Ishna ji,
My reservations about karma come from concurrance with your earlier statement to Seeker9 that we can drive ourselves mad thinking about the workings of karma. Karma itself doesn't seem to feature prominently in Gurbani which is where I try to get my spiritual understanding from (slowly). The impression I get from Gurbani is that karma is a mechanism which exists, but we should not preoccupy ourselves with it. My understanding is that if we assimilate the spiritual wisdom, mental attitude and way of life taught by Gurbani and the example of our Gurus, we're on the right track. Whatever happens, happens, and I try to accept that.
Perhaps the advice is against speculating, after all that would be due to ignorance, craving and most likely also wrong understanding?
If I experience physical pain, I can understand this to be a result of karma. But to wonder about which deed in the past must have been the cause for it, this can only be due to attachment to oneself and is therefore not only futile, but in fact detrimental. When I kill a fly, I can understand that this is an unwholesome activity which will bring its appropriate result in the future. But to speculate what those results might be, must again be due to attachment and ignorance and is therefore not only useless, but in fact the stuff of bad karma.
The impression I get from my learning about Sikhi so far, is that we are not supposed to withdraw from the world. We are to keep our attachment to the world in check. We are in fact encouraged to engage with the world. All of creation is an emanation of the Divine, why should we hold an aversion to it? It will all pass away, and so we shouldn't become attached with it.
There is the ‘world’ of convention, one which is populated with people, animals and things and where there are events happening in place and in time. There is however also the ‘world’ in the real and ultimate sense. This is the world of one moment of consciousness at a time through one of the five senses or the mind, without which that other world wouldn’t have been conceived of in the first place.
Within that first world, some people choose to live alone and some in the company of other people. In the second one, the understanding is that in fact, “we are all alone with our consciousness and thinkingâ€. From the standpoint of the latter therefore, which is what the reality is, we can’t ever get away from the world, and yet at the same time we are always alone. Therefore in the conventional world, if we decide to withdraw from society or to engage in it and in either case there is the lack of understanding about the “real†world, then one choice is not better than the other. Both are the product of ignorance and craving.
With this understanding, we can then come to see that the whole point is to understand who we are from moment to moment, so no need to “do†or change anything. If it is in your nature to live alone, fine, if not, also fine.
With regard to ‘attachment’, it is never good. No doubt, this may be all that we have in our relationships and will not go away so easily. But instead of trying to justifying, we can understand it for what it is and accept the fact, while at the same time, gradually developing good qualities such as kindness, compassion, morality, generosity, respect, patience, renunciation, truthfulness and most of all, wisdom, to counter the attachment aversion, conceit and so on. And why, because undoubtedly these are the better option when it comes to dealing with other people.
The point about worldliness was not an encouragement to not engage with other people, but to not be moved by values set by them, ones that are not grounded in basic principles of morality. If our confidence in good is weak and we lack understanding about the Truth, we become involved in worldliness to the point of being moved one moment this and another that, by values based on wrong perceptions. And what in fact all this comes down to, is desire for gain, pleasure, honour and praise.
As humans with our perceived higher intelligence compared with other sentient life forms on our planet, and our opposable thumbs which enable us to use tools to interact with our planet in a more complex way than other critters, coupled with our sense of morals, most people will find a sense of responsibility for our environment.
The “opposable thumbâ€.
Have you seen the short film titled “Isle of Flowersâ€, if not try to see it; you can get it on YouTube.
When it comes down to it, the only real responsibility that we have is to develop wisdom. And this wisdom will have it that alongside, we develop all good qualities, including morality. It is exactly because we don’t realize this that we are moved by other value systems, and whatever we do is ultimately, aimed at glorifying the ‘self’. This is due to the overwhelming tendency to ignorance and craving. Indeed realizing this to any extent is one motivation for us to guard our own minds.
And this is in no way a passive thing. The difference is that while this activity does not involve the need for validation from others, those other value systems requires other people to agree. And while the one sees that it is worthless to aim for gain, pleasure, praise and honour, the other is likely being motivated by one or more of these all the time.
This of course is not saying that we should not be involved in say, trying to improve the environment, what is being suggested is that we not be moved to act wrongly while doing what we do. But then in the case of the suggestion such as “a sense of responsibility for our environmentâ€, this comes across as carrying more weight than that of developing wisdom and morality. And here I see a problem, because it easily leads to justifying taking certain actions where we’d be forced to overlook morality. It should be the other way round, that wisdom and morality comes first, then whatever follows will take care of itself.
I feel great aversion when people mess with the natural order of things, injecting their man-made ideas into naturalness. For example, taking the horns off of elephants for the ivory and deforestation. If us pesky humans would leave it all alone, it would run beautifully. Humans come along, stick our greedly fingers in and everything falls out of balance.
Hence the virtue of minding our own minds, developing wisdom and other good qualities. ;-)
So when I see that humans have messed with the natural order of a river by bringing in fish from another hemisphere, and the fish is causing widespread environmental damage, killing trees, other fish, polluting the waterway, I feel the correct thing to do is to remove the introduced pest.
Have you not in effect allowed other people’s actions decide your own? Is it not apparent that their actions were motivated by ignorance and craving and now yours is no different in this regard? From where I stand, both of you have not taken into account the fact that receiving pleasant and unpleasant experiences is the result of good and bad deeds and no one knows what is in store for whom. Those other people thought wrongly that money is going to bring them happiness and you are thinking that in fixing the problems they have created, this is going to cause other living things to be happy. In other words, they were involved in their own projections and now you are in yours.
If someone sticks an arrow into the side of a deer, and the deer is limping around in pain, is it not logical that the right thing to do is to remove the arrow and restore the deer to health?
Of course it is. And although no one can say if the deer is going to survive or not, still it is what is happening now and your decision is based on kindness and compassion with not aversion towards any other being which may cause you to then do something bad.
I feel that should be the only consideration, not wondering "is this some expression of karma" or "what will happen to my karma if I remove the arrow?" or "I will generate good karma by removing the arrow, yay!". You do what is right and good then and there.
Sure, karma is "now" and not just a theory to indulge in thought proliferation about.
Another example would be if there is a grasshopper in your office and your co-worker is about to kill it, do you sit by and allow it to happen, fully conscious that you could get up and preserve it's life with no problems? By consciously choosing to stay on your chair and watch when you are fully capable of interceding, is that not wrong? You could rationalise it by saying "my co-worker is interacting with karma, it's his problem not mine". I would disagree.
You have misunderstood what I have been saying. Kindness is the deciding factor. It would not be an act of kindness to allow someone else to kill, but to point out the harm of killing is. Also towards the grasshopper, it would be kindness not to want it be killed. So indeed you can go ahead and teach your co-worker at the same time, about karma. ;-)
A very good point, Confused ji. It is hard to know what is good and right, and our personal greed, attachment and ego will always get in the way and could very well confuse your mind to think "do this... it's the good thing to do..." when in fact you've been fooled into doing what might not actually be good to gain something, or for your own personal satisfaction. That's why we have to keep coming back to Gurbani and drumming the message into our mind to bring ourselves in harmony to be able to figure out what is truly good.
I am glad that you appreciate this point.
I will conceed, I'm sure that sometimes the greater good would be to not do anything at all. We can only pray for the wisdom to know the difference!
But I think the problem is in the very perception of “greater goodâ€. That of turning ‘good’ into an “ideal†and then trying to act upon it with ambition all starts with the kind of misperception, namely that a situation exists waiting for me to do something. But really, there is only what is now for any right or wrong action to take place, and here there is no idea of greater or lesser, just what is. (Although even this can easily be misunderstood, since in reality the problem starts with the perception of ‘self’, and one can’t decide to have or not have any kind of perception. But this is another topic.) So it appears that we need to nip the bud at this stage, namely at the level of perception itself.
I believe that whatever happens after I die is whatever will happen. I am trying not to concern myself with that. I read Gurbani, I try to assimilate it's principles. Why should I concern myself with anything else?
Give me a couple more years of reading and learning, I might change my outlook. I only know what I currently know and act accordingly. If I worry about things I don't understand at this point, like karma, I'd retreat into a corner and not do anything for fear of damning myself, I think.
No you are right not to concern yourself with the result. What I’m urging you to understand and accept is that the mechanism exists. And the only we that you can be sure that it does, is not by trying to do your best to do good and leave it at that, but to develop the understanding of the good itself and everything else that make up your life. Without understanding karma for what it is, then you are left only with either believing in it or not believing. And this does nothing to arouse confidence, in fact in another life you will not believe in the idea at all.
Having said all that, I realise the misconception of my own logic.
1) If it wasn't for human greed and interference with the natural world, I wouldn't be sitting here with my coal-powered laptop, television and heater. Therefore, to walk my own talk I need to join an eco-commune.
And whether there is a laptop or not, and you are living in the Middle Ages or the Age of the Internet, good being always good and evil always evil, the knowledge about the distinction can be shared with all those who you come across.
2) If I stop my friend from squashing a poisonous spider, and instead I catch it and let it go outside, and that spider goes on the bite my next-door neighbour, where does THAT put my pompus sense of morals?
Regardless of what you think later on, the deed has been done and it will bring its appropriate result. What you will always be required to come back to, is what the state of mind is “nowâ€. If there is doubt and regret, know that this too is wrong and hence not to be encouraged. To speculate what could happen and be moved to act accordingly may be yet another example of going by a wrong perception, and which has nothing to do with reality.
Would it not be better to kill the poisonous spider so it can't bite anyone? But the spider is created by (or if you prefer, evolved according to) God just like that. Who am I to judge such a creature?
But is it really about judging or not judging? Or is it about knowing what the present state of mind is?
Gee, this spiritual stuff sure is complicated!
It is actually very simple, but only hard to see. And this is due to the three mental proliferations coming in again and again whenever we think about such things, namely, attachment, conceit and wrong understanding.
Sorry for the lengthy response.
