The End of Karma
August 19, 2023

It’s quiet right now. We’re told that a storm is coming, so the quiet is eerie in that sense. You look around you and you have no sense that anything is going to be in danger, anything is going to change. But as the passage we chanted just now said, “The world is swept away.” It’s a natural quality of the world—to be swept away. The little islands of security that we make for ourselves can get us deluded, can get us complacent, which is why the Buddha spent 45 years wandering around northern India, warning people, “There’s danger, but the danger can be avoided through our actions.” So that’s where we have to place our hopes, that’s where we focus our attention: in our actions. And where do our actions come from? They come from the mind.

So focus your mind right now. It’s hard to focus right away at the mind directly, so focus on something really close to the mind. Focus on the breath. Think of the breath not so much as the air coming in and out through the nose, but the flow of energy in the body.

Some people say, “What flow?” The fact that you have a sense of the body as you feel it from within: That’s the breath. Thinking of it as breath allows you to ask yourself, “Those places that are tense, tight, solid, blocked: Do they have to be that way?”

This is why this is a useful perception, because it opens up possibilities for loosening up a lot of the tension you may feel in the body. Just hold that possibility in mind, because we’re trying to make the present moment here a good place to be, so that as we settle in with the breath, we can see the intentions of the mind a lot more clearly. We can see where they come from. As for where they go, that’s a lot more complex.

The Buddha said that he saw, on the night of his awakening, beings dying and passing away in line with their karma, but the effects of their karma were very complex. So he has us focus instead on where all these actions come from.

He said you want to have actions that are inspired by a right view and respect for the noble ones. Part of right view is believing that there are people who have seen the pattern of action, the pattern of cause and effect—it’s not just a theory or a nice idea—and they’ve communicated those lessons to us. We should take their lessons to heart. There’s bright karma, there’s dark karma, there’s karma that’s bright and dark—in other words, you can’t make it totally bright—and then there’s the karma that leads to the end of karma, which is the noble eightfold path.

So what is the karma that leads to the end of karma? The main factor is right concentration. Remember that the image of the path is central to the teaching. We’re going someplace. And although thinking about and trying to describe where we’re going is not going to get us there, it does ensure that we don’t have any wrong views about it that would lead us away from the path. As the Buddha said, if you have any sense that nibbāna could be a negative experience or something undesirable, that’s wrong view and it’s going to get in the way, because a lot of things are going to be demanded of you, that you have to let go of. It’s going to be hard to let go unless you have a sense it’s really going to be in your best interests.

So focus on the path right now, because that’s what will take you there, but it’s also good to know that the Buddha didn’t totally abandon the idea of trying to tell you about nibbāna. There are places where he said it’s a dimension that’s beyond description, beyond the limits of what words can convey, but he does talk about it to the extent of helping you see that it is very positive, and it’s a place that really is the end of all suffering. And it doesn’t end suffering by snuffing you out. It’s a totally different dimension that, he says, is beyond measure.

The first quality is that it is a type of consciousness, called consciousness without surface: *viññāṇaṁ anidassanaṁ. *It’s consciousness outside of the aggregates. The aggregates arise and pass away, and they can be clung to. They exist in space and time. But this is a consciousness outside of space and time, which means it’s not subject to the changes in space and time. So unlike the world, it’s not swept away.

The image the Buddha gives is of a sunbeam. The sun rises in the east, goes through the window in the eastern wall of a house, and if there’s a wall in the west, it’ll land on the western wall. If there’s no wall, it lands on the ground. If there’s no ground, it lands on the water. If there’s no ground, no water, it doesn’t land. It’s the light that doesn’t have a surface to land on: That’s “consciousness without a surface.”

As a light beam that doesn’t land anywhere, you can’t see it. This is why those who have gained awakening are said to be indescribable. But it’s bright in and of itself; clear in and of itself. It doesn’t even take consciousness itself as its object. If it takes consciousness as its object, then it would be the formless state of the infinitude of consciousness. But this is something else. We may hear that there’s no subject, no object in this consciousness, and think we just hold to the perception of no subject and no object, and that’ll be a shortcut there. But that’s an example of trying to clone awakening. Awakening cannot be cloned. Any effort to create or imitate the goal is something fabricated, and as the Buddha makes very clear, the goal and the path there are two very different things. The path is fabricated; the goal is not.

The path is like a raft; the goal is like the safety of a further shore. Now, when you’re on a raft going across a river, you’re in danger. You have to hold on. And what did you make that raft out of? You made it out of the twigs and branches on this side of the river, the side where there are aggregates. You abandon the raft only when you get to the other side. And it’s always ready to fall apart, so you have to be very careful to keep it well tied together. But when you get to the other side, there’s nothing you have to do. This is why it’s the ending of karma.

So that’s one characteristic of the goal: It’s a consciousness outside of space and time, so it doesn’t change. As the Buddha also said, it’s true, in the sense that it doesn’t deceive you in any way. And because it’s outside of space and time, and there’s no change, it’s the ultimate happiness. There’s no stress, no disturbance of any kind in that state.

The primary quality the Buddha talks about is freedom. You’re free from suffering; you’re free from any kind of restraint. As he says, you dwell with unrestricted awareness.

Even the word nibbāna is an image of freedom. In those days, they believed that when fire burned, it latched on to its fuel, and it was agitated because it was latching on. When it went out, it let go. And when it lets go, it can’t be described as going east, west, north, or south. They believed that there was a fire element that was provoked to set fire to things, and then when it was unprovoked it grew quiet. It’s an analogy, the difference being that when the fires of greed, aversion, and delusion go out in the mind and you’re freed from them. They don’t get lit again.

The important part of the image is that you get freed by letting go. Just as the fire is not trapped in the fuel, it’s trapped by its own clinging, you’re not trapped by the body, you’re not trapped by the aggregates. You’re trapped by the fact that you cling to them. So that’s where you have to focus your efforts: to comprehend how you’re clinging and why it’s suffering. When you can comprehend these things to the point of letting go, that’s when you’re freed.

The final attribute the Buddha describes is the excellence of nibbāna. In other words it’s better than anything else, better than anything you can imagine.

Ajahn Suwat once commented that once you get to the ultimate happiness, the question of whether there’s a self there or no self there doesn’t enter into the mind at all. The freedoms and the happiness are totally overwhelming, totally satisfying.

So that’s where we’re headed as we practice. Ajaan Mun made the comment that the attainment of nibbāna is one thing, nibbāna itself is something else. The attainment of nibbāna is the third noble truth. It’s something you do. You realize the third noble truth, you realize the attainment of nibbāna, but once you’re there you don’t have to do anything anymore. This is why it’s the ending of karma. But to get there, a certain kind of karma has to be done. It doesn’t create the goal. After all, if it created the goal, then the goal wouldn’t be unfabricated. This is why the Buddha uses the image of the path. You follow the path and you arrive there. The place where you arrive is not caused by the path, but by following the path, you can overcome all the obstacle standing between you and the goal.

So we’re headed to a good place.

The idea that the path is the goal is nothing the Buddha would have endorsed. Otherwise, why would he have used the image of the path to begin with? In all its descriptions of paths in the Canon, they go someplace. And there’s a great variety of paths out there, and there’s a great variety of paths that we’ve been following through our many, many lives. But they keep leading us back to more and more karma: good karma, bad karma, but more and more karma. This is the one path, the noble eightfold path, that goes to the ending of karma. The happiness is so great, the freedom is so great, that there’s nothing more you have to do.

They say that the arahants are beyond delight, and it may sound kind of gray, but ask yourself: What is delight?

We have a tendency to dress up our pleasures in life. We have a meal, and having a meal is not enough. We talk about it afterwards, we plan for it beforehand, talk about how great it was, or how bad it was, how much better it could be if we did it like this, or like that. We’re constantly commenting on our pleasures to encourage ourselves to search for more of them—because they’re unsatisfactory. They’re never enough, so they require a lot of dressing up, a lot of embroidery. That’s delight.

The reason arahants are beyond delight is because there’s nothing lacking in nibbāna. Talking about it doesn’t improve it. You don’t have to advertise it to yourself or anyone else. It’s that excellent.

So we delight in the path to get there, to remind ourselves of why this is a good thing. After all, we haven’t seen it yet. We hear about it, and for the time being these are just words. And they’re not words that you can use to fashion the path. You can’t take whatever there is on the opposite shore and make a raft out of it. You’ve got to take things that are on this shore—the twigs, the branches, perceptions, fabrications, feelings, all the aggregates—and use them to make the raft. But still it’s good to know that we’re headed to a good place: to absolute safety, to a place where we no longer have to elaborate on our happiness to make up for its lack, because there’s nothing lacking. We don’t have to do anything more, because it’s the end of karma. It’s the end of karma because it’s totally satisfactory. Nothing needs to be added; nothing needs to be taken away.