BUDDHISM IN KERALA: Cause and Effect....

Monday, December 26, 2011

Cause and Effect....

Cause Entails Effect: Be mindful in all you do!

There are some fundamental tenets. One is the universal regime of cause
and effect. The second is the idea of interdependence of all phenomena.
The third is in understanding that there is a certain dependence in origination
itself, that is that which originates, changes, disappears and disintegrates.
This idea is inbuilt in origination. The 4th is the impermanence of conditioned
things and absence of inherent existence of the cognizer and the cognized.
The fifth is the suffering that follows from mistaken perceptions in the
permanence of reality. In our social as well as individual lives, we have to
encounter suffering caused by false apprehensions of reality and happiness.
Buddhism does not believe in mortifying the flesh; it does not believe in ignoring
the demands of life, or the potential for expanding knowledge about the universe;
it does not deny that knowledge can help to reduce suffering or improve
conditions of living. It has therefore no distaste for science or technology.
On the contrary, it believes that skillful use of science and technology can
improve the quality of our lives. But since technology involves the choice of
goals, nature of the goals, as well as the motivation that prompts the choice
and pursuit of goals become very important. If they ignore or violate any of
the beliefs that listed above, they are bound to increase individual and social
suffering, and not welfare. Hence what we believe will contribute to our pleasure
sometimes could turn out to be the cause of aggravated suffering.
To the Buddhist, ethics and morality are not extraneous to the realm of cause and
effect. They are not commandments of one who is the creator, and who functions
above the realm of cause and effect. Nor have their observance to be induced by
a system of reward and punishment.
The belief that actions take place in the realm of cause and effect has turned
Buddhism away from the need to look for an external source of authority or
reward and punishment administered by an external authority. Actions have
their inescapable consequences as they are guided by the law of cause & effect.
Thus my motivations and actions will have their effects on me and the social and
even natural environment in which I live. I cannot overlook this effect, and
therefore, the responsibility to see that my conduct to what creates a conducive
effect on me as well as my social and natural environment.
Advances in science and technology are not based on an analysis of motives,
or the impact and chain-reactions that these are likely to cause on the psyche
and environment. The negative consequences of this absence of mindfulness have
now been brought to our attention. What do we do?
Persist in the mindless pursuit of individual power and material possessions,
unconcerned with its consequences -- in other words running the risk of a
suicide of the species?
The answer lies within us, within our minds. To a believer in Buddha Dharma it is
this mindfulness which is the basis on which to choose the path that leads to
freedom and fulfillment. Among the most powerful enemies of mindfulness are
desire, greed and the ego, the desire to promote one's ego at the cost of others
or society or the environment. The answer that Buddha Dhamma clearly gives is
mindfulness even to protect mindfulness itself, and the ethics and morality that
mindfulness makes imperative in a world governed by cause and effect.
by Lama Doboom Tulku, Times of India, Dec 21, 2011

Causes, good as bad, inevitably spread as effects, like rings in water!