What are the five natural laws in Buddhism?
I came across this concept while researching equanimity meditation, which helps us achieve a balance of mind that’s completely free from reactivity.
It does so by making us visualize different people, such as a neutral person, a friend, and an enemy. Then, it instructs us to contemplate their struggles or accomplishments in the context of karmic actions.
As a result, we shift from judgment to awareness; we see that a person’s current state arises in dependence on prior conditions. We also become aware that any particular ‘up’ or ‘down’ isn’t the whole picture in itself, it’s just a transitory phenomenon — it’s not who that person really is.
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I wanted to find out how much of that realization is dependent on the teaching about karma. To me, the focus on karma seemed a bit limited because other causes and conditions outside of our control can affect what we do and who we become.
That’s when I came across a Free Buddhist Audio talk, which mentions the five natural laws in Buddhism, also known as niyama. And the most important takeaway for me was that karma is only one of them. Here’s an excerpt from the article “Understanding the Law of Karma” with more details on this subject:
Buddhism teaches that all things, both material and immaterial, are entirely subject to the direction of causes and are interdependent. This natural course of things is called in common terms “the law of nature,” and in the Pali language niyama, literally meaning “certainty” or “fixed way,” referring to the fact that specific determinants inevitably lead to corresponding results.
The laws of nature, although uniformly based on the principle of causal dependence, can nevertheless be sorted into different modes of relationship. The Buddhist [commentarial tradition] describes five categories of natural law, or niyama. They are:
1. Utuniyama: the natural law pertaining to physical objects and changes in the natural environment, such as the weather; the way flowers bloom in the day and fold up at night; the way soil, water and nutrients help a tree to grow; and the way things disintegrate and decompose. This perspective emphasizes the changes brought about by heat or temperature.
2. Bijaniyama: the natural law pertaining to heredity, which is best described in the adage, “as the seed, so the fruit.”
3. Cittaniyama: the natural law pertaining to the workings of the mind, the process of cognition of sense objects and the mental reactions to them.
4. Karmaniyama: the natural law pertaining to human behavior, the process of the generation of action and its results. In essence, this is summarized in the words, “good deeds bring good results, bad deeds bring bad results.”
5. Dhammaniyama: the natural law governing the relationship and interdependence of all things: the way all things arise, exist and then cease. All conditions are subject to change, are in a state of affliction and are not self: this is the Norm.
The first four niyama are contained within, or based on, the fifth one, Dhammaniyama, the Law of Dhamma, or the Law of Nature. It may be questioned why Dhammaniyama, being as it were the totality, is also included within the subdivisions. This is because this fourfold categorization does not cover the entire extent of Dhammaniyama.
More concise examples are also mentioned in this Reddit post:
- The rains come in the right season (utu-niyāma);
- If you plant rice seed, you get rice plants (bīja-niyāma);
- Experience arises in dependence on sense object, sense faculty and a cognitive process (citta-niyāma)
- The consequences of actions are inescapable (karma-niyāma)
- Miracles occur at the birth of a Buddha (dhamma-niyāma)
It has also been noted that although “this fivefold niyama framework sounds really nice it is not something found in [early Buddhist texts] and should not be attributed to the Buddha but considered a later development [within the Buddhist commentarial tradition].”
Complement with “What the Buddha Taught” by Walpola Rahula.
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Editor’s note: This article was updated with links to equanimity meditation and other related articles.
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