Get a Lifetime Dot Com

We do not have to believe in reincarnation to benefit from this post or weblog. We only have to agree that present volitional actions have effects in the future. What we call our past history was once the future that was caused by previous “present” volitional actions.

Prologue: We are told that karma is carried from one lifetime to another and from one situation to another in this present lifetime. It’s much like passing the torch in a relay race. But what does karma actually look like “on the ground” in our daily lives? Put another way, what are the consequences of our past volitional actions when certain causes and conditions meet and certain seeds ripen in the present?

Based on my weblog page called Actual face of karma,what would the life of someone who is the present (fictional) incarnation of Queen Tiye (mother of Akhenaten), Queen of Sparta (aka Helen of Troy), Queen Jezebel, Cleopatra, St. Teresa of Avila and Sigmund Freud actually look like? In other words, what is the fruition of the karma (past volitional actions) of this portrait gallery of six historical figures in areas like money, sex, friendships, career, family etc.? To try to answer this question, I use diary entries like the one below.

* * * * *

I, Rainbow Desert Flower, enter this into my private diary on the 05 th day of the month of December in the year 1970 CE. May it benefit all those who are trying to understand their own karmic package.

Over the last few years, there have been reports about the possible reasons that King Tutankhamun died at the age of 19. The latest was this past Tuedsay, February 16’10, one of which is entitled King Tut Mysteries Solved: Was Disabled, Malarial, and Inbred. It says that the young pharoah died of malaria and mentions that his father and mother were brother and sister. The diary entry below tells the real story…..

I am a slave in the court of Tutankhamun. Tumult in Egypt. Akenaten has disappeared. Tutankhaten (later changed to Tutankhamun to appease the priests of the old school), a physically disabled lad of nine or ten, came to the throne in 1333 B.C. His uncle, the High Priest Ay, is the power behind the throne and is plotting to have his nephew Tutankhamun murdered so he, Ay, could ascend the throne.

It happened this way: 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!)

For me, it’s a delicious juxtaposition when Valentine’s Day + the Tibetan New Year fall on the same day as they have this year on February 14, 2010.

What follows are my notes of Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche’s address to his international Shambhala Buddhist sangha at 13h00 EST today.

Let me stress that this is merely what I heard — not necessarily an absolutely precise transcription of what was said. But I believe it’s close enough to share its inspiring message.

The words in {   } are my interpretation only. Words in (  ) are from Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, the Sakyong’s father.

• Courage and effort are part of our {Shambhala Buddhist} tradition;
• {By contrast} It’s easy to fall asleep {not being awake;  just sleepwalking through life by being caught up in habitual patterns etc.} and hope that it all gets better;
• {It takes courage to} take responsibility for our own thoughts and projections;
• Don’t need to give into hate. Must have the power and maturity to express our love. Kindness will save our mind and planet;
• Love is the natural outpouring {on the relative or conventional plane} of our basic goodness {on the ultimate or absolute plane}. It’s a feeling of offering.
  • (“The closest analogy I can think of at this point is the general basic goodness of drinking a glass of ice water.” Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche; paras 4 + 10, please click here);
• (Love) liberates us from a mind that is stuck in just wanting;
• Ability to love brings peace and soothes others;
• Sometimes we are foolish and overwhelmed and possessed by wanting more. We become unhappy and wanting creates pain for others.
• Kindness = not struggling with our selves. Kindness is not a ceremony but a simple human exchange;
• Love is powerful emotion. Kindness is the daily [SMR actually said “more common and practical] expression of love. This is a viable path. When we decide that love is our path, it’s a very powerful moment;
• As Shambhala warriors, we are being challenged by wanting to hate; this is where we have to remember our tradition of courage; if we have something {good} to offer, we must demonstrate that;
  • (“The whole Shambhala training process is connected with how to manifest, so that people can do things without deception.” Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche; para 2)
• Not continously driven and wanting;
• Meditation has shown us that through kindness we can stop torturing ourselves by thinking that there just one more thing that we need to be happy;
• So take charge of your attitude {rather than just being driven by negative thoughts that are generated by your mind}. If we decide we want to be awake, we can. Otherwise we’ll sleepwalk throughout our life.
• Awake = the attitude that any part of our life is an opportunity to be awake and good;
• When things become difficult, see this as part of {what is being generated by our} mind;
• Look at our life as the possibility of enlightenment itself;
• If we have positive and strong attitude, then our home life can be our path to enlightenment;
  • (“As they say, charity begins at home.” Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche; para 2)
• Home is neutral. It’s up to us to decide whether it will be positive or negative. This is the notion of the householder living an awakened life rather than hiding in our life. On the premise that home can be the basis of goodness, then we can move into the world with this attitude.

The complete address can be found here.

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(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 telephone rang at 06h00 on February 5, 2010! I’m an early bird. But not that early!

Ferhan, a former workplace colleague, apologized for calling so early. And then got down to business:

“I feel extremely negative lately,” she said. “I don’t understand what’s happening. There seems to be a lot of discord around, my mind seems even more discursive than usual. I feel dragged down by heavy emotions. Like they’re almost taking me over.”

“Donovan’s Season of the Witch is upon us,” I replied.”

“What? What witch?” she said.

“Oh yes I forgot. You would have been in diapers when that song was popular. Well, the ‘witch’ in this case is called Mamo.”

“Specifically,” I continued, “it’s the Dön [pronounced “dun”] Season. From February third to the twelfth. A lot of negativity built up over the past year gathers together now. Maybe you’re picking up on that.”

She asked if I could send her an e-mail with more explanation.

Dear Ferhan,

The Dön (obstacles) Season comes at the end of the Tibetan year, which changes every year, unlike the Western New Year, which always takes place on January 01.

Here’s a sort of “nutshell” quotation from Harald Dienes, Blue Lapis Clinic:

Accumulated negative karma tends to ripen towards the end of the lunar year. It is a time when we are more susceptible to seemingly external influences such as distractions, illness and collective upheavals. According to tradition this is a time when we allow for closure of the expiring year and do not embark on any new projects…..

The Tibetan New Year is  sometimes in January, sometimes in February or March. This year it is February 14, 2010. Valentines Day!  So, before this date, negativity is heightened for about two weeks.

Because of our lack of paying attention to the conditions of our life, obstacles sneak in, says Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche.

Here’s an analogy: You’re a knitter. If you drop a stitch and don’t notice it, just keep knitting, then drop another stitch and on and on in this way, when you have the finished product, you’ll notice the holes. So you have to pay attention. A line in Donovan’s song Season of the Witch puts it this way:

You’ve got to pick up every stitch.

Now for the good news!

…..what is it we can do as antidote for obstacles?….engaging in practice …… restarting and rekindling our ….. mind of enlightenment. Loving kindness and compassion………

• We can work with obstacles, understand them. Then they can help us to become more aware of what is happening moment-to-moment as much as we can every day of the year; become appreciative of the life force.
• We can slow down right now, reflect on what’s happening; a time to amend relationships and friendships, quarrels.
• This is the time to “hold your seat” and just be aware of the negativity that arises, rather than indulge in it. If we indulge then we have to be aware of that also. Awareness is the antidote.
  <Source: Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche: The Dön Season; my unedited transcription of an  online talk in real time; January 27, 2008; Halifax, Canada>

FYI…Buddhists, besides practicing mindfulness and awareness of situations, also practice something called The Mamo Chants to pacify the turmoil of the Mamos.

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(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!)

Humtpy Dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
All the king’s horses, and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

I’ve had lots of experiencing falling off the wall.

In the context of this post, Humpty Dumpty refers to our manufactured self (ego). It’s not a stable structure because none of the “parts” exist in any solid, permanent way independent from the causes and conditions — that we call “our life” — which themselves are constantly changing and shifting.

I spent a lot of time in a never-ending cycle that looks like this:

1. sat relatively comfortably on my wall; and then
   
2. something would come along to challenge this comfort and I would fall off the wall and then try to “get my life back together again.”

Then the two stages of this cycle would start again.

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!)

If you don’t know it’s a thought it becomes your reality. <Anon>

There seems to be as many “causes” for depression as there are people who experience it.

• I’ve lost my job.
• My marriage has fallen apart.
• It’s raining.
• I’m in alot of physical pain.

Having suffered from chronic depression in the past, I finally came to a stunning realization. None of the above cause depression. It’s the way I relate to what is happening, not what happens in the world “outside” myself, that causes depression.

“There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.” – Shakespeare

and

We don’t attach to things; we attach to our stories about them – Byron Katie, author of Loving What Is

In other words, ego is the basic cause of depression, whether chronic or otherwise!

Put very simply, habitual patterns arise from grasping at a manufactured self, ego, that doesn’t actually exist.

Supporting this habitual grasping is an ego-mind produces thoughts, discursive chit-chat and subconscious gossip and afflictive emotions of of all kinds based on its original mistake: the creation of a Self. And then, by extension, the Other. And we believe it. That’s the problem.

• “You don’t have a job. So you’re worthless and a loser.”
• “They have more than I do.”
• “I’m the best!”
• “I’m the worst!”

Read the rest of this entry »

Lifetimes of ignorance have brought us to identify the whole of our being with ego. Its greatest triumph is to inveigle us into believing its best interests are our best interests, and even into identifying our very survival with its own. This is a savage irony, considering that ego and its grasping are at the root of all our suffering.

Yet, ego is so terribly convincing, and we have been its dupe for so long, that the thought that we might ever become egoless terrifies us. To be egoless, ego whispers to us, is to lose all the rich romance of being human, to be reduced to a colorless robot or a brain-dead vegetable. (source: Rigpa Glimpse of the Day, March 16, 2011)

The “show trial of the ages” has been a long one. As the spectators expected, Ego put up a spirited and clever defence. As one media headline put it, “Ego unmasked as manufactured self – trying to pass itself off as something it isn’t.”

Now the jury trooped back into the courtroom.

Have you reached a verdict, intoned the judge?

Yes Your Honour, replied the foreperson.

Read the charge, says the judge.

Ego is charged with masquerading as something it is not.

It is charged with vainly struggling to prove something unproveable, i.e. that it “exists.” To quote Byron Katie “The ego is terrified of the truth. And the truth is that ego doesn’t exist.”

Ego is further charged with duping human beings into believing a huge lie, namely, that it is real, solid and permanent, when in fact it is manufactured, like a car or a toy. The bureaucracy it has set up to protect its interests surpasses that of the largest international corporations.

Ego has misled us! Thus, Ego wastes vast amounts of time that could be put to better use, that of waking up from its delusion. As the expression goes, “Get a life, Ego” instead of wasting ours!

How do you find the defendant? Guilt or not guilty?

We find the defendant guilty as charged.

The courtroom erupted. The judge bangs her gavel. Silence.

The foreman continues:

Because of this vain struggle to prove that it exists,  and the suffering that struggle produces, Ego is charged with the following counts:

• Count One: being self-absorbed to the extent that it prevents us from going beyond neuroses and becoming fully human  – We find the defendant guilty as charged;
• Count Two: obesity from its insatiable hunger to convince us of its own importance – We find the defendant guilty as charged;
• Count Three: dabbling constantly in poisons. Poisons cause suffering. They sometimes kill – We find the defendant guilty as charged;
• Count Four: believing itself to be the centre of everything, just like the Middle Ages mistakenly thought the earth, not the sun, was the centre of our galaxy. Because of you, Galileo was thrown in jail – We find the defendant guilty as charged;
• Count Five: creating barriers between people by setting up  “self” and “other.” Therefore, there is discord, suffering, war, hunger and poverty. Even the “happiness” we experience is just another form of suffering, because it  is fleeting and based on illusion. We quote the Dalai Lama on this topic: Many problems due to demarcation of “we” and “they.” Shortsighted. Narrow minded.”
  • a by-product of this need to cut up humanity into “self’ and “other” is Ego’s ingrained tendency to engage in any action that will prove it is “better” than others by putting others down;
  • Ego encourages us to compare ourselves to others;
  • Ego depends on “external” conditions — which it itself has created — to get a sense of confidence and self-esteem;
  • Ego creates obstacles for us by spinning a story-line around our experience, including blaming others for our suffering.
  • Ego creates a bag of tricks (paragraphs 16 + 17), e.g. habitual patterns, to cover up the pain and suffering and discomfort we experience from trying to prove something unprovable.

  We find the defendant guilty as charged.

• Count Six: believing whatever it thinks to be true! As a result, it is fooled by its own projections (thoughts about things) and distort the truth; from this follows karma, karma that keeps us imprisoned in a treadmill life and robs us of our free will – We find the defendant guilty as charged.

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!)

My son lives in the north part of the city. But he likes the downtown. He just doesn’t like to pay the new, increased fare to get there. I suggest to him the he not begrudge spending money on a transit ticket.  It’s literally and figuratively his “ticket to ride,” as the Beatles’ song put it.

It’s his ticket to having multiple choices of where he wants to go and what he wants to do. In other words, it’s his ticket to relative (conventional) freedom.

How about the ticket that takes us beyond the myth of  freedom? For me, real freedom is to go beyond the karma we have created and constantly and unwittingly maintain by our actions.

How do we go beyond? Cut through? Change?

In short, we need to change our attitude, our perspective.

How?

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!)

Throughout my life I have had some dreams that explained certain ideas and concepts. This doesn’t surprise me as I’m not primarily an intellectual. I’m an intuitive. So I’m grateful for this type of dream. On the last day of 2009, I got this succinct message:

I had written a book or an essay called All in One.

Notes on the interpretation of the dream

• All in one = We all share the same (primordial) nature as the universe itself: unmanufactured, ungraspable, beyond concept.

• Astronaught Eugene Cernan, a member of the Apollo 17 crew of 1972, spoke of seeing the planet Earth, which he described as a blue-green ball surrounded by black. “An infinity of space. An affinity of time,” he said in awe. To me, he is also describing the nature of the mind itself.

• Ego = our planet (as seen from a space ship): a tiny speck in the infinity of the space and time of our primordial mind.
• poet William Blake: “to see the world in a grain of sand” (Auguries of Innocence)
• Compare the descriptions of the astronaught and the poet: one talks about something immeasurably and unfathomably huge. The other talks about something very tiny.

This clear, luminous space — which is the nature of both our universe and our primordial mind — is untainted by self-absorption….and therefore is beyond karma altogether.

But it is not unknowable. We can know our own nature by touching it directly, for example through the sitting practice of meditation. Science uses concepts. Our primordial nature cannot be known by concepts.

[The fox talking to the little prince] Here is my secret. It’s quite simple. One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes. (The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

If you find this post helpful, please tell a friend! Consider subscribing to the weblog. Click on the Subscribe button in the navigation bar. Then follow one of the three sets of simple instructions. Thank you.

(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 December 26, 2004, a earthquake surged under the Indian Ocean in what the National Geographic claims is probably the world’s most destructive tsunami in history. It is an example of cause and effect, but not the karmic kind.

(CAUSE:) Giant forces that had been building up deep in the Earth for hundreds of years were released suddenly on December 26…..

(EFFECT:) ….shaking the ground violently and unleashing a series of killer waves that sped across the Indian Ocean at the speed of a jet airliner.The earthquake that generated the great Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 is estimated to have released the energy of 23,000 Hiroshima-type atomic bombs, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

By the end of the day more than 150,000 people were dead or missing and millions more were homeless in 11 countries, making it perhaps the most destructive tsunami in history.

There are times in our lives when we feel we’ve experienced “killer waves” or what I’m calling tsunamis of the karmic kind.

• Our spouse\significant other isn’t who we thought they were.
  
• We’ve lost our job.
  
• A child is diagnosed as “psychotic” and has dropped out of school.
• etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
  

We rush to put our lives back together.

That’s understandable. We just want our “old lives” — which rest on old habits — back.

Nothing is stronger than habit ~ Ovid

I’d like to tweak that to say “Nothing is easier to fall back on than habits.”

Having experienced a number of karmic\psychosomatic tsunamis of different sizes and various degrees of destruction, I finally came to the point where I stopped trying to put my life back together again.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
All the king’s horses, and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

I grieved. But rather than fall into the usual habitual patterns and rush to glue everything back together, I instead tried to simply look at the ego-mind’s tendency to fixate on, obsess about, and cling to, my expectations.

Another way to put this is that when the gap occured between the tsunami and the next moment of my life, I didn’t jump back quite so blindly onto the treadmill of fixation that would have simply maintained the same karma that produced the psychological tsunami in the first place!

Instead of rebuilding, I tried to re-direct my life.

If you found this post helpful, please share it with your friends! Then consider subscribing to the weblog. Just click on the Subscribe button in the navigation bar. Then follow one of the three sets of simple instructions. Thank you.

(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!)

One of the readers of this weblog was asked by her father when she was four years old “what’s your favourite colour?”

“Plaid,” she replies.

This same Plaid, 58-and-a half-years later, sends me a message on December 15’09 that I want to pass on to you. It raises a number of nitty-gritty questions and issues around karma to which I try to respond.  (Come to think of it, the nature of karma might well be characterized as a kind of plaid fabric with strands knitted together from different colours and textures….)

In the quotations from Plaid below, I have added the numbers in parentheses.

I am more and more perceiving what may appear to be (1) real bad luck – bad karma, whatever you may call it –  as (2) hidden gold (3) when looked at upside down – kind of hard to explain,

(1) “real bad luck”: Apparently, the result (vipoca) of an action (karma) is actually neutral in its essence, just like gravity. If we move too far in one direction, we have to be brought back. This is what I call the compensation aspect of karma. If we perceive the result of our previous action as “unpleasant,” ego calls it “bad” or “negative” karma.

(2) “hidden gold”: It seems that we spend thousands of lifetimes in this struggle. But it is not “useless” if we regard our experience as a teacher. What does our experience teach us? Well, for one thing, it teaches us about cause and effect. “What goes around comes around.” As I mentioned above, it is ego that calls the effects “bad” or “good” etc., because ego bases all its evaluations, perceptions etc. on dualism, this and that. Of course, it is easy to be fooled into thinking we are “solid” and “permanent” because we have individual bodies.