..續本文上一頁e learned in his Awakening are important as well. It”s not simply the case that he found what worked for him, while what works for you may be something else entirely. No matter how much you twist a cow”s horn, it”ll never produce milk. The Buddha”s insights penetrated into how things work, what it means for them to work. These insights apply to everyone throughout time.

　　When summarizing his Awakening in the most condensed form, the Buddha focused on a principle of causality that explains how we live in a world where patterns of causality fashion events, and yet those events are not totally predetermined by the past.

　　The principle is actually a dual one, for there are two kinds of causality interweaving in our lives. The first is that of a cause giving results in the immediate present: When this is, that is; when this isn”t, that isn”t. When you turn on a stereo, for example, the noise comes out; when you turn it off, the noise stops. The second type of causality is that of a cause giving results over time: From the arising of this comes the arising of that; from the cessation of this comes the cessation of that. If you study now, you”ll have knowledge long into the future. If you damage your brain, the negative effects will be long‐term as well. Applied to karma, or intentional action, the dual principle means this: Any moment of experience consists of three things: (1) pleasures and pains resulting from past intentions, (2) present intentions, and (3) pleasures and pains immediately resulting from present intentions. Thus the present is not totally shaped by the past. In fact, the most important element shaping your present experience of pleasure or pain is how you fashion, with your present intentions, the raw material provided by past intentions. And your present intentions can be totally free.

　　This is how there is free will in the midst of causality. At the same time, the pattern in the way intentions lead to results allows us to learn from past mistakes. This freedom within a pattern opens the way to a path of mental training, mastered through experience, that can lead to the end of suffering. We practice generosity, virtue, and meditation to learn the power of our intentions and in particular to see what happens as our intentions grow more skillful. To fully test the power of intention, we work at making them so skillful that present intentions actually stop. Only when they stop can you prove for yourself how powerful they”ve been. And where they stop is where the unconditioned—the end of suffering—is found. From there you can return to intentions, but you”re no longer their captive or slave.

　　In presenting his teachings on karma and suffering, the Buddha offered empirical evidence to corroborate them—noting, for instance, how your reaction to another person”s misery depends on how attached you are to that person—but he never attempted a full‐scale empirical proof. In fact, he heaped ridicule on his contemporaries, the Jains, who tried to prove their more deterministic teaching on karma by claiming that all those who kill, steal, lie, or engage in illicit sex will suffer from their actions here and now. “Haven”t you seen the case,” the Buddha asked, “where a man is rewarded by a king for killing the king”s enemy, for stealing from the king”s enemy, for amusing the king with a clever lie

　　” Even though the basic principle of karma is simple enough—skillful intentions lead to pleasure, unskillful intentions to pain—the dual principle of causality through which karma operates is so complex, like a Mandelbrot set, that you would go crazy trying to nail the whole thing down empirically.

　　So instead of an empirical proof for his teaching on karma, the Buddha offered a pragmatic proof: If you sincerely believe in his teachings on…

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