🌱Day 82: 🌱Why Are Some Wise While Others Remain Unwise: Understanding Kamma Through the Cūḷakammavibhaṅga Sutta | Study Notes from BMV Monday Sutta Study with Bhante Dr. G. Chandima
The Path to Being Born Unwise
Pāli (excerpt):
Translation:
The Path to Being Born Wise
Pāli (excerpt):
Translation:
1. Not Asking Is Already a Choice—But You Will Die and Carry the Doubts Into the Next Life
Not asking questions about what is wholesome (kusala), unwholesome (akusala), blameworthy, or beneficial, in other words, is a karmic act. Subtle as it may be, such neglect eats away, leaving one feeling confused and doubting. Unresolved doubts will not die in death; they will make the scars of their next birth. And Rebirth does not occur haphazardly, but is a result of volition exercised in a previous life. If one repeatedly distracts oneself from spiritual questioning, one is not merely unwise; one is storing up straits of confusion for the future. Refusing to seek the Dhamma becomes a silent nagging force that nudges the mind to the dark side, throughout this life and into the next one.
2. Silence in the Face of Wisdom Is Not Humility—It’s Spiritual Stagnation
Humility is not silence when you have the potential to search for moral and spiritual guidance, but stagnation of your own ego. Silence, when silence is generated by fear, pride or indifference, prevents the light of the truth from shining in one’s heart. The Buddha extolled sincere questioning as a source of nourishment. "One who never asks 'What is right?'" gradually hardens into the kind of person who is governed by unexamined habits. The tranquillity of not-questioning is not tranquillity; it is the tranquillity of rot. Without the gnawing friction of curiosity, a being’s inner faculties grow weak, and one’s marsh-mind is left forever untrained as if left persistently open to unfit streams of behaviour.
3. The Unwise Inherit Their Own Negligence (pamāda)
Wisdom is not a random gift of fate; it is merited or lost through one's own past actions. "Born unwise" is not a punishment but the result of karma of having lived such an ignorant life, one which did not question, or seek, or clarify. If one steers clear of inquiring as to that which leads to lasting happiness or lasting harm, they deprive themselves of a set of tools that makes it possible to develop. So that not paying attention is a seed, and –In our future lives – when the continuum comes together, we get a mind that doesn’t know, gets confused, and is not able to discriminate appropriately. The unwise are not unlucky; they are reaping what they have sown. They don’t care about the truth, and they create a lot of their own bad karma.
4. Curiosity (dhamma vicaya) Is the Kamma of the Wise
The questioning itself, the sincere asking of what is useful and what is not, is an act of merit—it is a wholesome volition (kusala cetanā). Curiosity is not disinterested; it is ethical energy in action. One simple question, like, “What should I grow so that I don’t have to face suffering in the future?" clears the mind and leads it to freedom. These are the kinds of questions that lead to reflection, change, and liberation. Whereas the non-asker remains snarled in the web of superficial living. Curiosity in Dhamma is not merely a characteristic—it is a karmic investment with effects that reverberate through lives.
5. Avoidance of Moral Inquiry Is a Gateway to Dukkha
There are a lot of decisions you make in life, and if you don't have a moral compass, you're just navigating in the dark. When one dodges asking “What is…?” and assuring it’s either this or that, which? or “What should I avoid?” Then they succumb to craving and delusion. Moral questions are the road signs along the path: Refuse them at your own peril. That kind of avoidance does not add up to neutrality; it becomes the karmic conditions for confusion, misjudgment and pain. Suffering/dissatisfaction (dukkha) is not an external imposition; it is frequently self-invented out of ignorance. Not to ask is to discard a compass in the wilderness of saṃsāra.
6. Wisdom Doesn’t Fall from the Sky—It Is Asked Into Existence
Wisdom is not accidental. It comes about through deliberate practice, deep pondering and — importantly — asking the right questions. Someone who never inquires about what brings lasting happiness may do very well in this world, but spiritually, they are adrift. To doubt is the beginning of a mental cleansing. By asking “What is it to be blameworthy?” or “What brings harm?”, one clears a clouded head. Even meditation is mechanical without inquiry. The path to paññā (wisdom) does not start with silence, it starts with speech—speech that is an effort to comprehend our actions, our causes and effects.
7. Spiritual Apathy Is a Silent Poison
One of the most deadly poisons is the steady drip of spiritual indifference. He who has heard wise teachings, yet acts not the goer to a lake, the owner of the field goes to ruin. Let me put it this way: when you fail to ask simple ethical questions of monks, teachers, or spiritual leaders, you're not being unassuming, you're being lazy. And apathy is an active force, not a passive one. The mind goes dim and the heart becomes starved of truth. This inner decay may not be thrilling, but it is devastating over lifetimes.
8. The Bodily Death Is Not the Worst Death—Mental Blindness Is
You cannot escape the reality of death of the body, the death and decay of the body, but you can avoid the spiritual blindness. The Cūḷakammavibhaṅga Sutta emphasizes that an unwise human rebirth, even if not to hell, amounts to a form of spiritual damnation. You may live to old age, be highly educated or successful, but without asking the Dhamma’s moral questions, you live in the dark. They cannot see how they got there or how to get out. This kind of blindness is not just sad — it is dangerous. It’s what perpetuates the cycle of craving, aversion, and delusion, propelling the mind still farther from freedom.
9. Indifference to Ethics (sīla) Is the Real Ignorance
There are some types of ignorance (not knowing) that are harmless, but there are others we create by stubbornly ignoring what is right in front of us. Someone who refuses to say, “What is blameworthy? is opting to live without ethics. This is not a neutral ground—it is a breeding ground for selfishness, injury, and confusion. Ethics isn’t just a set of rules; it’s the architecture of wise living. Without it smart people do stupid things. This lack of moral sensitivity leaves the person open to acting in ways that make a mess of one's life or the lives of others — including having to experience rebirth in worlds that echo the confusion engendered by this insensitivity.
10. Not All Questions Are Equal—Some Save Lifetimes
The Buddha stressed the moral questions for a reason: They do not merely inform the self; they transform it. “The question is, ‘What do we do that will contribute to long-term damage?’ is not an abstraction; It is a path into a life of insight. Some questions we ask are for the purposes of adding noise to the mind; others for cutting through it. When we avoid asking these important questions, we end up living unexamined lives—and unexamined lives lead to unexamined suffering. Your future life depends in part on how good your questions are now.
11. A Human Birth (manussatta) Without Wisdom Is a Missed Opportunity
It is rare in the extreme to be born human: it is an extraordinary opportunity to develop the path of wisdom and liberation. But if a person squanders this opportunity by not inquiring into what is most essential, then that human birth is a tragic waste. The Dhamma is present, the teachers are within proximity, and still the heart is sealed. To have lived as a human being and have no moral curiosity is like having been given a fertile field and leaving it all barren. It's not simply a missed opportunity; it's a karmic turn, leading to future lives where not even that opportunity is available to us.
12. An Unwise Is Not Born—An Unwise Is Untrained
No one is born unwise for life. It’s free for you, all you have to do is ask.” (“Ask” means being willing to be guided.) Being “unwise” just comes as a habit and on the heels of that kind of choice. Lack of wisdom is not just bad karma, or the absence of learnedness; it is moral and spiritual blindness. A human becomes unwise when he/she know not what it is to ask, think, and make much of. Wisdom is a training part of our whole spiritual life; if it’s not being worked out through moral inquiry and deliberate living, it atrophies. Ultimately, the ignorant mind ceases to be able to discriminate, and all of its behaviour results in further suffering for oneself and others.
13. The Mind That Never Questions Becomes a Prisoner of Itself
A mind that is not questioning is not a free mind, and it is in a cycle of its own conditioned beliefs. Unasked, thoughts circle around filmy wants and fears. It is the absence of moral questioning that does not allow for transformation. As the light only enters a room when a window is opened, so wisdom enters the heart only when interrogation takes place. To never inquire, “What causes suffering/dissatisfaction (dukkha)?” is to be a prisoner in the sense that he knows not the meaning of the word, even when he feels himself most at liberty. Real freedom starts by having the balls to question what one thinks, why one thinks it, and what one is doing about it.
14. The Decline of Culture Begins Where No One Asks 'What Is Right?'
It’s not just the invading uncivilized that cause civilizations to fall – they fail from within, when the voice of ethical dissent is still. Societies that cease to ask what is right or wrong, what is blameworthy or praiseworthy, and instead accept political manichaeism as a norm are societies that descend into moral befuddlement. People reflect this rot. The refusal to ask is not only personal — it’s cultural. And in that, the sutta’s teaching is personal and communal at once. One who doesn’t make a demand may not seem very significant, but when there are masses who do not ask, it leads to a diminished world of wisdom and increased confusion.
15. The Root of Wisdom Lies in One Simple Habit: Asking
The humility in wisdom traditions is encapsulated by the question: ‘What should I do?’ The tiny act of turning for guidance is itself almost an infinite karmic burden. It’s a door that opens teachers, reflection, and transformation. The one who asks himself all the time, “What will become of this, because of this?” is the one who’s on the noble path already. On the other hand, those who do not ask are not only on the path of not knowing, it is also the path of delusion. The Cūḷakammavibhaṅga Sutta spells it out: the path to wisdom is made of questions — not just any questions, but questions motivated by the desire to live well, to do good, and to know clearly.
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