Swimming in Karma

Things seemed to point me in the direction of writing about karma today.  Both a chat I had with someone today and  a comment by Peter of the Monkey mind.  It's a big topic and one I approach with some trepidation.  So please, if you find me in way over my head, call the paramedics.  I'm going there anyway.  What's that about fools, you say? Picture me with one of those little plastic swim rings we wore as kids.  Mine has a little seahorse on it and I am going to have fun!

I have heard it said that no one fully understands karma, so I start the conversation with that in mind.  One of the definitions of  karma that I am familiar with, is that it simply means action. We take an action, we think a thought.  It has consequences. We may either feel the results of our action right away, later in this life time or in subsequent lives.  And some may not  share the belief in future or past lives.  (That's another conversation!)  

The karma that takes place in this life seems somewhat straight forward .  I say some angry words to my neighbour.  She says some back to me.  Instant karma.  (Tastes as bad as most instant things I've had.)  But then the karma gets more complex and harder to trace.  My neighbour now harbours a grudge against me.  She says something unpleasant about me to a new neighbour.  Now that person regards me with suspicion.  And so my single angry sentence has carried itself into the future having more unpleasant "karmic " consequences.  I feel bad now.  My experience of my neighbourhood feels a little less friendly and on and on, in ripples that I may not even see.

The comment about karma I made to Peter was in regard to his experience of his inner critic that seemed so strong.  My understanding was that he could see that he reacted strongly to a reasonably innocent comment by someone.   And yet there it was.... I always remember my Zen teacher saying, "when you have a reaction to something or someone that seems beyond logical explanation (it could be good or bad), it is probably karmic." .... In other words when something rouses us in this way , we have probably been dealing with this "issue" (or person) for more than this lifetime.  Hence it's industrial sized strength.  It's fairly accepted that we carry around things that we have been dealing with since we were children.  We can see the strength of that.  So it is an easy leap for me to make, to feel that those things that make me really crazy, come from even farther back than this lifetime.  While I have no logical proof of this, it feels true.  One of my irrational trigger points revolves around feeling left out.  Someone will do something that brings on this feeling or no one will do anything and the feeling will arise.   The same event might not even register on your radar but for me it create anguish.   I have a friend who, if you are the least bit late, begins to think you are not coming.  She knows it's irrational and yet there it is.  It's what comes up for her.  

I can't deny those strong feelings when they are stirred , nor can I explain them fully.  Sometimes they linger for days, like someone's unwanted cigarette smoke, clinging to my coat (quick, call in the karmic dry cleaner).  Somehow in the middle of the pain, I take solace in the fact that it is something old arising, that I have no control over.  I have also heard it said that you never know when old karma will come to greet you.

And with our willingness to just be with this karma, it is my understanding that something is happening.  It is discharging for lack of a better word, burning up like a flares in the oil patch.  We spend time with the pain and it passes.  We don't run off and create new karma by saying something unpleasant (although that's a possibility too!).  And it's not on our terms as to when the pain subsides.  Of course we do our part to let it go and not add to the suffering.  We don't drown or wallow but as Peter so wonderfully described we get on with life.  We do the next thing that needs to be done.

There are so many aspects of karma.  My partner and I were talking about the good karma that has allowed us to find and participate in a life of practice.  This is truly good fortune.  To have a human life, as the Dalai Lama points out in his poem, "This Precious Human Life,"  this too is good fortune.  .... an opportunity to study the Dharma and work with our karma.  (Please ignore the fact that this rhymes.  We are not going there. I may be guilty of many things but, No bad Zen poetry here.)

And finally just a comment from Uchiyama's book called "Opening the Hand of Thought" that I am reading these days.  He is talking about choice and how he chose in this life time to be a monk.  Even though it is my choice, he asks, where does that choice come from?  What makes one of us become a murderer,  another a human rights advocate, someone else a doctor.  Is that our karma playing itself out??  And our thoughts.  I always find this a scary one... that even what we think somehow gets accounted for in the karmic scheme of things.  Nothing is without consequence, which is the good news and the bad news all rolled into one!

Are Your Thoughts Real?

In the final scene of the movie "I Heart Huckabees"  one character is talking about a protest meeting and says, "Bring your own chains."  And the  protagonist  quips,  "We always do."  I love that line and I was thinking about it this morning in reference to "thinking".

Yesterday I became aware of the  chain like quality of  my thoughts.  I was all tangled up in those chains and if you'd chucked me off the short end of the pier that would have been the end of me.  In Buddhist terms, it isn't the thinking that is the problem, it's our attachment to our thoughts.  The fact that we believe them. (One of my favourite bumper stickers is "Don't believe everything you think".  When I told my Zen teacher, she replied, " it should be don't believe anything you think")  But I digress.  Such is the nature of thinking, following one thought after another like an unruly puppy.

My thoughts, your thoughts, any thoughts they are only troubling when somehow we buy into them, believe them, make them real and substantial.  I found this a bit hard to get at first because we are so intimate with our thoughts.  And we tend to think the same general thoughts over and over.  How can they not be real?  And in western culture our thoughts are considered as the basis for our being.  "I think, therefore I am."

And we do give substance to our thoughts.  They make us feel afraid, angry.  We might think we are bad because we have certain thoughts.  We give all kinds of power to our thoughts.  In watching some habitual and unpleasant thoughts yesterday I thought about the issue of addiction that I had been contemplating earlier.  I could see how I was drawn to these particular unwholesome thoughts in a very strong way.  .... Old long standing thoughts brought about by some family interactions ....  I could see how the thoughts were based on assumptions and how much I wanted to continue to think in the same, slightly self righteous way.    There was a little soap opera going on in my head.  Of course I was the star in the white hat and others where wearing hats of slightly dimmer shades.  These thoughts were agitating, yet I was drawn to them.  When I kicked those bums out, they kept coming back to do an encore.  So I could see what someone with an addiction must grapple with, the tenacity of the siren's call.  I was just trying to say no thanks to a thought, not a line of coke or a smoky glass of whiskey.

Last night I was reading Uchiyama's "Opening the Hand of Thought" and he talked about thoughts as "secretions".  That seemed a bit creepy.  Hmmm, secretions, it has a bodily fluid, ear waxy kind of ring to it.  I think his point was that thoughts just come out of our mind, the way things like sweat come out of our pores.  We don't have a lot of control over them, they are inevitable, everyone has them.  They are essential and helpful in their proper place.  I always love the quote, "the mind makes a good servant but not a very good master."  which I believe belongs to RM Jiyu Kennett, the founder of the Soto Zen Order of Buddhist Contemplatives at Shasta Abbey.

And while sometimes we may think it is the nature of our thoughts that is the problem, really it is our relationship with our thoughts that really matters.  ....To touch them lightly and let them go, as you might a tiny delicate moth that finds its way in through the open window.

Grumbling Mind Meets Grateful Mind

Today I got to look at grumbling mind.  It was not big grumbling, but more a series of little grumbles .... the barking dog, the truck parked across the driveway from the house next door, the cat scratching the couch again and yada yada yada ....

 And by the time I headed out to do the too many errands in too little time I was grumpy for no good reason.  I  added "my grumpiness"  to the list of  what was wrong and then went Bingo! "what IS wrong with this picture?"  As kids we used to hear "it's all in the way you hold your mouth." And as I told my partner this he said maybe it should be "it's all in the way you hold your mind."

As we drove to pick up a cake and birthday gift for my mother on a fine day, in a fine city, where we are both well and want for nothing,  I remembered that in the "Awakening Joy" course  I took last year, Jane Baraz talked about the gratitude journal she keeps.  "I should do that." I said.  It would orient me to look at the good things in my life, rather than the habitual tendency to face in the direction of the small irritations.  It would be a helpful way to build wholesome mind habits rather than just slop into lazy complaining mind.  

There has been lots written about gratitude lately.  Brain researcher and Buddhist practitioner, Rick Hanson (from wisebrain.org) talks about the fact that the mind is inclined to give more attention to the negative .... This apparently is based on our origins as hairless little creatures out on the savannas where we needed to sit up and pay attention to the negative to survive.  The blissful were weeded out in the evolutionary process.  For this reason it takes a concerted turning of the mind toward gratitude to encourage a positive mental outlook.  We need to "grasp our will" as my friend the Zen monk calls it and look up, instead of down.  In Kosho Uchiyama's book that I'm reading called  "Opening the Hand Of Thought" he says, "You should always bear in mind that all sentient beings are suffering. Everyone is fretting about something inside their head.  That is why we practice."  And so as part of this practice I will choose to cultivate a little patch of gratitude.  I have the seeds, right here.  All I need to do is scratch a little place for them in the mental terrain, add a little water and watch for something to sprout.  I can taste the fresh flavour of gratitude already.  What are you grateful for today?