What "Pleasant Karma Ripens as Pleasant" Really Means
The treatise pauses on a genuinely startling scriptural passage: read one way, it would mean spiritual practice accomplishes nothing at all, since karma would simply return exactly the same flavor of experience it was performed with. Read correctly, the very same words carry the opposite, coherent teaching — and the treatise walks through exactly how to tell the two readings apart.
1. A Reading That Would Make Practice Pointless
如世尊說：若有說言，彼彼丈夫補特伽羅，隨如是如是業，若作若增長，還受如是如是異熟。若有是事，便不應修清淨梵行，亦不可知正盡諸苦作苦邊際。若有說言，彼彼丈夫補特伽羅，隨如是如是順所受業，若作若增長，還受如是如是順所受異熟。若有是事，便應修習清淨梵行，又亦可知正盡諸苦作苦邊際。
As the World-Honored One said: were it said that a given person, according to whatever specific karma they perform or reinforce, receives back exactly that same specific ripened result — were this actually the case, one should not cultivate pure spiritual practice at all, nor could one ever truly know how to bring suffering to its complete end. But were it said instead that a given person, according to whatever specific karma-in-accord-with-a-feeling they perform or reinforce, receives back a correspondingly specific ripened feeling in accord with it — were this the case, one indeed should cultivate pure spiritual practice, and one could indeed truly know how to bring suffering to its complete end.
T1606 spells out exactly why the first, rejected reading would be so damaging if actually true: suppose karma always returns experience of the very same emotional flavor it was performed with — then keeping a difficult precept, which is undertaken with a certain present effort and perhaps some discomfort, would have to ripen as further discomfort; and, worse, indulging an affair with someone else's spouse, which might be undertaken with present delight, would have to ripen as further delight. On such a picture, moral discipline would be a losing proposition and misconduct a winning one, in each case exactly reproducing its own present emotional coloring into the future — which would make the entire project of cultivating virtue in order to reduce future suffering simply incoherent from the start.
2. The Hidden Intent, Correctly Recovered
如是經言有何密意？此中佛意為欲遮止如是邪說，謂樂俱行業還能感得樂俱行異熟、苦俱行業還能感得苦俱行異熟、不苦不樂俱行業還能感得不苦不樂俱行異熟，故作是說。又為開許如是正說，謂樂俱行業，順樂受者還受樂異熟，順苦受者還受苦異熟，順不苦不樂受者還受不苦不樂異熟。苦俱行業，順樂受者還受樂異熟，順苦受者還受苦異熟，順不苦不樂受者還受不苦不樂異熟。不苦不樂俱行業，順樂受者還受樂異熟，順苦受者還受苦異熟，順不苦不樂受者還受不苦不樂異熟。如是名為此經密意。
What is this passage's own hidden intent? The Buddha's intent here was specifically to block a wrongful doctrine — the claim that karma performed together with pleasant feeling always ripens into a pleasant result, karma performed together with painful feeling always ripens into a painful result, and karma performed together with neutral feeling always ripens into a neutral result. It was to refute exactly this claim that he spoke as he did.
And it was, at the same time, to affirm the genuinely correct teaching in its place: karma performed together with pleasant feeling, if it is of a kind conducive to a pleasant result, ripens as pleasant; if conducive to a painful result, ripens as painful; if conducive to a neutral result, ripens as neutral. Karma performed together with painful feeling, likewise, ripens as pleasant, painful, or neutral according to what it is genuinely conducive to. And karma performed together with neutral feeling, likewise again, ripens as pleasant, painful, or neutral according to what it is genuinely conducive to. This is what the passage's own hidden intent actually is.
The resolution turns on a precise distinction easy to miss on a quick reading: the rejected doctrine conflates an act's own present emotional accompaniment with what that act is actually, causally conducive to producing — treating "performed with pleasant feeling" and "productive of a pleasant result" as though they were simply the same thing. The correct teaching cleanly separates them: an act's present feeling-tone (pleasant, painful, or neutral) and its future karmic tendency (conducive to a pleasant, painful, or neutral result) are two entirely independent variables, freely combinable in any of the nine possible pairings. Keeping a difficult precept may well be accompanied by present discomfort, and yet be squarely conducive to a genuinely pleasant future result — which is exactly the coherent, motivating picture that makes cultivating virtue, despite its sometimes uncomfortable present texture, a rational undertaking after all. This is a genuinely careful piece of textual interpretation, and it fits the pattern already seen in Part 29's treatment of "whatever is impermanent is suffering": rather than either accepting a literal reading that leads to absurdity, or simply dismissing the passage, the treatise works to recover the specific, narrower claim the Buddha's own words were actually built to convey.
Part 43 Complete
This scriptural puzzle over pleasant, painful, and neutral karma is now resolved. Part 44 turns to a threefold division of karma by moral commitment — restraint, non-restraint, and neither — beginning with the three kinds of restraint that together define what it means to actually hold a precept.
Continue to Part 44 — Restraint, Non-Restraint, and Neither →