Abortion of Samsara

a summarized transcription

by Ajahn Nyanamoli Thero

[video] [audio]

Q:

Ajahn Nyanamoli: Yes, absolutely, and it’s good that you are not in denial, and are actually using your guilt as a context to not make the same mistake. As for the consequences, well, yes, the consequences of taking a life have to be experienced at some point. Now, how much of those karmic consequences would be experienced? Well, you can see from the suttas that if somebody, say, has taken human life and then afterwards they made a tremendous effort and developed their mind, freed it from greed, aversion, delusion, or at least partially, those consequences would diminish. In other words, the consequences that they will have to experience would be fairly minuscule in comparison to what they would have experienced if their mind were not rightly developed. And when I say rightly developed, I don’t mean you go and sit on a ten-day nostril watching retreat. I mean you fully start accepting responsibility for your actions, training your mind to remain unmoved in face of hindrances, not fueling greed, not fueling aversion, not fueling the wrong views. Getting the right view is your safety card. If you can become a sotāpanna or more, even better, but at least that, because the sotāpanna cannot be reborn lower than a human realm, regardless of the actions and consequences that are waiting for them from what they did before.

Q: I am also not trying to find out if the baby was conscious or not at the point of abortion?

Nm: It’s irrelevant.

Q: I am not trying to get rid of my guilt. I am actually finding value in it.

Nm: You’ve recogniz ed that regardless of the answer that you might get, depending on whom you ask, basically, from your individual point of view, what comes first is the guilt and the always lingering doubt that it could have been a life that you have taken. So it doesn’t matter what science or religion gives you as an answer, “Yes, it was”, or “No, it wasn’t.” The fact is, that act in and of itself, from your point of view, will always remain doubtful, because you cannot verify it.

For example, scientifically, if somebody tells you, “No, there isn’t consciousness there,” well, it’s a presupposition, or “No, it’s not conscious.” Again, they can’t verify that either. But the fact that it could be, is more than enough for you to recognize that killing it should not have been done, in that sense. So even if the fetus is unconscious, it’s still a human fetus. From its point of conception, to the point of death, it’s a human entity, in that sense, at different stages. You can say it’s a clump of cells, yes, but it’s a clump of cells of a very different value. It’s a clump of cells from which all the other cells develop. So it’s not the same to say, “My nails are a clump of cells so there’s no problem.” Yes, now. And the fetus is a clump of cells, they’re of a very different order, of a very different potential. So even if the fetus is completely not conscious, it’s still a human fetus. It’s not a squirrel fetus. And that can never change.

And that’s what I mean, regardless of what answer you might find, fundamentally, that’s something you cannot deny. And because of that, if you’re honest, you will experience guilt if that’s the action that you did. And you can’t undo it. So people would say, “Oh, you must just go to make some merit and that will make things better.” And yes, that’s all good, that’s all fine. But merit making will result in good consequences later on. But that has nothing to do with the bad stuff. You can’t offset that. You can just add more good things that you experience, sure. But what can actually offset your bad actions, including killing and so on, even if you did it out of ignorance and not premeditated murder type of thing, is if you develop your mind towards nibbāna rightly, if you abandon the wrong views, if you overcome sensuality, factually, as the Buddha said to Aṅgulimāla, that the consequences he was experiencing while he was still alive, when people were throwing stones at him and so on, he says, “Oh, bear it, brahmin. That’s all of the consequences that are left for you.” Although, he killed so many people before, if he were not to become an arahant, he would have been burning in hells for eons and eons. So there were still consequences of his actions, but they couldn’t pass that immediate level while this body was still present. That’s it. That was the extent of them.

Q: So it’s like doing other good actions to try and offset the bad that you’ve done in the past doesn’t really work, as you’re saying. It’s the uprooting of the thing that made you do that wrong.

Nm: Exactly, exactly. That’s the point.

Q: That’s really where the difference is made.

Nm: What are the roots of any unwholesome action? Killing, lying, cheating, stealing, all these precepts that we talk about, what is a common thread to all of them? If you abandon that, if your practice aims at uprooting those roots of those actions, then even things that you did in the past will not actually pertain to you anymore. And those roots are basically what we talk about, desire, ill will, inauthenticity, lack of self-transparency, lack of taking up responsibility.

If you actually from then onwards start practicing towards abandoning, restraining, not proliferating desire, abandoning acting out of ill will, not giving in to acts that would distract you from yourself, in the sense of bearing the responsibility, the weight of your existence and all of that, you are actually uncovering and getting closer to what the true practice of Dhamma is, and that in and of itself is developing your mind. So then any consequences that might be waiting for you, if your mind is truly developed through first accepting the weight of your actions, as we often say, the weight of responsibility, every day, not once so it goes away, but whenever it comes back. That cannot change. If anything you do is rooted in trying to get rid of it, that means you don’t want responsibility for something you factually did. So that’s what I mean, like if somebody already has that attitude, that they’re using that practically to keep their context, that’s extremely good. Now on top of that, I don’t know what your understanding of Dhamma is, but yes, sure, make merit, be generous, help others, but really focus on uprooting the desire, uprooting the conceit, uprooting the craving, greed, aversion, delusion, and then you won’t have to worry… because who knows, we all might have done even worse things in our previous lives that still haven’t been experienced yet, and the consequences of those things are waiting for us. Even if you haven’t performed an abortion, had an abortion, performed in this life or anything like that, you might have done other things, worse things beforehand, and those consequences are waiting for you. So you shouldn’t feel safe for as long as you’re in saṃsāra.

Many people can accept and come to terms with what they did, but then what do they do next? Do you just go back to life and sensuality and proliferation and sexual intercourses and everything else? Or do you decide to try to uproot those desires even further, so th at the consequences of your actions now that you can remember, and even more that you probably can’t remember, cannot touch you?

In other words, use the shame not just to temporarily deal with this specific thing from the past that you felt guilty or shameful about, but accept it, use it, and then aim it at the whole saṃsāra, basically abandon the whole thing, because that’s the only true safety. Because factually there are consequences of your actions, whether you accept it, come to terms with it, that’s fine, that can obviously help your well-being here and now, but that does not change the fact that you killed a being and the consequences will have to be experienced.