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Conversations on Karma Part 10: Finally, Enough Resolution to Forge Ahead

Conversations on Karma Part 10: Finally, Enough Resolution to Forge Ahead

AD: So I just finished reading LP Thoon’s sermon Line of Practice for Developments — in it he talks about how being born in a human body is like building a house. When the time is right, when you have sufficient materials, you will be born/ build a house. If you have lots of assets, it’ll be big and fancy. If you have little, it will be modest. The ‘materials’ are your karma in this analogy huh? I have been…

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Conversations on Karma Part 9: A Circle Back to My Predictable Obsessions: Goodness and Beauty, Yet Again, Again, Again, Again…

Conversations on Karma Part 9: A Circle Back to My Predictable Obsessions: Goodness and Beauty, Yet Again, Again, Again, Again…

MN: I like this! And yeah, there seems to be an issue with how you define “bad” and “good”. Do you use the same standards to judge others as well? Or is it more about beating up Alana? AD: I am judgmental as hell on if people are being good/bad (by the ole’ alana standard) although my practice has minimized this greatly (mostly by my finding evidence I am no better than those I judge, I have double standards. This…

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Conversations on Karma Part 8: A Paradigm Shift –If Karma Isn’t All Punishment and Doom, Maybe It’s Not So Scary

Conversations on Karma Part 8: A Paradigm Shift –If Karma Isn’t All Punishment and Doom, Maybe It’s Not So Scary

AD: Alright – I decided to change tactics and to see if I could make better headway coming from the karma as cookie direction instead of the karma as whammy direction. I am starting to understand how tit-for-tat would makes sense, how the debt cycle doesn’t need to be paid directly to the one who you incurred the debt with, how debts are settled in kind or degree and how the circumstance of such can arise. I have considered wider…

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A Pause in the Karma Conversation — Some Evidence, and Comfort, in the Fact Not Everything is About ALANA THE GREAT (OR ALANA THE TERRIBLE)

A Pause in the Karma Conversation — Some Evidence, and Comfort, in the Fact Not Everything is About ALANA THE GREAT (OR ALANA THE TERRIBLE)

Yesterday I started thinking about how I can use a paradigm of ‘meeting the qualifications’ to think about dhamma (in particular self and self-belong). My goal is to reinforce the idea that Alana is not some special snowflake, she is just the same as everyone and everything else in the world — subject to causes and effects, to the rules of the world and to its common characteristics. I need to prove to myself that all the objects, qualities, experiences or accomplishments that…

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Conversations on Karma Part 7: Some Further Guidance and Tips from Mae Neecha

Conversations on Karma Part 7: Some Further Guidance and Tips from Mae Neecha

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…

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Conversations on Karma Part 6: My Trouble With Tit-For-Tat, This for This, That for That Karma

Conversations on Karma Part 6: My Trouble With Tit-For-Tat, This for This, That for That Karma

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…

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Conversations on Karma Part 5: Mūgapakkha Jātaka and My First Inkling Karma May Not in Fact be About Me.

Conversations on Karma Part 5: Mūgapakkha Jātaka and My First Inkling Karma May Not in Fact be About Me.

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…

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Conversations on Karma Part 4: Some Advice Brings Some Clarity and Motivation

Conversations on Karma Part 4: Some Advice Brings Some Clarity and Motivation

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…

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Conversations on Karma Part 3: What a Murderer Can Teach Me About Karma

Conversations on Karma Part 3: What a Murderer Can Teach Me About Karma

AD: I was able to find and read stories of most of the Angulimara births you mentioned, though I couldn’t find the tortoise story anywhere, I have heard it before and I just wanted to share a few thoughts: — For you Dear Reader, in the story, Angulimara is born a giant tortoise who comes upon a sinking ship filled with 1000 people. He takes mercy on them and saves them from drowning by carrying them all on his back…

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Conversations on Karma Part 2: Looking for Clarity from the Classics like Isidasi, Angulimara and Nucky Thompson (from HBO’s Boardwalk Empire)

Conversations on Karma Part 2: Looking for Clarity from the Classics like Isidasi, Angulimara and Nucky Thompson (from HBO’s Boardwalk Empire)

MN: Not magic, just the result of karma. Maybe think small scale first, then expand the same concept to bigger scale. Isidasi, Khujjutara, all the others in the Jatakas – their actions led to karma. Try looking at the result of karma in terms of the five precepts. That might be a good start. What happens (short term) to people who lie? Steal? Kill? Commit adultery? Spend their days intoxicated? What happens (long term in this lifetime) people who lie?…

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Conversations on Karma Part 1: Some Rambling and Blind Stabbing

Conversations on Karma Part 1: Some Rambling and Blind Stabbing

Dear Readers, as I explained in the intro to this blog ‘chapter’, near the end of 2020, the topic of karma came crashing into my contemplations, and I decided that rather than my usual M.O. — box it up and bury it for later — I would finally take the topic of karma on head-on. Once again, Mae Neecha was a massive help to me: She was a guide, a teacher, a sounding-board, a conversation partner, and a  ‘fact checker’…

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Introduction: Karma’s a Bitch

Introduction: Karma’s a Bitch

Karma is the law of the universe – it is cause and effect – and as such, it is basically the foundation of Buddhism and all the Buddha’s teachings. You would think any ‘good Buddhist’ would have a good grasp of karma, or at least try to consider it, and mind it on occasion… So, I will begin this blog chapter with an honest confession… until rather recently, I just ignored karma. Yup, alana-the-striving-to-be-good-Buddhist, came-up against questions of karma and…

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Something of A Sum-Up: A Note to Mae Neecha Part 2

Something of A Sum-Up: A Note to Mae Neecha Part 2

This blog post is a direct continuation of the last, Something of A Sum-Up: A Note to Mae Neecha Part 1, if you have not already done so, please go back and read the last post before continuing here. Anyway, one more contemplation set from yesterday that considered the suffering that arises because of my chain’o’crazy. I was online shopping for a new rug (to solve the problem BTW that the old one, did as rupa shit is wont to do, and…

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Something of A Sum-Up: A Note to Mae Neecha Part 1

Something of A Sum-Up: A Note to Mae Neecha Part 1

By Mid-November 2021 I had begun to feel like my rupa contemplations, spurred on by pandemic living, were gelling into a more comprehensive understanding. I reached-out to Mae Neecha to give her an update which I will share here. Given the length, I will divide my note to her, as well as her reply, into a few blogs for ease of reading. Hey Mae Neecha– I sure do hope this email finds you and Mae Yo well.  I really just…

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One of Those Big Aha Moments: Apparently, a Fit Body Doesn’t = Extreme Willpower

One of Those Big Aha Moments: Apparently, a Fit Body Doesn’t = Extreme Willpower

OK, so a little background first…over the years of my practice I had repetitively returned to one of those crazy pervasive wrong views that I just couldn’t shake: A fit body = extreme willpower. Of course, I knew it was a wrong view, that it was permanent; I had done countless exercises gathering evidence of all the times a fit body doesn’t equal extreme willpower (how easy was it to be fit without trying in my teens, how much more…

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Tickin’ On Without Me

Tickin’ On Without Me

I was in the bathroom, standing in front of the mirror, doing my usual morning beauty routine — lotions, positions, facercize, hair removal —  and going through my usual mental exercise as well. Regularly, as I attend to my body, I try and remind myself that the reason I labor, I suffer, so meticulously beautifying and grooming is because of my delusion that this face, this body represents me, it is who I am.  This morning though, my mind wandered a little…

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Sand to Make A Fool of Me

Sand to Make A Fool of Me

I had been reading the NY Times  and I came across an article that completely blew my mind: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/09/science/what-makes-sand-soft.html  — it was about sand.  Apparently, this seemingly simple, everyday substance poses one of the deepest challenges to physics, so much so that despite the efforts of some of science’s greatest minds, there exists no ‘general theory of sand’. Even in a closed system, like an hourglass, where you know the shape and size of the particles encased, the variables of how…

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Lessons of the Leaves 2

Lessons of the Leaves 2

  In  the fall of 2020, with Covid still raging, and Eric and I still ‘sheltering in place’, we decided it was time to rent a country home — at least if we were going to be isolated, we could do it with plenty of space to spread out in. We found a nice sized home in Northern CT and signed a lease. Suddenly, all of my thoughts were consumed with the stresses of moving (in a pandemic no less);…

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A Hotel Room and Its Accompaniments

A Hotel Room and Its Accompaniments

I started thinking that this Alana life — the body and the samutti that is Alana — is like a hotel room. While I am a guest, I get all the accompaniments to the rooms: I can use the pillows, robes, slippers, objects that ‘belong to the room’ (i.e self belongings) and I receive the status of being a guest at the property with the accompanying treatment (the way I get treated as Alana the degreed professional, or Alana the accomplished yogi)….

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