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 your last bite of food. Bravery to volunteer to go out of the city gates, bravery to face the demon undeterred. Bravery tends to be rewarded and the reward of choice is generally money. Moreover, while bravery can be born of hubris and stupidity, it is clear in her case it comes hand-in-hand with cleverness and wisdom (as seen by her escape of the convict). Again this makes sense in light of the fact that she uses her bravery to the benefit of making merit. So giving food leading to wealth and then to being treasurer (we will assume her husband shares her cleverness as like often hangs with like), a job that takes wisdom, all still makes sense.

Also, it makes sense that someone hungry, since they gave all their food away, goes to the temple to beg, overhears a prophecy by the Buddha and then makes it self fulfilling. The wife knew the prophecy, which may be part of why she was looking for opportunities, like volunteering to go out of the walls, to help make the prophecy come true. In this story, its not like 1 bowl of porridge = 1 bowl of porridge in return.

The Kondadhana story is more troublesome for me. I get that he is clearly someone who likes to stir shit to achieve his ends. First, as a Deva he/she does it to divide the monks for whatever reason. Then as a monk he does it to retaliate for the other monks talking about the woman who follows him. Shit stirring, to someone inclined to stir shit, will be default problem solving mode and it will cost. Clearly, that is the Buddha’s warning about being silent as a broken bell. But why a tit-for-tat, I took the form of a woman to stir shit and now a woman form follows me to make my life difficult? I have no idea. This is one of those ‘a bit too much’ stories for me.

That said, I don’t know if the fact that I can’t always rationalize the exact tit-for-tatness matters right now. I seem to be making ok progress on the general idea of consequence and, more importantly, my practice feels unstuck –I was getting so bound-up in what I didn’t understand, couldn’t rationalize for myself it was shaking my “faith” (used very loosely as a term here), in my own ability to progress. Now though, thigs are starting to unfold again, especially on the topics of hope/fear, my imaginations for the future and the way rupa/self belonging feeds those. I know the past is gone, I know I spend the present worrying about the future and I know the future is uncertain and ephemeral. I think if I can get this to penetrate my heart, to kill the hope, that could be a biggie for me.

MN: If not the tit-for-tat, then what kind of punishment would pay for the debt someone has created in the past? In general, in the world we live in, don’t you pay for a monetary debt with money? if you stole someone’s opportunities, don’t your opportunities get stolen from you? if you took someone’s freedom, isn’t your freedom taken from you? You can see it in how parents punish their children tit for tat is the norm, isn’t it? How else would we learn the consequences of our actions?

AD: It’s the specificity, not the degree or kind, that gives me pause. How would it come to pass that because one chooses to create havoc via the form of an enchanting woman, their ‘curse’ would be an invisible enchanting woman who follows them.

And it’s not always…yes we pay a monetary debt with money, but we can also be ordered to pay money for ‘ pain and suffering’ caused in a law suit. Or we can pay a monetary debt with labor…the ole washing dishes to pay a tab. Or the punishment for speeding is a ticket, a fine, though the infraction wasn’t financial in nature..

MN: Then what else would be a equal punishment? for a monk, a woman is the ultimate symbol of desire and lust – the big rule that once broken, you must disrobe immediately

That money for “pain and suffering” is only paying for the interest. the principal can be paid later in life, or will be paid in hell or in another rebirth. It’s using money as a central currency for value — you sped because you valued time or something that can also be quantified in some sense by money.

AD: Agreed, but it isn’t exact alikes. It is not being hit in the eye for pretending to be blind.

MN: Maybe it isn’t so much, “why does it have to be this way” but more, “why shouldn’t it be this way?” “what should it be if NOT this way?” Do you have an alternate punishment that achieves the goal of paying the debt satisfactorily?

AD: Ok, I hadn’t thought of it in this way. On this one, the likeness in form is really a likeness in severity. This makes sense — if you are the judge of what you deserve, your heart knows it was severe, and this is most severe I get it.

MN: Sometimes the symbol is best served in tit-for-tat form, other times it is best served in equivalent/substitution form; regardless it is our own mind that keeps track. How would it recognize that it has paid a debt if it is too far removed from the actual kamma? for instance, drowning for poking someone’s eyes out. or having stomach cancer for slitting a turtle’s throat

AD: I totally buy the equivalent idea. It is just the stories that make it seem like there is some Fixer-in-the-Sky dolling out the punishment that a person who hits others in the eye will get hit in the eye six days hence.

MN: No, no one has the time to be doling out punishments. Even the guardians of hell don’t want more people to come to hell, when they take the wrong person, they have that person tour hell in order to go back to tell their friends and family NOT to do evil. That there are real consequences.

AD: So what, we punish ourselves for ourselves? To learn our lesson?

MN: We are the ones keeping track of all our karma. Think about the karma we commit by intention, it’s only in our minds, who the hell is gonna want to creep into our minds and do accounting? Think about this – would you want to do it for someone? In the pavillion of 1000 rooms (described in LP Thoon’s Autobiography), the karma that plays on the “monitor” is whatever is in our minds; our side of the story, not the full story, but our take on it. Your role in the drama, regardless of the factors that led to it. your actions – whether incited by others or whether you did it only because you pitied someone, or otherwise – are yours to pay for.

AD: We punish ourselves to balance out books and take debt off them perhaps?

MN: Yeah, think about how we realize what we’ve done and willingly pay for it. if we don’t pay, we feel never-ending guilt. Once a criminal gets caught, it’s kind of a relief, that suffering can end. Like when you lie or steal. If you never pay for it, it lingers in your mind, when you pay for it, it’s finally over.

AD: Oh, I totally believe this. It plays out in the world, it is obvious. It is also logical in that we create circumstances based on our views/ habitual patterns. Circumstances that have 2 sides. In time, being in the circumstances our own minds/views desire will expose us to both sides.

This is like a gang banger that shoots up people’s houses regularly being the victim of violence himself. No surprise, that’s what you get when you value violence, use it as an end, surrounded yourself by it. I am just saying a gang banger who shot someone could get stabbed. They could go to prison for life. Or they could reform, like ongalimala as a yakka, only to come back again and suffer the consequences of being a cannibal king because they never did break the pattern. This also makes total sense, but then someone who had a guiltier consciousness by their nature might ‘pay’ more steeply than another who committed the same act but just felt less bad about it.

MN: Murder is murder, but the HOW you killed someone makes a difference too. Sometimes a simple shot to the head, sometimes you stab them repeatedly, sometimes you kill with poison, sometimes setting someone up to be killed by planting lies in order for you to steal their possessions – so whatever feeling is experienced is what you’re gonna have to pay for. The shock in being shot,  the pain of being stabbed and not immediately dying but suffering excruciatingly with no hope/help to be found, the specific pain of being poisoned (inability to breathe, exploding, nerve damage, or whatever poison-specific death). I could give you a million examples because karma already makes sense to me, but you need to find your own proof.

Change your view, try looking at it from a different angle – instead of finding reasons why it doesn’t work, look for reasons why it does work. Look for patterns in this world. Don’t let the tit-for-tat be an assumed “wrong,” because it is blocking your view.