Talent

Each person is born with a different brain structure, so intelligence is not the same. One person is clear-sighted, another dull. One is good at business, another gifted in music. There are child prodigies who could speak from the moment they were born, such as Christian Heineken. He could recite many passages of the Bible at one year old, answer questions on geography at two, speak French and Latin at three, and at four was already attending philosophy classes.

"... John Stuart Mill could read Greek at the age of three; Macaulay knew world history at sixteen; William James Sidis read, and tried to read fluently, his mother tongue (American English) at two, and at eight she could speak French, Russian, English, German and a little Latin and Greek... Charles Bennet of Manchester could speak many languages at the age of three..." (Quoted from The Buddha and His Dhamma by Venerable Narada)

Today the world's press talks a great deal about a boy, Arthur, whose father is Malagasy and whose mother is French. At nine, Arthur passed the BEPC (lower secondary certificate, equivalent to the lower secondary level in Vietnam), and two years later the baccalaureate. At 12 he enrolled for the first time in a group course to get used to the manner of examinations, when he was preparing to take a bachelor's degree in mathematics. He is now preparing a postgraduate degree in pure mathematics while studying Fermat's last theorem. Most of his learning time is self-study, guided by his parents.

Einstein completed the theory of special relativity when he was only 25. Even now, not everyone understands clearly when hearing a lecture on that subject, although much has been written about it.

Countless marvellous minds have contributed to making humanity's civilisation progress further and further. Some have resounding names. Some have kept their names hidden for other reasons.

Alongside those special talents there are also people who are strangely "slow to understand". They cannot grasp a fifth- or sixth-grade sum. Some invisible barrier blocks their minds and does not let them go deeply into complex problems. They have no choice but to accept manual trades to make a living.

Educators all acknowledge that the factor of education counts for only a small part in opening up the human mind. Education consists only of:

- Passing on knowledge.

- Training students to reason.

However, these two things brought in from outside are still limited by the student's own subjective factors:

- The capacity to take in knowledge, large or small.

- The capacity to reason, quickly or slowly, deeply or shallowly, combining data widely or narrowly.

Each human brain is like a computer already built. According to how it was originally built, the computer can handle a certain amount of information (measured in bytes, kilobytes, megabytes...). When a problem is too complex for the capacity it was built with, the computer cannot solve it, or solves it very slowly with the help of specialists.

From birth, according to the karma of previous lives, each person has a different brain, and each brain "seems" to have a capacity fixed in advance. With identical capacity but different educational circumstances, their talents will differ. So there are two kinds of results that make up a person's talent.

- One, the kind of karmic result that forms a brain with a certain definite capacity (subjective).

- Two, the kind of karmic result that forms an educational environment of one quality or another (objective).

Combining these two karmic results, a person's talent is formed.

There are people with the merit of intelligence but without the merit of receiving much schooling, so their talent is limited. Conversely, there are people of lesser intelligence, who should be less talented, but who are in a good educational environment, carefully cared for and taught by parents, siblings and teachers, and so also achieve a certain degree of ability.

Although from the time in the womb the human brain has completed its details and so has already determined each person's level of intelligence, still, like fortune, a person's intelligence also rises and falls with karmic conditions. In periods when good merit manifests, that person suddenly becomes strangely clear-sighted, judging and foreseeing each matter profoundly. When the merit is used up, the same person naturally becomes befuddled and murky, unable to see far and wide, unable to judge what will happen, and goes into failure.

In their day, tyrants such as Napoleon and Hitler succeeded in all they reckoned, had a strange power of attraction over everyone, and won exploits that resounded around the world. When their merit ran out, Waterloo buried Napoleon's imperial career, and Hitler killed himself in his bunker.

Some businesspeople fall into a similar case. When fortune is flowing, they judge in advance how the market will develop, invest suitably and achieve great success. When their merit is used up, they foresee wrongly, invest in the wrong places and go bankrupt.

The law of karma springs from the Absolute Fundamental Nature, so it governs even the deep consciousness of human beings. When a good karmic result appears, it drives the mind to conceive accurate and original plans. With those plans, they act with effort and succeed. Conversely, when a bad karmic result appears, it drives the mind to scheme off the rails so that they fall into failure.

A businessman decided to buy some land in an area where he knew a large seaport would be built nearby. Once the port was built, the price of land would rise tenfold. What he did not foresee was that a political upheaval occurred and the project was cancelled. The land he bought had to lie idle, and a good deal of his capital was stuck in it.

A repairman of radio telecommunications equipment admitted that some kind of inner intuition helped him quickly guess the faulty part among a system of machines as tangled as an old forest. Because he guessed the fault quickly, he fixed it swiftly, to the admiration of his friends. He himself examined himself and "saw" that some special kind of spiritual faculty had helped him in this difficult work.

It is the merit of the distant past that creates marvellous clear-sightedness in the present, and because they think rightly, they act rightly.

So meritorious karma such as giving alms, making offerings, building roads and bridges, helping people in distress, defending the isolated, caring for the sick... contributes to creating clear intelligence in later lives. If meritorious karma is created steadily and persistently, in later lives we will have steady intelligence. If meritorious karma is done "in fits", that is, sometimes eagerly and sometimes lazily, in later lives we will have an intelligence "in fits", sometimes wise and sometimes foolish.

Some people are very good at school and in books, but when they step into life they are like a bewildered golden deer, unable to gauge people's deceit, and they meet failure after failure. Cause and effect are assessed as follows.

Success comes from the karma of helping others. Precisely because they lack practical help to others, they do not reap success. In life we also see plenty of people who read diligently and study every kind of subject, but who seem very seldom to set about doing good deeds in concrete ways. The habit of mulling over theory also creates in them an ability to reason about abstract problems in this life and the next. Of course, they do not carry that intellectual ability into the next life by way of some kind of soul or spirit consciousness. It is only the karma of the will in the previous life that creates the character for the next life. And in the next life they have a gift for abstract thought, yet feel murky and bewildered when they have to step out and make a living in trade...

It may be that a person creates the merit of being good at study by diligently teaching pupils. Because they are dedicated in teaching mathematics, literature, foreign languages and so on, in the next life they have the merit of being both intelligent and meeting a good educational environment. However, if they simply teach scientific knowledge (natural science and social science) without doing charitable work alongside it, they will only be intelligent but not very successful in practical life. This is the image of teachers and researchers who are good only at theory yet remain poor in life. If teachers, while passing on knowledge, also teach their pupils moral conduct, or do extra charitable work, then the great merit of passing on morality or of charitable work will create success for that person later. (In a later part we will return to discuss the merit of spreading morality.)

In the Jātaka the Buddha tells of the causal conditions of the elder Cūḷapanthaka. In former lives the elder was a person of much learning and broad understanding. Proud of his own intelligence, he laughed contemptuously at a brother monk of little wit, so that the other was too ashamed to go on studying the scriptures. Because of such karmic cause, in the present life (in the Buddha's time) the elder had to go through a period of dullness, unable to memorise a short verse. The elder suffered terribly over this. When the karma was exhausted, the Buddha used skilful means to awaken him, so that the elder attained the state of an arhat, his intelligence and erudition surged up powerfully, and he began to display a talent for preaching like clouds and rain, to the astonishment and great admiration of the assembly.

So an attitude of contempt for the dull also brings upon us the karmic result of lacking talent. But people are always like this: they always admire the gifted and look down on the inept. Respect for the gifted creates a good karmic result later, while contempt for the dull creates an unfavourable one. The thorny question is how we can keep respect for the talented while also keeping affection for the inept. Only so can we avoid a bad karmic result later.

Moreover, if we happen to be quick-witted and brilliant, and look around to find many people duller than ourselves, then if we look down on everyone, a base karmic result will surely come. Humility must always be guarded as carefully as one guards one's own flesh and bones. Some hypnotists carried out the following experiment:

A few people who did not know how to paint were given the suggestion by hypnotists that they were in fact superb master painters such as Picasso, Constable or Van Gogh. In the hypnotised state, those people, who had no skill in painting, suddenly painted wonderful pictures. They had identified with the famous painters and attained talent not much inferior.

Some psychics can walk on fire and raise themselves to hover in the air; some prophets know long beforehand events that will occur in the world...

From these phenomena, scientists hold that human ability is enormously great but not yet exploited. The regions of the brain that hold wonderful abilities are still at rest and not yet active. If the resting regions of the brain could be awakened, human ability would leap forward beyond expectation.

Eastern spiritual thinkers, for their part, are not unfamiliar with this question, and the solution is very clear. All of a person's extraordinary abilities are quietly hidden in the unconscious (see What Are the Five Aggregates?). Only a person who can enter meditative concentration can use the seemingly limitless abilities of this unconscious mind... As said in an earlier part, spiritual space acts in dependence on a person's subjective will. Sometimes it breaks ordinary physical laws to create marvels. A psychic can see through walls, read others' thoughts, heal illness with mental power, become invisible... All of this is due to spiritual energy, and spiritual energy is controlled by the unconscious. Whoever "holds" the unconscious is a superhuman. The path that leads to being able to use the unconscious is meditative concentration.

In speaking of the karmic result of talent, we also see that each person seems to have different innate gifts. One is good at the natural sciences such as mathematics, physics and biology, while another is only interested in languages, history, law... One learns martial arts skilfully and well, while another labours slowly and with difficulty to finish a single form. It is precisely differing karmic causes from former lives that create differing gifts for this life.

A person passionate about music has thereby created a gift for music for the next life. Let me repeat: it is not that some kind of consciousness carries the passion into the new life; it is only the karma of the will that forms the character for the next life. However, if besides the passion they also teach music to others, in the next life their musical gift is increased many times over.

A general who had won glorious feats of arms then resigned his post and retired to practise in seclusion. During his practice he always wanted to forget his extraordinary martial skill. In the next life, when young, he had a strange passion for martial arts and trained tirelessly, although his temperament was gentle like a monk's. But because of his resolve in the former life of not wanting to speak of swords and bows, even though he had the passion he lacked the conditions to be trained and become accomplished. Then gradually the passion vanished, exactly as he had wished in his previous life.

A doctor who lacks dedicated altruism and seeks only to get rich will, in the next life, still pursue the medical profession but at a lower level: as a nurse. Conversely, an ordinary nurse with a generous heart who cares wholeheartedly for patients will, in the next life, see the profession develop so that they become a good doctor.

Countless complex, flexible karmic causes make up each person's talent. But all of them develop if guided by an altruistic mind.