cooran wrote:Hello all,
I'd be interested in your thoughts on this short opinion piece:
‘’Upon arriving in southern China in 527 CE, Bodhidharma, the first Zen patriarch, visited Emperor Wu of Liang at his capital in Nanjing. This monarch was proud of his many great acts of charity: building temples, copying sutras, feeding monks. When he asked Bodhidharma how much merit all this had earned him, he was crestfallen when the monk bluntly told him, "None at all."
Bodhidharma was trying to make a point (you can probably find it by googling him), but there's another point that people ought to think about. I understand that many Thai Buddhists perform acts of charity - donating money to temples, etc - with the intention of earning merit. Such merit-making sounds praiseworthy, but is not entirely altruistic: they expect that the merit thus earned will guarantee them good fortune in this or some future life.
I understand that the Buddha taught that karma is produced, not by specific actions, but by the underlying motivation for those actions. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) He also taught that craving is the cause of suffering. Is it not reasonable to assume that if you perform good works with the motive of gaining good fortune in the future, that craving will undermine and nullify the effects of those good works?
Merit-making with no desire for reward is admirable; but the craving for reward poisons it. As the late Buddhadasa Bhikkhu remarked, "That's not religion; that's just a business deal."’
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/opinion ... 89582.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
with metta
Chris
Hi Chris
Craving is indeed the cause of Suffering, the coming-together again of the 5 Aggregates. But I think the chap who wrote the above may not fully appreciate the position in the Pali Canon.
Firstly, let's deal with -
...the Buddha taught that karma is produced, not by specific actions, but by the underlying motivation for those actions.
This does not seem to be the position contemplated in Dana Sutta, AN 7.49 -
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka ... .than.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
While intention is important, the manifestation of that intention into action is also a necessary condition for the fruition of kamma. Kamma is after all action, not just merely the intention per se; see AN 6.63 which says -
Cetanāhaṃ bhikkhave kammaṃ vadāmi, cetayitvā kammaṃ karoti kāyena vācāya manasā
Intention, I tell you, is kamma. Having intended, one does kamma by way of body, speech, & mind.
You can see that all of the
dana in AN 7.49 are tainted, in one way or another, with craving. All those
dana tainted by craving actually produce the good results that are expected.
The clearest exposition for this reality that craving is
not incompatible with good rebirth is in the Mahacattarisaka Sutta, MN 117. There, 5 factors of the Noble Eightfold Path are analysed into 2 types, ie whether it is -
1. with effluents, siding with merit, resulting in the acquisitions [of becoming]; or
2. noble, without effluents, transcendent, a factor of the path.
The "effluents" are nothing less than the
āsavā whose function is to cause rebirth -
In whomever the fermentations (effluents) that defile, that
lead to renewed becoming, that give trouble, that
ripen in stress, and lead to future birth, aging, & death are not abandoned: Him I call deluded.
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... .than.html
Yassa kassaci aggivessana ye
āsavā saṅkilesikā
ponobhavikā sadarā
dukkhavipākā āyatiṃ jātijarāmaraṇīyā appahīnā, tamahaṃ sammūḷhoti vadāmi.
It is clear from this definition of the
āsavā that they are synonymous with Craving.
If there were absolutely no Craving, then the 3rd Noble Truth says that there will be no Suffering. If one does not crave, one will not be reborn! Craving does not nullify the kamma. Craving causes the kamma to ripen!
Which brings me to this weird statement -
Merit-making with no desire for reward is admirable
Even in AN 7.49, in the final case of the
dana that leads to Non-Return, there is the subtlest form of craving hiding behind the motive -
cittālaṃkāraṃ cittaparikkhāran'ti
"This is an ornament for the mind, a support for the mind."
If there were absolutely no craving whatsoever, there would not even be rebirth as a Non-Returner; full Awakening would instead be achieved.