Excerpts from, “Kamma and the end of Kamma,” by Ajahn Sucitto

 Clearing the Past
One who was heedless in the past
and is heedless no more,
illuminates the world like the moon
freed from the clouds.
Dhammapada: ‘The World’, 172

Do you ever remember things you wish you hadn’t done? Perhaps after making a cutting remark, or catching yourself exaggerating in order to get your own way, have the sinking realization: ‘Oh-oh, lost it again …!’ Or, do you get flooded with painful memories about what’s been done to you? … ‘Is this my bad kamma …? How do I get out of this?’

Old Kamma Doesn’t Die

At some time or another, all of us have said or done things that we look back on with some regret. Or we have not done things – not said the generous, friendly thing we wish we had said, not done the noble or caring deed that we wish we had done. Then again, we may have had unpleasant things done to us. Other people may have taken advantage of us or abused us; people we trusted let us down – so maybe some mistrust lingers and affects how we relate to people. In any case, if an event has emotionally moved us, the heart-impression is strong, and that impression arises again in the experience of involuntary memory. It’s one feature of our inner world: you were talking to someone, the conversation took a few turns – and suddenly you were back arguing with your father, or feeling rejected by a loved one … again.

This reliving of past events is the case even when we didn’t do anything, but were the recipients of other people’s bad or good actions. Why? Because the underlying program of the affective mind, or citta, is to register contact, and based on that, designate a heart-impression. This lingers as a perception (saññā) that can store the emotion in the way that a barcode stores images or instructions.

Once formed, these perceptual patterns generate programs that keep forming and informing different scenarios based on their themes. It’s as if the actors and backdrops change, but their voices and atmospheres can keep resounding in our hearts. Recycled by patterns and programs, stories about alienation, unworthiness or mistrust (and more) become so familiar that they form part of our heart-territory, aspects of ‘myself’. Afflictive felt meanings such as these can take hold and establish personality patterns such as being the victim, or the one who gets left out, or the flawed, unloved or impure. They then lessen our self-respect and our confidence in doing things or in being with others.

So, the past that comes flooding back isn’t really past; it’s those saṇkhārā rising up and recycling their perceptions. And yet there’s a glimmer of hope in the fact that they’re recycled, rather than permanent and ‘myself’. The recycling of heart-impressions creates a sense of continuity, of history and of being someone defined in that – this is the program of ‘becoming’, or ‘existence’ (bhava). It creates us as solid, to a degree, but that isn’t always good.

Nor is it true: nothing changes so quickly as citta.[24] This is because citta, rather than being some kind of soul or immaterial ‘thing’, is more like a vortex of sensitive intelligence, or an energetic field like that of a magnet – except that the field is dynamic. It’s sensitive and receptive, and as manas brings perceptions, or as bodily sensations touch it, shifts happen: the citta is set trembling. Disagreeable and agreeable impressions push and pull it, thus the citta’s trembling forms waves of resistance or excitement. These get rigid or brisk under the pressure of some perceptions and feelings, or reach out when touched by others. In many cases, the waveform rises up under stimulation … and then subsides. But through the program of perception, the citta ‘learns’ the signals to rise up to, and the ones to recoil from.

Dependent on whether and how a perception has moved the citta, we may cognize that a smile means ‘friendly’, and that the smiling person is trustworthy. Pleasant feeling = ‘good’. Then we ‘re-cognize’ those signs when we come across them or others like them – even when the basis of the meaning is superficial. Signals are not reality, and need to be checked out: we are prone to short-term attention, grabbing at feeling, and jumping to conclusions. Thus, hastily established heart-impressions become reference points for how to act. Advertising, media propaganda and political slogans depend on establishing patterns in the heart. It’s called ‘ignorance-contact’: imprinting stupidity.

This is the crucial point; this is why citta doesn’t erase or stop recycling patterns. Based upon this ignorance, the self-construction program kicks in: the pattern provides a stable reference point, so it becomes part of my world, and my identity. Hence toads disgust me, or I vote for the Liberal candidate, or I must have peanut-butter rolls and coffee to begin my day. Contact, heart-impression, then behaviour-pattern – and out of all that, a self is born with the potential to act accordingly: kamma.

In extreme cases, when the impact is severe (for example, in cases of war, or assault), the energy-field of citta shatters, fires off fight-flight-freeze reflexes, and thereby adds to the discord that has to subside. And, however one tries to pull oneself together, shrug and move on, the subsiding of the energetic pattern of ‘shattered’ only fully occurs as the citta witnesses that the initiating impact has been resolved. This may be the case when the threatening thing is met, responds, backs off, or changes into something non-threatening. Sometimes it even apologizes! But when the impact is a memory, there’s no-one there to apologize, no signal that the attack has ended. In such instances, the citta has to be encouraged to coalesce around the impact and its responses until steadiness returns. Even if this means steadying in the presence of reverberations of fear or grief or rage, rather than suppressing them.

Needless to say, these emotions are not easy to be present with, and so the citta often shuts down. This means that the citta removes its intelligence, its witnessing, from that pattern. At that point, we stupefy; then the shock, fear or rage, etc. is no longer in aware presence and the experience becomes traumatic. In such a case, the pattern still exists in a ghost form, ready to be brought alive when a fitting signal triggers it. And most likely, citta once again will shut down – generally by shifting its attention to another topic, sound, sight, taste … you name it. Either that or it will set off a less-than-intelligent reaction: blame someone, blame yourself, drink, eat and so on. But you don’t get over it. You either suppress it – or you resolve it.

Continued next week: 31 October 2024