The great importance of translations of American history to English is recorded. There are more than 1,070 translators. Internationally, there are a billion translators at that time, and these translations were of the highest quality. And so Dr. Harvey is And he invited him to be a scholar in residence at H-State in San Francisco. So he's really glad to be sitting here. And he's also doing a lot of research. Thank you very much.

[01:08]

It is a great pleasure for me to be invited by Abbot Mel Whiteman and to have an opportunity to see all of you. The topic of my talk this morning is free will in Buddhism, with the subtitle, the karma, transmigration, and responsibility. In Buddhism, The notion of free will has never been grasped positively.

[02:11]

In the modern intellectual history of the West, the importance of human free will has been strongly emphasized. It has been generally recognized that humans have a capacity to make free decision over and against the natural necessity. Only through free decision, through the exercise of free will, can man's subjectivity and responsibility be legitimately established. And especially Immanuel Kant opened up an entire new and transcendental realm of noumena in which

[03:27]

the autonomy of the pure practical reason is grasped as authentic freedom. And like most of Western philosophy, Christianity regards human free will rather negatively as a root of original sin. while taking God's free will and God's word positively as a principle of his creation, redemption, and last judgment. Although human beings are creatures, they alone were created in the image of God, Imago Dei, and endowed with a God-like faculty of free decision and speech.

[04:45]

And thus, God's omnipresence, including foreknowledge, and divine free will versus human free will has constantly been important theological issues. This, however, indicates Christianity's strong affirmation of will of God as a fundamental principle of the divine human and divine nature relationship. Even Friedrich Nietzsche, who rejected Platonism, Christianity, and modern humanism, emphasized the will to power

[05:50]

as a basic principle of his radical nihilism. So, though viewed in a different sense in humanistic or Christian or Nietzschean standpoint, the notion of will has thus always been viewed positively in the West. Of course, humanistic understanding and Christian understanding and the Nietzschean understanding of the will is different. But throughout the long history of the West, some kind of will, has been always regarded as a basic principle for understanding human beings and the universe.

[07:02]

In sharp contrast, Buddhism has never taken the notion of will positively. Buddhism grasped grasp will negatively in that the problem of human free will is grasped with in terms of karma, which must be overcome to attain awakening. And thereby to achieve real freedom. Emancipation from karma does not lead us to an realization of the autonomous pure practical reason as in Kant, to the standpoint of the omnipotent will of God as in Christianity, or to will to power

[08:17]

as in Nietzsche, but rather to the awakening to shunyata, that is usually translated as emptiness, which is entirely beyond any kind of will. Shunyata is a realization of suchness or as-it-is-ness, no? Or jinen, which may be translated, you know, primordial naturalness. Or spontaneity, without will. As you know, Buddhism emphasizes suchness or as-it-is-ness.

[09:30]

Pine tree is really pine tree. Bamboo is really bamboo. Bird is bird, as it is. Fish is fish, as it is. Everything is different, but everything is just as it is. So I am I, just as I am, and you are you, just as you are. Everyone has their own as-it-is-ness or suchness. And realization of shunyata is just another term of the realization of

[10:34]

suchness or as-it-is-ness of everything, including us. In view of the problem of free will, the Buddhist notion of shunyata as suchness or primordial nature has both positive and negative aspects. As for the positive aspect of Shunyata, first, the distinction and opposition between man and nature, which is caused by anthropocentrism based on the emphasis upon the free will, is fundamentally overcome. Secondly, The struggle and the conflict between flesh and reason in making a decision based upon the free will is also overcome.

[11:45]

Thirdly, the original sin as a disobedience of human free will against the will of God involved in the centralism does not emerge in shunyata as suchness or primordial naturalness. The Buddhist notion of shunyata as suchness or primordial nature, however, also has a negative aspect in view of the problem of free will. The notion of shunyata inseparably, inescapably lead us to at least the following three questions. First, how can the notion of free will, peculiar to human existence, be positively established

[12:58]

in the locus of shunyata, which is primordial naturalness without will. Secondly, how can the problem be resolved there? the problem of evil. How we can understand the problem of evil in terms of shunyata or emptiness? Thirdly, how can shunyata as agentless spontaneity in its boundless openness incorporate a personal deity as the ultimate criterion of value judgment.

[14:04]

Unless these questions are adequately resolved, Buddhism cannot properly provide a ground for human ethics and modern rationality. nor can it overcome the problems raised by Nietzsche's principle of will to power. To cope with these questions and to overcome the negative aspect of the Buddhist notion of shunyata, the Western philosophy and Christianity, may provide some helpful suggestions. In order to deal with the above question properly, it may be helpful to deal with, to discuss the Buddhist notion of karma.

[15:15]

The karma is a Sanskrit term which means act or deed. And act here is not mere physical movement, but physical or and mental activity oriented by volitions. which is based on free will. As the Buddha himself said, all because it is volition that I call karma. Having willed one act through body, speech and mind, Karma is primarily equated with volition, that is mental and spiritual act.

[16:32]

And being mental volition, karma leaves traces in the series of human consciousness. As volition connected with free will and consciousness, such mental acts are a basic element in karma. But what one does after having willed is more important than the willing. Hence the importance of the bodily and vocal act is emphasized. Once produced by a conscious and volitional vocal or bodily act, it exists and develops of its own accord.

[17:38]

Without the agency of thought, unconsciously, whether a man is sleeping, waking, or absorbed in contemplation. It is part of the series that takes the place of the soul in Buddhism. As a series composed of thought, sensation, volition, and mental elements, The soul or ego is nothing but a collection of various elements constantly renewed. In reality, there is no agent but the act and its consequences. Thus, karma is a causality

[18:42]

excuse me, karma is a causally efficient phenomenon. But the effect of the act is not determined merely by the act itself, but also by many other elements, such as the nature of the person, who commit the act and the circumstances in which it is committed. Accordingly, even when two people commit similar, if not identical, evil act, they may reap different consequences and in different ways, because the circumstances or factors surrounding the action are very different.

[19:57]

Unlike the traditions of Hindu view of karma, the Buddhist doctrine of karma is not deterministic, but conditional and generative. This is very important. Buddhist view of karma is often understood deterministic or fatalistic, but it's wrong. The Buddhist view of karma is organistic. It grows, expands, and even gives birth to a new karma. Our present life is a result of the karmas accumulated in our previous existence, and yet is... and yet in our practical life,

[21:12]

The doctrine of karma allows in us all kinds of possibility and all chances of development. The Buddhist view of karma outlined above entails at least the following three points. Being volitional action based on free will, karma is essentially action that can be morally characterized. Although the circumstances and external stimuli are recognized as a factor of karma, karmic causality, Conscious motives rooted in volition play the most important role in the determination of karmic causality.

[22:19]

Also, good and bad actions are characterized by whether or not they are performed by such conscious motive as greed, hatred, and delusion. In such cases, the responsibility of the individual is evident. Accordingly, it is in one's moral life that the law of karma operates most clearly. Second, that the Buddhist notion of karma is morally qualified does not entail an individualistic view of karma. In other words, although karma is closely related to the problem of

[23:30]

and individual's responsibility. This does not imply an exclusively individualistic view of karma in that such act, good or evil, committed by a person determines only his or her own fate without affecting the lives of others. Instead, the karmic effect of one's own actions clearly determines one's own future and that of others as well. In the Buddhist cosmology, the whole universe, with all its varieties, is the outcome of act and these acts constitute a collective mass of the act of all beings.

[24:45]

In his book, Outline of Mahayana Buddhism, D.T. Suzuki describes this sympathetic solidarity or contagious characteristic of karma as follows. The universe belongs to all sentient beings, each forming a psychic unit. And these units are so intimately knitted together in blood and soul, that the effect of even apparently trifling deeds committed by an individual are felt by others such as much and just as surely as a doer himself.

[25:50]

Throw an insignificant piece of stone into a vast expanse of water, and it will certainly create an almost endless series of ripples, however imperceptibly, that never stop till they reach the farthest shore. The tremulation thus caused is felt by a sinking stone as such as a water disturbed. The universe that may seem to crude observer merely as a system of class physical forces is in reality a great spiritual community.

[26:57]

and every single sentient being forms its component part. So everything is interrelated. This sympathetic and generative character of karma is effective not only throughout the vast expanse of the present universe, but also throughout all human history. Again, as D.T. Suzuki says, the history of mankind in all its manifold aspects of existence is nothing but a grand drama. visualizing the Buddhist doctrine of karmic immortality. It is like immense ocean, whose boundary nobody knows, and waves of events, now swelling and surging, now ebbing, now wheeling, now relaxing, in all times, day and night, illustrate

[28:18]

how the laws of karma are at work in this actual life. One act provokes another and that third and so on to eternity without ever losing chain of karmic causation. The moral and individually self-responsible character of karma and the sympathetic and the collective character of karma are not contradictory but rather complementary to one another. The Buddhist view of karma is ultimately rooted in avidya, that is, fundamental ignorance, which begins without beginning and is ultimately or unfathomably deep.

[29:36]

Avidyā is the ignorance of the true nature of things, that is, of emptiness and suchness, resulting in not recognizing the impermanency of worldly things and tenaciously clinging to them. as final realities. Thus, Abhidhya, as a root of karma, is identical with bhava-tanha, that is, the will or thirst to live, to exist, to continue, to become more and more, to grow more and more, to accumulate more and more.

[30:39]

It is an unconscious, endless impulse, which Schopenhauer called, you know, bring the will, bring the will to live, that is, bring the will to live. In the depths of our human being, blind will to live is always, you know, working. Since avidyā, as a blind will to live, is the deepest root of one's karma, it is thoroughly individual and self-responsible, and yet trans-individual by going beyond the realm of one's consciousness and thus it is sympathetically leaving an ineffable mark in the life of the universe.

[31:54]

Briefly put, In the unfathomable depths of ignorance, fundamental ignorance, that is the blind will to live, the individual aspect and the collective aspect of karma are dynamically united. And karma Particularly, one's free will involved in karma thus grasped in the unfathomable depths of Abhidhya is understood by oneself to be a center of the network of karma extending throughout the universe. In the individual aspect of karma, that is, in terms of individual karma, we are responsible for everything caused by our own ignorance, realized in the innermost depths of our existence.

[33:11]

That is, for everything including consequences affecting us by immeasurable factors, known and unknown to us in the universe. Our individual karma is not exclusively individualistic, but also reflects effects made by the act of other beings through the sympathetic character of karma. On the other hand, in the collective aspect of karma, that is, in terms of collective karma, we are responsible for everything caused by human avidya, universally rooted in human nature. that is for everything including apparently unrelated to us in the ordinary sense.

[34:22]

In our collective karma, nothing happens in the universe entirely unrelated to us insofar as we realize that everything human is ultimately rooted in the fundamental ignorance, avidya, innate in human nature. In this fundamental ignorance, innate in human nature, the individual karma and collective karma inseparably merge with one another. When Buddhism talk about jigo, jitoku in Japanese, that is self-karma, self-obtaining, it must be understood to include not only the depth of individual karma, but also the breadth of collective karma.

[35:35]

Only when this fundamental ignorance is overcome, and self-centeredness involved in karma is broken through, can one awaken to the true nature of things, that is, emptiness or suchness. Now, we must turn to the question of how the problem of evil takes place in the locus of shunyata and suchness and how the problem can be resolved there. According to the Buddhist doctrine of karma, one is free to act for better or for worse within the circumstances in which the action is committed. Act motivated by greed, hatred, and delusion are evil acts producing unmeritorious karma, while act motivated by the opposite qualities are good acts producing meritorious karma.

[36:58]

The consequences of karma may be experienced in this life or in future life. However, both good acts and evil acts are regarded in Buddhism equally as evil acts in the deeper and fundamental sense. This is another important point. Because both of them, good act and evil act, are determined not only by external stimuli and internal consciousness, conscious motive, but also by a deeply inner unconscious blind will.

[38:03]

and thus bind one to the world of endless life-death transmigration. As we see in the word quoted below of the Chinese Zen master Linji Yishang and Taichu Huihai, even to seek Buddha and Dharma, to try to attain Nirvana, is regarded as evil karma. In his discourse, Rinchen said, make no mistake, even if there are something to be obtained by practice, it would be nothing but birth and death karma. You are saying the six parameters and ten thousand virtuous actions are equally to be practiced.

[39:08]

As I see it, all this is just making karma. Seeking Buddha and seeking Dharma is only making hell karma. Seeking bodhisattvahood is also making karma. Reading the sutra and studying the teaching is also making karma. The following is an exchange between a monk scholar and Taichu Huihai. The scholar, how can one attain great nirvana? Master said, have no karma. that work for transmigration. The scholar said, what is the karma for transmigration?

[40:13]

Master replied, to seek after great nirvana is precisely the karma for transmigration. To abandon the defiled and take to the undefiled To assert that there is something attainable and something realizable, not to be free from the practice of getting rid of evil passions, that is precisely the karma that works for transmigration. It is essential for Buddhists to seek Buddha and Dharma, to seek after Nirvana, by getting rid of evil passions. Even so, however, Rinci and Taichung mean that insofar as such religious practice is motivated by human volition,

[41:28]

It is a karma of life and death transmigration and is karma making hell. One should not take these words to simply indicate a radicalism peculiar to Zen. These words are nothing but an explicit expression of the basic Mahayana view of karma. Suchness or primordial naturalness in the realization of shunyata is fully realized right here and right now. When one is freed from all karma good and evil, religious and secular.

[42:33]

The following words of Rinchi and Taichu make this point in their own expressive ways. Rinchi, when your seeking mind comes to rest, you are at ease. noble man. If you seek him, that is, if you seek Buddha, he retreats farther and farther away. If you don't seek him, then he is right there before your eyes. His wondrous voice resounding in your here. Scholar asked Taichu, how can one be emancipated?

[43:39]

Master said, no bandage from the very first. And what is the use of seeking emancipation? Act as you will. Go on as you feel. without second thought. This is in comparable way. However, this is not an animal-like instinctive spontaneity. But spontaneity deeply based on the primordial naturalness which can be realized only by getting rid of karmic bind first.

[44:42]

How does evil take place in the realization of shunyata? This question can be properly restated by another question. How does karma take place in the realization of shunyata? For karma with fundamental ignorance as its root is nothing but source of all evil. Through shunyata is not a static state of emptiness, but a dynamic movement of emptying everything including itself. This emphasis of the dynamic character of shunyata, however, always leaves open the possibility for the realization of shunyata

[45:52]

to remain in shunyata, to dwell in emptiness, and lead to an attachment to emptiness. Precisely because the realization of shunyata is so essential to Buddhists, shunyata is often reified through conception as something called shunyata. However, the Mahayana tradition has always warned against such a conceptualized and reified view of shunyata as shunyata perversively clung to. For, as soon as shunyata is conceptually grasped, substantialized, and attached to as shunyata, it turns into karma.

[46:54]

Substantialization of shunyata is no less than a denial of true shunyata and an obstacle on the path to the realization of authentic shunyata. While a realization of true shunyata indicates enlightenment, attachment to shunyata signifies unenlightened ignorance, not avidya. How does the ignorant conceptualization of shunyata take place in the locus of shunyata? The awakening of faith in the Mahayana, Daijo Kishinron, one of the most important classic treatise of Mahayana Buddhism states, suddenly a conception arises that is called Abhidhya.

[48:09]

Suddenly, in this context does not indicate suddenness in the temporal sense, but rather, without why, in terms of causality, because the reason for arising of conception in the locus of shunyata cannot be rationally analyzed and explained. And yet, it happens. In this regard, it may be interesting to consider here the Genesis account of the Garden of Eden in the Bible. According to the account, it is by nature of the temptation, excuse me, it is by means of the temptation of the serpent, that Adam and Eve, originally innocent, committed the sin by disregarding the word of God and partook from the fruits of the tree of knowledge.

[49:27]

Without the serpent's temptation, Adam and Eve might not have committed sin. Where, then, did that serpent come from? One may say that the serpent appears suddenly in the Garden of Eden created by God. The very serpent in the Garden of Eden may be regarded as a mythological analogy to the statement in the awakening of faith in Mahayana that suddenly a consciousness, suddenly a conception arises. In the Genesis account, however, the serpent is not the cause of sin, but merely an opportunity or occasion for Adam and Eve to sin.

[50:31]

It is true that without the serpent's temptation, Adam and Eve might not have committed sin. But it is exclusively by means of Adam and Eve's free will that they accepted the seduction of the serpent and made its temptation possible as temptation. Wherever the serpent came from, it is not more than an occasion for the committing of sin by Adam and Eve. It is within Adam and Eve that the cause or ground of their commitment of sin is realized. Here we see the profound meaning and profound problematic

[51:35]

problematic character of free will. Why does the cause or ground of committing sin rise in the innocent Adam and Eve created by God? It is a fact which is beyond sheer rational analysis, deeply rooted in the unfathomable depths of free will. This is a reality of human free will. Despite a serpent's temptation, it is Adam and Eve's responsibility that they were disobedient to the will of God. And as Paul states, as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin.

[52:46]

And so death passed unto all men, for that all sinned. This is all of us, that is all of us sinned in and through Adam, and death passed unto all men as the wages of sin. Likewise, the Buddhism, however suddenly a conception and avidya may arise without why within ourselves, we are not free from responsibility for that arising. Despite its suddenness, we are thoroughly responsible for the arising of fundamental ignorance, because though unconsciously deep and endless, avidya, the fundamental ignorance, is a will or a thirst to be

[54:05]

and to live. And the arising of Abhidhya is possible at each and every moment of our life. As soon as we attain to Shunyata in the process of its incessant movement of everything, we are involved in Abhidhya and thereby in Karma. Because of our attachment and abiding at any moment, shunyata turns into karma. Enlightenment turns into ignorance. If we continuously attach to and abide in karma, thus arising, that karma creates more karma. and we become further involved in an endless process of the development of karma in samsara, transmigration of life and death.

[55:19]

If we, however, completely abandon our attachment and abiding and empty our conception and its object, that is, if we do not substantialize self and its object any longer and awaken to non-substantiality or emptiness of self and its object, karma ceases and ignorance is overcome. Although this extermination of the attachment must be deep enough to overcome the attachment to the unconscious blind will to be, the cessation of the attachment can take place at each and every moment of our life. In other words, as soon as we become completely non-attached to the self and the world in the process of samsara, karma

[56:34]

ceases and shunyata and nirvana is fully realized. This is because just as suddenly conception arises and ignorance emerges, suddenly conception ceases and awakening takes place suddenly. As a result of our detachment and self-emptying, karma turns into shunyata. Ignorance turns into awakening. Thus we must say, suddenly conception perishes. This is called awakening. True awakening is always sudden awakening, which takes place without why, beyond rational analysis.

[57:45]

Both ignorance and awakening takes place suddenly, not suddenly in a temporal sense, but without why. It is always suddenly that awakening time into ignorance and ignorance time into awakening. Shunyata time into karma and karma time into Shunyata. We are originally and fundamentally standing in the suddenness. We stand neither in sheer awakening nor in sheer ignorance. Nor is it that at the outset there is awakening and then it turns into ignorance.

[58:50]

Nor is it that at the outset there is ignorance and then it turns into awakening. This very understanding itself is again a conceptualization. In reality, we are standing in the as-it-is-ness of awakening as it is, is ignorance. Ignorance as it is, is awakening. And this as-it-is-ness is nothing but suddenness. It is an instantaneous pivot from which incessant mutual conversion from awakening to ignorance, from ignorance to awakening is taking place.

[60:02]

It may be called the dazzling darkness as some Christian mystics call it. It is not half dark and half dazzling. It is thoroughly dark and yet as darkness it is thoroughly dazzling at one and the same time. It is thoroughly dazzling and yet as it is dazzling, it is thoroughly dark at one and the same time. That we are fundamentally standing in this dazzling darkness indicates that we are thoroughly unenlightened and ignorant and yet simultaneously we are thoroughly enlightened. This is why Mahayana Buddhism emphasizes samsara as it is nirvana and nirvana as it is samsara.

[61:09]

And body or enlightenment and defilement are one and the same, non-dual. Such a paradoxical situation is possible, first, because it takes place in the locus of shunyata, which is entirely non-substantial and unobjectifiable. It takes place when One becomes attached to and dwells in shunyata without emptying oneself and objects of the self. The root of such attachment is avidyā, fundamental ignorance, the endless unconscious source to be.

[62:20]

On the other hand, evil and karma can be overcome when one completely empties oneself and the object of the self through the realization of shunyata in its dynamism. With this awakening, ignorance turns into awakening and emancipation is realized. Suchness and fundamental naturalness are nothing but terms which indicate Shunyata in its dynamism. Thank you very much. Bye.

[63:32]

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