My question is: Why human beings have different karma?
Thank you.
Our friend is asking why each human being has a different karma?
Are you sure?
(Laughter)
Are you sure that every human being has a different karma?
(Laughter)
I was quite sure but now....
(Laughter)
Karma is action, the word karma means action
My name Nhat Hanh means one action only.
Nhat means one, Hanh means action, and I don't know what action it is.
(Laughter)
Karma may be cause or may be effect.
Karma hetu is action as a cause and karma-phala is karma as a fruit.
And cause and effect they are together.
You cannot remove the cause from the effect...
...and you cannot remove the effect from the cause.
It is like the corn kernel is the cause and the corn stalk is the effect
but they are not two separate entities.
You cannot remove the corn kernel from the plant of corn
and you cannot remove the corn plant out from the corn kernel.
So cause and effect are not two different entities.
And one is the continuation of the other.
The plant of corn is a continuation of the seed of corn
in the direction of the future;
and the kernel of corn continues the plant of corn
in the direction of the past.
Thanks to the corn kernel, the plant of corn has access to the ancestors.
And thanks to the plant of corn, the ancestors have access to the future.
It's a wonderful collaboration on the base of no-self.
There is only a continuation and that is from the point of view of time.
From the point of view of space, it's the same.
There is what we call collective karma and individual karma
and you are talking about individual karma.
And it's different from other karma,
but if you reflect on the notion of individual and collective,
you already make a big step.
Because the notions of individual and collective
are also a pair of opposites to be transcended.
When a young person tells his father that:
"This is my body. This is my life,"
"I have the freedom, I have the right to do anything with my body, my life."
That is a view that I am not you.
"I have my own body, my own feeling, my own life."
"I have the right to dispose my life the way I want."
And there are young people say like that.
They don't know that they are the continuation of their father, their mother.
And in fact they cannot harm, they do not have the right to harm their father, their own body.
To commit suicide is an offence.
You are killing your father,
you are killing your mother, your ancestors when you commit suicide.
This body is not yours.
This body is a property of your father's, of your ancestors'.
And with that kind of insight, you cannot behave like the way many people behave,
based on wrong view.
So to meditate is to see the nature of interbeing,
non-self, which allow you to act properly.
and not to cause suffering that is karma.
And your body is not your individual property.
It is also collective at the same time.
Your body is a collective product of your nation's,
of your people's, of your culture's,
of your ancestors'.
So you are not strictly individual,
you are partly collective,
and it depends on a way of looking that you are more or less collective.
Suppose you say that you have your nerves,
your optic nerves behind your eyes.
Your optic nerves look like something strictly individual.
It only concerns you, your optic nerves,
that is something absolutely individual.
People don't see it, they are not concerned by it.
It concerns only you.
That is a notion of individual and collectiveness.
But if you are a bus driver,
our lives depend on your optic nerves.
So your optic nerves are not individual any more,
they belong to us because our lives depend on your optic nerves.
So your optic nerve is something you describe as individual
but in fact they are collective.
So we have the notion of collective karma and individual karma.
And any karma whether it is collective or individual affects the whole.
And the karma, the action might be better or worse.
When 600 people come for a retreat,
they read something together as collective action.
They do sitting, walking, breathing, smiling, sharing,
and this is a collective action and we profit from that.
There are those in the world at this time they don't practice like us.
and they drink and go dancing, and they spend their time in a very different way.
And we have been able to set aside three weeks to come together
and we are sharing a kind of collective action here
that we believe to be a good action.
because every day we water the seeds of mindfulness,
understanding, compassion in us and the collective.
But in the collective, you can see the individuals -
there are those that do better than some others,
there are those of us who can find it possible to transform,
to leave behind the burden of worries in the first five days;
there are those who also need more than that,
only on the third week that they can release, put down their worries.
So in the collective, there is the individual
and in the individual, there is the collective.
And there is no absolute individuality, there is no absolute collectivity.
That is the truth. And that is why it is another pair of opposites.
And if you practice looking deeply, you can remove them.
And you see that any karma affects all of us.
Whatever good we are doing here is helping the world,
so we have to be confident that the karma is not lost.
any thought of compassion and forgiveness that we produce not only can help us heal
but can help the world.
So during the 21 days, we have been producing thoughts of compassion,
of loving kindness, that is our best contribution to the world.
And that is why our action of karma is neither different nor the same
because sameness and otherness is also a pair of opposites.
So right view lies in the fact that
you are able to remove all these pairs of opposites.