People throw the word "karma" around like it's a mystical force which reincarnates people as bugs and enforces some kind of "cosmic justice". I personally prefer the way Ken McLeod describes it in his book, Wake Up To Your Life
. It's a book which attempts to present Buddhism to Westerners in a practical way without the religious structure, but rather just as a tool for everyday life. The way he describes karma really resonated with other things I had read, in NLP and so on. I'm gonna go ahead and completely paraphrase it, but credit goes to McLeod for the idea.
Karma, the way I think about it after reading McLeod, could be succinctly described as "behavioral momentum". It's the simple, straightforward, and entirely non-controversial non-religious concept that what behavior we've done in the past, we'll tend to continue in the future. For example, if we've stolen in the past, we're likely to steal in the future, and the more we stole in the past, the more likely the future theft.
This sort of leads back to the usual idea of "karmic justice". If I start stealing regularly, it'll quickly become habitual. Based on the stories of former thieves, it's likely that I'd start stealing bigger and bigger things. This obviously immerses me in a life of crime, making it very hard for me to maintain any kind of deep inner joy, peace, or love in my heart. Neither would it be surprising if my sketchy behaviors in this example lead me to prison, injury, maybe even death. That's "karmic justice", and there's nothing necessarily mystical or magical or spiritual about it. As Jesus said, "Live by the sword, die by the sword".
It's very liberating to see karma in this way. It means that if we can change the habit, we can avoid any "karmic justice" that hasn't been meted out yet. For example, if I've done a lot of stealing, and gotten away with it, but I can manage to break myself of that habit, then I can elude karmic justice. Of course, the more I've stolen, the harder it is for me to break the habit, so this shouldn't be read as some excuse to go commit a bunch of crimes and then change your ways just in the nick of time (never mind the fact that it's impossible to really judge when the "nick of time" even is).
Of course, there's a positive side to karma as well as a negative side. In a way, I'm harnessing karma right now. I'm doing a 30 day challenge to write a blog entry every day for 30 days. This will set my "behavioral momentum" in a direction of creativity, generosity and helpfulness. Already, writing on the blog is starting to feel like a natural part of my day, and I'm not even at the 20 day point. The same thing goes for working out, and for improving my music diet. So in a sense, I'm being propelled by "karmic energy" toward the lifestyle I desire. My "behavioral momentum" vector is being realigned toward that lifestyle. All with only as much mysticism/magic as you care to read into it.
When I was in the Air Force working as a weather forecaster, for a long time I was very miserable with my job. It started with simple things like questioning the efficiency of certain policies, feeling annoyed when I had to put out a forecast that noone looked at, and so on. That set my "karmic vector" in the direction of cynicism, misery, conflict, etc. And so things started going rapidly downhill. It was only when I had an epiphany and started releasing all that negative baggage, that things started looking up, and then I managed to get out of the military. It's impossible to say one way or the other, but I wonder if, if I hadn't had my epiphany, I would have subconsciously done something to sabotage my efforts to get out. As is, it took a ton of good fortune to escape (thanks, Congress, for declaring the Air Force "overmanned" at a time when we were already working 12 hour shifts!) There were a million points where I could've easily sabotaged myself, if I were stuck in a mindset to perpetuate my misery.
WE SEE THE WORLD IN TERMS OF WHAT WE KNOW
As a mathematician, I have a natural tendency to try to analyze things mathematically, even when it's inappropriate. This tendency has gone down a lot in the past couple years as I've been massively rounding myself out, but it's still a little present.
It's the same way with anyone. A military leader will see problems as conflicts to be won by force. Now that I've started working on language learning so intensely, I'm starting to see seemingly unrelated problems through a language-acquisition lens. Some of those ideas might even blossom into future articles here, if they do well enough in field tests.
This phenomenon is again part of the cosmic, karmic momentum. Thoughts count as behavior, albeit very high-level behavior, and so they are subject to behavioral momentum. When I think a lot about math, I get a lot of momentum toward thinking about math, and it takes more and more to wrench my mind away from math. When I turn my thoughts toward Japanese, I build up Japanese momentum and I might find myself running my private inner dialog entirely in Japanese!
RELATION TO EGO
Your ego is the collection of things you identify yourself with. Noone is really a grocery store clerk in any deep immutable philosophical sense, and yet people identify themselves as grocery store clerks.
The thing about ego is it wants to preserve itself. This is just another facet of the McLeod notion of karma. If I had the ego of a thief, in other words if I thought of myself as a thief and identified as a thief, the egoic desire to perpetuate itself would translate into me continuing to steal.
CONTROLLING DESTINY
The good thing about karma is that we're completely in control over it. If some alien possessed my body and forced me to steal a candy bar while I watched paralyzed through my eyes, that wouldn't have any effect on my own momentum-- I would not become more prone to stealing.
You alone have ultimate control over your will. Whatever circumstances arise, no matter how tempting or lucrative it is to take an action, you still have choice in the matter. For example, someone drafted into the army is perfectly capable of lying down and letting themselves be dragged to prison instead. Even if they were thrust against their will into the battlefield, they'd still have the choice of not firing their gun. If a thief were put in jail where it's physically difficult for him to steal, he could still try to steal, however unsuccessful he might be- he could try to steal the concrete from the cell walls!
The point is, as many things may be uncontrollable in our lives, one thing we can control is our karmic momentum. We choose moment to moment what actions to take, and those choices determine our "karmic vector" which continues to shape our circumstances as long as we live.
Let's direct our karmic vectors toward a good, productive, wholesome, loving lifestyle.
Here are some other articles I've written. Writing them gave me the karmic momentum which pushed me into writing this one.
No Regrets - Regret Is A Useless Emotion
Fighting Music Addiction: Week 1
Getting Motivated To Go Lift Weights
Swearing And Cussing: Indicators Of Lost Presence
. It's a book which attempts to present Buddhism to Westerners in a practical way without the religious structure, but rather just as a tool for everyday life. The way he describes karma really resonated with other things I had read, in NLP and so on. I'm gonna go ahead and completely paraphrase it, but credit goes to McLeod for the idea.Karma, the way I think about it after reading McLeod, could be succinctly described as "behavioral momentum". It's the simple, straightforward, and entirely non-controversial non-religious concept that what behavior we've done in the past, we'll tend to continue in the future. For example, if we've stolen in the past, we're likely to steal in the future, and the more we stole in the past, the more likely the future theft.
This sort of leads back to the usual idea of "karmic justice". If I start stealing regularly, it'll quickly become habitual. Based on the stories of former thieves, it's likely that I'd start stealing bigger and bigger things. This obviously immerses me in a life of crime, making it very hard for me to maintain any kind of deep inner joy, peace, or love in my heart. Neither would it be surprising if my sketchy behaviors in this example lead me to prison, injury, maybe even death. That's "karmic justice", and there's nothing necessarily mystical or magical or spiritual about it. As Jesus said, "Live by the sword, die by the sword".
It's very liberating to see karma in this way. It means that if we can change the habit, we can avoid any "karmic justice" that hasn't been meted out yet. For example, if I've done a lot of stealing, and gotten away with it, but I can manage to break myself of that habit, then I can elude karmic justice. Of course, the more I've stolen, the harder it is for me to break the habit, so this shouldn't be read as some excuse to go commit a bunch of crimes and then change your ways just in the nick of time (never mind the fact that it's impossible to really judge when the "nick of time" even is).
Of course, there's a positive side to karma as well as a negative side. In a way, I'm harnessing karma right now. I'm doing a 30 day challenge to write a blog entry every day for 30 days. This will set my "behavioral momentum" in a direction of creativity, generosity and helpfulness. Already, writing on the blog is starting to feel like a natural part of my day, and I'm not even at the 20 day point. The same thing goes for working out, and for improving my music diet. So in a sense, I'm being propelled by "karmic energy" toward the lifestyle I desire. My "behavioral momentum" vector is being realigned toward that lifestyle. All with only as much mysticism/magic as you care to read into it.
When I was in the Air Force working as a weather forecaster, for a long time I was very miserable with my job. It started with simple things like questioning the efficiency of certain policies, feeling annoyed when I had to put out a forecast that noone looked at, and so on. That set my "karmic vector" in the direction of cynicism, misery, conflict, etc. And so things started going rapidly downhill. It was only when I had an epiphany and started releasing all that negative baggage, that things started looking up, and then I managed to get out of the military. It's impossible to say one way or the other, but I wonder if, if I hadn't had my epiphany, I would have subconsciously done something to sabotage my efforts to get out. As is, it took a ton of good fortune to escape (thanks, Congress, for declaring the Air Force "overmanned" at a time when we were already working 12 hour shifts!) There were a million points where I could've easily sabotaged myself, if I were stuck in a mindset to perpetuate my misery.
WE SEE THE WORLD IN TERMS OF WHAT WE KNOW
As a mathematician, I have a natural tendency to try to analyze things mathematically, even when it's inappropriate. This tendency has gone down a lot in the past couple years as I've been massively rounding myself out, but it's still a little present.
It's the same way with anyone. A military leader will see problems as conflicts to be won by force. Now that I've started working on language learning so intensely, I'm starting to see seemingly unrelated problems through a language-acquisition lens. Some of those ideas might even blossom into future articles here, if they do well enough in field tests.
This phenomenon is again part of the cosmic, karmic momentum. Thoughts count as behavior, albeit very high-level behavior, and so they are subject to behavioral momentum. When I think a lot about math, I get a lot of momentum toward thinking about math, and it takes more and more to wrench my mind away from math. When I turn my thoughts toward Japanese, I build up Japanese momentum and I might find myself running my private inner dialog entirely in Japanese!
RELATION TO EGO
Your ego is the collection of things you identify yourself with. Noone is really a grocery store clerk in any deep immutable philosophical sense, and yet people identify themselves as grocery store clerks.
The thing about ego is it wants to preserve itself. This is just another facet of the McLeod notion of karma. If I had the ego of a thief, in other words if I thought of myself as a thief and identified as a thief, the egoic desire to perpetuate itself would translate into me continuing to steal.
CONTROLLING DESTINY
The good thing about karma is that we're completely in control over it. If some alien possessed my body and forced me to steal a candy bar while I watched paralyzed through my eyes, that wouldn't have any effect on my own momentum-- I would not become more prone to stealing.
You alone have ultimate control over your will. Whatever circumstances arise, no matter how tempting or lucrative it is to take an action, you still have choice in the matter. For example, someone drafted into the army is perfectly capable of lying down and letting themselves be dragged to prison instead. Even if they were thrust against their will into the battlefield, they'd still have the choice of not firing their gun. If a thief were put in jail where it's physically difficult for him to steal, he could still try to steal, however unsuccessful he might be- he could try to steal the concrete from the cell walls!
The point is, as many things may be uncontrollable in our lives, one thing we can control is our karmic momentum. We choose moment to moment what actions to take, and those choices determine our "karmic vector" which continues to shape our circumstances as long as we live.
Let's direct our karmic vectors toward a good, productive, wholesome, loving lifestyle.
Here are some other articles I've written. Writing them gave me the karmic momentum which pushed me into writing this one.
No Regrets - Regret Is A Useless Emotion
Fighting Music Addiction: Week 1
Getting Motivated To Go Lift Weights
Swearing And Cussing: Indicators Of Lost Presence
Posts
1 comments:
The paragraphs you wrote under “WE SEE THE WORLD IN TERMS OF WHAT WE KNOW” come closest to my understanding of karma. Rather than being just a continuation of our habits, karma is also our own beliefs and actions manifesting in other forms. For example, if you are the type of person who deceives others in order to manipulate them, then you will assume that other people are just like you. So, if you have a girlfriend, you may start to think she is lying to you because that’s exactly what you would do in her situation. You become suspicious and distrustful of her, and you start checking up on her. To me, the suspicion and distrust you feel is the karmic effect of your own deceptive behavior. So, while I agree with you that we’re in control of our karma, the difficulty is in recognizing the relationship between cause and effect. I would wager that most of the guys out there who are checking up on the girlfriends right now are 100% convinced that the girlfriend is the problem, and they’re not investigating whether it’s their own behavior that gives rise to distrust.
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