If could not find any specific reason , then could it be your inner compunction , that telling one to avoid unskillfulness ?
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Maybe it is wholesome, yet uncomfortable- like nibbida : ‘shame and fear or wrong doing’ (hiri otappa), again not judging or knowing your situation or intentions. Social conventions are strong motivators of guilt, and other emotions/behaviours.
We can also be overly guilt ridden or sometimes not feel guilt, when the latter is appropriate to do so. A marriage is not a ‘piece of paper’ but a genuine relationship, and sometimes that has ended despite the piece of paper being still valid in the eyes of the law, and external relationships maybe used against you. Sometimes it is possible to seek solace in sex.
Consider your intentions as well- intention is karma!
The dhamma describes what occurs naturally (breaking a precept and the disruption in samadhi it causes) and it describes how to make the situation better.
with metta
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Just to clarify my previous post, in no way was I implying anything about anyone’s individual circumstances. I have heard from many sources that occasionally people report feeling “empty” after a sexual encounter which does not take place within the bonds of marriage.
One of my Dhamma teachers has instructed me that when I am meditating I should be aware of my body, my feelings, my thoughts, and the content of my thoughts. A feeling of “emptiness” can be a bodily indication of one’s feelings, quite possibly (although not exclusively) of shame. Shame as a feeling may be connected to anxious thoughts. That anxiety might be brought about by examining the motivations of one’s actions and discovering that they are not consistent with the principles that person endeavors to follow. For someone practicing Buddhism, those principles would be Dhamma teachings, including Buddhist precepts.
In a different thread there is a discussion of whether or not sex work constitutes wrong livelihood. Questions about wrong livelihood in the realm of sex work engage the larger principle of sexual misconduct. As has been discussed in the other thread, sexual misconduct is historically and culturally contingent. The way we internalize cultures of sexual relations will affect our view of the Dhamma, and therefore whether we think that our sexual activity violates the teachings to which we subscribe. Anxious thoughts may lead to feelings of shame and a bodily feeling of emptiness.
As always, it returns to practice. The more we practice meditation, the more we can understand what we otherwise do during the rest of the day and adjust our actions (or not) accordingly.
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Would it be possible that karma would bring a woman into my life, to help me recover from a bad marriage, even if we were only together temporarily? Or would it just be completely random?
Kamma is not a force of the universe. It is not fate. It is not reward nor punishment nor cosmic retribution. Kamma doesn’t act to heal wounds. Kamma also is not “random.”
Kamma is a reaction to an action. If there is a woman in your life it’s because you took actions to bring her there. If you act in a certain way towards a woman, your actions will yield certain reactions that will be different than if you had acted differently. If you meet a woman at a bar and compliment her and show interest in her, this will prompt a friendly reaction on her part. If you only talk about yourself and are rude towards her, this will prompt an unfriendly reaction.
That, my friend, is kamma.
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What if an event is the ripening of karma from a past life?
Rather than a form of punishment, I believe karma means that things happen for a reason.
A reason implies a cause. Best to investigate the cause than to make assumptions about it on the basis of an effect. To put it another way, just because something happened doesn’t mean that it was inevitable.
Here is an example: You flip a coin and it lands heads up. Kamma didn’t determine heads. The coin could have landed tails. The only Kamma involved the likelihood of heads or tails, which isn’t even 50-50. There is always a chance the coin could fall on the floor, roll against a wall, and land resting on its edge, neither heads nor tails.
Regardless of the result, Kamma did not determine it; only the likelihood of one reaction or another.
I think of kamma as a process rather than a reaction, or a cause, or a force. Although of those last 3 terms, reaction is also close. I do agree that cause or force implies some greater kind of purpose in the universe, which the Buddha specifically denied. In the west at least, sometimes kamma is a “god substitute”-- leftovers from the Judeo-Christian cultural programming.
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To expand on my previous comments, I would add that if you bet your life’s savings on the flip of a coin and lose, you can’t say “oh, well, bad Kamma” any more than if you win you can attribute it to good Kamma. Whatever result occurs is a result of gambling your life’s savings on the flip of a coin.
Likewise, if you gamble at a roulette table all day long and lose all your money, you didn’t lose you money because of any one spin of the wheel. You lost all your money because you are a compulsive gambler. Kamma involves cause and effect. The odds at roulette favor the house. If you play long enough you will lose, not because of the last spin of the wheel, but because taking risks produces certain results when the odds are against you.
The Buddha did not teach a fatalistic belief system. He taught a philosophy of observables.
It’s possible to have a secular take on kamma, or water things down to make it more palatable- however kamma as a force of nature, is present in EBTs: MN136 Maha kammavibhanga sutta SuttaCentral AN8.40 Vipaka sutta SuttaCentral. It is intertwined with rebirth.
If we are to believe there’s something more than just the material at work, that our ‘moral’ actions have deep resonance at a subconscious level- I believe there is a place of kamma (actions) and it effects (kamma vipaka). It’s mechanism cannot obviously be sensed, yet some arahanths and the Buddha have the ability to sense the workings of kamma, beyond mere mundane cause and effect. It is important to say that belief in kamma isn’t compulsory to be a Buddhist, as Buddhism is different from dogma based religions - belief in kamma is part of mundane Right view. It’s a safe bet to believe it rather than not. ‘All’ it entails if being kind, compassionate, generous and wise to and with those around you - this is good kamma. A secular approach of causes and effects are also about taking responsibility for one’s actions and making the compassionate choice. Kamma, in its original form cannot be discarded because the Pali cannon cannot be changed. However kamma is helpful for the path and helps me keep the precepts, as I see negative kamma vipaka as another one of the drawbacks, among the more obvious drawbacks of bad actions. There’s no eternal hell and all of this is tempered with the sum of all of one’s actions rather than a random unwholesome act, in a field of general wholesome acts- see Niganta’s theory of kamma for that.
with metta
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Just putting in a quick plug for the Karma & Rebirth course by Ajahn Sujato and Ajahn Brahmali .
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From recent experience, I have found that finding a therapist with experience in Buddhist meditation and understanding of Buddhist principles is a helpful outlet for talking about such highly personal issues. I wonder if a forum that is so public as this is the best place to get the answers to the OP’s questions at the necessary depth.
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I’m not looking for someone here to fix any emotional problems. I am not hurt by my ex leaving, and if I believed in adultery, I would have dated someone else years ago. If anything, I’d be hurt on behalf of the children. What I am looking for here is a Buddhist perspective on certain questions.
If karma were to bring a new woman into my life, maybe I should give into it to see where it might go. This would be while remaining unattached to any particular outcome, allowing the unfolding of karma to take me wherever it might go, and hopefully I will learn from the experience.
In the Tannisho, Shinran Shonin said that if you don’t murder others, it’s not because you are a good person, but instead because your karma from a past life didn’t make you a murderer in this life. This would suggest that karma has a great influence in our lives.
I don’t mean to go too far with this issue, as it is a deeply personal one, but one of the advantages of this path and practice is that we can just let go of these questions and concerns for a while. Just let the practice be enough. Keep in mind the renunciate practices of the monks and nuns, with the idea that as part of life we can let go of a clinging to relationships, a need for intimacy or sex. At least for a time; let the breath be enough. And my two baht to add to this is that if there are children involved, give this time as kids really need to adapt to the separation of their parents before seeing a parent involved with others. Put the kids first, and give more focus to renouncing versus pondering what else might be out there waiting for you. Go deeper in your practice, focus on what is really important, and then see where you are at emotionally in about 6-12 months.
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I agree about putting the children first. I would reject any woman who didn’t appreciate that I need to put them first, and I would put an end to any relationship that got in the way of giving my children the care they need. I would expect any single mother to feel the same about me.
Please consider the following:
Recent evidence suggests, in fact, that people who dive into rebound relationships get over their ex-partner more quickly and feel more confident in their date-ability (Brumbaugh & Fraley, 2014). This evidence builds nicely on research showing that individuals with high attachment anxiety are better able to sever their emotional attachment to an ex-partner when they start a new relationship (Spielmann, MacDonald, & Wilson, 2009).
If the goal is to move on, it seems, starting something new helps.
Brumbaugh and Fraley (2014) also discovered that less time between a break-up and a new relationship generally predicts greater well-being, higher self-esteem, and more respect for a new partner. Further, contrary to what many people might predict, having less time between a break-up and a new relationship is linked to attachment security—which refers to habits of trusting, comfort with intimacy, and feelings of safety in relationships. In other words, individuals who tend to be emotionally stable were actually more likely to have a shorter amount of time between a relationship’s end and a new one’s beginning.
Can a Rebound Relationship Be the Real Deal? | Psychology Today
I get the point of the article. But, my focus is on how the kids perceive their world when the parents break up…not on what techniques make the adults recover more quickly.
I am opining from the point of view of practicing as a family lawyer for many years. Kids need time and counseling/support to help adapt to the breaking up of a family and seeing their parents separate. I’ve witnessed kids change their perceptions of a parent that re-engaged with paramours too quickly. Kids need the support and they need to process the breakup of their families. My advice was only to put the kids first, even if you feel you might benefit from a new relationship.
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My ex abandoned the children to run away with her new boyfriend. I’m trying to be the healthier one. I wholeheartedly agree with putting the children first, especially since I am the only parent they have now. I definitely would not date a woman who didn’t respect that.
In terms of how it might affect the children, I’ve explained to them what a girlfriend is, and how she would not be their new mommy. They said they just want someone to treat me better than their mommy did.
With all due respect, this is what scholars refer to as ex post facto reasoning which is therefore non-falsifiable. By this (faulty) logic, no matter what happens in life, one can chalk it up to kamma. With no evidence to prove this theory wrong, there is nothing to prove it right. A view of kamma along these lines cannot be adequately tested nor proven correct.
@Mat has suggested that a simple cause-and-effect view of kamma presents a watered down approach to Buddhist principles. O.K. Even a literal reading of the suttas as a force of nature requires proof. Let’s take an example: When Karl Marx wrote Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto he created kamma that affected him in his subsequent lives, and the lives of everyone else, in a fundamental way. No matter what form Karl Marx took in his next lives, those lives would necessarily be different than if Karl Marx had never developed a theory of Socialism. One can prove through logical argument (counter-factuals) that the kamma created by Karl Marx affected him in his subsequent lives. Had Karl Marx never written his seminal works, he would not have influenced the world in profound ways and his subsequent lives would be lived in a completely different world.
On the other hand, to take any living person today, whether it is a carpenter or a factory worker or a business executive or the current president of the United States, for that matter, and say that that person’s actions reflect kamma from a previous life thus validating his or her current actions is to infer from those actions certain actions from a previous life that cannot be proved. One cannot simply argue that someone has inherited someone else’s kamma because of the way they act and therefore they should continue to act that way. That is simply self-justifying behavior and not very consistent with the Noble Eightfold Path, in my humble opinion.
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The same could be said about almost any religious belief.
A topic being a spiritual one, may be ‘tested’ in a spiritual setting ie the Buddha’s awareness of kamma; as much as the search for a Higgs boson cannot be determined personally by any of us, but can be determined in the appropriate setting, inside CERN. Rather than provability, I suggest usefulness as a criterion for utilising the theory of kamma, in one’s practice. It’s not public issue. We believe in the reliability of motor vehicles, and weather forecasts …all the time.
Ex post facto reasoning is not appropriate, and kamma vipaka doesn’t determine a fixed fate for anyone. It influences this way or that and even things out a bit, but not quite. It shows us that we should avoid unwholesome acts and intentions. It cannot be a reason to blame others unknown past kamma for social injustices, such as caste and race discrimination.
I find the Niyama dhamma quite helpful way of thinking about what happens in the world.
Kamma of past lives can affect the present, but by that standard a being will continue infinitely in samsara, and our role is to do the kind of kamma that ends all kamma -the kamma of the noble eightfold path. Practicing only good deeds, or jhana will send a person to heavenly realms (unless the person is an Ariya noble person already) with dropping back into lower realms, therefore insight meditative practices become important, as is jhana in attaining that insight prior to it.
with metta
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