MN: The main thing is the normalization of certain behaviors/ways of thinking/views – this is what we act out day to day without stopping to question ourselves – this is at the foundation of karma/deeds.

Like you mentioned, once you do it once, the second time is easier. Then you keep doing it until it becomes who you are, until you don’t even see that there are other options to choose from.

We aim to satisfy our desires, but don’t want to lose out in any way – we think it is easier to hurt or kill others to get what we want. It’s easy to break the 5 precepts because we don’t understand that nothing is for free and that we have to pay for everything we do. Mainly because the results aren’t always immediately apparent. Once they become apparent, oftentimes it is too late. Each time we learn this lesson, it is stored in our memory (knowing right and wrong comes from experience like this), but because we don’t change the view propelling our reasoning, though we learned our lesson once, we can still make the same mistake over and over. It takes a lot to truly learn and change. That’s why we are reborn so frequently.

Right and wrong is learned from experience. From seeing reactions and results. From how we feel when we think of doing it, when we actually do it, and after it has been done. We innately know how to internalize – so we know that we’ve done good or bad. At the same time, we are profoundly confused about good and bad because our views make us all crooked – we make excuses and deny our wrongs to protect our sense of self… basically we know what should or shouldn’t be done, only we can’t help but act on what we think will feel good for us personally. We value subjectivity over objectivity…even though it hurts us.

Think about smoking – you knew it was bad for you, but you continued to do it for other reasons. How long did it take you to stop? What made you stop?

It isn’t like one warning or one piece of information could overcome the perceived value of smoking… it took time. The concept of karma is the same way. It takes time to accumulate certain views and behaviors, so it isn’t easy to change them.

Karma is like our tendency to act a certain way, to be a certain way. We reap the results of those tendencies, but we often fail to connect the result to the cause. That’s basically what we are trying to do in dhamma practice.

AD: Ok, I have given this some thought and it does make sense. Views drive behavior and behavior self-perpetuates under the force of habit and unexamined wrong views.

Because we don’t connect cause and effect clearly it is so easy to keep making the same types of mistakes — and receiving the corresponding consequences –because we are easily distracted by minor differences in the details each time, pattern recognition is slllooooowwww and poor. I relate to this.

I also relate to how practice helps either change the core views and/or connect reasons and results to get a sense of consequence. The two together are seeing impermanence and suffering.

When I smoked, I continued, despite ‘knowing’ the risk because:

1) I thought I was young and had time (wrong view of permanence),

2) I thought I was special, that I was going to be the one unscathed by disease ( wrong view my health was permanent, wrong view about the nature of Rupa bodies and my control over it aka permanence)

3) I thought no 1 cigarette would do me in, I got distracted by the single versus the pile versus the heap. I didn’t see consequence because I deliberately ignored the time horizon.

Ultimately though, I just didn’t want to give up the enjoyment, I wasn’t ready.  But when my dad got cancer it showed me I wasn’t special if he, my special person wasn’t. He was young, and without doing so deliberately, I internalized that to mean death didn’t spare folks below a certain age threshold. I also started weighing each cigarette I smoked, I saw drops could build to a flood.

Most of all, I saw my dad’s pain and the pain my family, it wasn’t abstract. It made the suffering real and I didn’t want to go through it or put my family through it if there was some action I could take to mitigate the risk I did.

So I quit. And once I decided to quit it was as good as done. No patch, no pill, no relapse. I was over it.

MN: However, when you quit smoking, it was linked to a specific suffering (TTP) – your dad. If it were someone else, or some other habit/tendency (traveling, cleanliness, food, comforts) you’d still have the tendency to remain addicted.

This is because while the situation made you change, you didn’t address the wrong view at its core. It was more the unbearable suffering that made you adjust your actions.

Like the king who suffered because his beloved consort died – he only let go once he saw her as a bug that was satisfied to be a bug, a bug who didn’t care about the king at all – it was specific to the details. But he could still suffer over other losses whenever the consequences weren’t clear to him.

It is this repetitiveness that we encounter in each rebirth, or even within each lifetime. Because we change ourselves at the result, not the cause.

AD: Ok, so how do we change ourselves at the cause? 3 worldly conditions? Seeing how they apply universally?

MN: Changing view. What wrong understanding, what wrong view made you think that you’d be an exception…to any rule (3 common characteristics) that the world abides by?

When we address view, it is broader and covers more than just smoking. Often, we address thought, not view.

AD: Can you elaborate on this. Not sure what you mean.

MN: Thinking smoking is good, then thinking it is bad. Smoking-specific. But not addressing addiction or heedlessness in general. So you only fix one issue, in that specific instance. Then you turn around and don’t do anything about other addictions. Like dealing with anger toward your mom in one issue, but not understanding your views that lead to anger in general. Not understanding/seeing how your wrong views over rupa/4es led to the anger, not understanding/seeing how nama (#2, 3,4, 5) lead to anger, not understanding/seeing how wrong views over self and self belongings lead to anger, not seeing the consequences of anger, etc.

AD: They easiest one to see/get at is that I believe Rupa that I dub  my own will abide by my rules. That somehow my ‘imaginary line in the sand’ — what is in my territory will obey. That what is mine acts differently. Won’t become cancerous or corroded. Past that, that me, whatever that is, is ‘good’, deserving of cookies by my own standards of goodness ( like those actually rule the world) and not of whammies like cancer.

MN: Yeah, self and self belongings at the root; but who would know to address that without guidance or without the existence Buddhism in the world?

So we are destined to reborn and repeat … rinse and repeat until we manage to change view. That’s why karma is hard to understand – our habits are so engrained in us that we don’t even consider that there are other options, that we don’t have to be like this No, not hard to understand.  But hard to see. The concept of cause and effect is pretty straightforward. Only we don’t see it personally or don’t see it clear enough.

AD: You know, that actually resonates with me. I got so stuck for so long on the idea that a fit body MUST mean extreme will power, since that is what I thought I was using to workout so much. It dawned on me though that all fit body reflects is my BELIEF that fit body equals extreme will and my extreme valuation of that characteristic, enough to act on it so vigorously. The views really are so ingrained as to be blinding.

MN: Yup and a sticker

AD: Ugh, I ping pong between feeling this is doable and that I am totally screwed. Either way, this is unsatisfactory, so I guess practice it is…

An abbreviation: There was a bit more dialogue that for the sake of brevity I will condense here: The main point was Mae Yo sent her encouragement, but also concern about my understanding of karma. I asked if it was necessary to understand karma to become a sotappana, my main goal, and Mae Neecha said that while it wasn’t, “understanding karma provides confidence in the world processes…that this is all proper and how things should be according to cause and effect. That this is all fair and “right.” I resolved to continue my karma contemplations according to the advice of my teachers.  More to come…