Thursday, August 31, 2006

Karma and the Unconscious

I, as others, have struggled with the concepts of theism versus atheism. Along most of the way, I had simply opted to call myself agnostic. Now, I consider myself an atheist and a Buddhist, which I have attempted to reconcile through the years.

A few years ago in conversation with a friend, who happens to be a Scientologist, the topic turned to karma. Scientologists, he informed me, are also atheists, and they do not believe in the concept of karma. After all, he argued, who would be the scorekeeper? Since God is an archetypal concept and archetypes do not keep score, who could it be, I wondered?

Einstein said, "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." Within the Buddhist concept of samsara, life as we perceive it is an illusion. Within samsara, there are various levels, containing, among other things, humans, animals, gods, and demigods. Outside of samsara, it is empty. So, karma exists within samsara, but who is the scorekeeper?

Then the thought came to me: karma can exist independently from a scorekeeper, per se. The scorekeeper is simply the unconscious. Of course, the unconscious comes in two flavours: personal and collective. What this means is when a person commits an act, good or bad, the unconscious registers the act. Moreover, the collective unconscious registers this act, too. In the true existential sense, we are in full control of our own karma. This is captured in the common expressions: "what goes around comes around" and "we reap what we sow."

Since most people are vastly unaware of their unconscious, it controls them and is perceived as karma. Enlightenment, then, is simply another term for Individuation. Once enlightened, a person becomes fully conscious, seeing and understanding the contents of the unconscious. Karma no longer affects this person, as the integrity of nature in all of its forms is fully realised.

"If we observe unconscious processes, we see that wrong deeds do not have to be avenged by other human beings, for they are punished from within. The murderer ultimately kills himself. This is the terrible truth repeatedly confirmed. Frequently one is shocked by the injustice of human life, but, psychologically, this is not true and it sometimes makes one shudder to realise what people risk. They may succeed in the outer world, but they incur terrible psychological punishment." 1

The problem is that the Self can never be fully integrated. As Heisenburg's Uncertainty Principle roughly states: As soon as one notices phenomena, uncertainties remain because of the act of observation.

When we must deal with problems, we instinctively refuse to try the way that leads through darkness and obscurity. We wish to hear only of unequivocal results, and completely forget that these results can only be brought about when we have ventured into and emerged again from the darkness. But to penetrate the darkness we must summon all the powers of enlightenment that consciousness can offer. (Jung)

Like the West, Tibetan Buddhism considers the mind to have two constituents: sem, the ordinary mind, and Rigpa, a primordial, pure, pristine awareness that is at once intelligent, cognisant, radiant, and always awake. 2 These aspects relate well to the unconscious and conscious mind, respectively.

"The masters tell us that there is an aspect of our minds that is its fundamental basis, a state called 'the ground of the ordinary mind.' Longchenpa, the outstanding fourteenth century Tibetan master, describe it this way: It is unenlightenment and a neutral state, which belongs to the category of the mind and mental events, and it has become the foundation of all karmas and traces of 'samsara' and nirvana." It functions like a storehouse, in which the imprints of our past actions caused by our negative emotions are all stored like seeds. When the conditions are right, they germinate and manifest as circumstances and situations in our lives.

"Imagine this ground of the ordinary mind as being like a bank in which karma is deposited as imprints and habitual tendencies. If we have a habit of thinking in a particular pattern, positive or negative, then these tendencies will be triggered and provoked very easily, and recur and go on recurring. With constant repetition our inclinations become steadily more entrenched, and go on continuing, increasing and gathering power, even when we sleep." 3

1. Marie-Louise Von Franz, Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales, Revised Edition, Shambala Publications: 1995, p. 49.
2. Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of the Living and Dying (February 1994 twelfth printing), Harper Collins: Chapter 4, p. 46-48.
3. Ibid. Chapter 8, p. 111.



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