Buddhist Advice Column: Does karma ever ripen in the same lifetime?

Photo by Jen Theodore on Unsplash

Karmic seeds germinate as future results

A post I wrote about karma last year stimulated quite a few reader responses, including this question. Because I feel it is such an important point, deserving a full answer, I thought that it would make for a post of its own.

Here goes!

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By way of a recap, the view of karma presented in Tibetan Buddhism is that every action of body, speech and mind creates a ‘seed’ that will germinate and ripen as a future result. Typically, this result will not be experienced until a future lifetime, when the conditions arise for it to ripen. This is why no longitudinal study of karma, confined to a single lifetime, could ‘prove’ its existence one way or another.

But are there exceptions?

According to Path to Enlightenment teachings offered by Kyabje Pabongka Rinpoche, one of the preeminent lamas in the last century, yes! There are three deeds, perhaps better expressed as categories of actions, which produce results in the same lifetime that they are performed. They are as follows:

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Deeds committed with strong emotion

Here we are talking powerfully felt emotions whether of the virtuous or non-virtuous kind.

Helping someone from a place of profound, heartfelt compassion is different from exactly the same action accompanied by a more superficial motivation. This is an important and subtle point, because it highlights that we are working with mind – where karma exists - and the impact on mind of whatever action we are taking, good or bad.

By way of example, in our conventional world we have a tendency to revere philanthropists who give millions or billions of dollars to worthy causes. The size of their donations is what makes their actions newsworthy.

According to the Dharma, however, the karmic impact of such generosity is highly dependent on the driver of the benevolence. You or I might make a much smaller donation in monetary terms, but with much greater emotional commitment, in which case the karmic impact of what we are doing could be much greater on our mind than that of the philanthropist on his or her mind.

This is why we should never overlook even the smallest virtue we can create (a virtue is defined as a cause of happiness) when deeply moved, because it isn’t only about the action itself, but about the state of heart motivating it.

Interestingly, both the Buddha and later Jesus used the same metaphor of the widow’s mite, one of many parallels between the two traditions. For those readers who don’t know it, in both cases those in the religious hierarchy were treating with disdain a very poor woman who was donating the smallest value coin. Whereupon Buddha/Jesus responded that it was what the coin represented to the woman that mattered, not the amount itself. Karma is about mind, not about how conventional reality appears to others.

I feel this is a useful reminder to many of us who try deliberately to practice generosity. In our busy lives it is easy to become blasé and to diminish or overlook the emotional impetus of what we are doing, focusing more on setting up the direct debit, sending the email, and ticking the action off our ‘to do’ list so that we can get onto the next thing. Better, however, to pause for a moment, remind ourselves exactly why we are doing what we are doing, and to cultivate an authentic sense of love, compassion and benevolence, if we wish our action to have the greatest impact and karmic outcome. 

If, for example, you are a paying subscriber to this newsletter, motivated by the wish to help the extraordinary causes that we do, recollect your generosity in your meditations or during the day. You are already taking the action. Get the greatest karmic bang for your monetary buck by recollecting and cultivating the compassion which it embodies!

Correspondingly, strongly negative emotions are more likely to produce results in this lifetime than less powerful ones. To use a sensational example, murdering someone in a jealous rage has a very different impact on the mind and will therefore yield a different karmic outcome from shooting an anonymous enemy combatant in a less heightened emotional state.

That said, I know several former warriors from the Rhodesia/Zimbabwe bush war who, much later in life, suffer from PTSD directly connected with the violence they experienced and inflicted. Readers of my novel, Instant Karma, may recognise them in the character of Colonel Tom Jackson, Lama Tashi’s neighbour and a former soldier.

If there is a message in here it must surely be this: when feeling strongly negative, hostile or harmful emotions, whatever you do, don’t act on them! Correspondingly, virtuous actions undertaken with powerful emotions are setting us up for happiness, maybe sooner than we may think.

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Deeds committed with a holy object

Traditionally, a holy object is defined as one’s parents and also one’s Buddhist teacher/lama.  Parents are considered in a league of their own for the simple reason that we owe them our existence. However good, bad or indifferent they may have been as parents and human beings, they created us and enabled us to survive.

The guru is a holy object because he or she is the one who shows us how to see through conventional appearances to what is really happening – i.e. reality is a projection of mind – and who gives us the tools we need to let go of these appearances and attain the extraordinary capabilities with which we can best help others. Some of us may have the immense good fortune to have more than one guru, in which case they are all holy objects.

Thoughts, words and deeds in relation to our parents or our gurus have a karmic impact far greater than other beings. Strongly positive or negative actions in relation to them can ripen in this lifetime. Understanding this encourages us to amplify whatever is good about our relationships, for example, going the extra mile in doing what we can to care for our parents, or practice as our guru has asked.

It can help us cope better with ‘Mummy and Daddy’ issues like resentment, hurt and estrangement. Even when there is little we can do to change the attitudes or behaviour of others, from our side - and this is the main point - we can let go, allow bygones be bygones, and get over ourselves. It is in our own karmic self-interest to shower our parents with love and affection. This is actually the cause to enjoy being showered with love and affection by parents in future lives. And if this perspective sounds self-seeking – i.e. we are only ‘using’ our parents to generate virtuous karma – then relax! This is exactly what the Dalai Lama calls being ‘wisely selfish!’

The interesting psychology behind this approach is that even if we decide, for reasons of enlightened self-interest, to do what we can to move our relationship with our parents onto a more positive footing, the result can sometimes be genuine fence-mending and authentic closeness. Sometimes we need a shove to do the right thing. Understanding karma can serve this purpose.

I have focused a bit here on difficult parent relationships, because they’re so common. But the same applies to bumpy experiences with our lama. One of my teachers commented only yesterday about how he doesn’t know anyone practising guru-yoga over a long period of time who hasn’t been through a bumpy patch with their lama – I guess it is a bit like marriage! The important thing is to recollect the karmic importance of our gurus and do whatever we can to cultivate virtuous attitudes and actions towards them.

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Deeds committed repeatedly

The third category of karmas that ripen within a single lifetime are those we commit over and over. Recollecting that karma is carried in our mind stream and not something ‘out there,’ it makes sense that the more deeply engrained habitual actions become, the more they become who we are.

We can see this clearest in some older people – and I include myself – where deeply rooted ways of seeing the world, patterns of speech and actions arising from long-ingrained beliefs, can sometimes have the effect of shaping reality in an observable way. The karmic chickens come home to roost – be they of the delightfully clucky egg-laying variety, or the crowing roosters that keep us up half the night.

“We are what we repeatedly do,” said Aristotle, summarising this element of karma in an eloquent, six words.

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What if it’s too late? You have thought, said and done horrible things to your Mum or Dad and they are now gone? Or you have acted in rage and hurt towards others? The seeds are planted and when conditions are ripe they will germinate and ripen.

We can diminish, postpone and ultimately get rid of negative karmas. The most powerful opponent force is that of cultivating bodhichitta, which I explained in my post last week. If you wish, I can share specific purification practices also. Please let me know if this may be of interest to you.

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If you have found this post helpful, you may like to explore my previous post, ‘Is there proof of karma’ which you can find here.

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I’d like to share a quick update from Roxy Danckwerts at Wild is Life, one of the not-for-profits we support, where a large enclosure with plenty of space to burrow and forage is being created for this little porcupine.

Roxy notes that porcupines are killed for their quills, so please don’t buy quills believing they were randomly found in the bush.

May all beings - including porcupines - have happiness and it's causes!