Following Master Keizan's offering last time (in the story of Master Kumarata) of a traditional view of Rebirth, this time we encounter a rather traditional view of the workings of Karma ...

... why often bad things happen to good people, and good to the bad ...

All through human history, people have asked this same question. Is it some punishment or test or game by God or by gods (as in the Book of Job)? Is it a simple roll of the dice and blind misfortune? Is it just something natural to the very free and organic world in which we live (much as a garden in springtime, in its growth, must produce some flowers which grow tall, some which fall early, some which never sprout at all, and thus the total garden beautifully thrives and grows)? Or is there a kind of debt to be repaid, a universal Justice whereby our intentional offences and kind acts reap ... sooner or later ... fitting punishments and appropriate rewards?

As a man of the 14th century, a traditional Buddhist, Master Keizan offered a very literal and traditional Buddhist interpretation. Perhaps.

I do not necessarily hold such a "do a bad thing, come back next life as a fox" view of cause and effect ... but I certainly believe in "cause and effect", and that our harmful acts have harmful effects to our self and others (not two) ...

I, personally, no longer believe that our having popped up alive in the middle of time and space ... given all the delicate movements and happenings of physics, chemistry, biology, history that were involved and required for that over the ages ... despite all the seemingly endless opportunities for events of the past to have drifted into any of countless other directions away from our births ... was just a matter of naked luck and pure happenstance. Somehow the dice were loaded, somehow conditions were not as free and random as they seem. We are here as naturally and inevitably as an apple (but not an orange or a stone) will be created from an apple seed ... we are the effects of some outcome defining cause or causes. Too much was required, too much prevented, in order for us to be here right now ... writing and reading these words. I think life, our lives ... more likely than not ... as much a natural and inevitable outgrowth of this world as the growth of hair on a baby's head and maturing of its eyes to see are (far from unpredictable or unexplainable hit-or-miss outcomes) the natural and inevitable outgrowths of its DNA and biology and like factors, causal mechanisms that bring about the ultimate product. There is a mechanism, and causes that bring effects. Perhaps, in the beauty of this garden that has turned out such a beneficial (though not always) way, there was the hand of some Gardener too ...

But whatever the case ... bad things seemingly continue to happen to many good people who do not seem to deserve it.

Whether you believe in some "cosmic system of Karmic Justice" or in a "Hand of God" or not ... Master Keizan offers that other perspective by which the whole question drops away ... For, in a moment of Shikantaza, dropping thoughts of good and bad, win or lose, right and wrong, 'should be' and 'if only it would be' ... we encounter a certain Good that sweeps in small human judgments of "good and bad", a "Just As It Is" which balances out all worldly injustice in its balance and calm. There is no separate self to do bad or to have bad done unto ... no place for dust to alight ... nothing lacking or which ever can lack thus nothing to take or be taken away ...

However (and this we can all agree on, whether we are believers in a literal view of the workings of Karma or not), that dropping of "good and bad, right vs. wrong" is NOT AN EXCUSE FOR IMMORALITY! Master Keizan cautions about this toward the end of his words. Our actions DO HAVE EFFECTS, and we do bring about benefits and harms to our self and others and this world (which are not two or three separate things). We can create heavens and hells right here in our lives and in the lives of those around us ... whether there are heavens and hells in the coming lives or not.

I am now reading a book about the Holocaust, many seemingly innocent men, women ... children ... who died. Why?

Master Dogen wrote ...

As all things are buddha-dharma, there is delusion and realization, practice, and birth and death, and there are buddhas and sentient beings.

As the myriad things are without an abiding self, there is no delusion, no realization, no buddha, no sentient being, no birth and death.

The buddha way is, basically, leaping clear of the many of the one; thus there are birth and death, delusion and realization, sentient beings and buddhas.

Yet in attachment blossoms fall, and in aversion weeds spread.

The garden of this world is beautiful, but there are weeds and thorns that are part of it.

There are weeds in this garden ... and whether by a Gardener's design, whether just nature's way ... the hands of these gardeners (you and me) should pull the weeds that we can, allow the weeds that we cannot.

Cook from p 116
Hixon from p 107