(Prologue: I’ve got first-hand experience that a real understanding of the laws of karma can substantially change our lives for the better. I created this weblog to share information and personal experience with others. May it be of benefit!)

The story of Helen of Troy, with its combination of sex and violence, has endured for over 3,000 years since Homer wrote about it. There have been movies on the big screen. Movies on television. And scores of books.

Helen was the Greek version of Marilyn Monroe. Her story, as told by one of my favourite authors Margaret George, is a dramatic illustration of the laws of cause and effect, afflictive emotions, grasping and craving. In short, we watch with fascination as the karma unfolds. (For an historical account, based on The Illiad by Homer, you can read the first three chapters of Helen of Troy by Jack Lindsay.)

Helen was Queen of Sparta, married to King Menalaus. While Prince Paris of Troy is visiting Sparta, he meets Helen and the rest, as they say, is history.

Agememnon, King of Mycenae, and older brother to Menalaus, creates alliances with other Greek kings and they set sail — in the fabled 1,000 ships — to make war on Troy. While Agememnon is in Troy, his wife takes a lover. After ten years, Troy is sacked. Helen returns to Sparta with her husband King Menalaus.  When Agememnon reaches Mycenae to take up his throne again, his wife stabs him to death.

In the meantime, Helen has set out to visit her sister Clytemnestra. As Helen nears her sister’s palace, Orestes, the son of Clytemnestra and Agememnon, tells Helen that he has murdered his mother.

As Helen continues towards the palace to carry out burial rites for her murdered sister, she comes across an angry crowd — they blame Helen for letting Orestes get away.

“….I am Helen, the queen’s sister. Pray, let me pass, that I may tend to her.”
Now they became more agitated and angry. “The cause of it all!’ one man hissed. “Without you, he [Agememnon] never would have gone away. Had he never gone away, then none of the rest of it would have happened.”
“I am weary of this,” I said. And in that moment I knew I had listened meekly to the last round of blame I ever would permit myself to endure. If this had not happened, then that would not. Yes. But how long, and how far back, could this be pursued? There was, in truth, no end to it. “Enough of it. I need to tend my fallen sister. Get out of my way.” [emphasis mine]

Helen might have been singing a line of an Aretha Franklin song: ” I found out I’m just a link in [the] chain.”

Or she might have been quoting Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche on karma:

“If we follow thoughts back, we can see that they stem from an embedded karmic situation that has gone on for a very long time.”<source: Class 5, a seminary transcript>

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