Alana's Dharma Blog

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…

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 to safety on land. Once they arrive on land, the ship’s passengers decide to kill the tortoise for food. Only one person, a small girl, hesitates. It is said in his final life as Angulimara the 999 people he kills are the passengers from the ship. The girl, is his mother in his final life, whom he does not kill because he is intercepted by the Buddha. Other Augulimara rebirth stories mentioned here (giant Yaka and Cannibal King) are linked in the last blog, if you need a refresher, feel free to head back there to check them out —

AD: You can have multiple tendencies and ‘goodness’ is not the requisite for enlightenment: The takeaway that struck me most was that it is so clear in his final life that he had cultivated the seeds of two strong tendencies — killing and wisdom. I think on some level, before I did the research and consideration, I expected the murderiness to be a ‘fluke’, like at the heart of it, he was really ‘good’ and was just misled by his guru, so of course he ‘deserved’ forgiveness by the Buddha and a chance for Arahantship. But actually, over and over he shows he will kill/eat people and also that he can quickly hear and be persuaded by the truth of this world. He is not one thing — either/or, good/bad.

The storyline makes it very clear that the foundation for enlightenment is not what Alana thinks of as goodness, it is having built the tendencies required to become enlightened: In Angulimara’s case, based on his rebirth stories, I would say the biggest of these tendencies were wisdom, forbearance (as a turtle saving, as a yaka living alone, on his killing quests, when he is assaulted on alms rounds) setting goals and following through (either killing or saving a lot of people even when it is hard, overcoming his addiction to eating people as a yaka and cannibal), and the power of his word (tree nymph and guru and woman in labor).

I suspect that laying the foundations for, and following-through on, becoming enlightened may actually be a related, but separate, issue than the whammy/cookie cycle that comes with rebirth.

Habit/what I am used to as the foundation for desire and behavior:

The stories make it abundantly clear that what we are used to will drive both our desires and our belief in the acceptability, in our own minds, of acting out those desires. As a yaka, he tried to eat the Bodhisattva because he had been eating folks who enter the woods forever. As the cannibal, as soon as he remembers the taste of human he got from his past yaka life, his desire takes the shape of what is familiar to him.

From my own experience I know that what I am used to shapes my desire: When I quit smoking, the worst cravings came after meals because that was the time I consistently smoked. Or, I like a glass of wine in the evening, but when I can’t have it because of work or needing to drive, I feel unsatisfied. My habits affect my desires and give me a sense of satisfaction simply by doing what I am used to/familiar with.

What is more, even in his last life, it seems Angulimara is reluctant to kill, but undertakes doing so in order to please his teacher and gain the merit and power the teacher promises will be gained upon completion of his bloody task. He is willing to kill, though reluctantly, because it is behavior he normalized in the past.

Back to Boardwalk Empire: Early in the series, Nucky is reluctant to kill even as a mob boss; he tries to resolve issues without bloodshed as often as possible. But after his first kill with his own hands, killing becomes easier and easier. It is like once the dam broke, and he is able to reconcile being murdery with his sense of self, he learns to justify the behavior. The first time he kills it is out of revenge on an underling who tries to overthrow him, each time thereafter, killing becomes a duty to protect himself and his family and empire.

My takeaway is that being wary of the habits we build is not so much an issue of ‘goodness’ or morality, it is about the fact that our habits limit our freedom. We put ourselves in cycles that are hard to remove ourselves from because the habitual becomes automatic and then we have to deal with the consequences of those cycles. Afterall, even after monkhood, Angulimara faces violence and hate from villagers who know of his murderous past.

The scary part I think is that I have seen there are habits that work really well, or seem innocuous enough, in some circumstances, but even these end up being a trap, and having negative repercussions in others. Quick example: I am a fastidious cleaner: So often, workmates, housemates, friends who I help clean after a meal, love that tendency. But I have gotten more than one scolding from Eric for ‘cleaning’ up stuff he can’t find. Worse, I feel deep discomfort in environments that aren’t clean, but it’s not always possible or appropriate to clean them — I suffer from my own ‘good’ habit.

I see Myself as #1:

After considering all the Angulimra stories, the single commonality that jumps out at me that motivates (what I would call) both his ‘good’ actions, and his ‘bad’ actions, is the supremacy of ‘I want/I am #1’ in dictating behavior.

In the Yaka life and cannibal life, he eats humans because it is what he wants. He believes that satisfying his hunger is of ultimate importance –that it is a matter of life and death even: He says as much explicitly in the 2 parable retorts he gives to his advisor about the child who starved because he couldn’t eat the apples he liked and the man who starved himself because he couldn’t hav  a goddess wife. He kills 999 people to get the boons and the power he wants.

But he also chooses to not sacrifice the Bodhisattva to the tree nymph because he is a friend, he doesn’t want to kill him (despite a vow to the nymph). He wants to help the shipwreck victims presumably because he feels bad for them; I would venture a guess that the same hubris (I-centrism) that makes him a so-great-shipwreck savior, also makes him heedless enough that he gets eaten afterwards.

When I look at the Nucky (Boardwalk Empire) stories as well, he doesn’t want to kill because he doesn’t want to be a murderer. He does kill because he wants to protect himself and what he built. He gives generously when he is moved, by people whose stories touch a nerve based on his own experiences or beliefs, but he hungers for money to bring him the lifestyle and influence he also desires.

For me too, I wanted to hug a homeless guy because I would want to be hugged. I want to be the kind of person who hugs. But I also want to keep myself safe –enter homeless Alana the O.G. Dhamma meltdown.  All my taking and using and manipulating is obviously to satisfy me/my wants. But as I learned from my compassionate and veggie Alana contemplations, all my faux-compassion has also always been about feeling like I am the good me I want to be, getting others to like and care for me, and deserving the cookies I want.

The Cycle Born from Self Aggrandizement

Me me me, I, I, I. at the meta level, it is hard to ignore that this is what makes us tick. Which also means that the very thing we seek when we come into this world is what keeps us ping-ponging between the cookie/whammy cycle –aka the 8 worldly conditions. As long as we are out for #1, this cycle does not end.

Just a small interjection here: When the pandemic started, you said to me we are living in a nightmare everyday, we just don’t see it. After months of pandemic life, I just notice how much everyone is acting according to the law of #1. People are doing what they need to survive, or acting according to their politics, their peers, their beliefs, their wants. To mask or not, to gather or not, folks act according to their good with far less attention to the utilitarian good than I would have guessed before all this (I spent months in shock actually).

Now I see humans are just like the animal planet shows — tigers eat gazelles, freaked out gazelles stampede each other, killing the small and leaving behind the weak. Of course, there are also stories of the dolphins that save people, the wolves that nurse adopted pups. Both tendencies. But at day’s end,  4Es are finite, when there is shortage, when there is need, even when there is just desire for more, animals and humans alike do what they need to do to get.

Anyway, while I can’t say I now fully understand the mechanics of the tit-for-tat cookie/whammy cycle, I can say I understand where the root cause lies (me, me, me, I, I,I) and the way in which our views will drive us over and over into circumstances where there are both benefit from the fruits of our views and suffering from them: Just like Nucky’s view on money brings him both friends and enemies, esteem and notoriety.

Being Fed-Up

Which brings me to my final thought: If the cycle is endless ping-pong, maybe the escape hatch has nothing to do with goodness and everything to do with being fed-up.  It is pretty clear that Anglimara was ready to be done with his killing quest, it is why he was rushing to find his final victim. When he meets the Buddha, the exchange — the thing that the Buddha offers him – is about stopping. This is not really a story of being reformed or being repentant it is a story about being fed-up enough to stop.

Across the stories, there are the big whammy sufferings – being eaten as a turtle or being assaulted on alms rounds – that sound a lot like a finger -wagging and “you get what you deserve.” But there is so much more subtle suffering that laces all the stories —  living all alone as a Yakka when it is clear at the end he enjoys the company of the villagers. Being exiled from community and family as a cannibal and ultimately being utterly alone when he eats his only companion, the cook. Being sent from his family in his final life due to bad omens and his own troublesome nightmares and rejection after he ordains. But, of course, it makes total and complete sense, its not hard to imagine a murdery-cannibals not having lots of folks who wanna hang-out with them.

In some ways, these pains and slights touch me most because they look less like extreme punishment and more like the ‘trade-offs’ we all make — that we have come to normalize and accept — as the cost for the lives and wants we peruse.

Which brings me back to being fed-up, maybe the trick is to not normalize and accept trade-offs, whether those are loneliness, or extreme anxiety, or needing to leave homes and established lives every few years for jobs, or just the trade-offs of birth bodies, aging, sickness and death.

OK, that is what I have on the Angulimara stories and karma right now. I am not quite sure where I will go from here, but I felt like it was critical for me to address karma, at least enough that I had a sense of the contours. Plus a sense that it was discernible through wisdom and increased understanding, by myself, when the time is ripe. For a while, it has just been taunting me from the corner of my mind, something I felt like I had to ‘take on faith’, which just doesn’t sit well with me. I sorta figure that if I go back to my self and self belonging contemplations with rigor, this will all come together a bit more organically for me.

Again, I really do appreciate your guidance on all this stuff. I try not to bother you and Mae Yo too much, but this was really stuck and needed some expert prodding.

If I may, I would like to ask you two one more question –it might be an answer I put on ice and contemplate on later, or use as a sanity check when my own contemplations get there in the future, but since I have the chance, I will ask now: Why do we know, in our hearts, what is naughty and what isn’t? Why is it that us humans, even animals (in dogs you can see in their face), have a sense of shame/guilt built-in? Is it because in our landscape of me-me-me-I-I-I we know what we would want to be on the receiving end of and what we wish to avoid?  Or is it just pattern recognition — after a while you notice your murdery behavior makes you unpopular — and wanting better outcomes for ourselves?

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? Steal? Kill? Commit adultery? Spend their days intoxicated? Commit adultery?

Spend their days intoxicated?

What happens (long term, in next rebirths) people who lie? Steal? Kill? Commit adultery? Spend their days intoxicated? Commit adultery?

Spend their days intoxicated?

AD: Lets just start with 1, adultery, since that is the topic in the Isidasi story:

In general, people who commit adultery tend to get caught at some point, we will call this short term and long term in this life. Their own spouse, if they have one, is upset and they can leave them, divorce them, take the kids and otherwise ruin their domestic life. The spouse of the adulterer’s lover, if they have one and find out, can try and exact vengeance by violence or other acts to try and ruin the adulterer’s reputation and life.

More ongoing/patterns/trends that can persist across lives — all behavior arises from view. Again, in general, it seems like the view of an adulterer is that achieving their own satisfaction takes precedence over the feelings of others. In 2 of the human lives from the Isidasi story, this is super clear, he toys with women to fuel his pleasure independent of how his serial use’em and lose’em behavior will impact those women, and then in a future life forces out wife number 1 for her own advancement without regard to how that is going to impact wife 1.

This will naturally leave a wake of pretty hurt and angry people in an adulterer’s path until something — either a serious enough bitch slap; or a come-to-Jesus that touches their heart; or being cheated on themselves; or a deliberate process of self exploration, internalization and view changing (aka practice) ends their view and by extension their behavior.

This all makes total sense to me. It even makes sense to me that while, in general, these are the consequences of adultery, they don’t always shake-out in the short or long or mid term. We can return to this later, but I did ask the Buddha (via Access to Insight https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.136.nymo.html)  for some clarification on karma and was really touched by the Maha Kammavibhanga Sutta. I see it is a matrix, and I see it is exactly like sand –so many variables that in any given instance it is impossible to predict what will occur for sure.

Totally A-OK so far.

Here is where I start getting frustrated — in the Isidasi story, it is obvious in her last life she is on the flip side, having her own home broken-up when she was a home wrecker before.  But, by all accounts, at least in her last life, Isidasi was the picture perfect wife. Nothing in her behaviors, at that time, should evoke retribution from her husbands. So what is the mechanism by which they ‘knew’ they should reject her? Even if you say, on some level, in her heart she felt like she deserved punishment, how did she know these marriages were the ones she should put herself in to be punished?

I guess put another way, karma gets talked about as very tit for tat. In a single life, I hit you so you hit me back makes sense. Even across multiple lives, I am a hitter so eventually I’ll get hit back makes sense. What doesn’t compute for me is I used to be a hitter, I would never hit now, but out of the blue, countless lifetime later, I get hit. The ‘why’ of karma doesn’t really make sense without understanding the ‘how’. What is the mechanism by which this gets carried forward?

Of course, I have some guesses, based mostly on what I have heard and a little on my own understanding. My biggest one, is that the aggregates, namely 3 (memory) and 4 (imagination), somehow  carry the ‘account book’ forward??? Memory of what we had/didn’t have and imagination of what that will be like are clearly responsible for becomings, so the fact that they pack a little retributive baggage along for the ride, is a reasonable guess to me. But, serious black box here.

Which does bring me back to the Isidasi story. Even if I buy that immediately after his player death he did not pass go, and went straight to hell, because he felt so bad about his actions (which then why would you do it again if you were so contrite as to send yourself to hell?)  It is not like some angry god pressed the down arrow. What’s with all the castration lives?

I suppose karma as a topic is extra, extra, frustrating because these whammies (like castration), that can come along and whack you at any time, are so worrisome, but I feel like I am stuck and it seems almost impossible to live in this world without doing whammy worthy stuff sometimes.

Seriously if you have any thoughts on the black box of karma, those would be great. Or maybe I just need a little more patients… Its not exactly my top virtue though…

MN: As for reaping karmic consequences, there are two things: Becoming the victim of a similar offense, or acting out that same offense again. This is mainly because our views do not change. If you committed suicide before, it was because your views led you to conclude that death ends things, or that death is the only answer. Though you may be stuck for eternity at the bridge or skyscraper where you jumped to your death, you only know that it sucked and you suffered – you can’t trace the result back to the cause, which is your wrong view. So come next life, you still haven’t changed your view on death, you encounter a similar situation, you act similarly….rinse and repeat until you’ve had enough. That’s what’s behind the whole 500 lifetimes we see in the discourse. It is like A LOT, or A LOT A LOT, too many

Angulimara is a good example. He had a lifetime as a large tortoise, as a human eating yakkha, as a king turned cannibal, and as murderer turned arahant. If you see all the lifetimes together, you’ll see why people repeat offenses, and why they end up becoming victim of offenses they once committed

This is an Angulimara past life (From MN) https://youtu.be/whNT4oxFPZ4

AD Present day addition: Here are a few other Angulimara stories I ended up finding on my own to get a better picture:

https://thejatakatales.com/maha-sutasoma-jataka-537/

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/hecker/wheel312.html

MN: As for who is keeping track of karma? Sañña, memory, has everything covered. If you recall, in Treasure Trove, Luang Por Thoon talks about the thousand room pavilion where recent arrivals watch a movie of their past deeds…and then if it the scales tip toward good, you reap karmic consequences in heaven realms first. If they tilt toward evil, you reap karmic consequences in hell or animal realms first. If it isn’t too bad or they sorta balance out, you could be headed to a human rebirth instead. The info is all contained in our memory. We know very well what we did, whether we want to admit it or not. Sometimes we mistakenly accept fault for something we didn’t do, or sometimes we refuse to admit fault for something we did do. But, like in a court of law, the proof exists. Once put on the stand, the truth slips out, somehow, someway.We can lie to others, but we cannot lie to ourselves.

AD: Generally, I am really good about staying super focused on a topic, and synthesizing when I am ready. I have been on self and rupa and belonging for many moons already, bringing everything back to touch on it. Just something about our conversation, plus my general frustration state (caused in part by my rupa contemplations), seems to have caused the karma black box — that I keep putting aside for another day –to creep out of its corner and start me feeling itchy from ignorance.

Anyway, I may ultimately need to time-out the karma box back into the corner for a while. But, since its already out, and I have already started poking…Give me a little while to do some Angulimara binge watching, we’ll see if my ‘Buddhist patron saint’s’ story can jar something for me.

I will say this much now, I suspect I am on the right track:

I am watching a show, “Boardwalk Empire”: The main character, Nucky, has a rather pronounced relationship with money. Clearly he values it, sees it as part of what makes him him, what he can use to shape the world to his liking, he uses tremendous force of character to acquire and preserve it. He is super generous and charitable, giving very freely to folks in need and friends and family, community — money is a way he can help solve problems and injustices people face. At the same time, he runs a bootleging empire, to build his wealth he regularly engages in violence and even murder, it is just part of the business.

Of course, for his generosity, he makes many friends, it allows him to advance his family life, public persona, to have folks who feel indebted to him. For his violence and murderiness, plus just his being in a position that competes against equally ‘hungry and forceful’ souls for business and territory, he makes enemies, who are by their nature as mob bosses are pretty ruthless. It is very very clear in the show how he sets the seeds both for good stuff and whammies, neither coming for him would surprise the viewer.

It is the same view about money, about its role in shaping identity and his future, that underlies both sets of actions –giving away and ruthlessly acquiring.   Until his view is changed there is nothing that would stop his relationship to money, his efforts to acquire it and the consequences it brings. If the view is unresolved in one life it will simply pop up in the next.

Still super confused on the mechanics in the Isidasi story because in that last life, she didn’t seem to have a choice in husbands, she seemed to act the picture of perfect wife, I am not sure how her rejections were ‘arranged’. Also not clear on the casterations.But anyway, to be continued…

Thank you again, I really do appreciate your help!

MN: Isidasi is a good one to keep on the back burner. It seems so weird how she could appear beautiful but be rejected. Are those men specifically acting out Isidasi-specific karma, or are they just realizing their own karma while she realizing her own. Is karma like a ray donovan fixer, bring two debts together to be cleared at once?

AD: You don’t have to tell me twice to back burner that particular take 😉.

But on a more meta level, I think what has frustrated me so much for so long about karma is that, coming from a judeo christian background, it just seemed tinged with old testament angry God retributive justice. But I really see now, after even just a little investigation, that it’s not that at all. It is that views drive everything we do, and what we do has consequences. And we keep doing that same stuff over again so long as we have the same view. Look at that, not magic after all.

Without context though, the Jataka and other such stories, sound like morality tales. Like a child being pat on the head and told to believe what I am told to believe and do what I am told to do because ‘its for my own good’. Which, may be true, but if it were my personality to take stuff on faith Is probably still be practicing Judism…

MN: Jatakas aren’t telling us to be good, they’re showing us consequences that we are too short sighted to see on our own. We aren’t told to believe, but to figure out if it makes sense to us, and if it makes sense on a small scale to adapt that to the world on a large sclae

AD:  Yes, that seems pretty reasonable when you say it like that ☺️.

One of my most pervasive wrong views, that I see come up again and again in my practice, is on good alana/ bad alana — aka what alana believes is good versus what alana believes is bad is the universal rule of morality, something fixed that exists inside fixed individuals. Homeless alana, compassionate alana, bad Buddhist alana, bad daughter alana, it’s all the same story. I think even beauty, in my twisted mind, is one of the physical manifestations of goodness. Which is to say, my wrong views color everything, even the way I see practice and Dhamma. So it’s not exactly super shocker that that is the lens through which I read the Jatakas or try and frame karma. I understand it isn’t right, it’s just so hard to catch the more subtle ways it pops up, it is so deeply ingrained into how I view the world. Believe me I am working on it…

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’ all rolled into one, amazing, Kalyanamitra . Because it pretty much captures my contemplations ‘real time’, I will once again (much as I did with my aha moments on rupa following the 2019 retreat) break our conversation into ‘bite-sized bits’ and share our Line Chat, over the course of a few blog entries, more or less intact as a transcript, with a few alterations for clarity.  So hold on, the train is about to embark on the karma line (…ugh, I know, I just couldn’t resist the pun though)…

---

So, as a little refresher here, I had been addressing the topic of beauty, but couldn’t quite get the clarity I wanted on what particular causes might result in being a super model beauty versus a hunchback ugly. I chalked it up to my “karma black box/total blind spot.” And asked Mae Neecha for hints…and so the journey began:
MN: Hints? Try looking at karma in terms of short term (doing something in this lifetime and seeing the results in this lifetime) vs long term (doing something in another lifetime and seeing the results in this lifetime or a future lifetime). Mae Yo always recommends whenever you want to know something that cannot be easily known, to draw a parallel to something that we can know in this world. The general rules governing the entire world, which means the 3 Realms, are the same

AD: I don’t know, this is so hard for me…when I think about beauty, one thing that stands out is effort. Compared to many of my friends from school, I have stayed fitter and more beautiful because I put a lot of time and effort into it. I also have financial resources I can direct towards my beauty tools, efforts and helpers — part of the reason for my success then is intention and energy.

When I look at friends even more able to retain beauty, they are 2 trainers who put even more effort in than me. Fitness and beautiful movement are their livelihoods. But I guess I just feel like to be born beautiful you need to be ‘good’ or ‘blessed’ somehow.

Much like being born rich, I look at my dad and Eric both, who grew up pretty poor and got rich. Both of them share a willingness to effort. And a willingness to problem-solve and quickly course correct to meet their goals.

Or maybe, because I am an effort-full person it is biasing my reading of the causes of these successes.

MN: Maybe this will help. Karma is both results of karma/past life actions we can’t see (I don’t know why I was born with X and not with Y), and actions we can see (I have A because I did B in present life). For instance, maybe you don’t know why you were born poor, but you can know why you lost money in this lifetime – because you gambled it all away or you joined a business venture that didn’t accurately predict market conditions.

But the concept is basically the same. So, if we can see how present actions lead to present results works in relation to this beauty topic in the present life, we can extrapolate past life to present results as well.

AD: Ok, I had a super fit body in my 30s because I worked out 3 hours a day. Now I have a medium fit body cause I at least work out 5 days a week.

I have retained more beauty relative to my age than many folks because I have taken care of my skin, been careful about sunscreen? I think for Eric and money, he has just been able to work so hard and adjust so much and learn what people want from him, what they will pay for and deliver.

I am still seeing the side of having consequence informed by the effort born of wanting. Fixating on that thing I want in order to get it.

Or the other side, getting what I don’t want as a consequence of some behavior: I used to smoke and I am getting those lip lines, a consequence of the reckless behavior of smoking. But also, I can’t sperate this observation from understanding that, to some degree, it is just the nature of Rupa to age and change, for lines on the skin to appear.

OK, lets try again: Eric and I lost a bunch of money on the house we bought in NY. We rushed into it. Made a rash decision based on what we imagined it would be like. We didn’t weigh and measure and info gather.

QQ: What does losing money on a business venture that doesn’t accidently predict market conditions say about karma? In my mind, this is the sand problem. The fact that you really can’t ever know what will happen in tomorrow’s market. Then again, a friend of mine tried to start a business and failed. I love him, but the whole thing felt like he just believed he knew best and others would follow him. He didn’t really evaluate the way the business he went into worked. The kind of expertise folks looked for in order to buy his products. There was hubris.

Ok, when I think about it, my dad made his money because people liked working with him. He had good relationships to his bosses. His employees liked working for him. He was someone who took time to mentor and he was well known to give a chance to women and minorities at a time that was not so common. As a result he had a number of people very loyal to him. They helped him succeed, get promoted and make money.

Likewise, when I wanted my own old job back, even with a weird schedule and semi remote thing, I got it because I always worked hard, I was dependable and I took pride in the organization and my own contributions to it. I also have a very good relationship with my boss, I went out of my way to adapt to her and get on her good side and position myself as valuable.

Still not sure about beauty.
Still, I see there are obviously causes. Things folks do that get them success or sets up failure. But this feels unsatisfactory.

MN: It follows the same pattern

AD: OK, I have recruited Eric into this effort. Here is our collective take:

Eric got rich because he believes the reward of money is worth his effort and boy oh boy does he effort. In addition, he has learned and adapted on the way in order to up the chances of his success. He was just saying back at Google he hated managers that yelled at him. He has learned not to tell at his subordinates. Those better relationships help him succeed.

Eric said he watched a masterclass by a fashion designer and something he said really resonated: He said the reason many folks aren’t successful at being fashionable is they think they can only be 10 percent more fashionable, and they don’t think the effort is worth the small percentage success. They give up. But if it is like that, slowly 10 percent at a time you build, you grow. Money, or fashion or beauty.

A few extra minutes on makeup. Learning new face massage techniques. Working out and going for botox. You think it is worth it. So you do, you build on success. You watch what others do and adapt. There is intention, effort adaptiveness and resourcefulness all based on the desire/ sense of worthitness of the reward of the pursuit.

As Eric said, he may have started in this life with more raw material than most — smart, persistent, perceptive. But each of these are traits, plus more, have increased and with it so has his success.

So is this it, the process of becoming a desirable trait? Clearly it is necessary, but not sufficient, what about penalties? Where is the smack down for naughtiness that are all over the precautionary jatikas that try to tell you not to be a dick, or cheat, or be murdery?

How does this tie to the rather quaint notion that folks who keep precepts will be beautiful?

Eric and I looked at the 10 paramitas together. He thinks that they are the checklist to any gain you want to make. Half of them hunker down and persist. A few planting seeds of kindness and endearment so others help. A couple don’t be a dick ones to avoid the vengeful pit falls or running afoul of law pitfalls. I think he is right. Which would mean the traits that get you worldly cookies are also the traits that get you Dhamma cookies. Hum…

Ok, I am still stuck on the retribution side. I was watching the Isidasi Theri story online, I am trying to follow the how’s and why’s of her punishment rebirths and I just can’t get there. I see in 1 life she/ he is a player and then goes to hell. Then has a bunch of castration rebirths. Then, not learning her lesson not to be a home wrecker, tries to overthrow a first wife to become favorite and finally gets born beautiful and proper but rejected by all husband’s. At least on the home wrecker side ( not clear on the hell’s or castration) she is getting exactly what she gave. I just don’t understand why? What is the mechanism here? This feels so much less clear cut then I workout therefore get ripped…

Anyway, on a different aspects of all this, it seems that success, ‘good karma’s is all delivered through the medium of Rupa — wealth, beauty, health. Looking back on my chain of crazy, it does relate. If I am hungry and decide somehow Rupa will satiate me that is the cause of all my effortfulness to build the Rupa stash of things I believe are worth it, will satiate me. If Eric works and builds 10 percent at a time for money, me for beauty, across many lives with persistence, and we achieve it, we only do so because of the tenacity of the wrong view we held in the first place that these things will satisfy us. I’m going on a limb here, it is late, but does that mean even what I would call the results of good karma is born of wrong views?

Ok, also on things about karma that make no sense to me. Khujjuttarā is said to get her wisdom from a life she offers bracelets to a pacceka Buddha to help him while he struggles to handle a hot bowl. How is this the cause of sharp wisdom?

I suppose if karma is like a video game, I get the basics, you start from nothing, build skills and tools. Play levels again and again till you improve enough to beat them. Dying when you lose focus. Not progressing when you don’t have forbearance.

But I don’t get the whammies that send you back to the start just for hitting them. I don’t get the warps. Or the special power ups that seem to just fall from the sky. It frustrates me because I feel like I don’t really understand how this all works and I hate being left with the ‘Oh, it’s just magic feeling’ when I know darn well magic is just science I don’t understand yet…

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 balked; I considered it a black box, a topic so impenetrable, that every time my practice pushed-up against it, I froze, and put the topic aside for another day.

In truth, what I came to realize was that karma wasn’t necessarily an impenetrable topic for me, so much as it was a scary one. Karma to me was about punishment, it was an indictment of me, of my worthiness as a person and a practitioner; when I bumped up against the topic of karma, some part of me worried that if I looked too closely, what I might find would steer me off the course of practice for good. Afterall, why practice when that practice is definitely doomed to fail? So, to ‘defend’ myself, my practice, I choose to just ignore karma altogether.

My strategy worked great, until the end of 2020 when a conversation with Mae Neecha about beauty took a turn toward karma, and for once I felt both frustrated and brave enough, that instead of balking at that karma black box, I decided to try and pry it open a bit and have a look. This next chapter will cover my karma contemplations, mostly by recounting an ongoing line chat with Mae Neecha in which she helps guide me on my karmic-ventures.

I will give you a spoiler alert here: At the end of this chapter, you will not find  Alana the great understander of karma ( I have come to see that is synonymous with enlightenment). You won’t even find an Alana with a super clear working knowledge of karma (that came later too). But, you will meet an alana who was finally ‘brave’ enough to start trying to unpacking that karmic black box, and who, in the process, discovered karma isn’t a personal punishment, a personal indictment, a personal anything at all…

Imagine that, the law of the universe just isn’t all about me…