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.