The Second Noble Truth — Kamma Vipāka

THE SECOND NOBLE TRUTH
Kamma�
(Vipaka)
QUESTION
How do you people generally account for things happening to them?
Take a position such as :� �������� �
fate/fortune
an all-powerful deity
any other
How do you explain a great tragedy such as the Mexico earthquake '87?
Kamma, more commonly known in its Sanskrit version Karma, (another language the
Buddhist scriptures are written in) has become part of our language ever since the hippie
sixties.� But unfortunately, the meaning of the word has been overloaded with Hindu and
western ideas. In Buddhism, the Law of Kamma is understood within the framework of the
Four Noble Truths, and without this law, the Truths would not make sense.
The Buddha taught there were fundamental laws that governed our lives and if we were
able to perceive them we would be able to understand why we suffer and how we could rid
ourselves of suffering.� Nowadays, the word kamma tends to be used when something
bad happens to us, but actually it refers to everything that happens to us: good, bad and
indifferent. Strictly speaking, Kamma means what we actually do.� The of our actions is
properly termed vipaka.� So, these two words, kamma-vipaka mean cause and effect,
action and result.
The law of cause and effect is accepted without question by western science. Nothing
happens without something having caused it.� There is nothing that just appears out of
nowhere, so to speak.� Everything is caused by something else.� At its most obvious, the
seed is the cause of the plant and the plant of the fruit which in turn produces the seed.
Buddhism takes this law of causality and places firmly within the moral sphere of human
existence.
Here we need to stand back a minute and consider what human beings are in relationship
to each other and� the world.� I am autonomous in the sense that I have all my own
apparatus, body, senses, mental abilities and so on, which perceive the world and make
sense of it.� In this sense Im an individual unit.� However, this unit is in a state of
total relationship with the world, not just other human beings, but animals, plants and
minerals.� I have a relationship with the stones in the street. I kick them!� In other
words, although I, in myself, have my own understandings, thoughts and so on, as soon
as I speak or act, I form a relationship with someone or something, and this relationship in
turn effects the way I think and understand.� In a way, I can say I am my relationships.
For instance, when Jim goes to work, he always sit at the same table. In the same chair.�
He has a relationship with these two objects - little do they know! - whereby they are
singled out from all the other tables and chairs in the room, singled out by him as his,
belonging to him. He knows this to be true for him.� The chair and table don't, but it does
affect them because no one else uses them.�� Their use, their relationship' is limited to
him. And everyone else who works in that room agrees� with that relationship.� It's all
very reciprocal and harmonious since everyone else in the room has their own table and
chair.� One day he walks in, and lo and behold! someone is sitting at his table.� This
person is new to the place.� She doesn't realise.� In fact, she's only there temporarily
to do a quick jotting, but her posture suggests that she owns the table and chair.� She's
pulled the chair up and is sitting comfortably and squarely at the table.� Shes taken his

space!
What is Jim's reaction?� Anger!� He might clothe it with sarcasm, 'Been promoted
then?'� ,� she says. Collects her things and shoots off with an angry glance.� You
can see that in this little scene, Jims relationship to that chair and table has been an
underlying factor in making an enemy of someone who in all innocence was just using them
temporarily.� These attitudes we have within ourselves, our inner dispositions, affect our
relationship to the world, both bad and good.
Here is the Buddha firmly placing the centre of all our relationships:
In this fathom long body, I declare is the world, the origin of the world, the cessation of the
world and the path leading to the cessation of the world.
This is another formulation of the Four Noble Truths, but from the point of view of
Kamma.� As far as I am concerned, this me-in-myself, my existence, my sufferings, my
joys, my birth and my death is the world, the world as I know and perceive it. The world as
I experience it. That world is me.� I make divisions between me-in-myself and me-with-
others, and also between me and the world.� But actually this 'me- in-the-world', is just
the 'me-in-myself' portrayed upon the world, affecting it.� And the 'me-within-myself' is
the world portrayed in me, affecting me. The division of subject and object is very much
needed in ordinary daily life, but we think of them as two totally� separate things instead
of realising their intimate interrelationship.
The table, chair and woman in the office have their own existence in the world, their
relationship to the world, but when Jim entered the scene, their existence in the world,
their relationship to the world, includes him in it.�� When he entered the office he fell
into an immediate relationship with these three.� What matters to Jim is exactly this
interrelationship. The way he understands, perceives others also includes the way others
perceive and understand him. The way Jim understands and perceives things is very much
effected by the way things effect him. When Jim doesn't see this, he lives in dual world
of 'me and them', 'me', the isolated being in a world of things and others. But in actual fact,
everything is interdependent, interrelated.� Its like a huge folk dance. Each one of us is
an only individual in that we have a specific role to play within the whole dance. How we
play that role is up to us, though our decisions will be affected by the other dancers.� We
say it takes two to start a quarrel, but you can bet your last penny, that the protagonists
will blame each other.� They won't see it as an interrelationship! If the woman was sitting
at another desk, Jim might have barely noticed her.� If the woman had been a friend, he
would have greeted her.� So you can see, within this fathom long body is the whole world
with all its suffering and, of course, the path leading out of suffering too. This whole world is
the whole of the interdependent interrelationships we are.
Now within this world of interdependent interrelationships, when we think or do something,
which is kamma, we create a result, vipaka.� In our minds, we either create a different
way of thinking or we reinforce an old way of thinking.� In other words we are conditioning
ourselves.�
Everyday when Jim gets to work, he has a cup of coffee.� As soon as he walks into the
office, his first thought is coffee.� Why?� Because for the past few years that's what he's
always done.� He sometimes looks forward to the coffee even on the way to work.� His
thoughts keep reminding him of the delicious coffee awaiting him.� His mind and his body
are conditioned to wallow in the taste of hot coffee before he settles down to work. One day
Jim gets to work...no coffee!� He's so angry!� Who's turn was it to buy the coffee?� He's
so embarrassed about his anger when other staff� tell him it was his turn.� Now where
does this desire, anger and embarrassment come from?

The desire, virtually obsession, has been cultivated by Jim in himself over the years!�
Every time he gets to work he's satisfied his desire, his wish for coffee!� The coffee didn't
make Jim do it.� The coffee has not created his obsession.� He could have decided to have
coffee only if he felt tired, to pep him up.� The coffee is a passive object.� Jims used it as
he's wanted to and it is Jim himself who is totally responsible for his obsession.
Did the coffee cause Jim's anger! Did the lack of coffee cause his anger! Of course not!�
Anger was Jim's internal learned reaction when he doesnt get what he wants. When Jim has
to suffer the pain of not satisfying a craving, he gets angry. Worse! The angry mind looks
for a scapegoat! Jim wants to blame someone!
As it turned out, it was his own fault and he feels embarrassed about his display of anger
and petulance.� Did his colleagues make Jim embarrassed, or the coffee?� Or the lack of
coffee!� Of course not!� Embarrassment is what Jim feels, what he's taught himself to
feel, when he makes a fool of myself.
It is the mind which suffers from its own internal conditioning.� Next day Jim reads in the
papers an article about the harmfulness of caffeine. He decides he won't have any more
coffee.� But the smell of coffee keeps distracting him.� He feels angry, depressed. His
body for lack of coffee feels uncomfortable.� But Jim holds out.� Within a week or two he's
dropped the habit. He's off the drug.
Reading the article influenced his opinion, his understanding of coffee. he ponders, he
decides it better not to drink it.� This decision leads to action, to avoiding coffee. Although
Jim has to suffer the consequences of past conditioning, his past obsession with coffee,
he reconditions himself. Jim purifies his mind of that obsession.� In the end, he's lost
it.� He doesn't care whether he has coffee or not.� Jim has reached a state of perfect
equanimity about it.� The importance here is to realise that he's conditioned himself, that
he's responsible for his own mind and that he can no longer blame his parents, colleagues,
friends, politicians, the system or whatever for his state of mind. In other words, should
Jim be made redundant, he could blame bad management for the collapse of the firm,
but not the ensuing depression and so on.� The mental reaction is his own self-imposed
conditioning. Others might be very happy to receive redundancy pay and start a new life!
This is extremely hard for most people to understand and accept.� Our whole vocabulary
and use of language is based on the understanding that others make us angry, or happy.�
Others make the anger in me, not me! One of the insights of meditation is to see that
states of mind from the darkest to the lightest are our own personal conditioning.� That's
why what angers one person may bring joy to another.� One person's delight is another
person's anguish.
In the Buddha's teaching this understanding is crucial if we are to cleanse the mind of
all negativity - to purify it.� If Jim thinks his wife, Jane, is the cause of his depression,
he'll have to change her or leave her. If Jane says John is always making her angry, she'll
have to get rid of him before she gets any relief!� This point of view which presumes that
somehow I will be perfectly happy and life perfectly wonderful for me if only the world,
especially the people in it, would change, is one of the causes of our great unhappiness
and frustration! When we realise we are the makers of our own mental states, suddenly we
have real power, real opportunity to change.� If I make 'me' angry and depressed,� I can
make 'me' un-angry and un-depressed.
When we accept this, we can now look for the kernel agent that produces this conditioning.
The Buddha isolated the agent:�
Volition, O Disciples, is what I call Kamma.
It is through will that a person does something in the form of thought, word or action.

So, an idea comes to mind.� At that point I decide to stop it or develop it.� If I decide to
develop it, it will produce a train of thoughts, which may translate into words or actions.�
From a mental development point of view, it is so necessary to decide whether the initial
thought or idea is good in terms of it being right.� However I react, whatever I do, will
reinforce the conditioning in my mind or undermine it.
This leads us to the next law of Kamma: that of reciprocity, like produces like.�
The Buddha taught very clearly that wholesomeness produces wholesomeness, and
unwholesomeness produces unwholesomeness.� I use 'wholesomeness', (another possible
word is 'skilful')� rather than 'good' and 'bad', to get away from any idea of supernatural
forces of good and evil or a rewarding and punishing deity.� The Buddha taught that
everything that happens to us is the product of past and present conditions.� There is
no concept of punishment in Buddhism. Everything that happens to us are consequences.
Punishment, as such, is something human beings have produced for themselves!
It's something human beings do to each other out of revenge or a sense of so-called
righteousness. Yet another result, another consequence of unwholesome conditioning in the
mind!
An objection is usually raised here.� How is it people get away with murder - literally?�
How is it that people who are good, end up suffering? The point is that a person's action has
a two-fold effect.
When a person does something, two stones drop into two pools.� The first pool is the
outside world, setting up a chain of reactions that effects the 'me-in-the-world'.� Since I
am in relationship with the world, as soon as I do something, it effects it.� These effects
go on and on, until they come back to the original doer.� In other words, the initial action
changes the world.� As the world changes so it affects the doer of that action. When Jim
got angry about his coffee, others formed new opinions of him.� These opinions of theirs
now effect his relationship with them. If his boss was involved, they may even affect his
career prospects!
The second stone drops inward into the pool of the mind, setting up a chain reaction which
effects the 'me-in-myself'.� Jim's anger over the coffee goes to reinforce his�� disposition
of anger.� When he goes home and finds there's no coffee there too, his angry response,
now just that little more developed, makes for a greater explosion and Jim finds myself
flinging the empty coffee jar out of the window!
In other words, the unskilful person and the skilful person are simply developing
different minds within themselves and they are also developing different worlds around
themselves.� At some point the consequences of their actions will be experienced.� Even if
a murderer gets away with it in the world, his heart won't!
The Buddha said:
According to the seed sown
So is the fruit reaped.
There is no escaping these karmic results in Buddhism.� Penance, prayer, offerings to a
god of Kamma, won't help in the least.� However, there are ways to assuage, to soften
the effects of unwholesome results, the vipaka.� Jim's display of petulant anger upset his
colleagues.� They were surprised and disappointed.� The next morning, Jim brings two
jars of coffee and leaves a note of apology.� Old relationships are re-established, but, of
course, it will take greater proof to convince them Jim is not the 'angry type'.
The next question normally asked is how does Buddhism account for mass suffering,
especially seemingly innocent suffering in earthquakes or civilian war casualties.
The first point is that the law of kamma is only one of the laws that govern the universe.�
When we are born, we have to accept the whole package. Not everything that happens to
us, is the result of our personal past or present actions.� When Jim threw that jar out of

the window, it landed on the head of a poor old man. He died there and then! And Jim went
for jail for manslaughter. Now, he didn't make the man walk under the window just as the
jar came down.� So you see, we have to be careful with what we do or say.� There are
other factors abroad that can maximise or minimise the effects of what we do.� Wholesome
actions, for instance, may not mature since the conditions are not there to support.
The second point is that suffering is a state of mind.� In meditation, when pains come from
the sitting posture, we try to see these so-called pains for what they really are.� Calling
them pains, puts a value judgement on them: they� are 'bad', 'terrible'.� We react with
fear or aversion. But in meditation, if we concentrate just on the sensations, the pains as
sensations, the mind will empty of its normal reaction and we will suddenly experience what
we thought of as pain as just sensation. When we experience just sensations, what is the
state of mind?� Peaceful and calm.� Not suffering.
So in a disaster such as the Mexico earthquake of '87, thousands of people suffered pain.�
Some died instantly, with very little pain indeed.� Others died slowly in great pain and in
great anguish.� Others died in great pain, but equanimously.� How each individual reacted
to their tragedy was determined to a large extent by their conditioned state of mind. From
the outside, from the TV pictures, we are filled with horror at so much suffering.� From
the inside, there are only individuals, each suffering their own lot according to their self
developed conditioning.�� That is why, some trapped but not physically suffering, may
have been screaming with fright: others in terrible physical agony may have been calm and
died peacefully.
So to recap.� Firstly, the law of kamma states that everything we suffer or enjoy belongs
to the moral sphere which is governed by the law of cause and effect as is the world of
atoms and molecules.� Secondly, that there is a direct reciprocity in that wholesome,
skilful thoughts, words and actions produce wholesome, skilful thoughts, words and
actions. And that unwholesomeness and unskillfulness produce unwholesome and unskilful
results. Thirdly, that the root cause of kamma is to be discovered in our own volition, our
wills.� This means that through the power of our own decision making, we can change our
personality, the way we are and act. And so we can change the world about us.� Fourthly,
that the results of any intentioned thoughts, words and actions are inescapable, but that we
can effect the outcome of� unskilfulness in the past with present skilfulness.
Vipassana Insight Meditation allows us to see our present conditioning of mind.� In the
clearing of awareness, the mind displays itself.� By not joining in, not indulging, not
developing, we can allow unwholesome states of mind to burn themselves out.� With the
practice of loving kindness, metta meditation, we suggest to ourselves more skilful ways
of thinking and behaving.� In our daily life, we constantly try to behave in more skilful
ways.� In this way the meditative life changes us, moves us away from unwholesome
states of mind towards the wholesome, from darkness to light.
The Dhammapada is often referred to as the 'Buddhist Bible'.� It is a collection of many of
the Buddha's sayings under different headings. Here are three verses on Kamma�� (119/
120/124):
Even a wrong doer may still find happiness,
So long as his unskilful behaviour does not bear fruit.
But when his unskilful behaviour does bear fruit,
He will meet with their unwholesome consequences.
Even a good person may meet with suffering
So long as his skilful behaviour does not bear fruit.
But when that skilful behaviour does bear fruit,
He will enjoy the benefits of that skilful behaviour.

If there is no cut on the hand,
A person can handle poison.
The poison won't affect someone who does not have a cut.
There are no unwholesome consequences
For one who does not intend to act unskilfully.
May the Teachings of the Buddha shed light into your life!
May you quickly attain the Supreme Goal!
SUMMARY
In this fathom long body, I declare, O Disciples, is the World,�
the Origin of the World, the Cessation of the World
and
the Path leading to the Cessation of the World.
The Law of Causation - of Cause and Effect.
1.� KAMMA��������������� :���������� VIPAKA
��� action/cause� ����������� ��������result/effect
2. According to the seed,
����So is the fruit reaped.
The Law of Reciprocity, Like creates Like.
Skilful actions produce wholesome results.
Unskilful actions produce unwholesome results.
3. Volition, O Disciples, is what I call Kamma.
It is through having willed
that a person does something
in the form of an action, word or thought.
Our Volition, Will, Decision Making is Kamma.
4.�The Law of Kamma is inescapable.
But we can assuage, soften, the results of past unskilful behaviour by skilful behaviour.
5.To understand the Law of Kamma, we need to see the Universe
as an intricate web of interdependent interrelationships.
Everything is affected by everything else.
We need to discover for ourselves how a meditative style of living, based on these
understandings, brings about a greater sense of well-being within the world.