In MN 78 the Buddha talks about karma without ever mentioning it once in its merit-producing context. (1)
Lay disciple Pancakanga went to the hall in a nearby park that was set aside for debates, and there he encountered the wanderer Uggahamana who said that a man who is perfected in what is wholesome, an invincible ascetic who has achieved the supreme attainment, is someone who does no evil in action, speaks no evil, has no evil intentions, and doesn’t make his living in an evil line of work. Pancakanga refrained from comment, left, and reported what was said to the Buddha later in the day. The Buddha then pointed out that, by that description, an infant is an invincible ascetic who has achieved the supreme attainment.
What’s interesting about this story so far is that intention was part of the larger discussion in the local hall (so perhaps it wasn’t introduced as a concept by the Buddha alone) and that the original terms used to frame the conversation — wholesome, action, speech, intention, livelihood — are all used in the Buddha’s answers to Pancakanga. Not only are the same terms in use, the answer is framed entirely in terms of the worldview and concerns of the original speaker.
Our familiarity with the Buddha’s concepts of intention and karma may make it obvious to us that this is what he talks about in his answer, yet he doesn’t use those words. Nowadays, if a Buddhist were to try to explain Buddhist morality to a Christian, they are most likely to talk about karma and intention, not reframe the whole thing in terms of sin and faith, but — using the modern frame of reference as a metaphor for what the Buddha does here — if the Buddha were speaking to a Christian, he would be talking about God and salvation, accepting Jesus as savior, and about sin and faith. He seems to have had a remarkable talent for speaking to people in the idiom they were most comfortable with.
The Buddha’s point about the baby is that it isn’t enough to simply do no harm, you have to understand what it means to do harm. He says that, in his way of thinking, one can only be a truly invincible ascetic if he has ten qualities, but before he tells us what those are:
[But first of all] I say, it must be understood thus: ‘These are unwholesome habits,’ and thus: ‘Unwholesome habits originate from this,’ and thus: ‘Unwholesome habits cease without remainder here,’ and thus: ‘One practicing in this way is practicing the way to the cessation of unwholesome habits.’ (2)
So here we have the Buddha framing the Four Noble Truths in terms of unwholesome habits. Since we know the truths are about dukkha, its origin, cessation, and the way to dukkha’s cessation, we know that he is equating unwholesome habits with dukkha. Equally important, we have him pointing out that the first step is to understand this — otherwise we’re just wriggling babes.
He then details the above by letting us know that unwholesome habits are those of bodily actions, speech and livelihood, and they originate from the particular aspect of mind that is affected by lust, hate, and delusion. Unwholesome habits cease by abandoning the evil conduct and developing good conduct in body, speech, and livelihood, and he describes in some detail what particular practices go into the cessation, which in part is about applying energy and getting excited about wholesome conduct.
Following — and paralleling — all this discussion of unwholesomeness is talk about wholesomeness, and what’s remarkable here is that it follows pretty much the same pattern. The Buddha talks about the importance of understanding what wholesome habits are, how they originate, cease, and the way to their cessation, as if they, too, were dukkha. What’s up with that?
The Buddha describes what wholesome habits are as the flip side of the unwholesome ones: wholesome bodily actions, speech, and the purification of one’s livelihood. He says that wholesome actions are generated by a certain kind of mind: one that is unaffected by lust, hate and delusion. So far so good, but it’s with the description of the cessation of wholesomeness that we come to understand why it’s equated with dukkha just like unwholesomeness was:
And where do wholesome habits cease without remainder? Their cessation is stated: here a bhikkhu is virtuous, but he does not identify with his virtue, and he understands as it actually is that deliverance of mind and deliverance by wisdom where these wholesome habits cease without remainder. (2)
It’s not enough to just refrain from evil, we have to understand the options; even then it’s not enough to just refrain while understanding, we need to have the right attitude, and that is all about not identifying with our actions: no “I am doing this” for whatever reasons one might have — to be known as a supreme ascetic, or even because “I know it’s the right thing to do.” This point is made more deeply in the Buddha’s illumination of intention in the parts that follow, where he shines a bright light on sensual desire, ill will, and cruelty as unwholesome, and their opposites in the wholesome.
Those familiar with the Buddha’s most popular teachings will recognize this whole sermon as being “the usual” with slight variations in details and terms to match the originator’s questions and philosophy. In “wholesome” and “unwholesome” he is talking about good karma and bad karma. Just as the Buddha’s deep discourses on karma talk about the importance of ending all karma — not just bad but good — that is the point here as well, made vivid by talking about ending wholesome actions, which seems odd at first glance, and only makes sense when we understand that what is behind unwholesomeness, and wholesomeness as well, is intention, and that the intention being pointed out is entirely about “identifying” with the action: it’s about the self. Understanding this is the key to the sutta because, after all, accuracy of understanding is really the whole point of this lesson.
When he finally gets to the ten qualities that the ultimate ascetic must possess, this is described as the individual having:
the right view of one beyond training, the right intention of one beyond training . . . the right speech . . . right action . . . right livelihood . . . right effort . . . right mindfulness . . . . right concentration . . . . right knowledge . . . and the right deliverance of one beyond training. (2)
The end of producing unwholesome states may be the production of wholesome states, but the end of both comes when someone has so thoroughly understood all the usual aspects of the eightfold path plus two more — knowledge and the deliverance it leads to — and has gotten this down so well, that they no longer need training in it. All unwholesome states — and all karma — comes to a complete end only after the identity view is gone so that all the factors of the path are produced from selfless intention, not from desire of any kind, not even desire to do the right thing because one should.
This is the point being made — though it is made more subtly — in MN 117 “The Great Forty” in its explanations of Wrong View, Right View With Taints, and Right View. Wrong View equates to the unwholesome, Right View With Taints equates to the wholesome — good actions but tainted by being tied up with a view of the self — and the actual Right View, the one that the Buddha teaches, is about doing pretty much the same sorts of things, but fueled by a different sort of intention, the one that has no self in it, the one that can only come from thorough knowledge of our motivations and who we are (and aren’t), knowledge that is liberating. In MN 117 this point is made most clearly in the three different kinds of intention:
And what is wrong intention? The intention of sensual desire . . . ill will . . . and cruelty. This is wrong intention.
And what is right intention? Right intention, I say, is twofold: there is right intention that is affected by taints, partaking of merit, ripening in the acquisitions, and there is right intention that is noble, taintless, supramundane, a factor of the path. (2)
The taints that affect right intention would be of sensual desire, being, and ignorance (MN 121.12) and the “being” there is the desire for the continuation of the self. As if that was not enough evidence of how this is all about self, there is “ripening in the acquisitions” which Bhikkhu Bodhi has said is about “the five aggregates that constitute personal existence… in that it leads to acquiring a new set of five aggregates in the future” (in other words, this kind of intention has a part in generating the stuff from which we create our sense of self), which makes the part played by the “partaking of merit” make sense because it is about intentions that are focused on doing the right thing for selfish reasons.
Whether the Buddha is talking about wholesome and unwholesome, or good karma’s good merit or the bad equivalents, whether he is using Uggahamana’s worldview, or the karmic system of the Brahmins, the thing we need to remember is that he is repeatedly saying that systems that result in moral behavior are better than those that don’t — regardless of whose systems they are — but the Buddha’s own system, the one in which we train to understand the intention behind both “evil” behavior and its opposite, or to understand unwholesome and wholesome behavior, only his system of understanding the failing in these results in actual liberation.
- The word “kamma” does get used eight times in conjunctions where it means “action” as in “kayakammam” meaning “bodily action” and once in its formulation as “right conduct”.
- All highlighted quotes come from Bhikkhus Nanamoli and Bodhi’s translation of the Majjhima Nikaya “The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha” from Wisdom Publications © 1995.