Apparently, our waking life is the same as a dream……

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The karmic system, comprised of causes, conditions, circumstances and effects, is, for me, the most definitive proof of the teaching that we are fooled by our own projections.

In other words, we create our own reality. And from that flows what we call our karma.

How?

By concretizing our thoughts, emotions, values, and beliefs. We make them solid — and call it reality!

And when something happens — pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral — to us in our lives, we again call it reality! “That’s life,” we’ll say.

But it is just our own projections, our own storyline, coming back to us. These projections are in fact the karma produced by our creating, and then believing in, those projections.

In short, the whole karmic system of causes, conditions, circumstances and effects is manufactured.

The way to liberate ourselves from the “reality” we have created for ourselves? Meditation practice. Only this practice allows us to work with our own minds to let go of the fixation on our thoughts, emotions, values and beliefs and experience freshness.

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How often have we heard “It’s the thought that counts”?

For example, if we couldn’t get someone the expensive gift that we would like to have given them, we can comfort ourselves with the belief that “it’s the thought that counts!”

That’s the use of the word “thought “as in “intention.”

But believing this phrase It’s the thought that counts is also how we can get ourselves into trouble.

If you have no interest in a thought, it has no power.
You oxygenate them with your beliefs and interests – Mooji

How?When we forget that thoughts are indeed just thoughts, not reality. In other words, we create problems for ourselves when we make  our thoughts  “count.”

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

Then we go further and become fixated. Obsessed. Grasping. Attached.

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

and

The root cause of suffering is identification with our thoughts, the ’stories’ that are continually running through our minds – Eckhart Tolle

This identification, clinging, attachment, leads to volitional action.

Which leads to the creation of our karma.

That’s the problem.

Now, here’s the promise! The very thing (confusing out thoughts with reality) that causes suffering is also the jump-off point  for going beyond our entrenched beliefs and habitual patterns that underlie every thought — mindfulness-awareness practice.

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What does it mean to say “change your mind and you can change your karma?”

What creates karma? Volitional action.

What underlies volitional action? Afflictive emotions, poisons (known as the root kleshas). These poisons — passion, aggression and ignorance — are based on ego. They are what ego feeds on.

These three root kleshas are the basic fuel for the karmic
chain reaction. <source: page 3 of syllabus for course on Karma and the Twelve Nidanas>

So if we can refrain from acting on these poisons, then we start to cut the chain reaction spun out by the ego-based mind that both creates and maintains our karmic stream.

For more on this topic, please click here.

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It’s winter, 1984, Pennsylvannia. I’m waiting to enter the shrine room for another day of eight-hour practice.

I have some kind of flash about the nature of karma: my mind seems to click into a sequence of stages that I can only describe as “going back and back,” until I get to some kind of root, where I realize that karma is nothing but our own mind.

Person X commits an action.

Person Y has one interpretation.

Person Z has another interpretation.

Why? Because what we perceive is a function of our own personal karma.

So karmic consequences are in fact a product of our own mind. It’s not some
objective karmic swat team that delivers our karma to us! It’s us.

Our life is shaped by our mind; we become what we think. ~ Buddha

That’s why it is said that if you change your mind, you’ll change your karma (karmic stream, or some variation on that message, to be more precise.

To change your life [karma, karmic stream], change your attitude [mind].
<source: Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, Contemplation for September 03,
2008>

Update: If karma is nothing but our own mind, then what does that tell us about those tables of consequences for virtuous and non virtuous action

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Ten seems to be a power number.

• the Ten Commandments;
  
• Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche’s The Ten Percent Advantage;
• the nursery rhyme Over in the Meadow; and
• the movie Ten
  

In the post called The Power of Ten: Part One, we saw, in precise terms, what consequences arise for us if we engage in any of the ten non virtuous action.

On the other side of the coin, there are ten virtuous actions that will create positive karma (consequences) for ourselves that will ripen in the future.

From the buddhist point of view, gewa, or virtue, is connected with the
strength of the mind as opposed to being moralistic. The word virtue
comes from the Latin root virus, which means “strength” or “bravery.”
<source: Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche: Taming the Mind and Walking the Bodhisattva Path, p. 69>

Here is the chart of the ten virtuous volitional actions. We noted in a previous post that the ten non virtuous actions have self absorption in common. By contrast, the ten virtuous actions all arise from thinking of others <source: teacher Jay Lippman, Talk 5 of the weekend seminar on Karma, March 13-14, 2010, Toronto, Canada>.

While it’s good to know that negative karma is finally “burned up,”  positive karma also gets burned up! Keeping this in mind, we can ensure that we act in a virtuous way as much as possible. It builds up merit for us. Merit is described as the

good fortune created by virtuous actions. It is the potential power to increase our good qualities and produce happiness.

So until we get beyond creating any kind of karma at all — which involves living in the gap rather than in our cocoons — we need all the positive karma we can accumulate!

Is virtue its own reward? I think so. We feel good about ourselves and appreciate others.

We’ve also seen that virtuous action creates positive karma for our future.

And there’s another benefit to acting in a virtuous way:

The purpose of developing virtue, strength of the mind, is to make the mind more harmonious and stable, more in accord with itself, more in tune. <source: Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche: Taming the Mind and Walking the Bodhisattva Path, p. 69>

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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 consequences 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? 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 when certain causes and conditions meet and the seeds of their past virtuous and non virtuous action  ripen in the present? 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 25th day of the month of November in the year 1975 CE. May it benefit all those who are trying to understand their own karmic package.

In Part One of this series, we see how our actions are tied to certain results.

Today, I will demonstrate this link between past actions and future consequences by reviewing some real-life examples that involve Freud, Cleopatra and Helen of Troy.

I, Rainbow Desert Flower, am always telling you that I’ve got first-hand experience that a real understanding of the laws of karma can substantially change our lives for the better. In fact, I created this weblog to share information and personal experience with others. Well, here’s some of that personal experience. I offer these examples from my own lifetimes to show the inevitable link between past actions and present consequences. May it be of benefit!

Freud’s theories were extremely controversial when he first presented them. I share the belief on the part of some that Freud lied about one of his theories, Oedipus complex — that in fact his research lead him to conclude that incest was far more prevalent than was hitherto thought.  But he knew that a theory around incest would be even more controversial than his other psychoanalytic theories. so he “tweaked” his theory and shifted the focus from the parent to the child! The result of this lie in his present lifetime? No one believes me even when “I” am right!

Mark Antony gave Queen Cleopatra whole countries in a gesture that is historically known as The Donations.  Berniece — Cleopatra’s sister who picked a husband without asking Rome and who grabbed the throne when her father, the Pharoah Ptolemy XII, was out of country in Rome — is strangled in a public event by the king her father. In this lifetime, Berniece is now my mother. The incarnation of Ptolemy is again my father and now also Berniece’s husband! The incarnation of Cleopatra’s brother, whom she cheated out of the throne of Egypt, is my son.

Helen of Troy (and Queen of Sparta) left her husband King Menalaus and ran off with Paris. In this lifetime, “Paris” is one of my university professors. It is love at first sight for both of us. We are married to others.  My spouse, an uncaring husband, is the incarnation of King Menalaus! I again run off with the Paris -turned-professor to the city of Paris! But because of my past sexual infidelity as Helen, the professor will not leave his wife to marry me in this present lifetime.

Queen Tiye murdered Tutankamun by putting poison on bottom of pages of books he liked to read. In this lifetime I was not allowed to suck my thumb as an infant; my mother put gloves put on hands. I experienced severe frustration.

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If I make certain decisions, I will get certain outcomes. That is the law of karma — the basic flow of nature. <source: Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche – The Four Sessions of Basic Goodness and here.>

In the post of March 28, 2010 we heard the story of Sariputra, the monk, who roared with laughter. We saw that once the consequences from our past volitional actions ripen,
we cannot change them. So it would be a good idea to get familiar with the
10 non virtuous actions and the karma accumulated from having engaged in them — especially as one of those non virtuous actions is not understanding how karma works! Yikes!

As Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche puts it, karma is tit for tat. <source: description of One of the Four Reminders: Karma, its cause and effect. For full quote, please click
here.>

Here is the chart of the 10 negative consequences that arise from ten past volitional actions. The one thing they all have in common is that they spring from self-absorption <source: teacher Jay Lippman, Talk 5 of weekend seminar in Toronto, Canada on Karma, March 13-14, 2010, Toronto, Canada>:

In a future post, I will demonstrate the information in the chart by using real examples from real lives.

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Thinking I have problems.
Thinking I have.
Thinking I.
Thinking.

There can be many meanings for this verse.

Here’s one:

If we follow thoughts back, we can see that they stem from an embedded karmic situation that has gone on for a very long time. <source: Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche)

The point of the practice is to stop being the person who has problems, and instead to abide fully in the nature where there are neither problems nor a separate individual to struggle with them.  <source: Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche>

It is often thought that the buddha’s doctrine teaches us that suffering will disappear if one has meditated long enough, or if one sees everything differently. It is not that at all. Suffering isn’t going to go away; the one who suffers is going to go away.” < source: Ayya Khema: When the Iron Eagle Flies>

Leave the mind in its natural, undisturbed state. Don’t follow thoughts of “This is a problem, that is a problem!” Without labeling difficulties as problems,  leave your mind in its natural state. In this way, you will stop seeing miserable conditions as problems.” <source: Lama Zopa Rinpoche: Transforming Problems into Happiness.>

Doesn’t every good story start with “Once upon a time……..”

Well then, once upon a time, Sariputra, a highly-realized student of Sakyamuni Buddha’s, is travelling with some of his (Sariputra’s) students when they come across a family who has just sat down to supper on the lawn. The supper table sits between a pond and the house.

The fish that had been swimming in the pond has just been caught by the father and is now being eaten by the family for supper. The father, sitting at the head of the table, has his baby son on his knee. As soon as the father finishes eating the fish, the family dog runs up to the table, grabs the fish bones and begins to eat them.

The father is very angry. He beats the dog.

Sariputra laughs. His students ask him “What’s so funny? What do you see that we don’t see?”

Sariputra explains.

In a past life the father thought that is wife was cheating with on him with the neighbour. So he killed the neighbour.

The father’s parents — the grandparents of the father’s children — are deceased. But while alive, the grandmother was a real homebody, very attached to her home, her children, and everything connected with her home. The grandfather loved fishing.

In this present lifetime, the grandfather is now the fish who has just
been caught and eaten by his son.

The grandmother has now been reborn as the family dog!

So the grandmother (now a dog) is now eating the grandfather (the fish) and she is also being beaten by her son in this lifetime.

This story expresses the reality of suffering. It demonstrates how the attachments of a previous life are now expressed in the circumstances of the present lifetime.

Source: material based on weekend seminar on karma by teacher Jay Lippman.

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