What Are You Going to Do with What You’ve Got?

·39 min·3 clips

Michael Stone reveals that karma literally means 'to make' and is better understood as creativity—what are you going to do with what you've got?

This episode is a recorded live talk by Michael Stone, part of a series originally titled 'the Buddha without Buddhism' or 'your original face.' Stone begins by contextualizing the Buddha's community, noting how monks (bhikkhus) relied on householders and were engaged near cities, not isolated in forests. He highlights the challenge for Western practitioners who are mostly householders, balancing rigorous practice with relationships, work, and values like nonviolence. Stone mentions Marsha Linehan, a Zen student who integrated mindfulness into DBT therapy for borderline patients. He then shifts to karma, framing it within three philosophical questions of the Buddha's time: what exists, how we know, and what continues. The Buddha emphasized subjectivity and independence, replacing metaphysical origins with moment-to-moment experience via conditioned arising (Paticcasamuppada) and karma. Stone explains that karma comes from the Sanskrit root 'kuru,' meaning to make or create, encompassing intention, action, and result. He contrasts this with vipaka (fate), arguing karma is not something you have but what you are—a process of conditioned arising. Stone cites a sutta where the Buddha critiques ascetics who attribute all experiences to past actions, using examples like bile disorders to show verifiable causes. He shares an anecdote about the Dalai Lama's doctor diagnosing wind disorders in Toronto, linking it to nostril dominance and hemispheric brain activity. Stone discusses how the Buddha temporalized karma, making each moment a mini birth and death, and how actions define roles (e.g., merchant, teacher) rather than birth. He references a line about a sage taming the self, interpreting the self as a flexible fiction to be cultivated, akin to Carl Jung's personas. A koan about falling down and getting back up illustrates resilience and allowing. Stone warns that a superficial understanding of impermanence can lead to nihilism, cured by grounding it in karma—actions matter, as shown in environmental or teen behavior examples. He concludes by framing karma as creativity, asking 'what are you going to do with what you've got?' and recommending daily forgiveness practices, inspired by an Oprah show specialist, before opening for group discussion.

As heard by us

A grounded Buddhist argument against treating every feeling as a sentence from the past.

Michael Stone's class on karma pushes back against the habit of treating every feeling as a verdict from the past. Returning to an early teaching, he follows Sivaka as he brings the Buddha a doctrine claiming that pleasant, painful, and neutral experiences all come from past…

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Why you'd press play

When every feeling starts to look like cosmic bookkeeping, you may want this early-Buddhist reset on karma.

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