MN: Not magic, just the result of karma. Maybe think small scale first, then expand the same concept to bigger scale. Isidasi, Khujjutara, all the others in the Jatakas – their actions led to karma.

Try looking at the result of karma in terms of the five precepts. That might be a good start. What happens (short term) to people who lie? Steal? Kill? Commit adultery? Spend their days intoxicated?

What happens (long term in this lifetime) people who lie? Steal? Kill? Commit adultery? Spend their days intoxicated? Commit adultery?

Spend their days intoxicated?

What happens (long term, in next rebirths) people who lie? Steal? Kill? Commit adultery? Spend their days intoxicated? Commit adultery?

Spend their days intoxicated?

AD: Lets just start with 1, adultery, since that is the topic in the Isidasi story:

In general, people who commit adultery tend to get caught at some point, we will call this short term and long term in this life. Their own spouse, if they have one, is upset and they can leave them, divorce them, take the kids and otherwise ruin their domestic life. The spouse of the adulterer’s lover, if they have one and find out, can try and exact vengeance by violence or other acts to try and ruin the adulterer’s reputation and life.

More ongoing/patterns/trends that can persist across lives — all behavior arises from view. Again, in general, it seems like the view of an adulterer is that achieving their own satisfaction takes precedence over the feelings of others. In 2 of the human lives from the Isidasi story, this is super clear, he toys with women to fuel his pleasure independent of how his serial use’em and lose’em behavior will impact those women, and then in a future life forces out wife number 1 for her own advancement without regard to how that is going to impact wife 1.

This will naturally leave a wake of pretty hurt and angry people in an adulterer’s path until something — either a serious enough bitch slap; or a come-to-Jesus that touches their heart; or being cheated on themselves; or a deliberate process of self exploration, internalization and view changing (aka practice) ends their view and by extension their behavior.

This all makes total sense to me. It even makes sense to me that while, in general, these are the consequences of adultery, they don’t always shake-out in the short or long or mid term. We can return to this later, but I did ask the Buddha (via Access to Insight https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.136.nymo.html)  for some clarification on karma and was really touched by the Maha Kammavibhanga Sutta. I see it is a matrix, and I see it is exactly like sand –so many variables that in any given instance it is impossible to predict what will occur for sure.

Totally A-OK so far.

Here is where I start getting frustrated — in the Isidasi story, it is obvious in her last life she is on the flip side, having her own home broken-up when she was a home wrecker before.  But, by all accounts, at least in her last life, Isidasi was the picture perfect wife. Nothing in her behaviors, at that time, should evoke retribution from her husbands. So what is the mechanism by which they ‘knew’ they should reject her? Even if you say, on some level, in her heart she felt like she deserved punishment, how did she know these marriages were the ones she should put herself in to be punished?

I guess put another way, karma gets talked about as very tit for tat. In a single life, I hit you so you hit me back makes sense. Even across multiple lives, I am a hitter so eventually I’ll get hit back makes sense. What doesn’t compute for me is I used to be a hitter, I would never hit now, but out of the blue, countless lifetime later, I get hit. The ‘why’ of karma doesn’t really make sense without understanding the ‘how’. What is the mechanism by which this gets carried forward?

Of course, I have some guesses, based mostly on what I have heard and a little on my own understanding. My biggest one, is that the aggregates, namely 3 (memory) and 4 (imagination), somehow  carry the ‘account book’ forward??? Memory of what we had/didn’t have and imagination of what that will be like are clearly responsible for becomings, so the fact that they pack a little retributive baggage along for the ride, is a reasonable guess to me. But, serious black box here.

Which does bring me back to the Isidasi story. Even if I buy that immediately after his player death he did not pass go, and went straight to hell, because he felt so bad about his actions (which then why would you do it again if you were so contrite as to send yourself to hell?)  It is not like some angry god pressed the down arrow. What’s with all the castration lives?

I suppose karma as a topic is extra, extra, frustrating because these whammies (like castration), that can come along and whack you at any time, are so worrisome, but I feel like I am stuck and it seems almost impossible to live in this world without doing whammy worthy stuff sometimes.

Seriously if you have any thoughts on the black box of karma, those would be great. Or maybe I just need a little more patients… Its not exactly my top virtue though…

MN: As for reaping karmic consequences, there are two things: Becoming the victim of a similar offense, or acting out that same offense again. This is mainly because our views do not change. If you committed suicide before, it was because your views led you to conclude that death ends things, or that death is the only answer. Though you may be stuck for eternity at the bridge or skyscraper where you jumped to your death, you only know that it sucked and you suffered – you can’t trace the result back to the cause, which is your wrong view. So come next life, you still haven’t changed your view on death, you encounter a similar situation, you act similarly….rinse and repeat until you’ve had enough. That’s what’s behind the whole 500 lifetimes we see in the discourse. It is like A LOT, or A LOT A LOT, too many

Angulimara is a good example. He had a lifetime as a large tortoise, as a human eating yakkha, as a king turned cannibal, and as murderer turned arahant. If you see all the lifetimes together, you’ll see why people repeat offenses, and why they end up becoming victim of offenses they once committed

This is an Angulimara past life (From MN) https://youtu.be/whNT4oxFPZ4

AD Present day addition: Here are a few other Angulimara stories I ended up finding on my own to get a better picture:

https://thejatakatales.com/maha-sutasoma-jataka-537/

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/hecker/wheel312.html

MN: As for who is keeping track of karma? Sañña, memory, has everything covered. If you recall, in Treasure Trove, Luang Por Thoon talks about the thousand room pavilion where recent arrivals watch a movie of their past deeds…and then if it the scales tip toward good, you reap karmic consequences in heaven realms first. If they tilt toward evil, you reap karmic consequences in hell or animal realms first. If it isn’t too bad or they sorta balance out, you could be headed to a human rebirth instead. The info is all contained in our memory. We know very well what we did, whether we want to admit it or not. Sometimes we mistakenly accept fault for something we didn’t do, or sometimes we refuse to admit fault for something we did do. But, like in a court of law, the proof exists. Once put on the stand, the truth slips out, somehow, someway.We can lie to others, but we cannot lie to ourselves.

AD: Generally, I am really good about staying super focused on a topic, and synthesizing when I am ready. I have been on self and rupa and belonging for many moons already, bringing everything back to touch on it. Just something about our conversation, plus my general frustration state (caused in part by my rupa contemplations), seems to have caused the karma black box — that I keep putting aside for another day –to creep out of its corner and start me feeling itchy from ignorance.

Anyway, I may ultimately need to time-out the karma box back into the corner for a while. But, since its already out, and I have already started poking…Give me a little while to do some Angulimara binge watching, we’ll see if my ‘Buddhist patron saint’s’ story can jar something for me.

I will say this much now, I suspect I am on the right track:

I am watching a show, “Boardwalk Empire”: The main character, Nucky, has a rather pronounced relationship with money. Clearly he values it, sees it as part of what makes him him, what he can use to shape the world to his liking, he uses tremendous force of character to acquire and preserve it. He is super generous and charitable, giving very freely to folks in need and friends and family, community — money is a way he can help solve problems and injustices people face. At the same time, he runs a bootleging empire, to build his wealth he regularly engages in violence and even murder, it is just part of the business.

Of course, for his generosity, he makes many friends, it allows him to advance his family life, public persona, to have folks who feel indebted to him. For his violence and murderiness, plus just his being in a position that competes against equally ‘hungry and forceful’ souls for business and territory, he makes enemies, who are by their nature as mob bosses are pretty ruthless. It is very very clear in the show how he sets the seeds both for good stuff and whammies, neither coming for him would surprise the viewer.

It is the same view about money, about its role in shaping identity and his future, that underlies both sets of actions –giving away and ruthlessly acquiring.   Until his view is changed there is nothing that would stop his relationship to money, his efforts to acquire it and the consequences it brings. If the view is unresolved in one life it will simply pop up in the next.

Still super confused on the mechanics in the Isidasi story because in that last life, she didn’t seem to have a choice in husbands, she seemed to act the picture of perfect wife, I am not sure how her rejections were ‘arranged’. Also not clear on the casterations.But anyway, to be continued…

Thank you again, I really do appreciate your help!

MN: Isidasi is a good one to keep on the back burner. It seems so weird how she could appear beautiful but be rejected. Are those men specifically acting out Isidasi-specific karma, or are they just realizing their own karma while she realizing her own. Is karma like a ray donovan fixer, bring two debts together to be cleared at once?

AD: You don’t have to tell me twice to back burner that particular take 😉.

But on a more meta level, I think what has frustrated me so much for so long about karma is that, coming from a judeo christian background, it just seemed tinged with old testament angry God retributive justice. But I really see now, after even just a little investigation, that it’s not that at all. It is that views drive everything we do, and what we do has consequences. And we keep doing that same stuff over again so long as we have the same view. Look at that, not magic after all.

Without context though, the Jataka and other such stories, sound like morality tales. Like a child being pat on the head and told to believe what I am told to believe and do what I am told to do because ‘its for my own good’. Which, may be true, but if it were my personality to take stuff on faith Is probably still be practicing Judism…

MN: Jatakas aren’t telling us to be good, they’re showing us consequences that we are too short sighted to see on our own. We aren’t told to believe, but to figure out if it makes sense to us, and if it makes sense on a small scale to adapt that to the world on a large sclae

AD:  Yes, that seems pretty reasonable when you say it like that ☺️.

One of my most pervasive wrong views, that I see come up again and again in my practice, is on good alana/ bad alana — aka what alana believes is good versus what alana believes is bad is the universal rule of morality, something fixed that exists inside fixed individuals. Homeless alana, compassionate alana, bad Buddhist alana, bad daughter alana, it’s all the same story. I think even beauty, in my twisted mind, is one of the physical manifestations of goodness. Which is to say, my wrong views color everything, even the way I see practice and Dhamma. So it’s not exactly super shocker that that is the lens through which I read the Jatakas or try and frame karma. I understand it isn’t right, it’s just so hard to catch the more subtle ways it pops up, it is so deeply ingrained into how I view the world. Believe me I am working on it…