Pondering Job and Karma

   I am reading a book recently, Love: A History by Simon May, which explores the notion of Job in the Bible. This story interests me because it is quite paradoxical. Job is a figure in the Bible who pretty much loses everything: his children, his livelihood and his servants as  well. He is also inflicted with illness, and yet he manages to somehow accept his fate rather than rage against God or deviate from his faith. It's interesting to me, because Job is on the one hand very humble and faithful in seeing himself as "naked" from his mother's womb and yet also naked returning there. On the other hand, he rails against his fate and even wishes never to have been born, I somehow wonder, how can this combination of qualities exist in the same person?  I suppose my assumption is that faith is stoic in the face of suffering, but Job does in fact feel pain and expresses his pain in a strong way. He cries out to God about his fate even though in the end he accepts his fate fully. And although there are those who believe that Job must have deserved the fate he received to have been given such terrible fate, May interprets the story of Job as a profound lesson on the nature of God and love for God. He remarks "A real relationship with one whom we experience as grounding our being--or even as the source of our being, like God or a parent or a landscape or a nation--demands stubborn acceptance and offers no predictable or calculable benefits." (p.32) In other words, Job's 'lesson' is that love is not something that can be calculated or even known to have a specific benefit. It is just this devotion to the 'unknown' or 'unfathomable' that makes Job's love for God so profound and moving.

    As I was reading this part of May's book, I had to wonder how this story line holds up to the notion of karmic retribution in Buddhism. Would a Buddhist perhaps argue that Job's 'punishment' is the result of his previous karma, and would therefore serve as a kind of 'reaping what you sow'? I do wonder what a parable such as Job would sound like if it were made into a Buddhist parable, and what the related lesson might be. But I think the notion of karma is much more complicated that one would expect from the adage of 'reap what you so' or 'to each one her just desserts.' Master Sheng Yen talked about in Chan and Enlightenment how futile it is to look for the causes of why things happen as they do in one's lifetime. It might be that something challenging arises in one's life due to an action that occurred many lifetimes ago. There is simply no way of telling what the 'root cause' of the problem is, since the cycle of birth and death is beginningless. In fact, Buddhist sutras often refer to the expression, "since beginningless time" to refer to an endless cycle of causes and conditions inflicting upon each other in circles. So I would imagine that the Job in a Buddhist parable would also come to the similar conclusion that she or he comes into this world naked and leaves it the same. in other words, there is no trace of past and future, and mind remains the same regardless of the conditions that arise and perish. And in both cases, Job would need to be faithful to the moment, rather than trying to attribute the present to something that might have happened in the distant past.

   But the story of Job is obviously nuanced, and there is the added dimension of what life would be like simply devoting oneself wholeheartedly to a higher principle, without calculating the personal gain or loss. The notable aspect of Job is his love that has no known motivation, other than a sense of awe and grounding in the eternal aspect of God. I have a sense that this life of devotion would have similarities to a general life of compassion that is espoused in Buddhism. Both involve a need to see past gain, and a love of something that is much greater than personal gain. But I want to add that committing to that life is also committing to a certain vulnerability. Without the vow to commit to a spiritual life or practice, there would be no danger of falling from practice, since there is nothing from which to fall or falter. If I am not vowing to live peacefully and compassionately, then the principle of losing my temper or struggling to have compassion wouldn't have so much meaning. To live meaningfully would be to live according to an underlying principle, even though that principle takes struggle and practice to actualize. Most importantly, these teachings help people to see beyond the need to calculate their personal benefit from doing something, and to see the sacred value of spiritual action as a joy in itself..

May, Simon (2011), Love: A History. London: Yale University Press