Reflections on Cause and Effect

Today I was reflecting on this thought: The corollary to the Buddha's teachings on cause and effect is the surprising realization that nothing — nothing — has a singular cause. Every so-called effect has incalculable causes across space and time. Even the so-called effect is not itself singular but also incalculable effects across space and time.

It's the exact opposite of a linear, deterministic view of cause and effect, and it renders the question of whether there is such a thing as free will moot. Who knows how much energy and time has been utterly and stupidly wasted on this non-issue?

Our freedom lies in our capacity to form and act out of our intention, through which innumerable causes and conditions are manifested. This is why the primary engine of Buddhism is vow, and the fuel for vow is practice. Practice clarifies and focuses our intention so that the direction of our thoughts, actions, and words accords with our true intention, our vow. This is what we call the wholehearted way. Practice sets our intention in motion.

For further study of cause and effect (also known as dependent origination) as the Buddha truly taught it, see Joanna Macy's superb book, Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory. There has been so much misunderstanding of this teaching, even among Buddhist scholars and teachers. Yet it is the deepest and most profound realization of the Buddha's enlightenment — truly revolutionary then, and just as revolutionary today. It is so profound, subtle, and deep that the Buddha himself despaired of teaching it. Ultimately he decided to first share the Four Noble Truths, so much easier to grasp, as the "intro class," when he rejoined his former companions.

The operations of cause and effect are constantly at work in our lives and our minds — in our reasoning about situations, in our thoughts, stories, decisions, actions, and words. When we say something is "wrong" or "unfair" or even "illegal," what we generally mean is "this violates my core beliefs about cause and effect."

We are organized and driven by our understanding of cause and effect. Our relationships and interactions are conditioned by those beliefs. Social norms and public policies are agreements founded on those beliefs — laws, rules, agencies, governments, everything we think of as "civilization" has been constructed on our naïve faith and simplistic beliefs about cause and effect.

What we are witnessing now is the crumbling of that misguided belief structure, and the confusion, anxiety, and fear that follows. We can imagine it as a shift in consciousness as profound as the Copernican discovery in 1543 that the Earth revolves about the Sun.

The disillusionment has been building for a long time, from the individual level — you mean, if I do well in school, work hard, play by the rules, be loyal and friendly, I still can't get ahead? — to the level of the highest public office. That is why such a large portion of the population is filled with rage and grievance. Institutions have failed because, without exception, they promote a dogma of simple cause and effect. Churches, banks, schools, sports, law, government, even sciences operate on that belief system. Rewards and punishments are established in this way, and persist despite the vast array of evidence that they don't really work.

"Study hard and you'll get good grades" — unless you are:

• homeless

• afraid

• hungry

• abused

• disabled

• addicted

• suffering losses

• bullied

• despised by teachers, parents, or society

• speaking English as a second language

…and so on. Then you might not.

What's broken is not our faith in institutions or our ideals or our hopes and dreams. It's not the systems that are broken, although that is a common complaint. It is something much more foundational — our bewilderment that "nothing seems to work the way it is supposed to."

In this strange time, our simplistic notions of cause and effect seem to be crumbling. But in reality, the true nature of cause and effect is revealing itself as infinitely more complex than we have allowed ourselves to notice or imagine. The Buddha's teachings are both more essential and more urgent than ever, if we do not want to fall into — or worse yet spread — despair and hopelessness.

We are powerful actors in creating causes and conditions for thriving, in all circumstances. The Buddha's teachings reveal both the limitless potential of our vow and its conditioned expression among a great host of causes and conditions we do not control. The distinction is like the distinction between Newtonian physics and quantum physics: the former misguided but roughly satisfactory for basic situations in ordinary life, the latter revealing much more of reality as it truly is — in all of its mystery and wonder.

As you travel through your day, see if you can notice how many of your actions and interactions reflect a simplistic linear model of cause and effect. Then expand your awareness outward to all of the causes and conditions at play in the situation, and the ripple of effects from every thought, word, and action you experience. You are witnessing the activity of what Longchenpa called the creative intelligence of the universe, or pristine awareness:

All that is experienced andyour own mind are the unique primary reality.They cannot be conceptualized according to the cause and effect systems of thought.

Investigate your mind's real natureso that your pure and total presence will actually shine forth.

I hope this is at least thought-provoking. Thanks for reading and thinking about it.