As promised at the start of this blog chapter, we will not be closing this part of my story with Alana the Great Understander of Karma. The truth is, the more clearly I understand karma, the more I suspect that a complete understanding of how karma operates is synonymous with enlightenment. That’s because, my most recent contemplations (March 2023) have helped me realize that not understanding karma is just one more, albeit exceptionally deep, wrong view; it is a failure…

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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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