I’m on my way to meet a friend at a restaurant. It’s raining. So I take my umbrella along with me in the car. We meet. Eat. And leave. I then discover that I do not have my umbrella. Return to restaurant. Return to the table at which I was sitting. No umbrella there. Ask the hostess whether anyone turned in a black umbrella. She checks. No.

I demand to speak to the manager. In harsh language, I tell the manager that the restaurant is bad news. In fact, maybe one of the staff stole my umbrella.

When I get home, I’m still fuming.

(source: modified version of original by teacher Jay Lippman)

What just happened?

• umbrella was stolen as a consequence of past negative actions that have now ripened;
• harsh speech and indulging in “the blame game” create future negative karmic consequences;  and
• hanging onto anger by indulging in it, even when the situation has ended, strengthens my habitual tendency to be angry. This ensures that when I am in a similar situation in the future I will most likely behave in a similar negative manner.

In the next scenario, the situation is the same — someone has stolen my umbrealla — but I respond differently:

• recognize that the karma of previous negative actions is being burnt up;
• Although anger is arising in me about the loss of the umbrella,  I refrain from harsh languzge when speaking to the manager;
• when the situation ends, I try to let go of anger every time it arises. This weakens the  negative habitual pattern. The next time I am in a similar situation, I will have a better chance to recognize that this is yet another opportunity to weaken my negative tendency to anger.
  

What’s the difference between these two sets of responses?

In the first one, I have not taken the opportunity to cut the loop. Instead I have used the opportunity presented by the stolen umbrella to maintain and strengthen the negative karma by indulgin in my habitual tendency. In the second one, I use the opportunity of having my umbrella stolen to step out of self absorption and cut the connection between the emotion of anger, angry behaviour, and the creation of negative karmic consequences.

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The gap to which the transit company is referring is that gap between the platform and the subway car.

The gap to which meditation instructors refer is that between one thought\emotion and the next. That’s where primordial awareness and intelligence lie. That’s where the unchanging essence that underlies all changing things is. This unchanging essence is sometimes described as being as vast as the sky where “nothing but everything arises from it.” The spaciousness that lies beyond the claustrophobia of our conventional minds. Beyond judgment, contrivance, change, accepting and rejecting. Just beyond….

I know from personal experience how, in a nano second, I get caught up in thoughts\emotions and how easily I get “hooked” if one of my painful “buttons” is pushed. e.g. if someone is extremely aggressive towards me. One of my spiritual guides used the example of walking along the street and a stranger looks at you and shouts “F — — K YOU!”  Or my child does something that really upsets me. What’s my usual reaction? How can I avoid going on automatic pilot?

Create a gap, I tell myself. Don’t just jump into the situation. Pause. Isn’t there some Coca-Cola ad that invites us to taste “the pause that refreshes”? Or like pressing  the “Refresh” (F5) key on our computer keyboard.

Some ways to create a gap:

1. in daily life:
   • take a few deep breaths before responding to the situation;
   • put up some signs around your home to remind yourself to “mind the gap.”
2. in meditation practice, we learn to be mindful of the gap between one thought\emotion and the next. This is where we learn to say “thinking” when  thought\emotion arises, rather than getting caught up in it, or obsessing and fixating on it.

As this weblog is an in-depth examination of karma, I want to point out that there’s a wonderful bonus to minding the gap: by not indulging in our usual habitual patterns, we burn up negative karma.

Every time a habitual pattern gets strong, every time we feel caught up or on automatic pilot, we could see it as an opportunity to burn up negative karma. Rather than as a problem, we dould see it as our karma ripening, which gives us an opportunity to burn up karma, or at least weaking our karmic propensities. But that’s hard to do. When we realize that we are hooked, that we’re on automatic pilot, what do we do next? (source: In the Face of Fear, article by Pema Chodron)

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When we hear the name Tibet, many people think of His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. Gentle. Compassionate. Humourous. Loving. Wise.

Milarepa, one of the greatest figures of Tibetan Buddhism, couldn’t present a better contrast to the perception we have of the Dalai Lama.

I mean, Mila was one bad dude. Got into black magic in a big way. Murdered his enemies to avenge some wrong-doing done to his family after his father had died.

But he is favourite of mine. Why? It’s really quite simple. He was a very naughty boy who went from sinner to saint. From a murderer to a magician and mystic. And did it all in one lifetime.

Milarepa’s message to me is: “I transformed a great deal of negative karma into enlightenment. So can you.”  Well, it’s taking me many many lifetimes. But Mila is my inspiration.

Let’s start at the beginning of his story.

Once upon a time a baby son destined to be the most famous Tibetan poet was born in 1040 to wealthy parents who called him “Good News.” But in this story, there’s a lot of bad news too.

As the expression goes, what do you want to hear first: the good news or the bad news about Milarepa? In this case, we’ll have to start with the bad news because out of the bad news came the good news.

When Mila was still young, his father died. Unfortunately, his father did not draw up a very wise will, and wealth, in the form of a beautiful house and much land were put in the care of Mila’s aunt and uncle to be held until Mila got married.

The aunt and uncle were unkind people. They were greedy and thought only of themselves. Mila and his mother and sister were treated like slaves in their own home! They wore rags for clothes and did not eat well, while the aunt and uncle took everything good for themselves.

Aunt, you are a demoness.
You are a deadly demoness who almost killed me.
(source: The Rain of Wisdom – “The Songs of Jetsun Milarepa”)

Soon, Mila, his mother and sister — deprived of their land and house and all their goods, and given poor food to eat and rags to wear —became unhealthy. Everybody in their village felt sorry for them but there was nothing anyone felt they could do.

We usually think of turning 16 as a big deal.His mother couldn’t wait until he turned 16 to put her hidden agenda into action. So when he turned 15, she held a party for him. Her brother helped by giving Mila’s mother some food so that she would have something to serve to her guests. The aunt and uncle were invited.

After everyone had eaten, Mila’s mother made her grand announcement: “It is time now to have our possesions returned to us.” The aunt and uncle refused, saying that the will Mila’s father had left gave the family possessions to the aunt and uncle outright.

There weren’t any lawyers to go to in 11th century Tibet.

So Mila’s mother urged her adolescent son to seek out a Sorcerer-lama to learn black magic so he could destroy the family’s enemies.

He did. In fact, Mila was a such a good pupil that he got an A+ on his report card. When he returned to his village, he didn’t actually show his report card to his mother. He went one better. He demonstrated his A+ skills:

• First, he killed 35 people at a wedding party by causing the horses to become extremely agitated; in their agitation, the horses kicked the main column that supported the house, and it fell on 35 of the 37 wedding guests; and then
• He caused three powerful hail storms to appear; they destroyed the entire barley crop of that year.

After wreaking this havoc, he returned to his Sorcerer-lama for what we today would call graduate classes.

Now for the good news. At some point, Mila realized that his actions had accumulated a great deal of negative karma and wished now to get spiritual instruction. He met his teacher, Marpa the Translator, and asked Marpa to give him spiritual instructions.

Through a break in  my evil karma, I discovered good karma
I met the father jetsun [revered teacher], the excellent true buddha [awakened one]
………..
The skin of ignorant ego-fixation fell away from me,
And the great knot tied by passion and aggression [the poisons] was loosened.
(source: The Rain of Wisdom; “The Songs of Khakhyap Dorje”)

The great spiritual teacher Marpa realized that Mila had a great deal of evil karma to be worked through . So he “sentenced” Mila to a long period of hard labour: Marpa set him the task of building a stone structure… only to have Mila destroy it as soon as he built it. This occured eight times.

Only then was Mila purified enough to hear the spiritual instructions.

Alot of us feel we’ve been living a life of (psychological) hard labour in some ways.

What a great basis for waking up from the illusions that ego creates.

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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 actions have effects in the future. What we call our past history was once the future that was caused by previous “present” 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?

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 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:

Tutanhkamum’s mother, under pressure from her brother, the High Priest Ay, agrees to murder her son. How to do it? She notices that when her son reads a manuscript, he licks his thumb and then turns the page with the moistened thumb. Clever, nasty woman – she puts poison on the bottom of the pages of the manuscripts.

One day the pharoah, walking with the help of his golden canes, enters his library. Moistens thumb. Turns page with moistened thumb. Gets poison on thumb. Reads a page. Moistens thumb. Turns page with moistened thumb. Gets more poison on thumb. And the cycle begins again.

This murder took place circa 1324 B.C. to the best of my recollection.

This  of course does not mean that the king didn’t have diseases like malaria.

I’m just saying that he was also poisoned.  I was there. I saw it. Slaves are considered to be  “sub human.” Useful, but not of any consequence in the order of things. Almost invisible.  I used that “invisibility”  and learned the truth in the case I just described.

I also use my “invisibility” another time….the latest report states that Tutankamun’s mother and father were brother and sister. Not by my recollection! His father was the pharoah Akenaten. And his mother? Queen Tiye, mother of Akenaten, and therefore Tutankamun’s grandmother as well. During some periods in ancient Egypt, incest was practiced by the royal families. This was not such a period. And so, after Queen Tiye, mother of Akenaten and Tutankamun, murders her son Tutankhamun at the behest of her brother the High Priest Ay, she is buried alive.

Karmic Update: Today’s incarnation of Queen Tiye, called Rainbow Desert Flower, has one son. He is the incarnation of Tutankhamun, called Prince. The High Priest Ay, in this incarnation called York, is Prince’s father.

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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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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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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 andI 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.

Stage One:

“Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall”

I’m “holding it all together.”  Ego feels comfortable. Those who have a Twitter account see the status message in the bottom right-hand side of their screen everyday, e.g. “Twitter status: all good.”  In the same way, when we’re in Stage One of the cycle, we can say “Ego’s status: OK.”

Example from my life:  Pretty nice life – good family, fun sisters, girl’s camp in the summer (canoeing, horseback riding, head of the “Orange tribe”), private girl’s school, friends, piano lessons, skiing lessons, play bridge, join a sorority, university grad, meet husband-to-be and get married

Stage Two:

“Humpty Dumpty had a great fall…”

(I-just-want-my-life-back.)

Example from my life: made the wrong marriage. It fell apart. How I felt is best described by the following quote:

“When the marriage broke up it had the effect of throwing me into a totally groundless state, which these days might be called a severe depression. I was scared and I was angry and I couldn’t get anything to come back together.” (click here for source)

Stage Two happens when “your comfort zone becomes your cage.” My old reference points get frayed at the edges, don’t hold up like they used to. I am frightened. The rug is pulled out from under me and I land on the floor! My ego, which relies on old habitual patterns to convince itself that it exists, swings into action to somehow “get-my-old-life-back.” This reliance on old, familiar, habitual patterns ensures that I will fall part once again.

Stage One again.

Stage Two again.

And on and on.

I finally had to examine this cycle very carefully.

I came to two conclusions:

1. I realized I can’t get anything from the past “back;” To believe that I can get my old life back is false; and

1. I decided not to make futile efforts to put my life together again, only to fall off the wall once again. So I simply sat there on the ground like Humpty Dumpty and rested in that state, and watched my mind making feeble verbal attempts to get back to Stage One: “Let’s-try-this. Let’s-try-that.”

At age 45 I got to Stage Three. Hopefully, Tiger Woods has reached this stage as well and will come out of the dark tunnel of an ego that has crashed.

Stage Three:

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

Example from my life: I had fallen very much in love with a work colleague — not workable. It reminds me of a line from the song “You walk by and I fall to pieces.” Collapsed in a way I had not collapsed in my life before. Became very ill. I was 45 year’s old. Lyrics from the song Undun by the Guess Who kept running through my mind!

At this point in my life, I began to realize that, rather than seeing my experience as an “obstacle” (and blaming others) to a fulfilling life, I could use it as a key to open another door that goes beyond ego’s tricks. Put another way, I could use my experience as a jump-off point to spiritual development to go beyond self-absorption.

I also noticed that it was Humpty Dumpty that fell. Not the wall! In the context of this post, the wall represents the unchanging, primordial ground that underlies all changing things in our world. Or put another way, the wall symbolizes the primeval groundlessness (open space beyond our attachments, fixations, clingings and obsessions) on which we can “sit” whether we fall off or not!

What a delicious piece of irony…..

Resources:

• Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche: Ruling Your World
  

• Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche: The Sanity We Are Born With

• Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche: Working with Negativity (article in magazine Garuda, Spring 1972; also a chapter in Myth of Freedom)

• In the Face of Fear: Buddhist Wisdom for Challenging Times, ed Barry Boyce et al
  

• Robert Kull: Seeking Wisdom in Extremes
  

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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 grapsing 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!”

As a sole support mother, being without a job sometimes was especially troubling for me. I finally realized that depending on external conditions (e.g. a job; the opinions of “Others,” others that I myself — ego —have created) for my self-esteem was the problem. I had a belief that, to feel worthwhile, I had to have a job.

That’s what ego does to convince itself that it exists in a solid, permanent way in an “external” world.

It doesn’t. It knows that, but will not give up the struggle to prove that it exists.

This conflict — knowing it doesn’t exist and struggling every minute to prove it does — produces depressions of all kinds when it gets undercut by our daily experience in the world.

I said above that the problem is that we believe our own thoughts, our own projections.

The thoughts will keep coming, but the belief in them will stop – Mooji

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

The good news is that it’s both the problem and the promise! We can relate in a non-ego way to our thoughts by practice.

I’m so relieved when I remind myself of this quote:

We don’t have to believe everything we think. <Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche>

After all, it’s just a thought……keep it that way so that it doesn’t become your reality.

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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 0wn 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.

In short, concluded the foreman, Ego is charged with both the creation and maintenance of the world of confusion and suffering (samsara). To put it another way, ego robs us of experiencing the world in a fresh way moment-by-moment.

Again, the courtroom noisily erupts, spilling out all its discursive thought and exchanging gossip. What will the sentence be?

“All quiet in the courtroom” shouts a court official.

The judge pronounces sentence:

The court takes these charges very seriously. The suffering that Ego causes is enormous.  But jail is not the answer. While it’s true that Ego keeps us imprisoned,  putting ego in jail and throwing away the key would just be a form of resistance. It’s like putting your hand on a bedspring. When you remove your hand, what happens? The spring bounces back.  If we put Ego down, it will just bounce back when we remove the restraints.

There will be no jail time. Instead, I propose an innovative solution to the problem of Ego. Put it under house arrest. Monitor its activity closely without judgement. In short, practice mindfulness and awareness.

And then the judge reads part of a poem by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche:

In the jungles of flaming ego,
May there be a cool iceberg of bodhicitta [compassion].

On the racetrack of [ego's] bureaucracy,
May there be the walk of the elephant.

May the sumptuous castle of[ego's] arrogance,
Be destroyed by vajra [indestructable] confidence.

[Note: the additions in [  ] immediately above are the judge’s.]

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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?

Two main ways:

1. study; and
2. practice

Study what? How our ignorance of the real nature of reality creates karma and traps us in that karma.

Practice what? The  practices I do seem to be two-fold, but not mutually exclusive by any means. One type creates the environment where I can start to understand the real nature of reality in a direct way. The second type helps me to change my attitude.

This then takes us into the land of multiple choices, as it were. Again, in terms of our two main categories of study and practice:

1. There are many genuine teachings to study to bring about a change in perspective, to change our confusion into wisdom. Only you can know what teaching is for you.
2. There are many practices to bring about a change in attitude.

In terms of number 2, as I wrote above, the basic practices I do seem to be two-fold, but not mutually exclusive.

2 a) One type creates the environment where I can start to understand the real nature of reality in a direct way: basic meditation.

2b) The second type helps me to change my attitude: practices of loving-kindness, compassion, moving beyond self-absorption. Some simple ones can be found here.

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