On Karma

On the first day of the trip, Mae Yo asked us to consider what kind of karma folks have to be living in a place like India, to be born into the conditions of poverty we see on the streets around us. (Present day note: a much more complete entry on Karma is coming-up, these are just a few thoughts from my trip).

As I looked out the window of the buss I noticed that folks live in such squalor and don’t even seem to care. They let rubbish stay in the streets, animals roam in and out of people’s shack homes. I watched folks clean their laundry in the river and then just lay it in the dirt to dry. I don’t understand it…there are trees everywhere, why not hang the clean laundry in sheets rather than putting it right back in the dirt? It feels like collectively, people here don’t even notice the conditions they are in, they don’t even look for a way to fix the easy stuff (like sweeping the streets or hanging the laundry or fencing their homes from the goats). That’s the karma of the place, of the folks born here — to not even know there is a suffering, an issue, better yet to try to fix it.

When we went to Nepal it was different. Still poor, much poorer than India in fact, but at least folks tried. The streets were cleaner, more orderly, laundry hung. It was such a contrast.

Then I think about the US. there things are so relatively clean and orderly. With our collective karma, we invent, we problem solve, we come-up with ways to live a more comfortable life, to put off the impermanence, the negative side of the coin. We have refrigerators and medicine and street cleaning, and trash collection. In the end of course, impermanent wins, in the US, India, Nepal, everywhere.

I don’t know what exactly got someone born in India versus in the US. In poverty versus wealth. But I see what perpetuates it. I see that complacency, failure to see a problem means it will never get solved. I see that by not seeing my own suffering I will never solve it, never figure out how to stop being reborn.