Karma - Dropping the String of Stones
Part 2 - Dropping the String of Stones
“By each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.” - David Mitchell
In Part One I talked about that sting of stones we all carry around called karma. Every action we take, good bad or indifference, adds a stone or a gem to that string.
I also talked about the fact that it is impossible to create nothing but gems. Be reminded that the definitions of good, bad and indifferent are relative to time and place. What one regards as good is someone else's evil. One man gathers what another man spills.
No, the only way to be free of the endless roller coaster of ups and downs, successes and failures, even birth and death is to drop the string entirely. And to do that we need to come to terms with the essential ignorance that holds it together.
By ignorance I don't mean stupidity. I mean simply believing something that isn't true. Accepting an assumption because we never knew it could be challenged. It is like walking endlessly towards a mirage and getting no closer but nobody ever suggests that maybe the mirage isn't actually there.
Karma is not a law. It is the result of a misperception of being.... YOUR BEING!
Now I am going to make this as simple as possible. I want to end suffering not do a tome. The stones added to the string are created by CLINGING and RESISTING. Aka attachment and aversion, clutching and avoiding, running to and running away.
If we look closely at our lives (and the lives of everyone else for that matter) we discover that our entire lives have be an almost constant grabbing onto or pushing away. This can take the form of the pursuit of objects, status, comfort, celebrity, or wealth. It can take the form of the pursuit of altered states, peak experiences. We hold on to beliefs and attitudes, theologies and philosophies.
And we push away the opposite of all of those, avoiding the uncomfortable, resisting any change, and, most importantly, avoiding looking at our own assumptions and beliefs.
This activity of grabbing (or trying to get) and avoiding (or trying to get rid of) is what creates all of those stones.
WHOA!
But, that is what I have been doing my whole life.
It's all I know how to do.
Even my spiritual practice has been to attain that ultimate state that somebody told me about.
Now what?
Well, while the revelation that we have been creating the stones on this string of karma can be a bit overwhelming and the fact that we create them whether we are doing good or ill (the ultimate double bind) is indeed a bit of a mind blower (not to mention a buzz kill) the way out is exceedingly simple and direct.
What would the opposite of clinging and avoiding be? The answer is ALLOWING, letting everything be as it is, no pursuit and no avoidance.
"The Great Way* is not difficult for those who have no preferences." - Hsin Hsin Ming - (3rd Patriarch of Zen in China)
Have no preferences? What? Are you kidding?
No, I'm not and, if you'll just give me a little bit more of your time I will attempt to prove to you how easy it actually is to do. And, once you feel the relief in it, you will want to come back for more.
(To be continued)
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