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?