(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?Create a gap, I tell myself. Don’t just jump into the situation. Pause. Isn’t there some Coca-Cola ad that invites us to taste “the pause that refreshes”? Or like pressing the “Refresh” (F5) key on our computer keyboard. Or the “Pause” button on a CD Rom player.
Some ways to create a gap:
- in daily life:
- take a few deep breaths and focus on the process — Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale — before responding to the situation;
- put up some signs around your home to remind yourself to “mind the gap.”
- in meditation practice, we learn to be mindful of the gap between one thought\emotion and the next. This is where we learn to say “thinking” when thought\emotion arises, rather than getting caught up in it, or obsessing and fixating on it.
As this weblog is an in-depth examination of karma, I want to point out that there’s a wonderful bonus to minding the gap: by not indulging in our usual habitual patterns, we burn up negative karma.
Every time a habitual pattern gets strong, every time we feel caught up or on automatic pilot, we could see it as an opportunity to burn up negative karma. Rather than as a problem, we dould see it as our karma ripening, which gives us an opportunity to burn up karma, or at least weaking our karmic propensities. But that’s hard to do. When we realize that we are hooked, that we’re on automatic pilot, what do we do next? (source: In the Face of Fear, article by Pema Chodron)
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