Karma, Intentionality, and Insight in a Buddhist Critical Phenomenology

With regard to spiritual transformation Buddhists have struggled over the relationship between liberatory insight and the operations of karma. That the liberatory process results in the transcendence of the need to attend to karma is both defended and critiqued. We see something similar in the history of critical theory and phenomenology, whereby social theorists like Adorno criticize Husserlian phenomenology for not taking seriously the socially and historically conditioned person. This split is particularly important when attempting to theorize the reproduction and transformation of social behavior. Might the resolution of this tension be located in the potential transformation of sedimented intentionality, a concept foundational to both traditions? This paper will theorize that Buddhism may provide the field of critical phenomenology with a means by which to understand a transformative mechanism for the sedimented nature of intentionality. In turn, Buddhism’s own engagement of collective karma would be augmented by the tradition of social critique within Critical Phenomenology, opening Buddhist conceptions to a robust theorization of social and historical reproduction.