Chanel No.6

Within our Sangha we are fortunate to have amongst us a retired professor of psychology who has researched a great deal into the creation of habits and their consequences. During our conversations about karma he has repeatedly said that he just can’t buy it - well, that was true until yesterday when I said that we could think of karma as habit. ‘Oh’, he said with a smile, ‘Well in that case I have no problem’. Afterwards I went away and thought maybe I should check that I had this right. In Tibetan there is the word bakchak which may be translated as habitual tendencies or imprints, the idea being that past actions have left an imprint that leads to a predisposition in the future. Actually the word bakchak means something like a ‘residual perfume’ that has been left lingering. So I think this works very well, although if we are going to be precise - and Buddhism is actually very picky on things like this - the word karma - intentional action - is really describing the moment when the habit was first established and then the imprint of this which becomes an habitual tendency follows. Karma and the seeds of karma - which are habitual tendencies.

This then lead on to another conversation with a member of our Sangha who is a clinical psychologist. She asked how someone seemingly overwhelmed by bad karma - here she was thinking of the impenetrability of clinical depression - could ever find a way out. If they had any residue of good karma left somewhere within them, how might this find expression. Generally I’m made anxious by these types of questions because they veer towards trying to explain the mechanics of karma which to my mind is seldom convincing and misses the point. However, on this occasion, this question does lead into some interesting places.

The notion of habitual tendency does not mean just bad habitual tendencies. There are impure habitual tendencies and also pure habitual tendencies. (Here don’t get tripped up on the word ‘pure’ - read this as wholesome or skilful). So the term is neutral. In later Buddhism, within the ‘Yoga School’ of philosophy, the idea of a deep level of consciousness which was the repository of all imprints evolved. This ‘store house’ consciousness, to my mind, sounds very similar to what we call memory which is stored within the neural networks found in different locations within the brain. Memory contains everything irrespective of whether it’s ‘good’ or ‘bad’.

However, in common parlance, habitual tendencies usually refers to something that is not to our benefit. Here comes another word in Sanskrit, klesha, 'conflicted emotion', that actually helps to understand the whole sequence of experiences that keep us trapped in samsara:

• A conflicted emotional state such as ignorance, greed, aversion, pride or envy occurs.

• This motivates an intentional action. (Our reactivity.)

• That creates a seed or ‘perfume’ that remains in the ‘memory’.

• This then creates habitual tendencies which with each repetition strengthen.

• And this in turn creates further conflicted emotions.

That all said, this sequence may also work for the good where wholesome mind states may be cultivated, creating wholesome imprints, which in turn perpetuate themselves with repetition - like meditating for oneself and everyone else as well. However, it's not usual to think of these as habitual tendencies but rather as ‘good qualities’ or ‘roots of virtue’. The term habitual tendency has trouble shaking off a negative connotation.

One last nugget: within the Tibetan non-dual traditions of Dzogchen and Mahamudra, the whole thing of wholesome and unwholesome karma changes. Remember the story about Garab Dorje, who taught this, initially upsetting everyone? Understood from this perspective, all imprints, whether wholesome or not, are simply the expression of intrinsic awareness, rigpa. While wholesome habits create the raft that leads to this realisation, once resting in intrinsic awareness there is no good or bad - there is just awareness.

As for the question of clinical depression, I’m going to write a separate blog on this because now the whole karma thing gets very tricky ….

NW. 23 July 2026  Huge thank you to S.C. and B.V. for their contribution to this.