Alana's Dharma Blog

AD: OK, another qq from Eric — are you manifesting the specific punishment? If so how, how do you control someone else to poison you because you previously poisoned someone?

MN: You don’t. it’s like a job opening. it doesn’t even have to necessarily be that specific person coming back to poison you. If you have a karmic opening for “being poisoned” then whoever can fulfill that job (to fulfill their own karma) can do it. But you know you’ve paid for your karma (poisoning someone else) once you’ve been poisoned, whether you actively realize it or not (because we can’t access the past life info, although it all still exists in our minds).

AD: So it is like dating — the counter party finds you/ you them, you are comparable so you act out the specific karma each of you has together even if it wasn’t created together?

MN: Yeah, sometimes it is about characteristic/symptom matching, sometimes it is person specific (like the Buddha and Yasodhara, or like vowing to exact revenge on YOU AND YOUR LOVED ONES). It really is like hiring for a job – sometimes you want a specific person, sometimes it’s whoever best meets those qualifications and is available.

AD: Eric seems to be clearing up on this: He said ” in order for karma to clear the conditions for clearing up need to be met, hence why it isn’t necessarily immediate. So for someone to be in an abusive relationship they have to have an open job post for abuser. It is not that everyone they date will be abusive, but that if an abuser comes along they can date them and then the karma payback can be filled.”

Ok, that is totally fair. I will try to consider ways/times/ evidence that it does work. I also agree that I have a view, particular to the detailed mechanics, that is coloring my perception. Since obviously, I believe in karma. I understand there is cause and effect, I get the broad-brush strokes. My own actions and behaviors — the strictness of my personality, my moral boundaries, and my sense of guilt and deep sensitivity to my own wrongdoings, make my belief in consequence pretty obvious.

MN: Yes! focus on the perspective of the person who commits the crime and remembers the karmic debt – not so much from the “all-knowing punisher” perspective – and it may make more sense.

Think about the job description concept: Whatever meets the requirement; things in this world can be molded and shaped more than we realize. “Magic” is just whatever exists but we just don’t know about. We believe too much in the tangible four elemental world that it is difficult for us to imagine how the intangibles work.

AD: I guess, at the end of the day, I know it sounds childish, my reservation is that I don’t want the world to work this way, it feels vengeful and unforgiving. It scares me that I am subject.

But then I guess this whole practice is about realizing the world doesn’t work the way I want it to, that is not what governs.

AD: Eric wants to ask: what is the relationship between paying off your karma and becoming enlightened? My answer to him btw was no necessary relationship: paying off karma is about circumstances in future rebirth. Becoming enlightened is about changing your views that obstruct you to the truth of this world. In so far as the karmic cycle is the suffering that gets you to put down the world it is related, but simply settling all your karmic debts to zero doesn’t equate to enlightenment. But that’s my guess anyway.

Anyway, Eric’s take is that knowing you need to pay your karmic debts is a good thing. Having the opportunity to do so is as well, otherwise we get crushing guilt aka interest.

Oddly I clearly agree with him in my actions/ behavior, but still don’t like such a dog eat dog world.

In other words, you are right and it is definitely my view blinding me/ creating a mental protest.

MN: There is no way to live in this world without committing karma. Every deed has its consequences. The karma we choose to commit depends on our views. We often choose to repeatedly commit the same karma because our views don’t change. Or we get punished and realize we don’t want to do that karma anymore, so we go and do the opposite instead (which is switching from permanent left to permanent right) – either way, karma doesn’t stop. We pay the debts, but incur more than we can immediately pay for (so it piles up and extends into future rebirths).

Becoming enlightened is about realizing the cause of the karma is within us – greed at the sotapana level, anger and lust at the sakadagami and anagami level, and ignorance at the arahant level. Once you eliminate greed, you will no longer go to hell because a result of the sakyaditthi (understanding self-view…that the world is how it is, not how YOU see it), you will consequently understand the relationship between cause and effect, and that intention is at the heart of karma.

It isn’t that your old karma is paid off, but going forward, you won’t be committing the same kind of heavy karma anymore (at whatever enlightenment level you’re at, anyway). Becoming enlightened is a result of karma. You must have built up the qualifications in order to be able to attain enlightenment. In a sense, you must have paid off relevant karma in order to become enlightened. Like the monk Lokatissa had to have paid off enough of the bad karma (that he committed towards an arahant in a past life) in order to become an arahant himself – although the residue of that bad karma made it so he still never had a full meal, even as an arahant.

Do you have to pay for all karma in order to become an arahant? I think not. judging from Lokatissa, from Upalavana who was an arahant bhikkhuni raped by her cousin, or from someone who attained enlightenment and then was soon killed by an ox, or from Moggallana and this karmic debt from beating his parents to death.

AD: Ok, just to clarify here a bit. We don’t become a sottappana by contemplating greed right? We contemplate on Rupa, it’s nature, and the suffering it causes us in trying to acquire it, and p’wn it, and preserve it and then lose it. Greed goes as a result. Yes? Realizing we cause our suffering with our clinging to these items also feels like a result, at least capital R realizing? Or do I need to contemplate on the bad things I do out of greed and worry about the consequences…That feels so overwhelming and scary.

MN: Yes, you become a sotapana by realizing you are not unique. That you are an arbitrary part of the fabric of the world – not the weaver. Greed goes because the objects that represent greed no longer hold the permanent meaning you once believed them to. It’s both contemplating rupa to see the truth in worldly objects, as well as seeing the TTP (TTP is the way to stop behavior).

AD: Ok, that seems doable. I can see the steps. I have been doing them and I see the results, my own changes in perspective, so I know for sure it works. I just can’t see past the steps and my best guesses of where they lead and why. But that makes sense, you don’t know what somewhere you have never been looks like till you get there.

Mae Neecha sent a few more resources, additional Buddhist stories of past lives, to help educate my karma contemplations further. I am linking the stories she sent here as they are salient to the conversation below, so please check-out the stories before reading on:

https://www.wisdomlib.org/buddhism/book/the-great-chronicle-of-buddhas/d/doc365081.html

https://www.tipitaka.net/tipitaka/dhp/verseload.php?verse=133

AD: the Kāḷavaḷiya story is simply that the tendency of the wife is bravery (in all this the husband benefits by association, which also makes sense to me). It takes bravery to give up your last bite of food. Bravery to volunteer to go out of the city gates, bravery to face the demon undeterred. Bravery tends to be rewarded and the reward of choice is generally money. Moreover, while bravery can be born of hubris and stupidity, it is clear in her case it comes hand-in-hand with cleverness and wisdom (as seen by her escape of the convict). Again this makes sense in light of the fact that she uses her bravery to the benefit of making merit. So giving food leading to wealth and then to being treasurer (we will assume her husband shares her cleverness as like often hangs with like), a job that takes wisdom, all still makes sense.

Also, it makes sense that someone hungry, since they gave all their food away, goes to the temple to beg, overhears a prophecy by the Buddha and then makes it self fulfilling. The wife knew the prophecy, which may be part of why she was looking for opportunities, like volunteering to go out of the walls, to help make the prophecy come true. In this story, its not like 1 bowl of porridge = 1 bowl of porridge in return.

The Kondadhana story is more troublesome for me. I get that he is clearly someone who likes to stir shit to achieve his ends. First, as a Deva he/she does it to divide the monks for whatever reason. Then as a monk he does it to retaliate for the other monks talking about the woman who follows him. Shit stirring, to someone inclined to stir shit, will be default problem solving mode and it will cost. Clearly, that is the Buddha’s warning about being silent as a broken bell. But why a tit-for-tat, I took the form of a woman to stir shit and now a woman form follows me to make my life difficult? I have no idea. This is one of those ‘a bit too much’ stories for me.

That said, I don’t know if the fact that I can’t always rationalize the exact tit-for-tatness matters right now. I seem to be making ok progress on the general idea of consequence and, more importantly, my practice feels unstuck –I was getting so bound-up in what I didn’t understand, couldn’t rationalize for myself it was shaking my “faith” (used very loosely as a term here), in my own ability to progress. Now though, thigs are starting to unfold again, especially on the topics of hope/fear, my imaginations for the future and the way rupa/self belonging feeds those. I know the past is gone, I know I spend the present worrying about the future and I know the future is uncertain and ephemeral. I think if I can get this to penetrate my heart, to kill the hope, that could be a biggie for me.

MN: If not the tit-for-tat, then what kind of punishment would pay for the debt someone has created in the past? In general, in the world we live in, don’t you pay for a monetary debt with money? if you stole someone’s opportunities, don’t your opportunities get stolen from you? if you took someone’s freedom, isn’t your freedom taken from you? You can see it in how parents punish their children tit for tat is the norm, isn’t it? How else would we learn the consequences of our actions?

AD: It’s the specificity, not the degree or kind, that gives me pause. How would it come to pass that because one chooses to create havoc via the form of an enchanting woman, their ‘curse’ would be an invisible enchanting woman who follows them.

And it’s not always…yes we pay a monetary debt with money, but we can also be ordered to pay money for ‘ pain and suffering’ caused in a law suit. Or we can pay a monetary debt with labor…the ole washing dishes to pay a tab. Or the punishment for speeding is a ticket, a fine, though the infraction wasn’t financial in nature..

MN: Then what else would be a equal punishment? for a monk, a woman is the ultimate symbol of desire and lust – the big rule that once broken, you must disrobe immediately

That money for “pain and suffering” is only paying for the interest. the principal can be paid later in life, or will be paid in hell or in another rebirth. It’s using money as a central currency for value — you sped because you valued time or something that can also be quantified in some sense by money.

AD: Agreed, but it isn’t exact alikes. It is not being hit in the eye for pretending to be blind.

MN: Maybe it isn’t so much, “why does it have to be this way” but more, “why shouldn’t it be this way?” “what should it be if NOT this way?” Do you have an alternate punishment that achieves the goal of paying the debt satisfactorily?

AD: Ok, I hadn’t thought of it in this way. On this one, the likeness in form is really a likeness in severity. This makes sense — if you are the judge of what you deserve, your heart knows it was severe, and this is most severe I get it.

MN: Sometimes the symbol is best served in tit-for-tat form, other times it is best served in equivalent/substitution form; regardless it is our own mind that keeps track. How would it recognize that it has paid a debt if it is too far removed from the actual kamma? for instance, drowning for poking someone’s eyes out. or having stomach cancer for slitting a turtle’s throat

AD: I totally buy the equivalent idea. It is just the stories that make it seem like there is some Fixer-in-the-Sky dolling out the punishment that a person who hits others in the eye will get hit in the eye six days hence.

MN: No, no one has the time to be doling out punishments. Even the guardians of hell don’t want more people to come to hell, when they take the wrong person, they have that person tour hell in order to go back to tell their friends and family NOT to do evil. That there are real consequences.

AD: So what, we punish ourselves for ourselves? To learn our lesson?

MN: We are the ones keeping track of all our karma. Think about the karma we commit by intention, it’s only in our minds, who the hell is gonna want to creep into our minds and do accounting? Think about this – would you want to do it for someone? In the pavillion of 1000 rooms (described in LP Thoon’s Autobiography), the karma that plays on the “monitor” is whatever is in our minds; our side of the story, not the full story, but our take on it. Your role in the drama, regardless of the factors that led to it. your actions – whether incited by others or whether you did it only because you pitied someone, or otherwise – are yours to pay for.

AD: We punish ourselves to balance out books and take debt off them perhaps?

MN: Yeah, think about how we realize what we’ve done and willingly pay for it. if we don’t pay, we feel never-ending guilt. Once a criminal gets caught, it’s kind of a relief, that suffering can end. Like when you lie or steal. If you never pay for it, it lingers in your mind, when you pay for it, it’s finally over.

AD: Oh, I totally believe this. It plays out in the world, it is obvious. It is also logical in that we create circumstances based on our views/ habitual patterns. Circumstances that have 2 sides. In time, being in the circumstances our own minds/views desire will expose us to both sides.

This is like a gang banger that shoots up people’s houses regularly being the victim of violence himself. No surprise, that’s what you get when you value violence, use it as an end, surrounded yourself by it. I am just saying a gang banger who shot someone could get stabbed. They could go to prison for life. Or they could reform, like ongalimala as a yakka, only to come back again and suffer the consequences of being a cannibal king because they never did break the pattern. This also makes total sense, but then someone who had a guiltier consciousness by their nature might ‘pay’ more steeply than another who committed the same act but just felt less bad about it.

MN: Murder is murder, but the HOW you killed someone makes a difference too. Sometimes a simple shot to the head, sometimes you stab them repeatedly, sometimes you kill with poison, sometimes setting someone up to be killed by planting lies in order for you to steal their possessions – so whatever feeling is experienced is what you’re gonna have to pay for. The shock in being shot,  the pain of being stabbed and not immediately dying but suffering excruciatingly with no hope/help to be found, the specific pain of being poisoned (inability to breathe, exploding, nerve damage, or whatever poison-specific death). I could give you a million examples because karma already makes sense to me, but you need to find your own proof.

Change your view, try looking at it from a different angle – instead of finding reasons why it doesn’t work, look for reasons why it does work. Look for patterns in this world. Don’t let the tit-for-tat be an assumed “wrong,” because it is blocking your view.

Eric and I had recently watched the Wonder Woman movie. I mentioned to him how much I liked the film, how much I got out of it: The idea that getting what we desire has 2 sides. That once we know the truth of the cost of our decisions, we can make better decisions.

In reply, Eric poked fun of me, he asked why it was that a hit-you-over the head morality tale, like Wonder Woman, was something I could both enjoy and also learn from, but when it came to dharma tales, a teaching, sermon, or jataka I so easily get super serious, prickly even, worried I am either being forced or being judged.

I realized, when I watch some Hollywood drama, I don’t think it is about me. But when something seems Buddhisty, because of the identity I have built of wanting to be a good Buddhist, my radar is instantly up — is this a story that judges me? Is this a story that indicts me? Does this story make me feel forced to act or be a certain way?

These Buddhist stories, the ones I see as an implicit yardstick of my worthiness, are stories I am leery of. And of all the Buddhist stories that make me feel most judged, most lacking, the one that has long stood out as the biggest indictment of my dharma deficiencies, is the Mūgapakkha Jātaka (the story is linked here, if you don’t know it, it’s a must read to follow this post).

Of course, over time, I came to understand this same disease/delusion –that a topic/truth of the world is about me/a personal indictment – lay at the core of my deep discomfort addressing the topic of karma, and my continual sense it was a ‘black box’; it was something I was afraid to look too closely at. This insight however came later, first, a message to Mae Neecha with some thoughts on my least favorite Jataka, and what it doesn’t actually mean about me…

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AD: As a follow-up to some of our recent conversations, I have some thoughts I want to share. It is not about karma though, it is about my persistent belief that I am not good enough/that other people’s greatness is an indictment of my own innate failings. Here are some thoughts about Mūgapakkha Jātaka — long-time winner of my ‘most loathed jataka award’ because I thought it spoke to my inability to be sufficiently-self-sacraficey to become enlightened (naturally the jatakas are about me 😉 ). But, a little background first…

Eric and I rented a place in the country, we figured long term we could use it for weekends/holidays, and for now, while we work from home, we can use it more  frequently because there is a huge, loud, construction project going on across the street from our Greenwich place. It took us months of looking and stress to find, because Connecticut real estate is super hot right now. We had it less than a month –we hadn’t even moved in yet — and the problems started piling-up.

Long and short of it, there were massive repairs to be made and the landlords were essentially slum lords and didn’t want to deal with anything. Plus, the reality of trying to move during a pandemic — when we are being so careful, and other folks’ precautions are basically a crap-shoot, came to dawn on us; how were we going to direct movers over Zoom? Ultimately the landlords decided they wanted “lower maintenance tenets” (i.e folks not familiar with Connecticut tenant rights laws) and we all agreed to nullify the lease. But, before that, there were plenty of contemplations about suffering!

The suffering that arises from my relationship to all rupa when I want it to be one way and it keeps on being another. The suffering that arises when I claim rupa, try to make it mine, try to use it both for my comfort and to reflect my personal style/identity. The suffering that arises because of the difference between what I imagine and reality. How my imagination blinds me, puts blinders on me, so I only see one side…

Anyway, about a week later, I was taking a Zoom Zumba class and the construction across the street was so loud I couldn’t hear the music to follow. I was annoyed and then I realized that in the past, in this same situation, my mind had immediately flown to finding a country rental. This time I thought about the fact that it was easier to just endure it than to go through the rigmarole of trying to find a new place right now.  Literally, right then, with my feet moving to the Latin grooves, I realized I had seriously misunderstood the Mūgapakkha Jātaka: I saw endurance/fortitude isn’t really about having some saintly quality, it is about realizing sucking-it-up in a sucky situation beats the likely stress of the alternative.

After our conversation the other night I started thinking about this more, because, perhaps more than any other story, this jataka has been a symbol of my total inadequacy. I have always felt, deep down, that to be a ‘good’ practitioner (or ‘good daughter’, ‘good person’ and so many other goods) I had to sacrifice. I had to do things that hurt, that I didn’t really want to do. I had to hug homeless people even if I was scared, even if there was a real danger. I had to go on vacation with my mother, even if I could guess it would be totally unpleasant, I had to suck up and deal with her abuse. I had to go to the temple even if it felt too loud and crowded, even if I felt culturally out of place and fake, even if hours of dharma talks about new topics/ techniques left me feeling overwhelmed and unconnected to my practice.

In fact, on some level, I have only valued doing things if I don’t want to do them, if I did them anyway out of a sense of the virtue of self-sacrifice. (Eric has long chided me that I keep trying to find ways to do stuff I don’t enjoy versus assessing, and if appropriate changing, the views that make me not enjoy things.) Being a good daughter to my dad didn’t count because I loved him so much. Being a good sister to my brother used to count, but then (largely based on my suck-it-up efforts) our relationship became close, so it doesn’t count anymore. It’s not just my sibling relationship either, all sorts of stuff that I used to not like to do, that I thought of as ‘do-gooder-saintly-virtuous’, like chanting (which I have started doing a little of each day, for my own reasons), I suddenly start to discount because I start finding them relaxing/ pleasant/informative.

All the things I like to do/do naturally or out of a sense of self preservation don’t count. This is why recording my practice, or practicing continuously to solve life problems, or contemplating just because I like mental stimulation/figuring stuff out and find it relaxing, doesn’t count. This is stuff I do for me, based on my own tendencies/desire/gains.

Ironically of course, by my own definition, I will never ever be good enough; as soon as what I don’t like becomes likable I need to find new virtuous seeming things I don’t like to do. In fact, since by its nature the process of practice fixes wrong views so that I suffer less, it continually diminishes the things I need to self-sacrifice for.  By my paradigm, practice deprives me of ways to prove my goddess, with enlightenment — the cessation of all suffering — being the total nullification of opportunities to be good. When taken to its ultimate conclusion, my paradigm clearly shows itself to be nonsense.  But..that is a contemplation for another time. For now, since we now know this Jtaka is not an indictment of Alana’s inadequacies, I would like to consider what it is actually about:

It is a story of someone that, based on their own experiences, based on reasoning, and thinking ahead just a little bit, sees the likely perils of a situation in front of them (the consequences of executing kingly duties in the Bodhisattva’s case) and — out of self preservation/ the desire to avoid more pain and stress — does what it takes to avoid them.  Even if avoidance involves foregoing some pleasant stuff and enduring some difficult stuff.

Crazy Thought: It almost seems like the Buddha was trying to teach folks, like me, how to avoid our own suffering.

When I get over the idea that this jataka is just an indictment of all the forbearance (khanti) I lack, I can find countless stories of my own when I have forgone stuff I enjoy, and endured stuff I don’t, in order to mitigate future risks. We were flat broke when Eric and I got our first jobs; it involved forgoing lots of enjoyment, but we prioritized maxing out our IRAs. It was a super tough conversation with my parents when I needed to go on birth control, but it was a hell of a lot better than teenage pregnancy. Actually, I am someone that prides themselves on planning ahead, granted it can be too much sometimes, but you can be sure we didn’t have a pandemic toilet paper shortage in my house.

I am not saying I have the forbearance of Temiya, I like treats and avoid fires. I also am not saying this story isn’t too over-the-top-tourmenty-finger-wagging for me.  I also know better than thinking this particular issue is solved, it is so deep for me. But I do see that this is just like me thinking my fit body proves fitness = extreme will power, rather than understanding my (temporarily) fit body only proves my belief that extreme willpower is valuable and that I can prove it with a fit body. My views are so ingrained they blind me, and this particular view about/ self-sacrifice/ goodness/ inadequacy is not just blinding it is shatteringly painful for me, over and over and over again . Anyway, meltdown 2.0 averted. Stay tuned for the sequel. And thank you again!

MN: Sent a sticker and replied: The more we practice, the more we eliminate the “bad” in us and do more “good”… but at the same time, we are eliminating that “good” as well, because good or bad all create consequences and tie us to this world. But the buddha taught us to eliminate evil first, then eliminate good, so you’ll still be a good alana for some time. until you reach ultimate enlightenment.

AD: Maybe so, but my problem is I’m not really a good alana — I’m just trying to be good, by alana’s definition, in order to be a special alana, worthy of cookies and avoiding whammies ;), hoping that sort of thing acts according to my rules versus the world’s.

It’s a work in progress, but I really am starting to see my blind spots more clearly and to be suspect of the alana version of truth and reality check it against the Dhamma version of Truth. The one thing I can confidently say that alana’s wacko paradigm and the actual truth of the world have in common is that I can’t game either. I can’t win. I can’t be satisfied. That is pretty strong motivation to find an exit.