Liberation

Collective or individual?

Misdeeds cannot be washed away with water,
the suffering of living beings cannot be removed with the hand,
my realization cannot transferred to another,
but by showing the true nature of things, there will be liberation.

—The Buddha

These days many Buddhists in West like to talk about something they call collective liberation. I am not sure what they mean by collective liberation. But in Buddhadharma, collective liberation is impossible. Not even in Mahāyāna is collective liberation a possibility. If it were, we would not have to spend eons helping all sentient beings achieve liberation. If we are not talking about freedom from the three afflictions, then in the context of Dharma, we are not talking about liberation.

Before we can talk about collective or individual liberation we have to define terms. What is liberation in Buddhism?

In general, people seem to believe the liberation referred to in Buddhism, (Skt.) mokṣa, is liberation from suffering (dukkha)—unpleasant experience from various kinds of material relations—illness, pain, hunger, poverty, and so on. It is true that being free of such conditions will cause one to be free of that suffering for a time. In addition, people desire to be free of unhappiness, emotional trauma, and a host of mental ailments that never had names prior to the late 20th century. But is freedom from these various kinds of suffering the liberation Buddha referred to? Certainly, being free from these conditions of suffering is a kind of temporary liberation, better cast as temporary relief (Tib. dbugs ‘byung, literally inhaling exhaling). However, these sufferings easily return unless the root cause is eliminated. Thus, the measures here can only be considered palliative.

So what did the Buddha mean when he discussed liberation? He was referring eliminating the causes or source of suffering. When he talked about the causes of suffering, he never identified a single external cause or source of suffering, not one. The only causes of suffering (as opposed to pain) are internal. They exist only in your mind. Now, when we say they exist only in your mind, we do not mean that they are just a projection, etc. What it means is that the direct cause of suffering is karma, and it is also the direct cause of afflictive happiness (most happiness is afflictive, liable to turn into suffering later.

Contrary to popular belief among many Buddhists, there is no such thing as collective karma either.

So what is karma? Karma has two aspects karma, action, and vipaka, ripening. The Buddha stated with absolutely clarity that karma is an individual’s intentions, and physical and verbals acts that follow from those intentions. Karmavipaka on the other hand, the ripening of karma, is separate in time from any given deed. Karmavipaka is the ripening of three types of karma—negative, positive, and neutral, depending on the intention and subsequent physical or verbal deeds—at a later time. That could be today, tomorrow, next year, in a hundred years, or a million years. When negative karma ripens, it ripens as suffering, When positive karma ripens, such as going for refuge, or just speaking nicely to someone, it ripens as happiness. When neutral karma ripens, it ripens as off-white, meaning neutral actions tend to be subtly negative since such as actions are motivated by indifference, etc. It is impossible to say when a given karma will ripen for a given sentient being apart from certain acts called karmas with uninterrupted or immediate ripening: harming a buddha, killing an arhat, killing one’s father, killings one’s mother, or causing a split in the Bhikṣu Sangha.¹

Now, there is a kind of karma that seems collective, but it is not collective in a true sense. Suppose there are ten people. One person is appointed to murder someone. The other nine do nothing but watch. However, there are four things needed to make a karma “complete.” Like the murderer, these nine others must have the intent to kill, malice; an object of malice, a human being; there is deed of the murder itself; and finally, satisfaction in the deed. Substitute greed and ignorance in the case of robbery, and so on (use your imagination). Each person in that group of ten accrues ten times the heaviness of the karma. In other word, each person’s karma is ten times worse. The murdered person no longer will suffer that specific ripening again. Who can say why they were the victim of murder? But we can understand at some point they engaged in some action in the past that ripened in this lifetime. In any case, if one approves of and is satisfied with the killing of a human being in a group of ten, one will have the karma of ten people killing ten humans. Just keep multiplying that into we hit war level. If one thinks about it, the consequences of karma, when it comes to modern warfare, are too horrible to contemplate.

When it comes to the ripening of that karma, it will be individual and specific to you. Not as in the movie franchise Final Destination, Death will not hunt you down. If you are in a place where 100 people are gunned down, each person is experiencing the ripening of their own karma, so it is not collective. It may seem collective, but it is not. This is why speaking of the collective karma of countries is just incorrect from a Dharma perspective. People may engage in karma because of their national, class, tribe, or family associations, but the karmic ripening will be unique for each person. The same of course goes for virtuous karma.

So what about collective liberation? In order to be liberated one must be free of the three afflictions that cause birth in samsara: desire, hatred, and confusion. That is all the Buddha meant by liberation—liberation from uncontrolled birth in samsara.

There is no way to collectively remove the three poisons from the minds of a group of people. All karma is motivated by affliction. All motivations are personal. And all suffering is the ripening of karma. Afflictions exist in the independent mind streams of all sentient beings. Since these afflictions cannot be removed manually, but only through wisdom of personal insight, there is no external means of liberating sentient beings collectively. Therefore, there is no possibility of collective liberation. Liberation is only personal and individual, one person at a time, based on one’s own interest in entering the Dharma. Therefore, we all must wake up one by one. This is why the teaching on the preciousness of human birth is so important. But that is a post for another time.

The Dharma cannot be forced on people. People must go for refuge voluntarily. But without refuge and faith in the Buddha’s Dharma, learning to calm one’s mind, and realizing the wisdom of emptiness—the absence of self or identity in all dependently origination phenomena²—liberation will never happen, and one will continue to be driven by the three poisons in lifetime after lifetime.

Moreover, sentient beings all have different karmas. Thus, there is no way to engineer equality in samsara. I am very sorry that this is so, but it is true. The best we can do is do is try and create ideal conditions so that all people have an even chance of success in life. We cannot really succeed in doing this either, or at least no one has tried without inflicting intense violence on people. Some people will be born sickly, and spend their entire life ill, but living to 90. Others will be born strong and healthy, and drop dead at 18. Karma is what determines social status, health, longevity—ripened karma is the starting condition for each sentient being’s life—whether deva, human, animal, preta, or hell being. These starting conditions can be overcome, they are not fate.

We should try to create conditions for everyone to succeed, but also no one agrees what those conditions are. Some people think we should redistribute all the weath of oligarchs. Even if we could redistribute all the wealth in the world, in dollar figures it would amount to a measly 55k for everyone. Basically, a one year salary for a lower middle class American. So, I don’t have an answer to the material misery of sentient beings.

What I do know is that collective liberation is impossible, at least, it is impossible in Buddha’s Dharma. Maybe some other teacher’s dharma makes this promise, and if that is what you believe, you are of course free to do as you please. But don’t claim it is possible in Buddhadharma.

1. This means that a fully ordained Buddhist monk declares they have a better teaching than the Buddha, and that a group of monks should follow him and not the Buddha. Nothing is mentioned about the fate of the followers.

2. The only phenomena that are not dependently originated in Buddhism are space and the two kinds of cessations. Apart from this, there are no other uncompounded phenomena.