Anicca, Anattā, Kamma, Rebirth and Dependent Origination

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I’ve been reading some threads on anattā, but I caught some tendencies that didn’t satisfied me.

  1. If you are confused by this, maybe is not the time to focus on this right now;
  2. People just quoting the suttas on this subject;
  3. Sometimes people do came to a conclusion only to be dismissed as wrong in the next comments;
  4. People only grazing on a conclusion, but never fully concluding;

I’m just listing this to avoid, if/when possible, for this happenning here on this thread. So, the Buddha said that there’s no permanent self. There’s no self being extinguished on death (annihilation) nor a permanent self jumping through lives and being reborn again and again (eternalism).

The self is impermanent (I can see that this phrase can in itself generate some discussions, but let’s avoid that rs). What I was pondering is, if self is impermanent, if the “me” that generated kamma is not the same “me” that harvest this kamma, how can there be kamma that only manifests after some life times? What is the link?

The first conclusion (don’t mean that it’s a right conclusion) that I came about is that only the kamma on the previous life affect the next life. So, this can make sense. I have build up energy and it’s like I poured this energy onto the cup of the next life. It does not immediately explain how it can affect the next lifes.

Keep in mind that anicca, anattā, kamma, rebirth and dependent origination are very close concepts. In many occasions the Buddha used the dependent origination to explain His teachings on kamma and if I’m not mistaken, anattā too.

So, I reasoned using the simile of the candle. Rebirth is like lightning a candle. My reasoning is, if rebirth is like a candle, and the self is a conditioned fenomenon of the chain of dependent origination, so the candle A passes the fire onto the candle B. The candle B is not the same fire of candle A, but it has some traces left by this process of DO. If I pass the candle B to the candle C, I still have some traces of candle A left, but less. Onto the candle E, for example, I have no trace left of candle A, probably just a little of candle B.

In the same way, we are not the same since the beginning of the day. We are not entirely different too, but I am almost entirely different say in comparison of when I was a child. Only the illusion of continuity make me believe that I am the same. I still regret a lot of things when I was a child, even though that person have basically nothing to do with me anymore.

This argument, however, have a important consideration. The recollections of the past lives cannot be made for every life lived because after X lifetimes the traces cannot be found anymore. I personally do not think that this is in contradiction with any teaching of the Buddha.

What do you think? Is this vision correct? In my view, if “correct”, it closes the deal for me.

Of course, this is a mundane interpretation and can only be understood by a deep understanding, not an intellectual one.

I am particularly interested on Bhante @sujato view on this, if it’s no trouble, Bhante.

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Absolutely agree on some parts of your understanding but not all!

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Can you share your thoughts in more detail dear friend?

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No friend, it would not make it past the moderator, peace!

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It’s hard to avoid addressing your argument without addressing the claim “the self is impermanent” because that view is at the argument’s root. Where do you find the Buddha teaching this idea?

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You have got it wrong way. Self - notion of self, as well the attitude “I am” are both connected with notion of permanence, so in no place Lord Buddha says: “there is no self”. You are self - as puthujjana, and your mistakes - according to the Buddha is self-identification with things. And here, indeed the Buddha says: all things are not self: read you are victim of wrong self-identification and you should abandon it.

As long you are not arahat, you are responsible for all your actions and you will experience results of them.
And while you conviction of being “self”, is dependently arisen upon ignorance, and so is impermanent, it is quite stable, you can see yourself as invariant under transformation. What is invariant? Notion “I am” and sakkayaditthi. While your ideas about yourself change from time to time, what doesn’t change is that you have some self-image of yourself. In terms of karma, you are unbroken chain of actions and results of actions.

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Unbroken? Like, the kamma of all the past lives can influence all the future lives?

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I do not exactly agree that is at the argument root, but I agree that is not what the Buddha taught. To be more precise, the Buddha said that the five aggregates are not-self, and not to regard anything as self, he didn’t affirm nor deny that there’s no self to not confuse Vacchagotta, and to not fall in the extremes of annihilation or eternalist view.

The things that we wrongly attribute as self are impermanent, conditioned (our mind, our consciousness, our body, our sensations, our memories etc.)

Is that correct? Does that contradict my reasoning of how these themes interconnect and work?

Thank you for your input and considerations, btw!

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Annihilation is the belief a self is extinguished at death. Eternalism is the belief a self continues after death. This is how these terms are defined in DN 1.

There is no real self but the sense of same self arises at the harvest of kamma because this is how ignorance functions. This sense of ‘continuity’ of self, even in the present life, is also called ‘eternalism’, as explained in SN 12.17. For example, today you get angry at your friend and tomorrow you feel remorse & apologise to your friend. Even though each sense of self is a separate different arising according to Dependent Origination, to the mind with ignorance, both selves feel as though they are same self.

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I understand that the rules are not to quote a sutta at you, but the Buddha does have a nice agricultural simile for this one. :wink: He says that kamma is the field, consciousness is the seed, and craving is the moisture. So each deed (kamma) that you carry out during your life ends up as the soil for future lives. At the start of each new life, the seed of consciousness is planted somewhere in that field and fed by the moisture of craving (for sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touches, and ideas) it establishes itself into a new being. That seed of consciousness can be planted anywhere in the field of kamma. The place where it lands could be lovely soil rich in nutrients or it might be awful soil that is incapable of growing anything beautiful. Obviously the more good deeds you do over multiple lifetimes, the richer more lovely the field of deeds is overall, but you never know where the seed of consciousness is going to fall in the next life. It might just fall in a bit of old scrubland at the edge of the field that has been poisoned by old bad deeds.

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That all sounds about right to me. The only thing I’d add is in bold above. I feel like it’s important to not forget to include dukkha when talking about the other two characteristics. The relationship is: impermanence → what is impermanent is dukkha → what is impermanent and dukkha is not fit to be regarded as self. The dukkha of things in all three aspects (SN 45.165) is crucial to perceive and reflect on because it goes against our underlying tendency to delight in things that are, when seen in the light of wisdom, in actuality dukkha.

I’m fairly sure you knew all that already. Still, I said it in order to highlight it. :slight_smile:

You’re welcome! May we all realize the deep Dhamma that the Buddha taught. :slight_smile:

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Thank you for the highlight, friend! You are indeed correct.

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Please, do not be discouraged to share a sutta, it is always a pleasure to read the Buddha’s words. I just ask for using it in a clear way. Sometimes people share suttas excerpts on this matter that is deep, complex and hard to understand for most of us, and the scriptures sometimes shows this characteristics too.

So, if you think is needed and can clarify the understanding instead of clouding, please do!

Regarding your consideration, I can be wrong, but for me this simile can explain only one aspect of the question. What I’m interested is to understand superficially how an ever changing process can be affected by past deeds if it’s an ever changing process.

In this simile, I suppose I can think, the soil that I planted the seed is not the same soil that harvested the fruits of it. The consciousness that had the seed planted is not permanent, is conditioned, and it’s now a different consciousness that harvest it.

Of course, the consciousness is not entirely the same nor entirely different, is just different, meaning, it can share some elements but not all. Is this correct?

Also, if I planted the seed in the soil today but no condition enabled the seed to grow, can it “lost the opportunity to grow” forever? What I’m asking is, can there be a kamma ready to be harvested in this life and the next ones fruit of all the countless previous lifetimes? Or after a number of lifetimes, the seeds just won’t sprout anymore? Meaning, I don’t have the kamma of all the previous lifetimes, but only some?

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Hi moxu.

The sutta that I was referring to is AN3.76 I think it answers some of your questions.

Absolutely. Sentiment beings are forever doing deeds (kamma) so we are continually changing the field that we grow in.

Consciousness does not have the seed planted. Rather the sutta suggests that ‘consciousness is the seed’. So maybe think of yourself as a plant and you are spending your life making a stream of seeds (consciousness-es if you like) culminating in single seed. This seed is your consciousness at the end of your life and (arguably) it is the consciousness at the beginning of the next life in the sequence.

This seed will be planted somewhere in a field made up of all of your past deeds including the deeds from the life just lived, but also deeds from previous lives. If this seed is watered by craving it will grow into a new sentient being. This is your next life.

From the perspective of ‘consciousness is the seed’, it is a seed that creates a sentient being, in the same way that a mango seed produces a mango tree. The quality of the realm (heavenly, human, animal, etc) into which the sentiment being is born will be dependant on the part of the field the seed is planted in. If for example there is no part of the field that can support a human birth, then the seed will not create a human, but some other sentient being instead.

Yes. Sure. If there is no craving to water the seed of consciousness at death/rebirth, then there will be no arising of a sentient being. That’s the end of the spiritual path. Nibbana. However if there is craving still there and there has been any previous deeds from past lives (that have not been exhausted through growth) then some form of rebirth will take place.

I think the idea is that we are creating much more soil (kamma) than we are exhausting in the growth of a new being, so we can’t rely on that. We need to instead remove the moisture (craving) to stop the growth.

This is my understanding. Thanks for the questions. Really lovely contemplation :heart:

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Things are starting to get even more interesting. Let me develop my idea from your input and sutta (thank you for the sutta!). Let’s use this simile then, instead. Kamma is the soil, consciousness is the seed and craving the moisture.

First, the soil is ever changing, so we do not harvest all the kamma from all the past lives, but some (of course we are also while concious through volitional acts creating more soil and more kamma).

Second, consciousness is the seed, and existence is an sprouted seed, a plant. For the sake of the example, the plant only has one seed. When we die, the seed goes to the next field of sāmsara. The next plant born from this seed is not entirely different from the previous plant(s) nor the same. This will continue to happen as long as moisture reach the seed in the soil and sprout it again.

Third, like you said, if the soil has low quality the plant will be undeveloped, there will be an animal birth, if the soil has high quality it will support a huge and tall tree, a heavenly birth.

Forth, the plant will also harvest the benefits and drawbacks of the soil that it was planted, meaning the harvest of kamma in our lives. A putrid soil can still affect the birth and condition of the plant even though it was covered by many other soil after it, an ultra high quality premium soil can still benefit the birth and condition of the plant even when some layers of lower quality/bad soil were on top of it.

If you put an extremely acid soil when the plant die on top of not so good/not so bad, or ok soil it fan directly impact the conditions of it’s birth.

What do you think, friend? Do you think this explanation is correct?

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Yes. That looks like a fair representation to me. Your last point reminds me of another series of similes in AN3.100

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You are, what you created for yourself. I would rather suggest reasoning based on free will / determinism dialectic. Now your body with all the rest can be seen as old action, and whatever action is done by body, speech and thoughts are new action.

From ethical point of view, you are totally responsible for all your actions, and you are free to choose this or that line of action, but in fact we cannot speak really about free choice, since your actions are determined by ignorance.

The question of kamma or ‘action’—‘What should I do?’—is the ethical question;; for all personal action—all action done by me —is either akusala or kusala , unskilful or skilful. Unskilful action is rooted in lobha (rāga ), dosa, moha , or lust, hate, and delusion, and (apart from resulting in future dukkha or unpleasure) leads to arising of action, not to cessation of action—tam kammam kammasamudayāya samvattati na tam kammam kammanirodhāya samvattati. (‘That action leads to arising of action, that action does not lead to ceasing of action.’) Skilful action is rooted in non-lust, non-hate, and non-delusion, and leads to cessation of action, not to arising of action. (Anguttara III,xi,7&8 <A.i,263>) The puthujjana does not understand this, since he sees neither arising nor cessation of action;[a] the ditthisampanna does understand this, since he sees both arising and cessation of action—Yato kho āvuso ariyasāvako akusalañ ca pajānāti akusalamūlañ ca pajānāti, kusalañ ca pajānāti kusalamūlañ ca pajānāti, ettāvatā pi kho āvuso ariyasāvako sammāditthi hoti ujugatā’ssa ditthi, dhamme aveccappasādena samannāgato, āgato imam saddhammam (‘In so far, friend, as a noble disciple understands unskill and understands the root of unskill, understands skill and understands the root of skill, so far too, friend, the noble disciple has right view, his view is correct, he is endowed with tried confidence in the Teaching, he has arrived at this Good Teaching’) (Majjhima i,9 <M.i,46>)—; the arahat not only understands this, but also has reached cessation of action, since for him the question ‘What should I do?’ no more arises. To the extent that there is still intention in the case of the arahat —see CETANĀ [f]—there is still conscious action, but since it is neither unskilful nor skilful it is no longer action in the ethical sense. Extinction, nibbāna , is cessation of ethics—Kullūpamam vo bhikkhave ājānantehi dhammā pi vo pahātabbā pageva adhammā (‘Comprehending the parable of the raft, monks, you have to eliminate ethical things too, let alone unethical things’) (Majjhima iii,2 <M.i,135>).[b] See MAMA [a].

[a] A puthujjana may adopt a set of moral values for any of a number of different reasons—faith in a teacher, acceptance of traditional or established values, personal philosophical views, and so on—, but in the last analysis the necessity of moral values, however much he may feel their need, is not for him a matter of self-evidence. At the end of his book (op. cit., p. 111) Jean Grenier writes: ‘En fait toutes les attitudes que nous avons passées en revue au sujet du choix ne se résignent à l’absence de vérité que par désespoir de l’atteindre et par suite des nécessités de l’action. Elles n’aboutissent toutes qu’à des morales provisoires. Un choix, au sens plein du mot, un “vrai” choix n’est possible que s’il y a ouverture de l’homme à la vérité; sinon il n’y a que des compromis de toutes sortes: les plus nobles sont aussi les plus modestes.’ (‘In fact all the attitudes we have passed in review on the subject of choice are resigned to the absence of truth only out of despair of attaining it and as a consequence of the necessities of action. They end up, all of them, only at provisional moralities. A choice, in the full sense of the word, a “real” choice is possible only if man has access to the truth; if not there are only compromises of all kinds: the noblest are also the most modest.’) And Sartre, more bleakly, concludes (op. cit., p. 76) that man is bound by his nature to adopt values of one sort or another, and that, although he cannot escape this task of choosing, he himself is totally responsible for his choice (for there is no Divine Dictator of values), and there is absolutely nothing in his nature that can justify him in adopting this particular value or set of values rather than that. The puthujjana sees neither a task to be performed that can justify his existence—not even, in the last analysis, that of perpetual reflexion (Heidegger’s Entschlossenheit or ‘resoluteness’, acceptance of the guilt of existing; which does no more than make the best of a bad job)—nor a way to bring his unjustifiable existence to an end. The ariyasāvaka, on the other hand, does see the way to bring his existence to an end, and he sees that it is this very task that justifies his existence. Ariyam kho aham brāhmana lokuttaram dhammam purisassa sandhanam paññāpemi. (‘I, divine, make known the noble world-transcending Teaching as the business of man.’) Majjhima x,6 <M.ii,181> [Back to text]

[b] Hegel, it seems, in his Phänomenologie des Geistes, has said that there can only be an ethical consciousness in so far as there is disagreement between nature and ethics: if ethical behaviour became natural, conscience would disappear. And from this it follows that if ethical action is the absolute aim, the absolute aim must also be the absence of ethical action. This is quite right; but is ethical action the absolute aim? The difficulty is, precisely, to see the action that puts an end to action in the ethical sense. Whereas unskilful action is absolutely blameworthy as leading only to future unpleasure and to the arising of action, there is action, leading to a bright future, that yet does not lead to the ending of action. See Majjhima vi,7 <M.i,387-92>. The generous man, the virtuous man, the man even who purifies his mind in samādhi, without right view remains a puthujjana, and so does not escape reproach: Yo kho Sāriputta imañ ca kāyam nikkhipati aññañ ca kāyam upādiyati tam aham Sa-upavajjo ti vadāmi. (‘One who lays down this body, Sāriputta, and takes hold of another body, he I say is blameworthy.’) Majjhima xv,2 <M.iii,266>

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Thank you, I really appreciate the simile of the lump of salt. I must say I got a little surprise when I heard the Buddha talking about dollars at that time :rofl: It’s incredible how this, unfortunately, is still the case today though…

Take the case of a person who is thrown in jail for stealing half a dollar, a dollar, or a hundred dollars. While another person isn’t thrown in jail for stealing half a dollar, a dollar, or a hundred dollars.

What kind of person is thrown in jail for stealing half a dollar, a dollar, or a hundred dollars? A person who is poor, with few possessions and little wealth. That kind of person is thrown in jail for stealing half a dollar, a dollar, or a hundred dollars.

What kind of person isn’t thrown in jail for stealing half a dollar, a dollar, or a hundred dollars? A person who is rich, affluent, and wealthy. That kind of person isn’t thrown in jail for stealing half a dollar, a dollar, or a hundred dollars.

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The 5 aggregates come together to form the individuals experience and are the basis of mind-body. This, in relationship to sensory data, is what gives rise to the sense of self in the form a thought because of the fact of being aware that one is aware, or alive.