4. Intimate Causality

After this encouragement, the Buddha would then move the discussion of the power of action from personal to impersonal terms—looking at actions and events in and of themselves, without paying attention to who was doing them or where they were happening. When he did this, his explanations followed the same general outlines as his more personal discussions of actions: The present moment is shaped to some extent by past actions, and to some extent by present actions that have at least the potential to be freely chosen.

The difference was that in some cases he framed his more impersonal explanations in terms of general principles, and in others he went in the other direction, going more into the details.

The general principles establish the overall framework for how causality works in such a way that it’s possible, on the one hand, for actions to have long-term consequences and, on the other, for actions in the present moment to be free from past influences. Only in such a causal system can problems arising from causes be solved by attacking the causes here and now.

The more detailed explanations show precisely how desire and passion play a role in giving rise to suffering, and how they can be used to put an end to it. In fact, one of these explanations—called dependent co-arising—will provide the framework for the remainder of this book. As we explore it, we’ll see:

• the places in the causal system where intentional action plays a role in giving rise to suffering;

• the places where desire and passion also play a role, both as conditions for the ignorance that’s key to the creation of suffering, and as its results; and

• the ways in which the knowledge that overcomes ignorance allows for intentional actions to fall in line with the triple training that leads to the end of suffering.

Exploring both of the Buddha’s main impersonal teachings—the general causal principle and its detailed application—allows us to understand the what and why of his teachings. Exploring the ways in which these teachings shape the training that puts an end to suffering helps to explain not only what he taught his listeners to do, but also who he chose to teach and how he trained them.

The most important of the Buddha’s general formulations of his impersonal explanations of action is a causal principle called this/that conditionality. This principle gets its name from the fact that all the causal factors it describes are events and actions immediately present to your awareness: “this right here,” “that right there.” Instead of pointing to causal factors behind the scenes, it says, in effect, that all you need to know about the causes of suffering for the sake of putting an end to it are things that you can point to in your direct experience as “this” or “that.”

Keep this fact in mind. When the Buddha describes things in impersonal terms, he’s not talking about faraway abstractions. He’s focusing on events and actions that can be intimately known—so intimately that they’re often overlooked. He’s telling you to look closely at what’s happening and what you’re doing in your immediate experience. As we’ll see, these actions and events are even more intimate than the sense of you and your world that you build out of them.

The Buddha describes this/that conditionality with four statements that sound very simple on the surface.

At first glance, these statements seem to say nothing more than that there are causes that lead to effects, and that every effect coming from a cause that can pass away will also have to pass away. But when you look at the statements more carefully, taking the connected statements in pairs, you see that there are actually two slightly different principles interacting. This is what makes this/that conditionality complex.

The first pair is this: “When this is, that is.… When this isn’t, that isn’t.” This pair describes causality in the present moment. The result appears at the same time that the cause appears. When the cause disappears, the result immediately disappears as well.

The second pair describes causality over time: “From the arising of this, comes the arising of that.… From the cessation of this, comes the cessation of that.” The cause may appear and disappear in one time period, but the effect can come and go either right away or much later.

An example of the first kind of causality would be putting your finger in a flame. You don’t have to wait until your next lifetime to get the result. It burns right away. When you pull it out of the flame, it stops burning. Similarly, if you spit into the wind, it’s going to come right back at you and then stop.

An example of the second type of causality: You put your finger into a fire and then pull it out, but even though it’s out of the fire, it still has the marks of a burn that will take time to heal but ultimately will go away. Another example would be planting a tree seed in a forest. You won’t get a mature tree right away. It’ll take time, long after you stopped the action of planting the seed. And the tree may live for a very long time. But then, because the seed is impermanent, the tree will eventually have to die.

The fact that these two principles are always acting together means that at any one moment in time, you will experience a combination of three things:

From the point of view of kamma, this means that your experience is shaped to some extent by past actions, but not totally. It’s also shaped by present actions. In fact, as we’ll see in the next chapter, without present actions, there can be no experience of the results of past actions.

At all.

The principle of the mind’s proactive nature extends that far.

Now,

(1) because the mind that acts can also be aware of its actions and any immediate results of its actions, and

(2) because all the causes and effects you need to know are immediately present to your awareness, then

the fact that some causes lead to immediate results allows for some very quick feedback loops in the process. In other words, you see the immediate results of your actions and, if they’re good, you decide to continue with those actions. If they’re bad, you can stop what you’re doing. If you put your finger in a fire then, unless your senses are impaired, you’ll feel the pain and immediately pull your finger away. Or if, while meditating, you sense that the way you choose to breathe is making you uncomfortable, you can change mid-breath.

However, there are many reasons why we might respond inappropriately to the results of our own actions, making mistakes in interpreting what’s causing what.

—We might be insensitive to what we’re doing, or we might not make the connection between an immediate cause and its immediate effect.

—At the same time, the results of actions, in terms of sights, sounds, etc., don’t come with labels indicating which actions they come from, whether present, past, or far-distant past. In fact, because kamma seeds don’t all sprout at the same rate, it’s often the case in any given moment that we’re experiencing the results of present actions and past actions that come from many different times and places. This means that many different feedback loops between action, result, awareness, and new actions might all be happening at the same time. This is how this/that conditionality can get complex and confusing. As a result, we might misread a moment of suffering in the present, thinking that it’s coming from something we did in the past, when actually it’s a result of something we’re doing right now—or vice versa. In either case, we can easily respond inappropriately.

—Another reason for not seeing the connections between our actions and their results is that our views might prevent us from doing so. We might believe either that no past actions can affect our present experience, or that no present actions can have an effect right now. An example in the Canon is of a group of sectarians who believe that all pleasures and pains come from past actions. They practice severe austerities and, because of their beliefs, think that the pain they’re feeling comes from burning off old unskillful kamma, when actually it comes from the austerities themselves (MN 101).

—And as I noted earlier, some unskillful actions can lead to pleasant sights, sounds, etc., right now, to the point where we desensitize ourselves to the fact that the actions in and of themselves come from uncomfortable mind-states.

So even though this/that conditionality focuses on intimate parts of our experience, the fact that we can be ignorant of our most intimate relations—with events in our own minds—means that we can often abuse those relationships. Every action we make is for the sake of happiness, but many of those actions often end up causing suffering for ourselves and for those around us.