karma
Both selfness, i.e., the uncritical belief in one's 'self' as a more or less immortal, partless and independent ultimate basis of being (the classical definition of atman, in Tibetan = dag nyi, 'selfness per se') and the fleeting yet self-oriented thoughts, beliefs, moods and activities making up one's life as lived out (the classical definition of aham-kara, in Tibetan = dag 'dzin, 'grasping at a self')... the scenario of situation and owner of situation that is the stock in trade of our daily lives can be proved quite simply not to exist at all as we conceive of them.
When I say 'simply', perhaps I should qualify that. The arguments themselves are simple enough though often coming from angles one would never have dreamed of: The difficult bit is actually putting them into practice so as to test their validity... that's not easy at all! We do almost anything not to accept them, even when actually meditating on them.
It took me 40-some years to even get a more or less correct intellectual grasp on them... Fortunately I have a few left before me still to actually begin to stabilise this.
Put it it this way: Rather than a self or a Self, at the absolute basis of being there is simply awareness.
Not awareness of any particular this or that to begin with, but aware of itself and of its manifestations which are very much like the endless outpouring of the fountain of youth. It has no other nature than to be aware - conscious of what arises in it much like a mirror which will reflect anything that is placed before it - and is thus empty of being any thing. Out if it stream all infinite possibilities, much like mist forming out of and then dissolving back into the air. The awareness - this ultimate "space" out of which everything comes" - is neither improved by the good manifestations nor stained by the bad ones... they simply arise, all of them ultimately identical in nature inasmuch as they actually have no real nature at all ('real', here, meaning the above mentioned naïve belief that things and selfs are 'permanent, partless and independent)...
What does arise, however, creates its own logic in arising - the instant something comes into so-called 'existence', it becomes real on its own plane and has an energy field of cause and effect that surrounds it. Everything, in fact, is related to everything else, and it is this infinite web of cause and effect in which every single thing that exists is mutually conditioned by and conditioning of everything else that is the basis of what is called in Sanskrit karma.
Karma (from the root kr, whence our 'create' words via Latin creare, to bring into being' and crescere 'grow', whence others such as 'crescent' whose original meaning was something in the process of coming into being or growing) is doing.
Although there is the popular belief in karma as fate - what you did in your past life determines what, where and how you are in this - and although this aspect of karma is (to a degree) correct, what karma really means is what you do. What you are doing now.
Of course this is conditioned by what you assume to be the case - the state of affairs, real, true, just, what-have-you - but, depending upon how you act in this instant - whether your action and attitude tend more toward the encompassing and accepting or toward the exclusive and rejecting - will determine the quality of the next instant.
A. N. Whitehead called this process 'experientially initiated potentialities for experience'... Every door you open - every experience you have - conditions your experience of subsequent experience... It's not a question of this life and the next... it's right here, now, in this very breath you're breathing.
And what is extremely important (before you start imputing Eckhardt Tolle and Richard Moss on me) is that here - in this instant of being=doing - there is no one and nothing at all in any ultimate sense. There is no one who can grasp and put to work 'the power of now'.
All you have is the opportunity to be skilful or unskilful with your encounter as it manifests to you. There's not even a you to manipulate it.
Just the appearance.
Sure, the appearance always seems to play itself out as some sort of mandala with a me bit at this end of it and a that bit out there and all around me, but, in fact, this 'centre of the universe' one blithely imagines one is (witness how everything we say and do will generally tend to our own comfort first) is just one among countless quintillion of beings, each whom is a centre of a lived through world and each of whom assumes his/her/its self to be the be all and end all of experience.
The point is not that if you're a good boy or girl you'll get your reward in some future heaven. The point is that - here and now - you have that choice... what is your attitude? cleae and open and filled with joy, or dark and trammelled and filled with distrust?... The garden of forking paths.
So karma is not actually fate - Karma is the instant and what you do with it, either regardless of or because of what came before. The choice is yours. Of course, certain attitudes and beliefs "stick" and need a lot of work to dislodge, re-transparentise.
What we generally do is knit a universe of our beliefs and hopes and fears and inattentions and then dub it "reality" - It's like we almost wittingly dirty up our windows so we can't see outside and the light can't get in and then bitch about the filth and claustrophobia of the room we find ourselves in. But there's nothing keeping us from cleaning up those windows, throwing open the windows and doors and even - dare I say it? - stepping outside and opening ourselves to whatever breeze blows... Nothing except the terror of finding ourselves not ourselves, finding ourselves changed or - horror of horrors - non-existent... Finding our little cockle-shell boat so lost and adrift on the ocean of becoming that we know we'll never find shore again...
Yet, oddly enough, it's not like that - or so they tell me.
The less you attach to your you, the more you open to everyone else's "me", the easier life becomes. Instead of dissolving into nothingness, you find that openness is the eternal becoming, and that - as HH Dalai Lama says - 'ordinary human kindness; ordinary human intelligence' are the very wings of the bird of enlightenment... sometimes a thunderbird, sometimes a phoenix, sometimes a sparrow...
... and... some, very few times... the great raven who speaks.
thought i'd better say that.
excuses for prolixity.
When I say 'simply', perhaps I should qualify that. The arguments themselves are simple enough though often coming from angles one would never have dreamed of: The difficult bit is actually putting them into practice so as to test their validity... that's not easy at all! We do almost anything not to accept them, even when actually meditating on them.
It took me 40-some years to even get a more or less correct intellectual grasp on them... Fortunately I have a few left before me still to actually begin to stabilise this.
Put it it this way: Rather than a self or a Self, at the absolute basis of being there is simply awareness.
Not awareness of any particular this or that to begin with, but aware of itself and of its manifestations which are very much like the endless outpouring of the fountain of youth. It has no other nature than to be aware - conscious of what arises in it much like a mirror which will reflect anything that is placed before it - and is thus empty of being any thing. Out if it stream all infinite possibilities, much like mist forming out of and then dissolving back into the air. The awareness - this ultimate "space" out of which everything comes" - is neither improved by the good manifestations nor stained by the bad ones... they simply arise, all of them ultimately identical in nature inasmuch as they actually have no real nature at all ('real', here, meaning the above mentioned naïve belief that things and selfs are 'permanent, partless and independent)...
What does arise, however, creates its own logic in arising - the instant something comes into so-called 'existence', it becomes real on its own plane and has an energy field of cause and effect that surrounds it. Everything, in fact, is related to everything else, and it is this infinite web of cause and effect in which every single thing that exists is mutually conditioned by and conditioning of everything else that is the basis of what is called in Sanskrit karma.
Karma (from the root kr, whence our 'create' words via Latin creare, to bring into being' and crescere 'grow', whence others such as 'crescent' whose original meaning was something in the process of coming into being or growing) is doing.
Although there is the popular belief in karma as fate - what you did in your past life determines what, where and how you are in this - and although this aspect of karma is (to a degree) correct, what karma really means is what you do. What you are doing now.
Of course this is conditioned by what you assume to be the case - the state of affairs, real, true, just, what-have-you - but, depending upon how you act in this instant - whether your action and attitude tend more toward the encompassing and accepting or toward the exclusive and rejecting - will determine the quality of the next instant.
A. N. Whitehead called this process 'experientially initiated potentialities for experience'... Every door you open - every experience you have - conditions your experience of subsequent experience... It's not a question of this life and the next... it's right here, now, in this very breath you're breathing.
And what is extremely important (before you start imputing Eckhardt Tolle and Richard Moss on me) is that here - in this instant of being=doing - there is no one and nothing at all in any ultimate sense. There is no one who can grasp and put to work 'the power of now'.
All you have is the opportunity to be skilful or unskilful with your encounter as it manifests to you. There's not even a you to manipulate it.
Just the appearance.
Sure, the appearance always seems to play itself out as some sort of mandala with a me bit at this end of it and a that bit out there and all around me, but, in fact, this 'centre of the universe' one blithely imagines one is (witness how everything we say and do will generally tend to our own comfort first) is just one among countless quintillion of beings, each whom is a centre of a lived through world and each of whom assumes his/her/its self to be the be all and end all of experience.
The point is not that if you're a good boy or girl you'll get your reward in some future heaven. The point is that - here and now - you have that choice... what is your attitude? cleae and open and filled with joy, or dark and trammelled and filled with distrust?... The garden of forking paths.
So karma is not actually fate - Karma is the instant and what you do with it, either regardless of or because of what came before. The choice is yours. Of course, certain attitudes and beliefs "stick" and need a lot of work to dislodge, re-transparentise.
What we generally do is knit a universe of our beliefs and hopes and fears and inattentions and then dub it "reality" - It's like we almost wittingly dirty up our windows so we can't see outside and the light can't get in and then bitch about the filth and claustrophobia of the room we find ourselves in. But there's nothing keeping us from cleaning up those windows, throwing open the windows and doors and even - dare I say it? - stepping outside and opening ourselves to whatever breeze blows... Nothing except the terror of finding ourselves not ourselves, finding ourselves changed or - horror of horrors - non-existent... Finding our little cockle-shell boat so lost and adrift on the ocean of becoming that we know we'll never find shore again...
Yet, oddly enough, it's not like that - or so they tell me.
The less you attach to your you, the more you open to everyone else's "me", the easier life becomes. Instead of dissolving into nothingness, you find that openness is the eternal becoming, and that - as HH Dalai Lama says - 'ordinary human kindness; ordinary human intelligence' are the very wings of the bird of enlightenment... sometimes a thunderbird, sometimes a phoenix, sometimes a sparrow...
... and... some, very few times... the great raven who speaks.
thought i'd better say that.
excuses for prolixity.
posted by cloudhand at 2:02 AM
