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Our ultimate aim as Buddhist practitioners is attaining the fully enlightened and omniscient state of a Buddha. The vehicle we require is a human body with a sane mind.

Most of us take being alive as relatively healthy human beings for granted. In fact, human life is often referred to in Buddhist texts as extraordinary and precious. It is the result of an enormous accumulation of virtue, accrued by us over countless lives. Each human being has devoted a great amount of effort to attaining this physical state. Why is it of such value? Because it offers us the greatest opportunity for spiritual growth: the pursuit of our own happiness and that of others.

Animals simply do not have the ability to willfully pursue virtue the way humans do. They are victims of their ignorance. We should therefore appreciate this valuable human vehicle and must also do all we can to ensure that we shall be reborn as human beings in our next life. Though we continue to aspire to attain full enlightenment, we should acknowledge that the path to Buddhahood is a long one for which we must also make short-term preparations.

As we have seen, to ensure rebirth as a human being with the full potential to pursue spiritual practice, one must first pursue an ethical path. This, according to Buddha’s doctrine, entails avoiding the ten nonvirtuous actions. The suffering caused by each of these actions has many levels. To give ourselves more reason to desist from them, we must understand the workings of the law of cause and effect, known as karma.

Karma, which means “action,” refers to an act we engage in as well as its repercussions. When we speak of the karma of killing, the act itself would be taking the life of another being. The wider implications of this act, also part of the karma of killing, are the suffering it causes the victim as well as the many who love and are dependent upon that being. The karma of this act also includes certain effects upon the actual killer. These are not limited to this life. Actually, the effect of an unvirtuous act grows with time, so that a ruthless murderer’s lack of remorse in taking human life began in a past life of simple disregard for the lives of others as seemingly inconsequential as animals or insects.

It is unlikely that a murderer would be immediately reborn as a human being. The circumstances under which one human being kills another determines the severity of the consequences. A brutal murderer, committing the crime with delight, is likely to be born to great suffering in a realm of existence we call hell. A less severe case - say, a killing in self-defense - might mean rebirth in a hell of lighter suffering. Less consequential nonvirtues might lead one to be born as an animal, lacking the ability to improve mentally or spiritually.

When one is eventually reborn as a human being, the consequences of various unvirtuous acts determine the circumstances of one’s life in different ways. Killing in a previous lifetime dictates a short life span and much illness. It also leads to the tendency to kill, ensuring more suffering in future lives. Similarly, stealing causes one to lack resources and be stolen from; it also establishes a tendency to steal in the future. Sexual misconduct, such as adultery, results in future lives in which the company you keep will be untrustworthy and in which you will suffer infidelity and betrayal. These are some of the effects of the three non-virtuous acts we commit with our body.

Among the four nonvirtuous acts of speech, lying leads to a life in which others will speak ill of you. Lying also establishes a tendency to lie in future lives, as well as the chances of being lied to and not being believed when you speak the truth.

The future life-consequences of divisive speech include loneliness and a tendency to make mischief with other people’s lives. Harsh speech begets the abuse of others and leads to an angry attitude. Idle gossip causes others not to listen and leads one to speak incessantly.

Finally, what are the karmic consequences of the three nonvirtuous acts of the mind? These are the most familiar of our unvirtuous tendencies. Covetousness leaves us perpetually dissatisfied. Malice causes us fear and leads us to harm others. Wrong views hold beliefs that contradict the truth, which leads to difficulty understanding and accepting truths and to stubbornly clinging to wrong views.

These are but a few examples of the ramifications of nonvirtue. Our present life results from our karma, our past actions. Our future situation, the conditions into which we shall be born, the opportunities we shall or shall not have to better our state in life, will depend on our karma in this life, our present acts. Though our current situation has been determined by past behavior, we do remain responsible for our present actions. We have the ability and the responsibility to choose to direct our actions on a virtuous path.

When we weigh a particular act, to determine whether it is moral or spiritual, our criterion should be the quality of our motivation. When someone deliberately makes a resolution not to steal, if he or she is simply motivated by the fear of getting caught and being punished by the law, it is doubtful whether engaging in that resolution is a moral act, since moral considerations have not dictated his or her choice.

In another instance, the resolution not to steal may be motivated by fear of public opinion: “What would my friends and neighbors think? All would scorn me. I would become an outcast.” Though the act of making the resolution may be positive, whether it is a moral act is again doubtful.

Now, the same resolution may be taken with the thought “If I steal, I am acting against the divine law of God.” Someone else may think, “Stealing is nonvirtuous; it causes others to suffer.” When such considerations motivate one, the resolution is moral or ethical; it is also spiritual. In the practice of Buddha’s doctrine, if your underlying consideration in avoiding a nonvirtuous act is that it would thwart your attainment of a state transcending sorrow, such restraint is a moral act.

Knowing the detailed aspects of the workings of karma is said to be limited to an omniscient mind. It is beyond our ordinary perception to fully grasp the subtle mechanics of karma. For us to live according to Shakyamuni Buddha’s pronouncements on karma requires a degree of faith in his teachings. When he says that killing leads to a short life, stealing to poverty, there is really no way to prove him correct. However, such matters should not be taken on blind faith. We must first establish the validity of our object of faith: the Buddha and his doctrine: the Dharma.

We must subject his teachings to well-reasoned scrutiny. By investigating those topics of the Dharma that can be established by means of logical inference - such as the Buddha’s teachings on impermanence and emptiness, which we shall explore in Chapter 13, “Wisdom” - and seeing them to be correct, our belief in those less evident teachings, like the workings of karma, naturally increases.

When we seek advice, we go to someone we consider worthy of giving the sought guidance. The more evident our wise friend’s good judgment is to us, the more seriously we take the advice given. Our developing what I would call “wise faith” in the Buddha’s advice should be similar.

I believe that some experience, some taste of practice, is necessary for us to generate true, profound faith. There seem to be two different types of experience. There are those of highly realized holy beings who possess seemingly unattainable qualities. Then there are more mundane experiences that we can achieve through our daily practice. We can develop some recognition of impermanence, the transient nature of life. We can come to recognize the destructive nature of afflictive emotions. We can have a greater feeling of compassion toward others or more patience when we have to wait in a line.

Such tangible experiences bring us a sense of fulfillment and joy, and our faith in the process by which these experiences came about grows. Our faith in our teacher, the person who leads us to these experiences, also intensifies, as does our conviction in the doctrine he or she follows. And from such tangible experiences, we might intuit that continued practice could lead to even more extraordinary attainments, such as those immortalized by saints of the past.

Such reasoned faith, stemming from some taste of spiritual practice, also helps strengthen our confidence in the Buddha’s account of the workings of karma. And this, in turn, gives us the determination to desist from engaging in the unvirtuous actions that lead to our own ever increasing misery. It is therefore helpful in our meditation, after even the slightest insight into the subject we have studied, to spend some time recognizing that we have had this insight and acknowledging from whence it derived. Such reflection should be thought of as part of our meditation. It helps strengthen the foundation of our faith in the Three Jewels of Refuge - the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha - and helps us progress in our practice. It gives us the heart to continue.

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