Comments on “No cosmic justice”

(1) Done, thanks!

(2) I don't know enough about Theravada to say. I think the Pali scriptures have substantially equivalent statements about certainty, eternity, and so forth, although expressed in slightly different terms.

(3) I think your point about temperaments is a very good one.

Hi, Alexander, thanks for your comments!

This page has confused a number of readers, and revising it is on my to-do queue.

Key phrases in it, apparently is easily overlooked, are that "Dzogchen does not deny karma altogether" and "the Dzogchen view is that karma is a matter of habit".

The context for the page is that many Tibetan Buddhist leaders have opposed Dzogchen and tried to ban it. I'm trying to explain why that is. One of the standard reasons they give is that Dzogchen denies karma. This is not actually true, but it is true that Dzogchen makes it difficult or impossible to make an ethical theory out of karma. (That is not their only reason for rejecting Dzogchen; I will go into the politics soon in my Wordpress blog.)

For Dzogchen, liberation (enlightenment) is synonymous with "rigpa", which literally means "vision", but in context means "accurate perception". Because rigpa is perfectly accurate, it is not conditioned by karma (i.e. previous actions). It simply reflects reality.

The thing is, rigpa is potentially available to everyone at all times, regardless of karma. If you are a mass murderer and you can maintain rigpa, then your karma is irrelevant.

Dzogchen is called "the path of instantaneous liberation" because the moment you hold rigpa, you are a fully realized Buddha. There is nothing more to be done. In particular, there is absolutely no need to purify past karma.

Within Dzogchen, there is a doctrine called "grol lugs bzhi", which means "the four aspects of liberation". (To understand this, it helps to remember that "liberation" in Tantra and Dzogchen is synonymous with "destruction" of samsara.) The four modes are:

• Shar grol (liberation in arising): karma evaporates instantly as it arises.
• Rang grol (self liberation): it destroys itself; you don't have to do anything.
• gCer grol (direct liberation): it is released as soon as it is perceived.
• Ye grol (primordial liberation): liberation is timeless; with rigpa, karma doesn't need to be worn away gradually; it always was an illusion, and once liberated it is gone forever.

Some readers have somehow misread this page as denying rebirth, which it certainly doesn't. The Tibetan bardo teachings, which are the most detailed Buddhist account of rebirth, are part of Dzogchen. According to those teachings, the circumstances in which you are reborn depend only on how you perceive phenomena in the between-lives realms. If you perceive them accurately, then you can choose to be reborn however you like.

Ordinary perception is muddied by perceptual habits, which accumulate as a consequence of habitual actions (karma). Tendencies of misperception are what cause involuntary rebirth. Particular patterns of misperception tend to produce particular kinds of rebirth; anger will lead you to the hell realms, and so on.

The point is that this isn't a "Law" imposed by some sort of external cosmic force. It's just a matter of psychological tendency. The "Law" can be violated at will, and utterly obviated at any moment, by remembering your true nature, i.e. rigpa.

Regarding your second question, Dzogchen has its own cosmogony and ontology, in terms of the trikaya. Briefly, the dharmakaya primordially self-manifests as the sambhogakaya, which self-manifests as the nirmanakaya. This is prior to any karma, which only arises late in the game as nirmanakaya misperceives itself. It's acausal; there's no "why" about it.

I'm not sure where you got "the theory of karma necessarily posits a creation and therefore a creator". I didn't intend to say that, and I can't find it in what I wrote...

Regarding sources. I don't recall an extensive discussion of this; and so, for the time being, I've removed the word "explicitly" from the page text. When I do the revision, I'll hunt through my books and see what I come up with. If anyone else wants to do some research, I'd suggest three possible starting points. One would be Nyingma defenses against the sectarian polemics that wrongly claim that Dzogchen denies karma altogether. Second would be the Bardo Thodol, explaining how rigpa liberates one from karma in the between-lives. Third would be Mipham's Beacon of Certainty, which explains the Dzogchen view of emptiness and liberation.

Best wishes,

David

I'm glad I make sense sometimes!

I wrote this page four years ago, and re-reading it now, I can see that it's confusing. Really does need a re-write.

Hello Anonymous,

Thank you very much for this!

For anyone lacking context: Dharma Wheel is a Buddhist forum. There was some discussion of the Aro Ter there a few months ago, which referenced this page about karma and Dzogchen.

The moderators of the Dzogchen subforum of Dharma Wheel include some of the same people who used to run the e-Sangha Buddhist forum. Some of them were, and apparently still are, hostile to Aro, for reasons that remain mainly unclear.

Discussion on Dharma Wheel was twice cut off by moderators. In both cases, my impression was that this was to prevent me from continuing to respond factually and neutrally to inflammatory misinformation. That certainly was the explicit policy on e-Sangha at one time.

My impression was that the Dharma Wheel moderators felt they had to be somewhat less one-sided than they had been on e-Sangha, probably because they had full control of that forum, but are essentially guests of the owner on Dharma Wheel.

I would have liked to post a reply to the final round of hostile, factually incorrect comments in the Dharma Wheel thread. However, my feeling was that the moderators knew they were on very thin ice, and that another round of Aro-bashing was unlikely to occur there.

If it does erupt again, I will appeal for fairness up the chain of moderators and eventually to David Snyder. Thank you very much indeed for the suggestion.

David