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 beneficial!)

I am having a back-and-forth with my friend Louise about an intense situation in which I was recently involved. Her last e-mail to me was “so what [are you going to do] now?”

I hope my reply to Louise is helpful to more than myself. May it be so.

I can’t change the karma. The outcome has already been decided from my actions in previous lifetimes. There’s some karmic obstacle here.

In certain ways, this is very helpful to know. I simply stopped struggling. Instead, I continued to practice and study; to, hopefully, serve others by being emotionally nurturing; and to help people deal with crises with some insight, dignity and integrity.

On the other hand, I am left with a lingering sadness that I really cannot do anything about the situation. Once we have committed certain actions in a past lifetime, we cannot take them back. We can soften the effect. But we can’t take the actions back. The karma is going to ripen. [Added May 12’13: Of course, as senior teacher Jay Lippman pointed out to me today, you don’t know how long the karma will last. It might be for a whole lifetime. Or just a part of a lifetime.]

My lifetime has been about one choice and one choice only: simply deciding on what my response will be when the karma ripens. That’s it! What I do or don’t do makes no difference whatsoever to the outcome. Other than creating future karma, my present actions have no effect on the karma that is ripening. To repeat, once we have committed certain actions in a previous lifetime, we cannot take them back. We can soften the effect. But we can’t take the actions back. The karma is going to ripen.

 

Recognizing that I had one choice, I made it: I could be resentful, angry, paranoid, embittered, morose etc. But I decided decades ago that I would be as gracious as possible in the face of an almost overpowering amount of negative karma.

 

I knew what I was heading into before I was born. Supposed to be born around February 27th,  exactly 38 weeks after the day of conception, D-day June 6, 1944. But refuse to exit the womb. Wait until March 11th. Still only 5 lb 5 oz. I am called “5 by 5” in the hospital. Umbilical cord wrapped tightly around my neck. Doctor gets it off just in time. It is 60 degrees Fahrenheit in winter, Toronto, Canada. People are playing tennis.

Fast forward to 1956. I have a distict and very vivid memory of sitting in my bathtub at age 11 and realizing what the rest of my life would be like. It wasn’t pretty.

But there’s another factor that impinges on my life that we must consider: Up until now, I’ve only been talking about my own karma and karmic obstacles. There are other people’s karma and their obstacles as well! I cannnot change that. It is up to them.

So, Louise, back to your question “so what [are you going to do] now?”

Isn’t there some story about a princess and a frog? The frog tells the princess that he once was a human being. But then, by some evil [ego], got turned into a frog. Now the princess must kiss the frog to turn him back into a human being.

Let’s tweek that story a bit.

Frogs seem to think that they have to be in love with someone to be loving. Otherwise, they fear they may get embroiled in something they don’t want. So they hold back. Perform harmful, hurtful actions that show rejection. Become takers rather than givers. Are completely self-involved. They have lost their humanity to the forces of fear. This creates and maintains negative karma. In short, frogs put their fears before their friends.

But frogs, too, have a choice. If they are aware that they have become frogs who are stuck in their ponds, they can ask the warrior princess (heart, feeling, basic goodness, bravery) to embrace them so that that mind of fear can be put into the cradle of lovingkindess.

The frogs then awaken into full human beings, warrior princes. They put their friends before their fears.Princes understand that, no matter what type of relationship they are in, they can be true to the core of their being, which is to be kind, loving, caring, supportive. This creates and maintains positive karma.

(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 beneficial!)

BOSTON, MA, March 05, 1770 The Boston Massacre — British troops kill five unarmed colonists and wound six others after the colonists hurled taunts and snowballs.

The Boston Massacre occurred on March 5, 1770, when British soldiers opened fire on colonists that were heckling a British sentry.

BOSTON, MA – Monday, April 15, 2013, 14h50 EST — two bombs explode near the finish line of the Boston Marathon at 673 Boylston Street

A Boston Marathon competitor and Boston police run from the area of an explosion near the finish line in Boston, Monday, April 15, 2013. (AP Photo/MetroWest Daily News, Ken McGagh) MANDATORY CREDIT

Violence is rare in this picture-book city.

What would make two young men alleged to be the bombers perpetrate this horror? In this post, we’ll try to answer this question.

1.  Ignorance — The two killers don’t realize how bad this type of action is, or understand the karmic results that flow from such a negative action.
2. Karmic creation — Because of this ignorance, the killers perform the actual act of killing.
3. Consciousness — This factor includes the killers’ motivation, how strongly they feel about what they want to do, and their vizualization of the act step-by-step. Their feelings, and imagining the act, “nourish” the minds of the killers. Seeds of negative karma are now sown in killers’ minds and they will come to fruition at some point in the future.
4. Name and Form— The act of killing confirms the killers’ (ego) identity.
5. Six Senses — During the act of killing the killers’ senses are active – seeing, hearing, touching etc.
6. Contact — takes place when victim is actually killed by the weapon.
7. Feeling — how the killers feel – upset, pleased, neutral etc.
8. Craving or Adoption — Emotional indulgence is now full-blown. Their minds are fixated on the act and killers carry it out to the end.
9. Grasping or involvement — Killers becomes involved in the act because they want something, or want to avoid something. In other words, a self-indulgent reaction to their feelings takes place.
10. Becoming — Now that the killing has been committed, karma has been created.
11. Birth — Killers have given birth to consequences that will affect their future in a negative way.
12. Aging and Death — End of the act of killing.

<source: based on Thrangu Rinpoche’s schemata>

This is the mind of the killers.

It can make us question whether people are basically evil or basically good.

A video of the attack surfaced today showing the moment when the bomb detonated at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. The video captures the fiery explosion of one bomb and the thunderous boom of another. But it also captured something else. <source: click here>

Then the Boston Bodhisattva Warriors step forward. They are motivated by selfless and courageous service to others despite the possible danger to themselves.

Before the dust had settled from the explosion police officers and marathon runners were rushing to the scene to help those who were injured. No one knew at the moment what was going to happen next. No one knew if there would be another explosion. All they knew was that there were people who needed help and they rushed to help them. <source: click here>

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Usually, to tell someone they are a dreamer, is a bit of a criticism. It somehow means that they don’t have their “feet on the ground.” They may be, in the words of the Everly Brothers, “dreamin’ [their] life away.”

In the case of our spiritual guides, it means that they are great visionaries. As The Monkees would say, they are “daydream believers.”

My own dreams aren’t of that calibre and they appear when I am asleep at night. But they sometimes explain the meaning of a concept that I have not yet fully grasped experientially.

That was the case on April 06’13.  My centre celebrates the 26th passing of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Among other things, we listen to Talk One of a series of talks entitled How to Manifest Enlightened Society, Boulder, December 26, 1980. Harald Dienes leads the post-talk discussion. He points out a vivid phrase — “glaring light of the Great Eastern Sun” — that Rinpoche used to illustrate the idea that we’d prefer to stay inside our cocoons than come out into open space where we may be exposed.

Listening to my brothers and sisters share opinions and views of this phrase  triggers a memory of a dream I had had on April 05.

Dream

I and a friend are standing on a white beach looking out to the water. I am simultaneously standing beside my friend and can see our backs. I  say “look at how blue the water is.  Look at how yellow the sun is. Look at how red that [don’t remember what the object is] is!” The colours are so vivid.”

Next to that scene (stage left) is the exact same picture – the water, the sun, the white beach and some red object. But the colours are dull, washed out.

Notes

• the colours red, blue, yellow are primary colours = our own primordial wisdom; non-conceptual wisdom; primordial awareness beyond our own projections
• the sun = the mind of basic goodness, complete perfection, arises
• the colours are so vivid = when you actually see a colour, rather than your own concept of the colour, it is vivid, almost in a surreal way
• dull, washed out, pastel = seeing our projections, not the actual objects themselves
• simultaneously standing beside my friend and am also standing behind us so that I can see our backs = there is spaciousness  such that I can both be with my friend and get another (wider) view of the situation
• the two scenes placed side-by-side = coemergent quality, that is, both wisdom and confusion arise simultaneously — which one will we pick at any given time?

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Toronto, May 26’79 – Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche arrives to visit his students and hold a five-day public seminar

Halifax, Canada. Saturday, March 04, 2006. 19h00 AST…… Evening reception for participants of a five-day programme. Alan Sloan proposes a toast to Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, the Dorje Dradul. It is one of the best I’ve heard in 40 years. Alan has kindly given permission to quote his remarks.

I would like to propose a toast to what I personally feel is the essential Chogyam Trungpa. If I close my eyes and think of Rinpoche, the very first impression, the first thought is of his incredible warmth, his tenderness and amazing sensitivity to what it means to be a human being. The Vidyadhara was the most human human being I ever met.

He made us feel that being human was precious, that having a human body, heart and mind was the greatest treasure. He clearly loved his life and communicated that love to us. In his presence, every detail of perception, every emotion, thought, word, the most ordinary activities, all seemed potent and filled with meaning.

His tenderness was pervasive and penetrating. Whatever rock hard opinions his students held were illuminated and then melted, like glaciers, by the Dorje Dradul’s heat and brilliance. He loved us so passionately. His love encouraged us to be truly human, to feel everything, no matter how painful or pleasurable, exactly as it is — to respect our own experiences no matter what.

I would like to raise a toast to the ultimate human drala, to the Father and Grandfather Guru, to the kindest and most generous spiritual friend, who continues to inspire us all to be truly human and truly liberated.

To the Dorje Dradul.

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