Enacting Selves, Enacting Worlds: On the Buddhist Theory of Karma Matthew MacKenzie

Philosophy East and West, Volume 63, Number 2, April 2013, pp. 194-212 (Article) Published by University of Hawai'i Press DOI: 10.1353/pew.2013.0022

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ENACTING SELVES, ENACTING WORLDS: ON THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA

Matthew MacKenzie Department of Philosophy, Colorado State University

The concept of karma is one of the most general and basic for the philosophical traditions of India, one of an interconnected cluster of concepts that form the basic presuppositions of Indian philosophy. And like many general, pervasive, and basic philosophical concepts, the idea of karma exhibits both semantic complexity and a certain fluidity and open texture. That is, the concept may not have a determinate application in all possible cases, it can be fleshed out in quite different ways in different contexts and philosophical traditions, and it should be understood as open in its future applications. Thus, any complete account of the concept of karma must take into consideration its diverse uses across philosophical traditions and across time. Finally, and perhaps most important for my purpose, karma is a living philosophical concept it continues to guide Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain thinking and it continues to evolve in the process. My purpose here is not to give an exhaustive account of the notion of karma, even for the Buddhist tradition, let alone for the other philosophical traditions that employ the concept. Rather, I shall give a reading of certain key aspects of the Buddhist theory of karma that will bring it into direct contact with recent work in philosophical psychology and phenomenology in the hopes of achieving a degree of mutual illumination between Buddhist and Western philosophy. In particular, I will draw on the enactivist work of Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch which is itself deeply influenced by Buddhism in order both to make senseof certain traditional aspects of the Buddhist approach to karma and to give an indication of what a contemporary reconstruction of the concept might look like.1 Thus, in Gadamerian fashion, my account will be both interpretation and appropriation. My focus, then, will be on two interrelated aspects of the Buddhist theory of karma. After some preliminary comments on the general philosophical notion of karma and on the enactivist approach to philosophical psychology, I will explore the distinctively Buddhist idea that through the karmic process we enact ourselves that is, we make and remake ourselves through our actions. Second, I will discuss the idea that we also enact our world(s) through karma that is, that our patterns of action and reaction bring forth meaningful worlds, which, in turn shape these very patterns for better or worse. In this process, we shape and are shaped by the possibilities for action disclosed within these worlds. And crucially, we enter enacted worlds midstream, as it were already at birth the products of this ongoing process. Finally, I will briefly discuss the character and cultivation of enlightened action, action free from the production of karma.

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The Doctrine of Karma The word karma originally derives from the Sanskrit karman (k), meaning action and in particular referring to a properly performed ritual action.2 By the time of the Upaniads, we find the meaning of the term expanded to cover moral actions and, by extension, the fruits (phala) or consequences of these actions. Further, we can distinguish between what Roy Perrett terms the general and the special theories of karma.3 The general theory concerns the relations between ones actions and ones well-being and character in one life, while the special theory concerns relations between successive lives of the same individual (or mental continuum). The two theories are logically independent and the general theory does not require belief in rebirth. Throughout this article I shall be concerned with the general theory of karma, unless otherwise specified. In the Bhadranyaka Upaniad we find an early statement of the general theory of karma:
According as one acts, according as one conducts himself, so does he become. The doer of good becomes good. The doer of evil becomes evil. One becomes virtuous by virtuous action, bad by bad action.4

This core conception of karma is likewise accepted in the Buddhist tradition. For instance, in the Majjhima Nikya the Buddha explains:
Student, beings are owners of their actions, heirs of their actions; they originate from their actions, are bound to their actions, have their actions as their refuge. It is action that distinguishes beings as inferior and superior.5

Compare the statements above to Aristotles assertion:

Men become builders by building houses, and harpists by playing the harp. Similarly, we grow just by the practice of just actions, self-controlled by exercising our self-control, and courageous by performing acts of courage.6

Thus, the core conception or general theory of karma deals with the shortand long-term effects of moral or immoral actions for the agent of those actions. Skillful or wholesome (kuala) actions will tend to have positive consequences for oneself in this life, while unskillful (akuala) actions will tend to have negative consequences. It is thus claimed that there is a reliable causal connection between virtuous action and long-term well-being, a claim that is at the center of Buddhist ethics and soteriology. Furthermore, the Buddhist theory of karma emphasizes the deep interdependence of action and character. Unskillful actions plant karmic seeds (bja) in ones stream of consciousness that, given the appropriate internal and external conditions, grow into negative consequences (phala fruit, vipka result) for the agent. That is, ones actions affect ones character, habits, and dispositions over the long term. Each time the thief steals, she may find it that much easier to steal (or that much harder to avoid stealing) in the future. An action performed once might be said to be out of

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character for an individual, but if repeated it becomes less appropriate to say that itdoes not reflect the individuals true character. Moreover, insofar as an individualsattitudes, habits, perceptions, desires, values, and so forth are interconnected, unwholesome actions may have rather pervasive or unexpected negative effects. In any case, the key point here is that, as a part of Buddhist moral psychology, karma focuses on the often subtle and intricate feedback mechanisms in the human psyche, emphasizing the ways in which action, intention, and character are mutually reinforcing. Another key point to recognize about the theory of karma is that it involves both descriptive and normative claims. There is no fact/value dichotomy in the Buddhist tradition, and the theory of karma is meant to provide a framework for interpreting the complex relations between the moral dynamics of human experience and the larger causal order. Specifically, Indian Buddhists understand sentient beings and their world in terms of dependent origination (prattyasamutpda). The focus, then, is on patterns of dependence between events or processes, rather than on, for instance, the operation of external forces on ontologically independent objects. The world is understood as a dynamic network of interdependent events, and the sentient beings within it are understood in the same terms. Karma, then, is a mode (niyama) or special case of dependent origination and is not co-extensive with it. Indian Buddhists identify five modes or domains (niyama) of dependent origination: physical (utu- niyama), biological (bja-niyama), mental (mano-niyama), ethical (karma-niyama), and spiritual (dharma-niyama).7 The proper understanding of an event may involve some or all of these modes, and it would be a mistake, on this account, to assume that everything that happens to a person is determined by her karma. Moreover, one may interpret the theory of karma, in addition to positing certain kinds of causal connections, as expressing a commitment to a fundamental, internal relation between virtuous action and genuine well-being. The specifics of this connection may rest on empirical claims about human action and psychology, but commitment to the internal relation itself will not be a merely empirical generalization. In the final analysis, then, the general theory of karma expresses a regulative normative commitment to the idea that, as Aristotle put it, activities in accord with virtue control happiness, and the contrary activities control its contrary.8 According to the doctrine of karma virtues are both means to the end of genuine happiness or wellbeing (sukha) and partly constitutive of the end itself. Thus vices are harmful to oneself in that they detract from ones objective well-being. In addition, vices will tend to undermine ones ability to enjoy other things of value, such as worldly happiness or wealth.9 The Enactive Approach Having sketched the outlines of the general theory of karma in Indian Buddhism, let me now turn to some recent work in philosophical psychology and cognitive science, generally referred to as the enactive approach, that will be central to my interpretation of the Buddhist theory of karma.10

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As Evan Thompson summarizes, the conviction that motivates the enactive approach is that cognition is not the representation of an independent world by an independent mind, but is rather the enactment of a world and a mind on the basis of a history of embodied action.11 Several related claims are involved in the development of this basic conviction. First, from an enactivist perspective organisms are autonomous, autopoietic systems that is, self-organizing systems that maintain and reinforce their own structures through the process of living. Hence, living organisms quite literally enact themselves; the organisms future structure and organization are products of its earlier activity, in addition to being the product of the environment and the evolutionary history of organisms of its kind. Second, the enactive approach proposes that perception is to be understood in terms of perceptually guided activity. Perception and action evolved together, such that motor activity orients perception while perceptual systems guide activity. Perception, then, is not the passive reception or recovery within the mind of a pregiven world; it is not the construction of an internal representation or model of an objective world. Rather, perception is part of a larger system of ongoing transaction between organism and environment. Likewise, as perceptually guided activity, perception is not the mere projection of internal representations onto the world. The enactive approach to perception rejects representationism in both its objectivist and subjectiv ist varieties. Third, cognition more generally is grounded in embodied action; that is, cognition is neither projection nor passive mirroring, but rather a form of know-how. AsThompson explains, cognitive structures and processes emerge from recurrent sensorimotor patterns of perception and action. Sensorimotor coupling between organism and environment modulates, but does not determine, the formation of endogenous, dynamic patterns of neural activity, which in turn inform sensorimotor coupling.12 Fourth, the enactive approach maintains, in agreement with many Buddhists, that cognition bears a constitutive relation to its object. That is, instead of representing an independent world, [we] enact a world as a domain of distinctions that is inseparable from the structure embodied by the cognitive system.13 Likewise, because perception and cognition emerge from patterns of interaction between subject and world, our minds are also enacted in this process. Both mind and world, as distinct phenomena, emerge from this more fundamental dynamic process of enaction. Finally, because perception and action are so tightly intertwined, the domain of distinctions that constitutes ones world will not necessarily be, first and foremost, a domain of distinct objects. Rather, equally, or perhaps more fundamentally, ones world will be a domain of affordances, of opportunities for action. The water glass is perceived as graspable, its contents as drinkable. The doorway is presented as passable, the table as hide-under-able, and so on. The world of perception, for embodied, mobile creatures is a world of affordances. And affordances are inherently agentrelative. In addition, from the enactive perspective conceptual thinking is also a form of action. Thus, certain propositions afford certain inferences, while certain concepts

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may afford extrapolation or association in various ways. The point is that, even at the level of abstract thinking, we find a deep interconnection between agent, action, and world. Enacting Selves In addition to the important role it plays in Buddhist moral theory, moral psychology, and soteriology, the concept of karma does important ontological work within Buddhist philosophy. Self, world, and action are taken to be three interdependent aspects of an ontologically and phenomenologically more basic and universal process of dependent co-arising (prattyasamtpada).14 Thus, not only do actions, as common sense would have it, arise from selves interacting with the world, but also, Buddhist philosophers insist, selves and the world arise from actions (karma). That is, we may say that both the self and the world are enacted in and through the process of dependent origination. It is perhaps not clear which idea is more paradoxical that we enact ourselves or that we enact the world but in any case I will begin with the former idea and take up the latter in the next section. One central focus of Indian Buddhism is the examination of the structure and dynamics of lived experience in the service of identifying and addressing the distortions and afflictions that perpetuate human suffering (dukha). What is distinctive about Buddhist thought both within its own historical and intellectual milieu and, to some degree, within the context of philosophy more generally is its radical rejection of substantialism in favor of an ontology of interdependent events and processes. In the Buddhist view, phenomena arise in dependence on a network of causes and conditions. Thus, the Buddhist analysis of any particular entity, event, or process will not be based on the categories of substance and attribute, agent and action, or subject and object. Rather, the analysis will focus on the dynamic patterns of interaction within which events arise, have their effects, and pass away. The identity of any persisting object, then, is determined by its place in this vast pattern of relations. Indeed, even what we would normally conceive of as enduring substances are reconceptualized as more or less stable patterns of more basic and more ephemeral events and processes. It is against the backdrop of these basic analytical and ontological commitments, then, that we can understand the Buddhist account of the self and the claim that we create and recreate ourselves through karma. Rejecting the existence of the substantial self, the Buddhists argue that the existence of a person (pudgala) consists in the existence of the five skandhas (bundles or aggregates) organized in the right way. The five skandhas are: 1. Rpa: the body or corporeality 2. Vedan: affect 3. Saj: perception and cognition 4. Saskra: conditioning and volition 5. Vijna: consciousness

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These five skandhas are not to be taken as independent things, but instead are seen as interdependent components of a causally and functionally integrated psychophysical (nma-rpa) system or process (skandha-santna, an aggregate-stream or bundle-continuum). The rpa-skandha (material form) refers to the corporeal aspect of the human being, including the organizational structure of the person as an organism. The vedan-skandha denotes the affective dimensions of the person and her experience (pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral). The saj-skandha denotes the more fully cognitive faculty of perception, including the ability to identify and re-identify objects of experience.15 The operation of this capacity depends on sensory contact (spara) with the environment as well as sensorimotor skills (such as exploratory behavior). Next, the saskra-skandha (conditioning) includes the various dispositions, capacities, and formations such as sensorimotor skills, memories, habits, emotional dispositions, volitions, and cognitive schemas that both enable and constrain the person and her experiences. This category also includes our basic conative impulses attraction, aversion, and indifference which are in turn closely tied to our feelings and the affective modalities (vedan) of experience. In the Buddhist view, typically ones whole being in the world is driven by this sedimented conditioning and not always for the better. Indeed, the basic conative impulses often manifest in pathological ways, such as the three poisons of greed, hatred, and ignorance. As Dan Lusthaus remarks, such predilections are always already inscribed in our flesh, in our very way of being in the world, even while we ignore or remain ignorant 16 of the causes and conditions that have given rise to them. Finally, the vijnaskandha denotes discerning or discriminating intentional consciousness. Therefore, in the standard Buddhist analysis, the person is not an entity that can exist independently of the five skandhas. Take away the complex, impermanent, changing skandhas and we are not left with a constant, substantial self; we are left with nothing. Moreover, the diachronic identity of a person consists in the appropriate degree of continuity and connectedness of the skandhas that is, it is a matter of there being a causally and functionally integrated series or stream of skandhas. This account of the selflessness of the person (pudgalanairtmya) is held by all major Buddhist schools, but there has been a great deal of disagreement as to the full ontological implications of the rejection of the existence of a substantial self. For instance, the Indian Abhidharma schools tended to hold a radically reductionist form of empiricism in which all composite entities were rejected as mere mental constructs. On the other hand, some later Buddhist thinkers allowed for an ontologically deflationary account of the self, in which the conventional self is said to have a certain phenomenological and practical reality, while still insisting that this minimal notion of self is not to be reified. As the Dalai Lama explains, both body and mind are things that belong to the I, and the I is the owner; but, aside from mind and body, there is no separate independent entity of I. There is every indication that the I exists; yet, under investigation, it cannot be found.17 This minimal self (what is called the mere I or mere self [Tibetan: nga tsam]) is not the ontological ground of either the

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stream of experience or the person, but is rather a product of both the immanent structure of experience (i.e., our sense of self, ahakra, that arises from our internal access to our own states) and the network of linguistic and social practices within which we find ourselves. It is a dependent phenomenon that, because it is not a reified separate thing, disappears under analysis.18 So how does the minimal self emerge from karma? To approach this question I want to focus on two deeply intertwined processes: I-making (ahakra) and the karmic arc. I-making is a dynamic process of self-appropriation that arises from the more basic autopoietic structure of the sentient being. The karmic arc is a circuit or dynamic loop wherein actions (karma) shape conditioning and volitional dispositions (saskra) and lead to certain results (vipka) in the life of the agent. This conditioning in turn shapes action and the way in which the results are assimilated into the life of the agent. In this section I will take up I-making, while in the next section I will discuss the karmic arc. In order to understand I-making, we must begin with the more basic autopoietic structure of sentient beings. According to both the Buddhist and enactivist accounts, sentient beings are organized dynamic systems. Hence, an understanding of such systems requires that we pay close attention not just to the systems components but also to its organization.19 We may begin with the distinction between heteronomous and autonomous systems. A heteronomous system is exogenously controlled and can cleanly be modeled as an input-output system. In contrast, an autonomous system primarily will be understood in terms of its endogenous, self-organizing and self-controlling dynamics, and does not have inputs and outputs in the usual sense.20 Instead of an input-output model, autonomous systems are understood in terms of perturbation and response. External factors perturb the ongoing endogenous dynamics of the system, yielding a response that must be understood in terms of the systems dynamics and its overall organization. More specifically:
In complex systems theory, the term autonomous refers to a generic type of organization. The relations that define the autonomous organization hold between processes (such as metabolic reactions in a cell or neuronal firings in a cell assembly) rather than static entities. In an autonomous system, the constituent processes (i) recursively depend on each other for their generation and their realization as a network, (ii) constitute the system as a unity in whatever domain they exist, and (iii) determine a domain of possible interactions with the environment.21

In biochemistry, Humberto Maturana and Varela call this type of autonomy autopoiesis (self-production).22 Autopoiesis involves what Varela terms a logical bootstrap or loop in which a network or process creates a boundary and is sub sequently constrained by that boundary. This is the systems organizational closure, (no. ii above). For instance, at the cellular level, a self-organizing process of biochemical reactions produces a membrane, which, in turn, constrains the process that created it.23 The completion of this loop gives rise to a distinct biological entity that maintains its own boundary in its environment. This new level of coherence is a virtual identity that is to be understood in terms of both boundary maintenance or

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 rganizational closure and a new mode of interaction with the environment. In o addition, autopoietic systems are characterized by operational closure, (no. i above): the property that among the conditions affecting the operation of any constituent process in the system there will always be one or more processes that also belong tothe system.24 Furthermore, autonomous systems are always coupled to their environments (no. iii above). As Thompson explains, Two or more systems are coupled when the conduct of each is a function of the conduct of the other.25 When two systems (organism and environment) develop a history of recurrent interactions leading to a structural congruence between them, we have structural coupling. Sentient beings, in this view, are understood not as heteronomous mechanical input-output systems, but rather as dynamic autonomous systems necessarily coupled to the environment, but also self-controlling. In addition, autonomous systems, in particular living and sentient systems, involve emergent processes. As Thompson describes it, An emergent process belongs to an ensemble or network of elements, arises spontaneously or self-organizes from the locally defined and globally constrained or controlled interactions of those elements, and does not belong to a single element.26 Emergent processes, and the systems in which they arise, exhibit two forms of determination. Local-to-global determination involves the emergence of novel macro-level processes and structures based on changes in the system components and relations. Global-to-local determination involves macro-level processes and structures constraining local interactions. Thus self-organizing systems display circular causality: local interactions give rise to global patterns or order, while the global order constrains the local interactions. In my enactivist interpretation, this circular causality is the fundamental action from which the self or I-making emerges. Hence, in this view, through autopoiesis we quite literally enact ourselves from moment to moment. What, then, is the dependence relation between the pre-personal, autopoietic skandha-santna and the enacted self ? A common analogy for the relation between the self and the skandhas is the mutual dependence of fire and fuel. Jan Westerhoff notes in this context:
Not only does the self depend for its existence on the constituents, but the constituents acquire their existence as distinct parts of the stream of mental and physical events only by being associated with a single self, which, regarded as a constitutive property, produces the basis for postulating the individual in which the various properties of the self inhere. It is precisely this reason which keeps the Mdhyamika from regarding the constituents as ultimate existents (dravya) and the self as merely imputed (prajnpti).27

Furthermore, just as the fire appropriates (updna) the fuel to perpetuate itself, the self appropriates as its own the various mental and physical events that make up the skandha-santna. As Candrakrti comments on Ngrjunas use of the analogy:
That which is appropriated is the fuel, the five [types of ] appropriated element. That which is constructed in the appropriating of them is said to be the appropriator, the thinker, the performing (nipdaka) self. In this is generated [the activity of ] I-ing, because from the beginning it has in its scope a sense of self.28

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The self, then, is the appropriator (updt) and the various elements are the appropriated (updna-skandha), and yet Candrakrti insists that the self is not a real, existent thing. That is, the self lacks inherent existence (i.e., it is empty) and it is not any kind of thing or object. Rather, the self is I-ing (ahamna) or ongoing self- appropriative activity.29 Furthermore, I-ing is an inherently perspectival activity; it appropriates phenomena as me and mine, incorporates them into its own ongoing dynamic, by indexing (or tagging) them to the I. Appropriation, then, functions as a self-referential loop or a form of self-grasping (tmagrha). More specifically, the root of the enacted self is the recursive nature of lived experience. A recursive process is one wherein the results of the process are fed back into the process itself. In the Buddhist view, the vicious cycle of sasra is understood in terms of the recursive process of dependent origination. Indeed, living itself is a recursive process. As Hans Jonas remarks, organisms are entities whose being is their own doing.... [T]he being that they earn from this doing is not a possession they then own in separation from the activity by which it was generated, but is the continuation of that very activity itself.30 In order to survive, the organism must maintain its own dynamic organization in the face of, but also by virtue of, continuous matterenergy turnover. The viable organism, through its organizational and operational closure, is able to subsume or appropriate both bits of the environment and elements of the organism itself. Furthermore, as Jonas remarks, The introduction of the term self, unavoidable in any description of the most elementary instance of life, indicates the emergence, with life as such, of internal identity and so, as one with that 31 emergence, its self-isolation too from all the rest of reality. Of course, autopoiesis is just a particular kind of dependent origination, and, according to the early Buddhist account of the five niyamas, not all dependent origination counts as karma.32 Indeed, without the whole network of non-karmic causes and conditions, no sentient beings and no sense of self could arise. So whats the point in saying, as we see in the Pli canon, that beings are heirs of their actions and that they originate from their actions? Beyond the fairly obvious moral force of the Buddhas assertion, there is, I think, a profoundly important existential point in seeing clearly the way in which sentient beings and their sense of identity emerge from action. At the very root of our embodied existence is a form of living organization that simultaneously constitutes an interior (a living being) and an exterior (a world Umwelt or loka) and an internal relation between the two. Indeed interiority, exteriority, and the relations between them are not defined primarily in spatial or physical terms, but biologically and psychologically. And with the emergence of biological and psychological interiority comes a deeply ambivalent relation to the larger environment. The environment becomes both the source of survival (self-preservation) and the greatest threat to it. Correspondingly, the emergence of the sentient being leads to the development of behaviors geared toward survival and self-protection, such as attraction and aversion. At the level of the human being, the emergence ofsentient individuality, coupled with past conditioning (vsan), yields a deeply entrenched

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sense of an independent self (tma-dti). And this deep sense of an independent self is the lynchpin of sasra. Enacting Worlds In my enactivist interpretation, then, the Buddhist theory of karma highlights the recursive, autopoeitic character of our existence. Indeed, ones accumulated karma is the experientially embodied record of the history of embodied action that is the basis from which the self is enacted. Or, as Varela puts it, The cognitive self is its own implementation: its history and its action are of one piece.33 However, the Buddhist theory of karma also maintains that ones very world is somehow a product of ones karma. That is, it is not just ones situation in a world or even into which world (of all the possible realms) one might be reborn, but the world itself that is a product of karma. For instance, in the Sayutta Nikya we find the origin and passing away of the world linked to the karmic process in terms of the twelvefold chain of dependent origination:
And what, monks, is the origin of the world (loka)? In dependence on the eye and forms, eye-consciousness arises. The meeting of the three is contact. With contact as condition, feeling [comes to be]; with feeling as condition, craving; with craving as condition, clinging; with clinging as condition, existence; with existence as condition, birth; with birth as condition, aging-and-death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, dejection, and despair come to be.... [And so on for the six sensory modalities.] And what, monks, is the passing away of the world? In dependence on the eye and forms, eye-consciousness arises. The meeting of the three is contact. With contact as condition, feeling [comes to be]; with feeling as condition, craving. But with the remainderless fading away and cessation of that same craving comes the cessation of clinging. [And so on for each link in the chain.] Such is the cessation of this whole mass of suffering. This, monks, is the passing away of the world.34

Moreover, in the Abhidharmakoabhya (IV.1) Vasubandhu proclaims The world in its varied forms arises from action.35 Now, on the face of it, the idea that the arising and passing away of the world is fundamentally linked to the karmic process may strike one as a particularly outrageous form of subjective idealism. I think that interpretation would be a mistake. However, a subjective idealist interpretation of the Buddhist theory of karma will be hard to resist if one assumes a strictly objectivist conception of the term loka (world). But in my interpretation, the Buddhist theory of karma is in fact a central component of an ontological alternative to the duality of subject and world that is so deeply entrenched in the Western tradition and from which both objectivism and subjectivism arise. As we have seen above, the Buddhist concept of a world (loka) is in an important sense subject-relative. The arising and passing away of the world depends upon such

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things as sense-consciousness, feeling, craving, and clinging. And further, the specific character of a subjects world will depend in part on the subjects psychophysical makeup and karma. Hence, the term loka does not denote an absolutely objective world of entities whose existence and properties can be specified independently of a subject; rather, a loka is a world of experience, activity, and meaning that is, a lifeworld (Lebenswelt). In the Buddhist view, we find ourselves in a world of persons, objects, events, and situations that are experienced as attractive, repellent, or indifferent; that are identified as self or not-self ; and that are, ultimately, unsatisfactory (dukha). In the terms of the enactive approach, a cognitive beings world is not a prespecified, external realm, represented internally by its brain, but a relational domain enacted or brought forth by that beings autonomous agency and mode of coupling with the environment.36 Hence, a loka is neither a strictly objective readymade domain, nor a merely subjective projection. Rather a loka is a relational domain of significance and involvement within the vast network of dependent origination. The fundamental claim is that, at bottom, both the subject and her world arise within the karmic process, from action and the effects of action. Thus sentient beings enact themselves and their worlds in dynamic interdependence over time. Let us further examine some of the Buddhist depictions of this process. Here are two different depictions of the karmic mode of dependent origination:
Dependent on the eye and forms, visual-cognitive awareness arises. The meeting of the three is contact. With contact as condition there is feeling. What one feels, that one apperceives. What one apperceives, that one thinks about (vitakketi). What one thinks about, that one conceptually proliferates (papaceti). With what one has conceptually proliferated as the source (nidna), apperceptions and notions tinged by conceptual proliferation beset a man with respect to past, future, and present forms cognizable through the eye, [and so on, up to] mind-objects cognizable through the mind.37

And:
In dependence on the eye and forms, eye-consciousness arises. The meeting of the three is contact. With contact as condition, feeling [comes to be]; with feeling as condition, craving; with craving as condition, clinging; with clinging as condition, existence; with existence as condition, birth; with birth as condition, aging-and-death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, dejection, and despair come to be.38

Clearly, these two formulations point out different aspects of the process that keeps beings bound to sasra. The first emphasizes the role of conceptual proliferation (prapaca), while the second emphasizes the role of distorted motivations such as craving (ta) and grasping (updna). These depictions are not meant to be in conflict, however, and we can find other depictions with different combinations and emphases. Generalizing a bit, we can discern a process that has sensory, affective, per ceptual, cognitive, and conative phases. First, sensory contact (spara) involves the meeting and correlation between a sense faculty, a sensible form, and a sensory consciousness. What one is able to sense is, of course, a function of ones environment

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and ones specific sensory faculties. Further, the sensory awareness (vijna) operates through discrimination or contrast (this, not that). Second, sensation leads to feeling (vedan). The three basic affective modalities here are pleasure, displeasure, and indifference, but the key point is that now the sensory object is given as affectively salient. The sound is experienced not just as high-pitched, but as annoying. Third, the object is perceptually cognized (saj), which involves perceptual identification of the object it is no longer a mere that, but a what. Note that the object has sensory and affective salience even before it is fully perceptually iden tified. In addition, perceptual identification relies on prior experience and asso ciations, that is, on sedimented conditioning (saskr). Thus, while vijna is discriminating, saj is synthetic. Fourth, the affective valence and perceptual identification of the object lead to impulses such as desire (or aversion) and motives such as grasping. In phenomenological terms, we have a shift from what Husserl calls affectivity, the basic pull or allure of the object, to receptivity, the active orienting to the object. These impulses and motives in turn inform and guide ones action. An action, then, is conditioned by sensation, affect, perception, dispositions, and cognition, and conditions each of these in turn. We do not merely perceive an object. Rather, the object is given in its sensory-affective salience and against the background of ones associations, habits, impulses, and motivations. Indeed, what we have here is a process in which each aspect conditions and is conditioned by the others (i.e., it is operationally closed). And the way in which our experience unfolds through time is largely a function of the ongoing operation of this karmic circuit. Perhaps we can gain purchase on the karmic circuit by comparing it to MerleauPontys notion of the intentional arc.39 Briefly put, the intentional arc is a continuous loop or circuit between a subject and his world that underpins the subjects practical engagement with his meaningful world. Merleau-Ponty writes:
Beneath intelligence as beneath perception, we discover a more fundamental function ... which ... before bringing objects to our sight or knowledge, makes them exist in a more intimate way, for us. Let us therefore ... say ... the life of consciousness cognitive life, the life of desire or perceptual life is subtended by an intentional arc which projects round about us our past, our future, our human setting, our physical, ideological and moral situation, or rather which results in our being situated in all these respects. It is the intentional arc which brings about the unity of the senses, of intelligence, of sensibility and motility.40

For Merleau-Ponty, the primordial meaningfulness of the experienced world and our ability to grasp its meaning through our practical engagement with it is grounded in the ongoing sensorimotor and affective coupling between the lived body and its environment. We understand the meaning of the doorknob by knowing how to use it, and we express our understanding of the subtle facial expression by our appropriate response. Yet, when the intentional arc is disrupted, as in some cases of neuropathology, a persons world can in important respects fall apart. Furthermore, note that the intentional arc cuts across such distinctions as self/other, inner/outer, and mind/body. Finally, note that the ongoing dynamic of the intentional arc involves the temporality

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of experience. Past experiences help us to acquire habits and skills (such as using doorknobs or recognizing subtle facial cues), which help us to understand current experience and to anticipate its future course. Through the intentional arc, we carry our past into the present and project toward the future. Both the intentional arc and the karmic arc, in my interpretation, are (forgive the expression) sensorimotor-affective-conative-cognitive loops that subtend a subjects practical engagement in a meaning-laden world. In both accounts, the arc helps to explain both the nature and course of the subjects experience and the construction and reconstruction of her experienced world. In short, the karmic arc lays out the Buddhist account of the dynamic, recursive process whereby sentient beings enact their worlds as domains of significance inseparable from their own structure and activity. It is interesting to note that Merleau-Ponty discusses the intentional arc in the context of its failure due to traumatic brain injury. In severe cases of neuropathology, the distortion of the intentional arc can cause dramatic disintegration of an individuals experience and world.41 In contrast, the Buddhist concern is with a karmic arc that works all too well. Insofar as the karmic arc is affected by afflictions (klea) such as ignorance, grasping, and self-centeredness, it constructs and reconstructs sasric experiences and worlds. Thus, the normal operation of the karmic arc is ultimately pathological. The basic pathology of the karmic arc can be seen in the broader view of the Buddhist model of the twelvefold cycle of dependent origination, discussed above: 1. Ignorance (avidya) 2. Conditioning (saskra) 3. Consciousness or cognition (vijna) 4. The body-mind or sentient embodiment (nma-rpa) 5. The six sensory domains (a-yatana) 6. Sensory contact (spara) 7. Feeling (vedan) 8. Desire (ta) 9. Grasping (updna) 10. Becoming (bhava) 11. Birth or arising ( jti) 12. Death or ceasing (maraa) The twelvefold cycle is a model of the perpetuation of sasra both across lifetimes and within a lifetime.42 Moreover, it is important to note that these factors or links (nidna) are viewed as mutually conditioning, inter-defined, and related in complex ways both synchronically and diachronically. The first four factors can be seen as the enabling and constraining conditions of our sentient embodied being. As living, sentient beings (nma-rpa), we are of course embodied and conscious. Further, as we have seen, our bodies and minds are structured by conditioning (saskra) from both our own past actions and experiences and those beings with whom we are physically or psychologically continuous (i.e.,

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through rebirth or biological evolution). In this view, the human body-mind is a condensed, embodied history of past patterns of action. If we refer to the twelvefold cycle of dependent origination, we see that a human being is understood in terms of a specific form of sentient embodiment (4), which presupposes consciousness or cognition (3), as well a conditioning (2). This seems fairly unproblematic considering what we have discussed thus far, but what of the first factor of ignorance? As mentioned above, the existentially primordial ignorance being referred to here is the instinctive sense of oneself as a substantial entity (tma-dti) and its close cousin, the reification of both the self and worldly objects (satkya-dti). This ignorance is the root problematic of human existence leading as it does to the dissatisfaction (dukha) that pervades sasra and is therefore existentially primary. Indeed, we can see this more clearly when we take up the enactive perspective. Thompson explains:
Individuality in this case [i.e., of an autopoietic system] corresponds to a formal selfidentity to an invariant dynamic pattern that is produced, maintained, and realized by the system itself, while the system undergoes incessant material transformation and regulates its external boundary conditions accordingly. An autopoietic system is thus an individual in a sense that begins to be worthy of the term self.43

In this interpretation, then, the emergence of bounded identity through organizational closure, in a sense, sets into motion the entire cycle, from ignorance and conditioning to death and rebirth. The co-emergence of organism and environment, of interiority and exteriority, is reflected in the transition from the first four factors to factors 5 through 9. The fifth factor, the six sensory domains (ayatana), includes both the sense faculties the five external senses and the inner sense as well as their correlative sensory objects, for example sights and sounds. These sensory fields are central to the constitution of the organisms milieu or lived environment (loka). The actual process of sensation, in turn, emerges from ongoing sensory contact or coupling, spara (6), with the environment. This coupling is not merely causal, but also intentional it involves the organisms most basic sensory directedness toward objects. Along with sensory coupling there emerges (7) feeling or affective tonality (vedan). These modalities in turn condition factors 8 and 9, desire (ta) and appropriation (updna). Thus, the sensory-affective coupling with the environment feeds into the basic conative orientation in that milieu. A sentient beings milieu involves not just actual conditions but also conditions that must be effected or procured that is, objects (potential or actual) of desire and appropriation. Therefore, with the co-emergence of an organism and its lived environment, there emerges a dynamic sensory-affectiveconative karmic circuit that is enabled by and reinforces prior body-mind conditioning (saskra). The recursive, self-reinforcing aspect of this circuit, if successful, drives the continued existence or becoming, bhava (10), of the sentient organism. The final two factors, birth ( jti) and death (maraa), have different connotations depending on the context of analysis. When the twelvefold cycle is used to analyze the moment-to-moment dynamics of a sentient being, the terms mean arising and

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ceasing, respectively. As phases in a complex process, each factor, and indeed the being itself, is dependent and impermanent. On the other hand, when the target of analysis is a longer time frame, these factors indicate both the mutual entailment between birth and death that is, life and mortality and the fact that death leads to rebirth (and ignorance) and a continuation of the entire cycle. In sum, the enactment of identity through organizational-operational closure and body-mind conditioning is at the root of sentient being (14); organism and environment, or interiority and exteriority, are correlative and co-emergent (5); the sentient being is coupled with and oriented toward the environment through a dynamic and self-reinforcing sensory-affective-cognitive-conative circuit (69) and when effective (survival) perpetuates the existence of the sentient being (10); and, finally, this process feeds into the larger dynamic of birth and death that is the existential situation of all sentient beings (1112). Freedom from Karma So if, in the Buddhist view, the karmic arc keeps human beings bound to sasra, what is the proposed solution? Initially, the goal of practice is to improve ones karma by developing skillful rather than unskillful habits, conditioning, and modes of perception and action. Ultimately, however, liberation requires the dismantling of negative karmic patterns and the end of karmic accumulation. The highly advanced practitioner may have reduced her ignorance, cultivated skillful habits, and increased her ability to act on good intentions (cetan). An enlightened being, however, has overcome ignorance, perceives directly, and acts without centan. The result is said to be wise and compassionate spontaneous responsiveness that is, enlightened activity.44 Overcoming karma, in this interpretation, involves the progressive disman tling of those habits and forms of conditioning that lead to reactivity over responsiveness. Responsive action, then, displays what the phenomenologist Samuel Todes calls poise. In Todes view, which closely follows Merleau-Ponty, poise is a form of living, embodied responsiveness to ones circumstances that is, he says, the primary form of directed action.45 He writes:
This intention of the active body is poise in dealing with the things and persons around us. It is sharply to be distinguished from its correlate, the pose of the inactive body. Poise is always a way of responding to, of dealing with, objects around one; pose is a way of separating oneself from these objects. Poise does not, when successful, coincide or agree with its later effects, as does will with its achievements. Rather, when successful, poise is its own effect.46

Poise, then, is a type of spontaneous fluid responsiveness to ones circumstances that is in sharp contrast to both the stereotyped reactions of karmic conditioning and explicit willful effort. In both reaction and willful effort there is a separation between agent, action, and circumstance that is absent in poise. Todes explains:

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When I act in an effective, poised way, it is not merely that what I was trying to do is in agreement with what I (distinguishably) did do. Rather,... there were no two things to compare, but only the perfect fit of me-in-my-circumstances.... It is only in failure of response, and loss of poise, that a distinction appears between what I was trying to do and what I did.47

In a stereotyped reaction, the action is already fixed, and is then simply triggered by the circumstance. In a willful effort, one has a determinate and explicit intention and goal. In either case, one does not have the perfect fit of poised responsiveness. Thus, poise is nondual it is not characterized by a subject-object dichotomy. We can also say that in acting with poise one engages in an effortless deed (anbhogacarya), a key quality of a bodhisattvas actions. The idea here is that in poised action one does not need to have an explicit conceptual representation of ones goal and ones intended action. In the Buddhist sense, then, true poise does not involve cetan (explicit intention), which drives karma. Todes writes:
In willing, I can clearly distinguish my own act from what it makes of my circumstantial objects, both from what it makes them out to be, and from what it makes them become. But in poise, no such distinction is possible. My poise is the way I make of my circumstantial objects merely the circumstantial objects that they originally are, viz., those of felt, active experience.48

Likewise, Varela asserts that,

When one is the action, no residue of self-consciousness remains to observe the action externally. When non-dual action is ongoing and well established, it is experienced as grounded in a substrate that is at rest and at peace. To forget ones self is to realize ones emptiness, to realize ones every characteristic is conditioned and conditional.49

On this enactive account of action, ones direct apprehension of ones environment, that is, the affordances of the situation, brings about action. One does not need an intervening representation of the kind I intend to x. The suggestion, then, is that we may see the Indian Buddhist path to liberation from karma as involving the cultivation of poise or spontaneous responsiveness (and the stable attentive awareness that grounds it) in order to dismantle karmic conditioning and, eventually, to develop sufficient attentive responsiveness so that one no longer reinforces or acquires stereotyped reaction patterns, good or bad. In the meantime, the practitioner strives to displace unskillful actions and habits, based on distorted perception and reactivity, with skillful actions and habits, based on awareness and responsiveness. Our afflictions and delusions blind us to the opportunities for wise and compassionate action all around us. But through practice, one may develop greater sensitivity to the moral affordances that saturate our world, as well as the skillful means (upya kaualya) to cope with them in wise and compassionate ways.As Varela insists, mastery of the skillful means of ethical expertise results in the elimination of all habits so that the practitioner can realize that wisdom and compassion can arise spontaneously out of wisdom.50 The virtues that arise from this

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practice are primarily perceptual and affective rather than discursive or calculative, and they are essentially active. Indeed, from an enactivist perspective and commensurate with the bodhisattva ideal enlightenment cannot be separated from enlightened activity. Thus enlightened beings help to enact enlightened worlds. Conclusion Through bringing it into contact with recent work in philosophical psychology and phenomenology, I hope to have given an indication of the richness of the concept of karma. And I believe the theory of karma has much to contribute to contemporary thinking. For, quite independently of questions of rebirth, the theory can help to highlight the subtle and complex connections between evolution, cognitive processes, moral psychology and phenomenology, and ethical theory. Far from being an outdated conceptual framework, better left to the historians of religion, I think a contemporary and fairly full-blooded theory of karma can be a source of real insight.

Notes 1 Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992). 2 Christopher Key Chapple, Karma and Creativity (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986), p. 3. 3 Roy Perrett, Hindu Ethics: A Philosophical Study (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1998), pp. 2021. 4 Robert Ernest Hume, The Thirteen Principal Upanishads (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1931), p. 40, IV.4.5. 5 Bikkhu Bodhi, ed. and introd., In the Buddhas Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pli Canon (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2005), p. 166, Cla-kammavibhanga Sutta, MN 135:III 202206. 6 Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, trans. M. Ostwald (New York: Prentice Hall, 1962), 1103b. 7 Buddhaghosa, The Expositor (Ahaslin): Buddhaghosas Commentary on the Dhammasanga, the First Book of the Abhidhamma Piaka, trans. Pe Maung Tin, ed. and rev. by Mrs. Rhys Davids (London: Pali Text Society; distributed by Routledge and Kegan Paul, [1920-1921]; reprint, 1976), vol. 2, p. 360. 8 Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, 1100b711. 9 Charles Goodman, Consequences of Compassion: An Interpretation and Defense of Buddhist Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 61.

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10 My purpose here is not to argue for the truth of the enactive approach, but rather to deepen the dialogue between this active research program and the Buddhist tradition. 11 Evan Thompson, The Mindful Body: Embodiment and Cognitive Science, in The Incorporated Self: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Embodiment, ed. M.ODonovan-Anderson (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996), p.128. 12 Evan Thompson, Mind in Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), p. 13. 13 Varela et al., The Embodied Mind, p. 140. 14 My use of the term self does not, of course, refer to the tman or substantial self. All Buddhists reject outright that there is a substantial self. Rather, self here refers to the dependently originated sense of self and, by extension, those sentient beings that have a sense of self. 15 The term saj (sam, to put together+ja, knowledge) is cognate to cognize and can have the sense of synthesis as well as association. 16 Dan Lusthaus, Buddhist Phenomenology: A Philosophical Investigation of Yogcra Buddhism and the Cheng Wei-shih lun (London: RouteledgeCurzon, 2002), p. 49. 17 Tenzin Gyatso, The Meaning of Life: Buddhist Perspectives on Cause and Effect, rev. ed., trans. and ed. Jeffrey Hopkins (Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2000), p. 65. 18 Matthew MacKenzie, Enacting the Self: Buddhist and Enactivist Approaches to the Emergence of the Self, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 9, no.1 (2010):7599. 19 The following discussion of autonomous systems closely follows Thompson, Mind in Life, chap. 3. 20 Ibid., p. 43. 21 Ibid., p. 44. 22 Francisco Varela, The Emergent Self, Edge 86 (2001). 23 Ezequiel Di Paolo, Extended Life, Topoi 28 (2009):p. 15. 24 Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco J. Varela, Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living (Dordrecht and Boston: D. Reidel, 1980). 25 Thompson, Mind in Life, p. 45. 26 Ibid., p. 60. 27 Jan Westerhoff, Ngrjunas Madhyamaka: A Philosophical Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 163.

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28 Jonardon Ganeri, The Concealed Art of the Soul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 201. 29 Ibid., p. 203. 30 Hans Jonas, Mortality and Morality: A Search for the Good after Auschwitz, ed. with introd. Lawrence Vogel (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1996), p. 86. 31 Hans Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology, foreword by Lawrence Vogel (1966; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), pp.82 83. 32 It should be noted, however, that one can find later Buddhist texts that assimilate the two. 33 Francisco J. Varela, Ethical Know-How: Action, Wisdom, and Cognition (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), p. 54. 34 Bikkhu Bodhi, In the Buddhas Words, pp. 358359, SN 12:44; II.7374. 35 karmajam lokavaicitrayam. 36 Thompson, Mind in Life, p. 13. 37 William S. Waldron, The Buddhist Unconscious: The laya-vijna in the Context of Indian Buddhist Thought (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), p. 163. My interpretation here is much indebted to Waldron, chap. 5. 38 Bikkhu Bodhi, In the Buddhas Words, pp. 358. 39 Lusthaus, Buddhist Phenomenology, pp. 179183. 40 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London and New York: Routeledge, 1962), p. 136. 41 For instance, in cases where one can no longer properly orient ones body in space, or when one can no longer recognize faces, etc. 42 Thus, it is self-similar at different time scales. 43 Thompson, Mind in Life, p. 75. 44 Cf. Jay Garfield, Why did Bodhidharma Go to the East? Buddhisms Struggle with the Mind and the World, Sophia 45, no. 2 (2006):6180. 45 Samuel Todes, Body and World (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), p. 65. 46 Ibid., p. 65. 47 Ibid., p. 70. 48 Ibid., p. 66. 49 Varela, Ethical Know-How, p. 34. 50 Ibid., p. 72.

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