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Mindfulness and the Karma of Body, Speech, and Mind
Karma has three types: bodily action, verbal action, and mental action. A thought is an action, a seed that can produce fruit, causing the world to vibrate and affecting the moon and stars. Within karma, there is karmic cause (Hetu) and karmic fruit (Karmaphala). Jean-Paul Sartre wrote in a novel: “L’homme est la somme de ses actes,” man is the sum of his own actions. When an action of body, speech, or mind arises and leads us in the direction of suffering or happiness, that force is called leading karma. When that karma ripens and manifests fully, it is called completing karma. Alaya consciousness, or maturation consciousness, is where wholesome, unwholesome, and neutral karmas ripen, creating the totality of life like a “concoction.”
In the Sarvastivada version of the Sutra on the Four Establishments of Mindfulness, there is mention of internal formations, which are blocks formed within the mind due to the contact between the six sense organs and the six sense objects. These internal formations can be painful feelings or pleasant feelings, and mind consciousness often increases their intensity. To transform them, we need to recognize the thought right in the present moment, using the light of mindfulness to shine upon it instead of pushing it away. Compared to Western psychotherapy which is only about 100 years old, meditation practice has a history of thousands of years. In the United States, the four professions that enter mental hospitals the most are:
- Dentists
- Lawyers
- Doctors
- Psychiatrists
Happiness is a collective matter, not an individual one; the practitioner needs to practice right within the family and society instead of running away. The Dharma talk analyzes the groups of mental formations:
- Four indeterminate mental formations (can be wholesome or unwholesome depending on the case): regret, sleepiness, initial application of thought, sustained application of thought.
- Wholesome mental formations: faith, shame, bashfulness, non-craving, non-anger, non-ignorance, diligence, pliancy, non-laxity.
