Wisdom of Karma In the years before the pandemic, I lived in New Orleans. I would ride my bicycle through City Park from my shotgun house in Mid-City to the university on Lake Pontchartrain where I was attending grad school. The park is home to the New Orleans Museum of Art’s renowned sculpture garden, and as I biked, I’d often go out of my way to behold my favorite sculpture in the garden: Karma by Korean artist Do-Ho Suh. The piece depicts a man standing with another man perched on his shoulders, covering the standing man’s eyes. On the percher’s shoulders, another man blinds the percher with his hands, and on that percher’s shoulders, yet another. This configuration repeats itself in a tapering fashion, rising twenty-three feet in the air. From certain angles, it appears to continue into infinity. This striking image has always helped me understand the complex and oft-misunderstood concept of karma. To me, the sculpture seems to imply that actions, whether performed in past lives or much more recently, have the power to blind us in the present. Suh’s artwork remains my reminder to stay aware. Here are three articles to help you, too, wrap your mind around karma. When you unlock its wisdom, as Jan Chozen Bays writes below, “you really understand who and what you are, and you understand the rest of the universe too.” —Ross Nervig, Associate Editor, Lion’s Roar            What Is Karma?   The Buddha taught that because of karma, beings are bound to the ever-turning wheel of rebirth. Only when a person stops believing in the existence of a permanent and real self can he or she become free from karma. Bhikkhu Bodhi, Jan Chozen Bays, and Jeffrey Hopkins discuss what that means.   Jan Chozen Bays: As a physician, I teach karma from a scientific point of view, because what I love about karma is that it is rational. Karma is like the laws of physics. It’s almost mathematically precise, and there is a great relief in that. Because if you understand karma, you really understand who and what you are, and you understand the rest of the universe too, because the laws of karma are universally applicable. When I teach about rebirth, I ask people to consider what happens to the physical elements of the body after they die. I ask them, if we buried you in the ground with no preservatives and dug you up in a week, would we recognize you? Yes. If we dug you up in a year, would we recognize you? Maybe. If we dug you up in ten years, would we recognize you? No. So what happened to the elements that made up the body? They all dispersed and became other things. ADVERTISEMENT Karma: The Choice Is Yours   There are two ways to understand dependent origination, teaches Ajahn Buddhadasa. But only one leads to liberation. To be trapped forever in the prison of karma is not Buddhism. If every­thing constantly happens to us according to karma, there could never be any liberation. For a teaching and practice to be Buddhism, we must be liberated from the power and oppression of karma. A teaching that merely reiterates the old approach cannot be the true Buddhist teaching. It must be completed to the extent of liberation to be Buddhism. Thus, the Buddha needed to teach the karma that ends karma. He took the kind of karma that does not explain liberation and perfected it so that liberation from karma became the central point. What Is Karma and Why Should it Matter to You? Karma is essential to Buddhist psychology, says Toni Bernhard, because karma molds our character. Karma is crucial to our development as wise, loving, and caring human beings because every time we act with a non-harmful intention, we predispose ourselves to act that way again. We plant a behavioral seed. Conversely, every time we act with a harmful intention, we predispose ourselves to act that way again, making it more likely that the next time our behavior will be harmful. LION’S ROAR PROMOTION Summer savings in the Lion’s Roar store!