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“Buddhist teachings refer to our personalities as karma. Modern psychology seems to agree with Buddhist doctrine in viewing personality as the sum total of past experience. Psychologists limit their study, however, to traits stemming from inherited characteristics, prenatal experience, and life experience. Buddhism goes a step further and includes all experience — over countless eons from the beginningless past. Of course, we’re not conscious of all these experiences. The events we can call to mind are a minute fraction of the total. Nevertheless, all of those experiences have come together now to form a single personality that lives and acts, every minute of the day.” — Kōun Yamada
Buddhist teachings refer to our personalities as karma. Modern psychology seems to agree with Buddhist doctrine in viewing personality as the sum total of past experience. Psychologists limit their study, however, to traits stemming from inherited characteristics, prenatal experience, and life experience. Buddhism goes a step further and includes all experience — over countless eons from the beginningless past. Of course, we’re not conscious of all these experiences. The events we can call to mind are a minute fraction of the total. Nevertheless, all of those experiences have come together now to form a single personality that lives and acts, every minute of the day.