Get a Lifetime Dot Com

(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!)

Doesn’t every good story start with “Once upon a time……..”

Well then, once upon a time, Sariputra, a highly-realized student of Sakyamuni Buddha’s, is travelling with some of his (Sariputra’s) students when they come across a family who has just sat down to supper on the lawn. The supper table sits between a pond and the house.

The fish that had been swimming in the pond has just been caught by the father and is now being eaten by the family for supper. The father, sitting at the head of the table, has his baby son on his knee. As soon as the father finishes eating the fish, the family dog runs up to the table, grabs the fish bones and begins to eat them.

The father is very angry. He beats the dog.

Sariputra laughs. His students ask him “What’s so funny? What do you see that we don’t see?”

Sariputra explains.

In a past life the father thought that is wife was cheating with on him with the neighbour. So he killed the neighbour.

The father’s parents — the grandparents of the father’s children — are deceased. But while alive, the grandmother was a real homebody, very attached to her home, her children, and everything connected with her home. The grandfather loved fishing.

In this present lifetime, the grandfather is now the fish who has just
been caught and eaten by his son.

The grandmother has now been reborn as the family dog!

So the grandmother (now a dog) is now eating the grandfather (the fish) and she is also being beaten by her son in this lifetime.

This story expresses the reality of suffering. It demonstrates how the attachments of a previous life are now expressed in the circumstances of the present lifetime.

Source: material based on weekend seminar on karma by teacher Jay Lippman.

If you found this post helpful, please share it with a friend. Then consider subscribing to the weblog. Just click on the Subscribe button in the navigation bar and follow one of the three easy sets of instructions. Thanks! I would welcome your comments. May you be well and happy.

(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!)

Unlike Erica in the popular Canadian TV show “Being Erica,” once the seeds from past volitional actions have ripened, we cannot go back and change the consequences.

Our past lives karma might be determined but in this life we should always try to remedy it, make efforts to make it workable.” <source: “His Eminence Namkha Drimed Rinpoche, January, 2011 in reply to a question that I sent to him.>

The only choice we have at this point is how to relate to these consequences. Are we going to dwell in anger, bitterness, resentment if we see the consequences as negative? Or gloat, bask in ego-pride because we see the consequences as positive?

Byron Katie’s book Loving What Is nudges me off my psychological default position (ego) and helps me to respond to consequences —that I myself have brought about — in a much more spacious, graceful and positive way.

Here’s a book review: Read the rest of this entry »

(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!)

I’m on my way to meet a friend at a restaurant. It’s raining. So I take my umbrella along with me in the car. We meet. Eat. And leave. I then discover that I do not have my umbrella. Return to restaurant. Return to the table at which I was sitting. No umbrella there. Ask the hostess whether anyone turned in a black umbrella. She checks. No.

I demand to speak to the manager. In harsh language, I tell the manager that the restaurant is bad news. In fact, maybe one of the staff stole my umbrella.

When I get home, I’m still fuming.

(source: modified version of original by teacher Jay Lippman)

What just happened?

• umbrella was stolen as a consequence of past negative actions that have now ripened;
• harsh speech and indulging in “the blame game” create future negative karmic consequences;  and
• hanging onto anger by indulging in it, even when the situation has ended, strengthens my habitual tendency to be angry. This ensures that when I am in a similar situation in the future I will most likely behave in a similar negative manner.

In the next scenario, the situation is the same — someone has stolen my umbrealla — but I respond differently:

• recognize that the karma of previous negative actions is being burnt up;
• Although anger is arising in me about the loss of the umbrella,  I refrain from harsh languzge when speaking to the manager;
• when the situation ends, I try to let go of anger every time it arises. This weakens the  negative habitual pattern. The next time I am in a similar situation, I will have a better chance to recognize that this is yet another opportunity to weaken my negative tendency to anger.
  

What’s the difference between these two sets of responses? Read the rest of this entry »

(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!)

On subway cars in my city, there’s a sign on the door saying “Mind the Gap.” Love it! I need to be constantly reminded to not follow all the subconscious gossip and discursive thought going on in my head and just mind the gap.

The gap to which the transit company is referring is that gap between the platform and the subway car.

The gap to which meditation instructors refer is that between one thought\emotion and the next. That’s where primordial awareness and intelligence lie. That’s where the unchanging essence that underlies all changing things is. This unchanging essence is sometimes described as being as vast as the sky where “nothing but everything arises from it.” The spaciousness that lies beyond the claustrophobia of our conventional minds. Beyond judgment, contrivance, change, accepting and rejecting. Just beyond….

I know from personal experience how, in a nano second, I get caught up in thoughts\emotions and how easily I get “hooked” if one of my painful “buttons” is pushed. e.g. if someone is extremely aggressive towards me. One of my spiritual guides, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, used the example of walking along the street and a stranger looks at you and shouts “F — — K YOU!”  Or my child does something that really upsets me. What’s my usual reaction? How can I avoid going on automatic pilot? Read the rest of this entry »