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Dear monastic community,
recently I had a discussion with a Non-Buddhist friend of mine. I tried to explain to him the concept of the law of karma, and that, according to the law of karma, it does not matter so much what you do, but what what your intention is, as intention is regarded to be the determining factor which conditions the quality of the consequences that result from one's actions.
Having said that, a confusion came up which I had to answer to. If intention is the determining factor, then what determines whether an intention is good or bad? What is the measure for the goodness of one's intention?
I wonder whether that is not something entirely subjective. One can easily think of examples in history of people who were convinced of the necessity to commit genocides, or, say, religious groups who believed it necessary to combat so-called heretics. But did they have bad intentions? I find this debatable. Probably they even had good intentions! They wanted to, say, free their country of pernicious people, or of people with misguided beliefs. So they wanted to combat what in their eyes was regarded as evil for the sake of the greater good.
One could state though that the means by which they wanted to do good were detrimental for some. However, – supposedly – good for the rest! And combating those „some“ was believed to be of benefit for society at large. One could argue that such horrible deeds were motivated by a cost-benefit analysis, which impelled those murderers to take action. But in my eyes that does not constitute a bad intention. I have to say, I find it hard to put my finger on what is really intentionally bad about those deeds. What could be considered „bad“ about it is the, say, distorted or in a way one-sided perception with regard to the costs and benefits of the desired outcome, which made the cost of the victims‘ lives appear to be small, and the benefit for society at large appear to be high, when in fact the victims simply had to die or suffer tremendously, and society at large did not really profit from it – as was intended.
Thinking about it, it appears to me that the badness has to be identified with the distortedness of the perceived costs and benefits of these deeds. But I think that having distorted perceptions is not the same as having bad intentions. So, if we replace „bad intentions“ by „distorted perceptions“, then, coming back to my original point, what is the measure for distortedness of perception?
Now I guess that your answer will be that the scale by which to measure the distortedness of perception is the amount of greed, hatred and delusion which is underlying these actions. But don‘t we just go round in circles here? Since these are just more words greed, which provide nothing more than more lexical categories with somewhat more precise semantic definitions. But they are still just lexical categories. How do you measure, say, hatred objectively?
For the sake of simplicity, let's speak of delusion („distortedness of perception“ is too unwieldy). But what is delusion? What is the objective measure to determine the deludedness of an action? If there is no objective measure for it, then karma is a completely arbitrary concept, and it would be impossible to come to an agreement as to what good karma is, since goodness then would be an entirely subjective category which could not be measured or defined objectively anyway. Objective measurability (or let's at least speak of determinability) is I think an absolutely indispensable point here. As long as we cannot objectively measure or determine what is meant by goodness, all one can do is argue about it. We may come up with good arguments, but we can never know for sure.
Buddhism, as I understand it, encourages us to find out for ourselves. So, what is the measure for goodness? The state of one‘s mind? How does one measure one‘s state of mind objectively as to whether it is deluded or not? Does delusion equal to one‘s ability to see anicca, dukkha, and anatta? But what has one‘s ability to see anicca, dukkha and anatta have to do with those crimes mentioned above? And, coming back to a point I mentioned above, is it really appropriate to regard intention as the determining factor for good or bad karma? Or should we not rather speak of deludedness instead (however it is supposed to be defined or measured)?
English is not my first language, and this is a complicated matter, but I tried to the best of my ability to lay out my thoughts carefully and accurately. I hope I was able to convey my thoughts successfully. Now, I am looking forward to your replies.
Kind regards
Michael
recently I had a discussion with a Non-Buddhist friend of mine. I tried to explain to him the concept of the law of karma, and that, according to the law of karma, it does not matter so much what you do, but what what your intention is, as intention is regarded to be the determining factor which conditions the quality of the consequences that result from one's actions.
Having said that, a confusion came up which I had to answer to. If intention is the determining factor, then what determines whether an intention is good or bad? What is the measure for the goodness of one's intention?
I wonder whether that is not something entirely subjective. One can easily think of examples in history of people who were convinced of the necessity to commit genocides, or, say, religious groups who believed it necessary to combat so-called heretics. But did they have bad intentions? I find this debatable. Probably they even had good intentions! They wanted to, say, free their country of pernicious people, or of people with misguided beliefs. So they wanted to combat what in their eyes was regarded as evil for the sake of the greater good.
One could state though that the means by which they wanted to do good were detrimental for some. However, – supposedly – good for the rest! And combating those „some“ was believed to be of benefit for society at large. One could argue that such horrible deeds were motivated by a cost-benefit analysis, which impelled those murderers to take action. But in my eyes that does not constitute a bad intention. I have to say, I find it hard to put my finger on what is really intentionally bad about those deeds. What could be considered „bad“ about it is the, say, distorted or in a way one-sided perception with regard to the costs and benefits of the desired outcome, which made the cost of the victims‘ lives appear to be small, and the benefit for society at large appear to be high, when in fact the victims simply had to die or suffer tremendously, and society at large did not really profit from it – as was intended.
Thinking about it, it appears to me that the badness has to be identified with the distortedness of the perceived costs and benefits of these deeds. But I think that having distorted perceptions is not the same as having bad intentions. So, if we replace „bad intentions“ by „distorted perceptions“, then, coming back to my original point, what is the measure for distortedness of perception?
Now I guess that your answer will be that the scale by which to measure the distortedness of perception is the amount of greed, hatred and delusion which is underlying these actions. But don‘t we just go round in circles here? Since these are just more words greed, which provide nothing more than more lexical categories with somewhat more precise semantic definitions. But they are still just lexical categories. How do you measure, say, hatred objectively?
For the sake of simplicity, let's speak of delusion („distortedness of perception“ is too unwieldy). But what is delusion? What is the objective measure to determine the deludedness of an action? If there is no objective measure for it, then karma is a completely arbitrary concept, and it would be impossible to come to an agreement as to what good karma is, since goodness then would be an entirely subjective category which could not be measured or defined objectively anyway. Objective measurability (or let's at least speak of determinability) is I think an absolutely indispensable point here. As long as we cannot objectively measure or determine what is meant by goodness, all one can do is argue about it. We may come up with good arguments, but we can never know for sure.
Buddhism, as I understand it, encourages us to find out for ourselves. So, what is the measure for goodness? The state of one‘s mind? How does one measure one‘s state of mind objectively as to whether it is deluded or not? Does delusion equal to one‘s ability to see anicca, dukkha, and anatta? But what has one‘s ability to see anicca, dukkha and anatta have to do with those crimes mentioned above? And, coming back to a point I mentioned above, is it really appropriate to regard intention as the determining factor for good or bad karma? Or should we not rather speak of deludedness instead (however it is supposed to be defined or measured)?
English is not my first language, and this is a complicated matter, but I tried to the best of my ability to lay out my thoughts carefully and accurately. I hope I was able to convey my thoughts successfully. Now, I am looking forward to your replies.
Kind regards
Michael
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