Throwing Out The Emotional Barometer

36"x36"  Mixed media " Across The See"

It's always interesting to me what comes up on my radar for examination.  Last week after a couple of social interactions I became aware of the subtle (or not so subtle) measuring that was going on inside me.  What was this strange barometer thing constantly scanning the internal air pressure?  This interaction left me feeling good, that one made me feel slightly unsettled. And then I could see how these feelings lingered and flavoured the the day.  At the end of the week I could see how truly unpleasant all this unconscious measuring really was, how the sheer movement of the scales made me feel a bit internally seasick.

Rather than just being with whatever was I was using my experience in the world to determine something, using my emotional life as some sort of guiding compass. This underground current that I suspect stirs in all of us wants to weigh and measure and tot up a score.  How am I doing?  We may only notice the measuring by the feeling it leaves.  It goes on at Olympic speed, mostly under the radar.

24"x24" mixed media "Travel Plans"

If I don't notice the process, then I use the feelings generated to navigate my world by.  Hmmm, seems a pretty shaky basis to steer the old ship by.  At a deeper level if I want to simplify it, I want life to make me feel good.  I believe somehow that my internal state is determined by the outer world  and what goes on there. I keep track of how that's all going with my barometer.  Sheesh, I'm tired just thinking about the craziness of my internal life! But weighing and measuring tools in the slippery hands of the ego are never a good thing.  Given the Western mind's relationship with itself and the nature of scales I am never going to come out pounds ahead.  And to digress, is this crazy world a good place to get our sanity from?

 In his book "The Tibetan Yogas of Dream And Sleep" Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche tells us that these emotional reactions I'm thinking about arise from "karmic traces". He says, "All moods, thoughts, emotions, mental images, perceptions, instinctive reactions are governed by the workings of karma" (karma simply meaning for every action there is a reaction).  Act with anger once, the seeds of karma for future anger are sown.  And ditto for everything else.

His explanation offers me information on where these "emotional" responses of mine come from, feelings that feel so puzzling sometimes. Their arising is based in past action and contains no conscious intention for how I might want to live my current or future life.  In a way, if I don't consider this I am held hostage by my past (both from this life and past ones, if you care to see it that way).

So as the week wound down I realized that it was unlikely that I could cart this barometer off to a thrift store and get rid of it.  But what I could do was see it for what it was, a very unreliable measuring tool that I could simply see and choose not to use as a barometer. Maybe it's more like a laugh meter or an alarm button or a kitchen timer reminding me to wake up?  How about you?  What's in your internal measuring chest?

Working With Body Tension & Karmic Stuff

This is a close up shot of a piece I am slowly working on (perhaps I am inspired to slowness by the slugs that have all but decimated our garden).  It seems there are never enough hours in the day for both gardening and artwork, but I've said that before, haven't I?  I am not whining, really.  I promise.  Although occasionally I do have a little wine.

But I must confess I always turn a little green when I see the concerted efforts of those working away in their studios everyday.  Ah... (she gives a wistful sigh which goes well with her green complexion). An osteopath told me sighing is good for releasing tension.  Try it.

But I have made my choices about how to spend my time.  I was talking about "choices" in terms of money with a friend the other day, but it is the same for time.  If we attempt to live with awareness we choose where we spend our time and our $$.  There is only so much of both to go around.  I keep telling myself this is the year of the house and next year I will have more art time.  I may be deluded, time will confirm or make a fool of me.  How do you deal with this?

But there is always lots of Dharma up on the radar, no matter what I do, even if I'm not here writing about it.  I have been sitting twice a day in preparation for a week long retreat in August.  I'm in training, like a marathon runner (well maybe a slightly slacker marathon runner, the bald guy at the back of the pack).  My body needs this extra sitting, my mind needs this.

As I sit a little longer and more often I have been noticing all the subtle ways and places I hold tension and how good it feels to find those spots and let them go.  I am seeing strongly, how the mind doesn't settle with ease if there is no ease in the body, how the body tenses when the mind starts reciting the list of things to do.  I think this can't be repeated too often. The mind/ body, which practice shows us, are really a single unit, has somehow in our modern world been divided  into two separate things (did I miss a divorce in People magazine?). Where did this separation come from?  "I think therefore I am?"  Did this leave the body out of the equation of being?

This relaxing of the body has become a big part of my sitting.  I have been doing a form of qi gong meditation for part of the time when I sit, which is really just concentrating or focusing on the hara (the area just below the navel).  In doing this I am reminded so much of how we don't make anything happen.  We focus and then when the qi or energy becomes strong enough it moves.  WE are not doing.  We are simply being.

Another part of my practice, as always, involves chipping away at my "karmic" or habitual stuff, the stuff we come here with, the personal stuff that we each have.  This is such an important part of practice for me, to work with your personal stuff in a way that helps loosen it and if we're lucky release.  Sometimes we have to go about this in different ways.  And mostly it is hard even to see our own patterns and foibles; easy to see that of others. And the karmic stuff of others is their business, not ours.  But that's another topic entirely.

I have been chipping away at  my mountain of stuff (can I sell this stuff anywhere, maybe on ebay?)  I have got the loader and the backhoe out and I am surveying "my stuff" from a totally different angle, using some Shamanic journeying, (okay so no bulldozers were involved).  It's the same stuff (sigh), just seeing it from a different angle.  It lends new perspectives and new tools for the chipping away process.  It is this chipping away and releasing of our karmic patterns that will ultimately help us to see more clearly and release us from suffering.

Many monks when they have their "kenshos" or awakening experiences have past life rememberings.  Shamanic journeying can help us relate to some of what is unseen in a similar way.  Although again we must be careful not to "want" too much, or delude ourselves.  As always on the path, we must proceed with caution and attend to what niggles.

And so I have been working away at those inclinations to retreat, working with fear, approaching it in different ways (like training a wild animal?), by doing some body work, by being willing to see what catches me, in a non judgmental way.  I am learning to be comfortable in my own skin.  In my Shamanic work it has been expressed as "hiding" which is just another way to say we feel uncomfortable exposing and being who we are.  While some might see this as navel gazing, I believe it is an essential part of the inner journey.  I don't think we can blast through it all by our will and simply extended sitting.  What are your practices for working with your "personal" stuff?  And have you had any success selling it on ebay?

Dharma Porridge, Ingredients: Hurt, Rejection & Self Doubt

Yesterday I arrived home after an all day sit at the intensely beautiful Stowel Lake Farm to find a somewhat unpleasant phone message, at least one I didn't appreciate. I won't go into the details but it revolved around a request to hang some of my work. After several trips and some preparation on my part, the person had changed their mind. Now what came up very quickly was not the work I'd done or the time I'd put in to prepare the pieces but the instant arising of the feelings of rejection.

If you write or display art, you are familiar with some level of rejection but sometimes it's the particular circumstances that bring it up more strongly. In this case, having been here, done this before, I wanted to try another way than feeling angry, rejected, and spiraling down the rabbit hole of doubting my own competence (Alice, are you there?).

Yes those things arose (and what is anger, but hurt?) I know this one well. And so while these things arose and I squirmed and looked for a cookie, a cup of coffee, something to ease the sting, I did stay with the sticky, heavy sense, just hanging out with it. But I did another thing. I asked myself a couple of questions. Why do I feel this way? What would I be like if I didn't feel hurt?

The answers were interesting, helpful and strangely comforting. I answered that if I felt confident about myself and my work, I would not take this change of heart in the person as a personal affront. I would simply see it as her changing her mind (for some reasons that I could actually agree with). I could see this as a simple truth, like if you catch your jacket on a nail and it tears. You might not be happy but you see what happened. Humans being slightly more complicated than nails, I can never really know all the reasons.

What this reminded me of was the old Dharma lesson, that if we pin our feelings, our responses, our state of mind, our self worth, our lives on outside circumstances, we will be blown about like a dandelion seed head. There will always be some little breeze pushing us around. I was reminded (not in an ego sort of way) but in a "be a pillar" sort of way, to have confidence, to not throw myself into a vat of doubt, because someone had simply changed their mind. I know this spinning off into doubt intimately, I own a very large loom, built specifically for this purpose. In fact if I didn't know better, I'd think I invented this particular loom (rhymes with doom and gloom).

It was a wonderful Dharma lesson and I must say I moved in and out of darkness for the evening, this being a long standing habitual response for me; me, oh lover of approval. But this morning I could pick up my art work, have a chat about why it didn't work for the recipient and give her a hug before I left. (She has her own set of troubles). It felt good and it was all over. No karmic residue, no dark cloud following me around. And this is truly why I practice the Dharma. So I can live a slightly saner life, with a little less suffering.

One Thing Doesn't Stand Against Another

I have been painting, not on canvas, not on cradled panels, no paper involved. No Buddhas, no abstract marks, just swaths of green paint, the colour of Martha Stewart's fancy chicken eggs. Painting walls, struggling with the application of eco friendly paint that doesn't quite cover like that old toxic stuff. But it's done now, the zendo painted, from it's deep purply brown that stole light from the room, to a gentle green that calls the forest in at the windows.

I like the feeling of small accomplishments, a room painted, a meal prepared for visiting friends, a feeling somehow of making this place home, cleaning, tidying, bringing order, becoming the caretakers and grateful dwellers of this place.

We have been working to get the inside things done in the hope that the sun will soon shine and call us out to spend whole days in the great outdoors, the dream of pale sun deprived northerners before summer arrives. We burned that last of some old branches, paying attention to the burn ban that took effect today even though the ground still sucks at your boots at the far end of the pond. Other branches will get composted in piles in the woods. Always honest work to do in the country, work that employs muscles and organs and quiets the mind. An opportunity to hear the towhees screech, see an eagle fly overhead, watch a deer loaf in the meadow.

And while all the work and pretty making is fine, it is important to know, I remind myself, that I can never really control life, by creating a facade of order. I can never stop the movement of the shifting and changing nature of life by trying to arrange things in ways that please me. Trees fall, roofs leak, muscles get pulled. And yet this doesn't negate me working to create beauty or enjoying the pleasing look of a pile of brush removed from a grassy knoll. One thing does not stand against the other. In fact knowing that things will change, that things can turn in ways that may not please me, helps me when the inevitable happens. I am not so surprised. I may still be rattled, but I don't ask, why me, why now?

I am reading a wonderful little book on karma called "Kamma and the End of Kamma" (kamma is the Pali for the Sanskrit, karma) by Ajahn Sucitto. Here's a nice little quote from the book as I head off to read some more of it. I am filling it with underlines and undoubtedly I will share more wise bits as the days go on: "... Because I can't hold onto what I want and can't get away from what I don't want, the underlying mood of self is restless and unfulfilled. I keep trying to find the good state... but this one isn't quite it. Thus there is dis-ease. Liberation from this dis-ease and stress is thus synonymous with Awakening out of the dissatisfied self."

Harvest Time

Here's a little shot of some of the work I did at The Altered Image workshop I took a couple of weeks ago. When I wrote the initial post about the workshop I talked about how much I liked the instructor's (Tony Bounsall) suggestion that we look on our work as creative compost and then as a lover of metaphor I stretched this to include all of our life's material as creative compost.

Our wonderful blogging friend 108 Zen Books ran with the compost analogy in a fun series of 5 posts which you should definitely add to your life/garden manual. A couple of days ago I noticed the weather in the garden take a distinct turn in the direction of fall, the air cooled, the sun's intensity waned even though it remained bright. The quality of the light changed in a way I can't quite pinpoint and a feeling of quiet and order settled over everything. Clouds roll around forming, disintegrating and reforming, the weather changes a myriad times each day. The manic intense energy of summer has headed off to another hemisphere.

I have been doing some seed saving: kale, parsley, mustard greens, foxglove, lettuce, onion, nasturtium, cilantro, radish. And this morning I decided it was time to remove the lavender of it's dried stalks. As I rubbed the tiny flower heads off onto a piece of newsprint, it's intoxicating scent filled the air and I thought "harvest". We have been talking about compost in terms of our practice, our training, living our lives, whatever you choose to call it. How about the harvest? Where does that figure into the picture.

We could talk about karma and that we harvest what we sow. Trite perhaps but seemlngly true enough. It is like the story that the grandfather tells the small child about the 2 wolves that live inside us, the angry one and the kind one. When the child asks which one will win, the wise grandfather reminds her that it is the one we feed that grows. So it is with harvest, I think. The seeds we nurture and cultivate, watering and tending, giving them our attention, those are the seeds that will grow in our hearts. The choice is always ours. It is easy to fall back into the dark tangled weed patch of unconscious habit but at some point we stumble out, hat askew, morning glory twined around our left ear. You get the picture. Such is the gardener's life.

When I think of harvest I am reminded of something my Zen teacher used to say to me when I told a story of where I was astonished that something had gone so well . She would say, " those are the fruits of your training." And so I think that about the harvest, that if we are diligent and train and work with our "stuff" in earnest then gradually, often without notice, change comes about. Slowly, surely, we advance in the direction of the little rows of compassion and , the patch of letting go and a basket full of all acceptance. This is the work of a life time, many lifetimes, if you will. If we can remember that this is the most important work we will do in our lives, then there will be something to harvest. And being human, of course sometimes we forget, get blown over in a ferocious storm and fall into the thistle patch, but that's okay. We just get back up, pick out the prickles and gather up the hoe again.

All this harvest talk makes me think of ripe tomatoes and fat squash but it also make me think of a line from Daishin Morgan's little book "Buddha Recognizes Buddha". He says "training and enlightenment are not separate". And so the spiritual garden is like this: we are always planting and weeding and watering and harvesting. It's all going on at the same time. And all the while if we are good organic gardeners we keep adding to the compost heap, because it will feed the garden and make our harvest rich and strong and luscious. Hey, is that a hay seed I see behind your ear?

Buddha's Bible Stories

Words of the Buddha

Acrylic on Paper mounted on matte board

8"x8" black matte, image size 3.75"x4.5"

$25 including shipping in North America

I was completely thrown off my game (whatever game it was I was playing) by my mother today.  So instead of speaking to the little Buddha picture I have here I will share the Dharma and Karma in my evening conversation with my mother.  And of course the Buddha is never far away.  My mother who is 94 is nearing the end of her life.  And not quite quick enough for her.  We have made our peace my mother and I.  And this really has all come about as a result of a lot of difficult spiritual work I have done around our relationship and her willingness to talk openly about her impending death.

Now tonight my mother drops a little bit of burning coal on the evening phone chat.  A number of years ago she gave her mother's bible to a family member who was supposedly marrying into a Jewish family.  That marriage didn't happen and my mother said to me tonight that there is only one thing she needs to do before she dies.... And that is get her mother's bible back and give it to me or my daughter.

Now perhaps this sounds simple.  And perhaps it is.  But there are layers of implication in it.  And my mother is asking for my opinion,  probably even my approval...  And yet I realize the need to tread carefully here.  I need to be honest.  I need to say that I see the potential for hard feelings.  I see the potential for this small action to explode in a spray of shrapnel that will leave me picking sharp bits out of my flesh for a long time to come.  I need to acknowledge how much I don't know and can never know about how people will react.  I acknowledge that it could all be projection and imagining on my part. 

 And I need to say that everyone must decide what they have to do from a place deep inside them.  Who am I to tell someone what to do?  And yet I feel it is appropriate to remind my mother to look deep inside for the answer, to make sure no retaliation is involved.  We chat about all these things several times and how sometimes we humans can trick ourselves and have a hard time looking at our own unflattering motivation sometime.  An action taken from a place of spite is always a mistake.  I feel the need to say this loud and clear.  I am not good with "well mom if that's what you need to do, go for it."  I also know it is not up to me to discourage her from doing the thing that she says will allow her to die in peace.

I also can share the wise counsel I have received from my friend the Buddhist monk on other occasions; that we need to decide what to do from our heart of hearts and don't base it on results.  We can't know what will be the outcome, nor should we base our decisions on imagined outcomes.  Our heart leads the way.  And after that it is out of our hands.  We do the best we can, as carefully as we can.  I remind her that choices that come from the heart may not always seem logical and that reason might not explain what our heart decides.

All that being said I worry that her choice will put me in an awkward position and create hard feelings toward me by the person loosing the bible.  I am not particularly sentimental about things and am surprised (but understand in a strange way) my mother's seemingly sudden pang of sentimentality over this bible, one of the few things she had that belonged to her mother who died when she was just 3 years old.

There is a strangely, weirdly awkward karmic flavour to it all.  I have resented my mother for a lot of my life for putting me in awkward positions, for creating drama and conflict  and here she is doing something with this potential  as her dying wish.  And there is a feeling through recent conversations we have had that there is a deep karmic connection between my mother and I and that somehow my mother wants to honour this by giving me the bible.  At some level I sense this.  I know there is a karmic lesson here for me to negotiate all this with kindness and without anger and resentment, and perhaps with a little grace.  Wish me luck.

What Are You Packing For Your Final Trip?

This morning as I sat in meditation these words popped up on my little mind screen: "All we take with us when we die is our good and bad karma."  As a spiritual detective I started looking around for the door that these thoughts wandered in through.  What rippled through my experience and mind to produce this little shard of Dharma?  (It is not my original thought, but a quote from somewhere. I'm not sure where).  I could see a couple of open doors that offered a way in for this slightly cautionary quote.  Following on the heels of this thought were the last words of the Buddha, which go something like:  "Work out your future with diligence."  (Now if someone would close the door, it's getting kind of crowded in here with all these thoughts busting in.)

Last night I heard of the sudden death of a woman in her 40's who had recently quit work at my mother's care home.  There had been some disharmony between her and others at the facility so she decided to leave.  A week after she'd left to enjoy  a summer break, her life here in this human realm was over.  Working in her garden, seeming pretty vibrant and alive, and poof that's it, end of this human life.  So we never know.  Instead of working myself into a fear lather (that's from the spiritual sodium laurel sulphate in my mind) when I heard this story it reminded me that every moment counts (there's 2 sides to this little karmic coin).  While we should live with gusto and passion, we also need to live with care and attention to the small choices we make in our lives.  On the karmic dance card, every step counts.  This is not meant to hang over our head in a heavy and gloomy way, it is simply a reflection of the truth, of how things really are.

Over the last couple of days I have also been chewing on some family affairs that have left me with a lingering feeling of "that's not fair".  You know those jags the little self gets on .... and has a hard time letting go of?  Rottweiler mind  just won't let go.   For starters it's most often about "what is not working for me".  This is the modus operandi of the little self.  In this case it had to do with some money and I won't go into it.    For starters it makes me feel greedy that it even comes up so  strongly for me.  But that's another rabbit hole.  

I could see that little rottweiler mind kept working that bone during the day and  that I couldn't really will it to go away.  Those thoughts kept popping up like little gophers on the landscape (remember that wack a mole game?).  I kept wacking those darn moles with the present moment but they kept popping up.  And as I know, time passes and eventually the little mole storm settles down and the horizon is quite clear of furry, marauding thoughts.  The rotweiller is quiet and all is clear on the western front.  

So when I was reminded this morning that all we take with us is our good and bad karma, it offered me some perspective.  The money is not important.  It is much more important to concern myself with how I conduct myself in this matter.  Do I act on my irritation?  Do I let my irritation and greed; my desire, cloud my behaviour and interaction with others?  This doesn't mean I won't say what seems appropriate (we are not zen doormats) but I must remember not to speak or act out of that place of irritation and desire.  I can contemplate my options and say what I feels need to be said and move on.

So in that way I am preparing my suitcase for my final journey, one that can come at any time.  We never know the time or circumstances of our death.  The Dalai Lama says he spends time every day preparing for his death.  So it's kind of like that emergency preparedness pack they keep encouraging us to have stored in our homes.  We need to be constantly checking the spiritual luggage and working to fill it with the appropriate actions and thoughts, the ones that will carry us into our next lives.  So there you have it I am thinking about what's in my spiritual valise, what I might add and what I need to take out and leave behind.  May you pack well and may both the packing and the journey be fruitful.

The Work of the Heart

In the most recent issue of Shambhala Sun, Norman Fischer, in a piece called "Applied Dharma", talks about using Buddhist principles in mediation, the law and health care.  When writing about mediation, Fischer says, "One of ... the  key concepts is the notion that no conflict is about what it seems to be about.  Impasses over money or property are really about deeper concerns that usually do not surface.  Any solution that does not address these deeper concerns won't really hold."

When I read this I was reminded how I have learned this in my own life.  As I started to look a little more deeply at what was going on, I could often see that what I was citing on the surface as the problem, was only a thin skin covering a deeper, more painful issue of the "little self" or ego.  And if I looked carefully enough I could see a common thread joining the things that bothered me.  The relationship between neighbours that took all the parking spaces on the street, my daughter not helping around the house and my mother needing me to run just one more errand for her.  

I could see it wasn't about the specific issues; because if a neighbour I liked, took my parking space I didn't feel irritated.  If my friend the Buddhist monk asked me to run another errand for her, I didn't feel chagrined.  Logic was telling me that something else was going on.  I needed to look more deeply.  What about these situations drove me a little crazy?  Why couldn't I just take them in my stride, say no big deal and carry on.  The common thread which I unravelled was that I (my little self), felt unconsidered.  When I saw this dangling thread I knew it was attached to a very old piece of karma.  It pushed a button so deep and tender that I could feel the lifetimes of angst behind it.

We all have different buttons and threads, we are a veritable wardrobe of tender wounds and karmic baggage.  I remember my teacher saying if the feelings you are experiencing seem out of proportion to the event, chances are that it's karmic.  So when Fischer says, it's not about the money or the property, there are several levels to explore, both the deeper feelings that we keep covered up and our own "issues" that keep coming up to greet us until we work on them.

And that is what I learned from watching myself, seeing the pain I felt and the pain I could cause for others if I was not careful.  I needed to ante up and look more deeply at what was going on and deal with that issue or it would come back again and again.  So it is never about the parking place, or the money or the property.  Are we willing to look?  Are we willing to do the hard work that needs to be done?  To hang out with the irrational, with our anger, our suffering until it calms and settles and we can figure out what is the good thing to do.  Any solution that doesn't come from that place is merely a band aid, a home handy man's repair job.  In time it will simply fail to do the job.   It is the deeper exploration of "what is really going on here"  that will help us do the work of the heart.

We Are Artists Of Our Own Lives

I woke up this morning with a line in my head that goes, "Sometimes I have breakfast with Mara and I use a long spoon."  I love this line.  It conjures this fabulous picture in my mind of a large bowl and the diner with an extremely long handled spoon gingerly dipping it, while suspiciously eyeing  Mara (the emanation of darkness and temptress of the passions who tested Buddha on the night of his enlightenment) from across the bowl.  The quote belongs to RM Jiyu Kennett, founder of the Soto Zen Order of Buddhist Contemplatives.

What I understand of this quote is that sometimes old karma arises and we have senses or feelings that come to us that leave us scratching our head.  What's that all about, where did that come from. .... especially  if you wake up with some unexplainable feelings that linger, as in the breakfast with Mara scenario.  The practice is of course not to indulge these feelings, nor suppress them. ... easier said than done, but that is the razor's edge we aim for.

One of the interesting things I have heard about karma is that once you stop creating new karma, (by our unskillful actions) old karma can then come up to be cleansed.  As The Humble Yogini mentioned yesterday in a comment on my post,  "Cracked Pots, Mustard Seeds And Suffering", that is one of our functions here on this earthly realm, to cleanse karma.  If you find that a bit far fetched you can always do what my teacher suggests, and put it on the back burner for now.

This morning Mara visited me more as a physical sensation, a slightly churning stomach.  And as I resisted the urge to go with the old "I'm sick" story I could feel the turning.  I could feel strangely cheerful and yet not completely physically well.  I could see the fruits of my training, as it is sometimes called.  I have been a glass half empty kinda gal for most of my life.  My understanding is that's partly karmic package and partly the inclination for all human beings according to brain researcher, Rick Hanson of Wisebrain.org.  But this morning I could see the turning, a feeling that I don't have to do things this way any more.  I can choose to look up instead of down.  It was a blood and bones sensing, not just an understanding it in my head kind of thing.  

And then in this optimistic (egads, Batman!) kind of way I could see some of the other fruits of my training laid out before me like a little tropical feast: my improved relationship with my mother, my partner and daughter, from a willingness to do the necessary work.  A lot of contemplation and courage to say the hard thing  (always in the most helpful way possible and not coming from anger) went into this.  I could see how working with anger (I talk about this in my post "the doorway in") has changed how I relate to the world in general.  And the practice of letting go has helped me see how much of what we cling to is, in the grand scheme, not particularly important.  And the work is on going; as someone once pointed out that's why they call it practice.  We are continually working away on it, refining our lives, like cooks, like alchemists, like artists of our own lives.

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!