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The World Through Zen Eyes Podcast
What we do?
Once a week we take a look at the going-ons of the world and say something about ‘em.
The goal?
None, really. Just trying to make heads and tails of the great world roar of Ooommmmmm.
Why?
To try ‘n keep a modicum of personal sanity. And stay off both the meds and the cool aid.
The point?
Points are sharp and therefore violent. We just go around, and round….and round.
Disclaimer:
The views, perspectives, and humor of the speakers and guests of this podcast do not necessarily represent the those of any associated organizations, businesses, or groups, social, religious,cultural or otherwise. The entirety of the podcast is for entertainment purposes only. Topics discussed and views expressed do not constitute medical advice. As the saying goes “Opinions are like bellybuttons, everybody’s got one”.
The World Through Zen Eyes Podcast
Ep. 15 - Beyond Eye for an Eye: The Misunderstood Nature of Karma (Karma part 1)
FAN MAIL - Send us a comment or a topic suggestion
What if karma isn't what you think it is? In this mind-expanding conversation, we unravel the true nature of karma beyond the simplistic "eye for an eye" understanding that leaves so many people confused and doubtful.
Karma, at its core, simply means action – specifically the actions of body, speech, and mind. But where most of us get lost is in understanding how these actions connect to their results. We often expect a direct, linear relationship: if I push someone, I should get pushed back in exactly the same way. When life doesn't follow this pattern, we question whether karma exists at all.
The reality is far more intricate and fascinating. Imagine karma as a vast spider web where tugging on one thread affects countless others in often unpredictable ways. Your actions might return to you in a completely different "currency" than the one you used – what matters is the underlying quality of experience, not its exact form. This accounts for why seemingly "bad people" appear to get away with harmful behaviors – we're simply not seeing the full timeline or all dimensions of consequences.
Through vivid analogies and practical examples, we explore four different ways karma can manifest: visible causes with visible effects, visible causes with hidden effects, hidden causes with visible effects, and hidden causes with hidden effects. Understanding these patterns helps make sense of why life unfolds in sometimes mysterious ways.
The most liberating insight? You don't need to know your past karma to improve your present life. Rather than trying to decipher which past actions led to your current circumstances, focus on cultivating wakefulness in this moment. Only through awareness can you interrupt the habitual patterns that perpetuate your karmic cycles. Instead of trying to erase negative karma (which isn't possible), add more positive actions to your life – this changes what you'll encounter moving forward.
Ready to break free from limiting karmic patterns? Listen now and discover how wakefulness in the present moment is your most powerful tool for transformation.
Dr. Ruben Lambert can be found at wisdomspring.com
Ven. MyongAhn Sunim can be found at soshimsa.org
Hello, my name is Jane and I'm a member of the Soshimsa Zen Center. If you haven't heard, one of the many benefits of our Zen Center is a weekly podcast entitled the World Through Zen Eyes. You can find it on the Soshimsaorg website Just click on the podcast's page. It's a conversation between our abbot, the Venerable Myung An Sunim, and Dr Ruben Lambert, a Buddhist monk. The subjects of their conversation vary from week to week and are often suggested by listeners. Our hosts discuss life questions and concerns within the timeless wisdom of the Buddha. Their discussions are friendly and informal. Their discussions are friendly and informal, peppered with humor and personal experiences.
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Speaker 2:Welcome back to another episode of the World Through Zen Eyes podcast.
Speaker 3:I'm Myung An Sunim here with One week older, reincarnated, and back again, Dr Ruben Lambert.
Speaker 2:Welcome Nice to meet you.
Speaker 3:Pleasure to meet you too In your new form, In your new form, self In your new location, relatively speaking to the stars and the planets.
Speaker 2:Yes to the moon and the sun and all that we have. Well, this is kind of a build-up episode, so we're going to. Karma is the main topic, but I will read you the listeners, questions or comments, if you will so, and of course, there are the comments and the requests for topics that come via the uh, our website, or that lead that takes you to the bus sprout page for for the podcast which?
Speaker 3:what's the?
Speaker 2:website. Well, socialmsorg, you go to the podcast page.
Speaker 3:But is there a direct page too?
Speaker 2:It's if you Google. I think if you Google, like the World to Zen Eyes podcast, the Buzzsprout page should come up as an option and that's where the fan mail is. Of course, you're always welcome to send it through the website, through the website, and many of the questions have come through the Buzzsprout fan mail, but also a number of them come up in just person, to person interaction with our members, or text message or things of that nature.
Speaker 3:so everyone, encourage everyone to continue to do that leave us comments sure if there are any questions, any questions whatsoever, and even even please drop us a line.
Speaker 2:Yeah, even on YouTube. I mean, you could comment on YouTube. I believe you could comment on many of the platforms. I think Sure, yes. So let's go chronologically. Let's see. It was a Lovely podcast today. This is from May 16. Lovely podcast today. I have a suggestion. You mentioned karma. I am interested in finding out if we repeat our past karma for a reason. Are we aware that we are doing it? Also, is there a way that we can pay our karmic debt to become free of it?
Speaker 3:I guess, we'll start with a little humor again. Well, hold on. That's the one. Oh, that's the one. There's another one. Yeah, that's the one. There's another one. Oh, another one. Please go, go, go.
Speaker 2:Right so you mentioned karma. I'm interested in finding out if we so it's the repeat of the karma and we know that we're doing it and can we become sort of wipe the clay Sleen, tabula rasa, wipe the clay.
Speaker 3:Sleen.
Speaker 2:Sigmund Freud used to say right and I and I say wipe the clay, Sleen, because it's not Sleen clay, or however that seems like that, yeah, see, um, and we have another one, sling clay or however that is, sling slate, see, and we have another one.
Speaker 2:Can we ever so? This is another listener asking, commenting can we ever know our karma? How can we work it out without knowing? Can we ever know if we paid our karmic debt? So, what comes up so many times here and but this is not unusual the these, this line of questioning and and thinking of karma, is a very common thing.
Speaker 3:You had a so a 17 year old did really well in school and on his birthday he opens the garage and there was a bow on the car and he says to his mom a bow, a bow, a bow, like a bow, like a birthday bow on the car. Oh, okay, on his 17th birthday that's the age they get their driver's license so he looks at the bow and he looks at his mom and says, oh, is that my new karma incoming?
Speaker 2:dad joke. And then there was that famous one my karma ran over your dogma. Oh, that's a good one. Yes, that's, I think, a good start. We probably lost half the audience by now with these dead jokes, but no, they are fun and meaningful too.
Speaker 1:So let's start with as we tend to do, defining the terms.
Speaker 3:There should be like a little sound right now. What is the sound of defining the terms?
Speaker 2:We need a DJ. So the very common interpretation of karma is that it's a sort of action that we have done that is then stored somewhere and we carry that like the door. Death comes up frequently, Right comes up frequently right. So we create some, you know, usually divided to negative and positive karma, and how those things are stored and how do we pay it back. And it's a reasonable way to think about it. It's a common way that people do think about it. It needs refining and it's sort of linear. You know that the division of the duality of good and bad is in there and all those things.
Speaker 2:So we'll hack away at some of those things, not because they are well I I used my myself use the term karma in in that kind of context, so we have to understand like what?
Speaker 3:like a common?
Speaker 2:like zen. Yeah you're, you're so zen yeah you're so zen enough.
Speaker 3:It creates. You get new meaning. Yeah, right, so we can go backwards to forward. What is the original meaning? How's it used in a common manner today?
Speaker 2:right, so you know you're so zen. Usually to me you're someone calm. You're so calm and and I don't know that zen is calm or at least that's another.
Speaker 3:What's so what?
Speaker 2:yes, yeah, like that, right, like that's another misnomer, I think that people so misnomer, I think that people so first and foremost, karma, or up is is what we call it in korean up karma simply means action and in everyday korean language there's a.
Speaker 3:When you meet someone you can say hello. What kind of? I guess?
Speaker 2:what service? What's?
Speaker 3:your job in society, and it uses the word up too right, that's very interesting.
Speaker 2:So it's like the literal translation is sort of what kind of karma are you making now, you know?
Speaker 3:type of thing. It's your day-to-day action that you put into the system we call society.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, and piling, you know, because that's the other term, the ancient way of greeting in a sense, or comments from a monk would not be simply means reach, enlightenment, it means the other one would be just how much piling are you doing? What you're piling? What kind of what you're stockpiling? Piling are you doing? What are you piling? What kind of? What are you stockpiling? What are you collecting? Yeah, yes, and so stockpiling of you know, hopefully we want the good Now.
Speaker 2:So karma, just the word itself, a standalone op, means action, action. That then we divide into three and three karma. So we have the karma of the action of the body, action, the action of the speech, speech Karma, and the action of the speech or the, the function or the action of the mind. So mind, karma, karma, speech karma can be divided in a sense. Now, of course, then we get into the sort of details. Well, you know mind creates and you know the body and the speech follows that, and you know there's nuance in it, et cetera, et cetera. But generally speaking, that's it. Karma is what you do with your mind, what you do with your body, what you do with your speech. Then we have a term called objang. Jang is a container like a jar, a storage chest, if you will. So container, and this is where the usual misuse of it comes in. A storage chest, if you will so container, and this is where the usual misuse of it comes in. This is not scolding, by the way. You're using it wrong, right? So we have op as an action and then we have optung, which is a kind of jar in which all of the actions are collected. We're stockpiling something, and these two are usually what's kind of used interchangeably.
Speaker 2:Some people say, oh, somebody falls down.
Speaker 2:They say, oh, you have bad karma, and somebody falls down.
Speaker 2:They have bad karma suggests a punishment, in a sense, right, it suggests this debt, right, this debt, and some, almost like a godlike personal vendetta against you, like, oh, you know, shoved, you get shoved into a puddle of mud, you know, while waiting, waiting, wearing a white suit, and then, and then we look at it kind of very kind of linear and they say, oh, you know, because when I was five, I had a friend that I pushed and he fell and he got his pants dirty and he got home he got a whooping from his mom, and so we think about that, and now here say, aha, the debt is satisfied.
Speaker 2:And frequently we do speak of those kind of ways in which it's that the debt is paid in a sense with the same currency. But if you consider the complexity of life and the interconnectedness of things, it's not a singular kind of tether that connects one particular behavior necessarily and only to that same kind of behavior on the other end of it, like if I've shoved some kid my friend when I was a child and he fell and then I got home and got in trouble for it, then shoving- Would then be the return.
Speaker 2:So now I must get shoved for shoving somebody, and albeit sometimes that is kind of the possibility, right.
Speaker 2:But we do have to consider this complexity of essentially what is a kind of a spider web or a net that if you tug at it on one side of a net, so many parts of the net move along with it to varying degrees, right. So you could, let's say, if you had that magic kind of trick not magic trick per se, but with that set table and the tablecloth, and how swiftly you could kind of swipe the tablecloth and not knock over all the things, if you kind of yank on it, chances are some things will just be shifted, some things maybe will not be shifted and some things will fall over, you know, if you haven't completely kind of swiped it off the table. So this is a, I think, a good way to consider karma and and that kind of connection. It's not necessarily you get shoved for shoving, you get pushed for pushing. Underlying that linear kind of thing of you get shoved for shoving, it's the resulting suffering, right, or benefit, but so the flavor, if you will, of suffering in a sense it's.
Speaker 2:you know, let's say, suffering is bitter, and so various degrees of bitterness are available, generally speaking. Well, let's let's say it in this example that all suffering is bitter to varying degrees, and it doesn't have to be a bitter melon, it could be a bitter strawberry, it could be a bitter, whatever rightitter is the point, not the exact thing that is there, it's the bitterness of it. So not necessarily shoving, you know, shoving, shoving eye for an eye kind of thing, but you know, I mean eye for a kidney also works.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, it's like there could be a bitter fruit that is your return, but the container in which it travels to you could be different. Like there could be a bitter fruit that is your return, but the container in which it travels to you could be different. It could be on a plate, it could be in a box, it could be on a giant leaf. Yeah, all of that can vary yeah, it doesn't have to be exactly.
Speaker 3:Then I think, when you, when we think linear, we get trapped into this sense of, uh, logical reasoning, sure, right, and some of these things when they enter the sphere of the unknown and the mystery realm, logic just doesn't apply there in that realm, right? So we can give some examples and things like that of, and there is a portion actually where there's the immediate return right, immediate return right, where that might be able to give people a direct understanding of almost like the physics behind, you know, actions and the return or cause and effect. But that's just, you know, one leaf in a forest of possibilities, right?
Speaker 2:so yeah, so so the idea, the idea of karma, we could say, is sort of seed, because it's related to yin-gua or yin-gua-eng-bo Yin-gua, yin is the seed, gua is the fruition of it, right, eng-bo are like the conditions, so usually translated as causes and conditions type of thing which expands on this linear kind of singular tether. And also this is a very important thing to mention that it is largely due to that linear tethering of cause and effect, in the way, like you said, that we logically expect it to be, that people find the let's call it, the believing in karma challenging, right, because if there is such a you know, almost nearly a physical, tangible theater, right, and it says well, look at that person, you know that person's a bully, look at that person, that person's abusive, that person's doing this thing, but they've gone away with it. And where's the terror? Where's the karma? Where's the cause and effect? Where are all these things? They're there.
Speaker 3:People ask that question oftentimes when they see these types of situations. Where's the justice Right? And they get lost sometimes, and people sometimes feel a sense of misery, a sense of being betrayed, because you know the action hasn't arrived yet to that person and we have to consider that what they're looking for is not justice.
Speaker 2:What they're looking for is not justice. What they're looking for frequently is revenge in some expression of it, and also what they're looking for is justice as they see, just as they would like to see the thing done. Which is kind of like oh, you chop off a thief's hand for stealing, kind of thing right you use the hands to steal, so chop it.
Speaker 2:And and this is where we get into well, he used the mind to steal and the hand was innocent you know, the hand just followed the orders of the mind right and the hand is just meat and nerves and muscles so and and then, and then what you, you know it's, it's punishment, uh, and revenge versus education, and and you know we could go down the rabbit hole because you know there's, there's, there's layers and layers and severities of transgressions of one man against another, and all that kind of thing makes then us, sort of puts us in the position of being the judge, and hardly is, you know, is it our work and our job to be the judge of things.
Speaker 3:Well, one can argue then at that moment. Well, there would be a natural flow, like of karmic events, that would occur, let's say, if a person did steal something, and that is like a, let's say there's a ripple effect no different than if you throw a rock into a lake. That happens all of itself. But when the person now enters into, let's say, that system, the order of the system, and imposes a judgment, now you've created some karma there too that you're going to be responsible for being judgmental and and yeah, yeah it's, you know it's I could, versus kind of accepting and and understanding the law of inguambo, cause and effect, and allowing it to come to fruition.
Speaker 2:It's it's a whole different. It does. It's a whole different.
Speaker 1:Now we're now we're entering into into a whole other thing, which is which is part of it, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I mean, we meander right because what? What then? Creating of the judgmental mindset? Yeah, you know that, that, that funny joke of some people are judgmental. Some people are so judgmental I could just tell by looking at them, right, you know holier than thou that kind of thing.
Speaker 2:So, to circle back to it, so we have the action of mind, body and speech. We're called their karma. Then we have the action of mind, body and speech. We're called that karma. Then we have the collection of said, the stackpiling of those things. Then we have to consider the rather complex system, the net of intertwined, interwoven strings and tatters and lines and things of that nature psychological, physiological. All of that makes it a rather complex network which, like we said, tends to make it challenging for people to accept that justice. In a sense it's served.
Speaker 2:And, yeah, because we have this concept of the eye for an eye. So, unless an eye is taken out for an eye, then it doesn't count. But, like I said, how about a kidney for an eye, or a spleen for an eye, or a heart for an eye, or whatever for an eye? You know it could get all kinds of the there's a value. So another way to think of it is we could. We could think of a currency, right? A x amount of lira, an x amount of rupees equates to x amount of dollars, to x amount of shillings, whatever it is it. There's a exchange rate, but underlying it there's a value, and the value gives you purchasing power, but it's expressed in a different, different currency, in a sense.
Speaker 2:And so just because you've shoved your best friend at a childhood who has fallen, and then went home and got a whooping and yelling and couldn't play for a week because we ruined the sunday best, doesn't mean that now the repercussions of it has to be verbatim in your life, right? It doesn't have to be the same exact thing. Are the instances where it is absolutely? I mean, if you punch somebody, they're likely to punch you. Are they going to punch you in the same place, in your face? Are they going to punch your face? They might kick you, they might elbow you, they might knee you, they might, you know, take a bar stool across your head or or see that you love your car and, instead of hitting you back, key your cars or blow out the
Speaker 1:windows whatever, yeah so it's.
Speaker 2:It's there's a transfer of energy there and, and you know also, that kind of energy is neither created or destroyed nor destroyed, it just changes form. It's kind of applicable to this karmic thing. So it's it's not necessarily I for an eye right, so necessarily I for an I. So hopefully that makes sense Right Now. Not only is it not necessarily I for an I, but then what we also have is the time, the season of sprouting. You think of it as the season of sprouting. You think of it as the season of sprouting. Not all seeds planted in your garden sprout at the same time. Tomatoes and your cucumbers and your cherry, your whatever, your arugula, they all have their own time of sprouting, depending on their sort of DNA makeup, if you will.
Speaker 3:I just told a patient yesterday about this. He's kind of caught up in this cycle where he feels a little down in the press because he hasn't come into his own fruition based on his efforts at his job. He hasn't received the promotion that he wishes to receive. And I told him some people are tomatoes, some people are apples. Some people come into their own and receive the rewards for their actions in 90 days, like tomatoes, right, they come fairly quick and what apple trees takes about five years.
Speaker 3:Not everything has the same return rate right.
Speaker 2:And then we have that other complexity of each individual person's uniqueness, and so a tomato is not a tomato, tomato tomato is not this. You could, we could, you and I could go to the store, buy the same tomato plant and we could go home into our individual gardens and plant it. And then we'd check in. It's like, oh, I'm getting tomatoes, and the other was like I'm not Because why?
Speaker 2:I mean? It's the same plant. So that is to say we could say same action, same seed, right of the same variety, same everything. I mean we could live, you could plant those, even in your own gardens. You could plant those. You know, if you plant it 12 feet apart, it's going to potentially make a difference because if your ph of the soil, you know, to the right of your plot, you know, and you planted something else, that other plants, that an altered the ph and and the, the nutrient content of the soil, and then 12 feet to the left, you're planting the same tomato.
Speaker 3:They might very well grow different rates, at different speeds, flourish or not flourish so ultimately right, it's like what are those specific conditions when you have a question? We're giving a general overcast right of the, the way you know karma or opchang is can work in somebody's life, right, but for the specifics, right, you have to know exactly. You know it's like oh, how long will this tomato plant take to grow, right, well, what kind of? What kind of soil, what kind of sun, how frequently do you water it? Right that that's so specific.
Speaker 2:Yeah, is your house blocking the sun? Yeah, is your house blocking the sun?
Speaker 3:Before that we can say yeah in general, on average, but for the actual qinon or true experience, you have to be there and experience it for what it is.
Speaker 2:And that's the yin guo, yin guo. Yin guo means seed and the fruition of the seed, yin bo are the surrounding conditions in which this is happening. So it's tomato plant or tomato seed. It's going to fruit a tomato. But depending on now the call, the other surrounding causes and conditions whether you know numerous, numerous, right, then those two situations are going to vary, and there's you know, do you want to go through this?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we'll go we'll go through them to, to, to give a little bit more of a idea. Now there's that famous story of a monk seeking to reach a temple and has been walking for however many days you know, not con, not, it's just, you know it's a long journey and he finally sees the, the kind of end of the journey sort of coming. And as he's walking he sees a farmer and he asks the farmer how long to such and such temple? And the farmer looks up and says walk. And the monk's like no, I'm asking how long to the such and such temple Walk, walk. No, I'm asking how long to the such and such temple Walk. How long to the such and such temple, walk Right.
Speaker 3:And so he gets upset, starts walking and the farmer looks up and is like 40 minutes, Right, Right.
Speaker 2:Because how long that's?
Speaker 3:the same thing. That's your clients, right? What's your race? We say that all the time. Thing that's your clients.
Speaker 2:Right, we said all the time yeah, how long till I get well, at what pace? Yeah, how fast are you walking? Are you planning a break? Are you doing this? Are you doing that? You know it's, it's going to vary. So how long to the temple is going to depend on the various causes and conditions. Now, having said that, so we have wow, this is very organized. Today we have the action, that's the karma. We have the container of the action we call. We've established that those are sometimes used independently or, I'm sorry, interchangeably Sometimes. What we mean is you have bad karma. We mean, generally speaking, what that means is you've collected how, what's, what stockpile do you have? And then right, and then we have to, kind of, I, I believe it was, um, I don't know, was it al capone? There was a, one of the famous, uh, mobsters that was finally imprisoned and and even his prison cell, I think, was like bellagio style.
Speaker 3:He had a couches and a tv and whatever, when everybody else's was, you know, barren cells and and yeah, yeah, yeah right, there was a movie which was based on a true story I forget if it was good fathers or one of those mobster things and yeah they were living it up in prison.
Speaker 2:They had everything they needed right and and penthouse suite in there, yeah, and, and I think that you know he, he was finally busted for I don't know he, you know, shot dead. I don't know, tommy and uh, I think it was like the first night or I. I don't recall the details of the story. I you know that I I frankly don't care about details of stories, largely right, just the point is the point?
Speaker 3:Good points or bad points?
Speaker 2:I use language the way that was quoted in Humpty Dumpty, that I use words for them to mean what I mean. Them to mean, or something like that yes, yes, yes and anyway. So come nightfall, the guards hear this guttural, feared screams.
Speaker 3:I believe that was alcohol Howling right.
Speaker 2:And they're like what in the world is going on. They get to the cell and he says Tommy, it's Tommy, it's Tommy.
Speaker 2:So he was essentially haunted by, whether in kind of supernatural haunting ways or psychological haunting ways or schizophrenia or, uh, you know, dementia, I don't care what he was tormented, but but you know, when we look at it from outside, we could say, you know, he kind of got away with it even, even while in jail, his while in jail, he's, you know. And then we could say, well, he's having a glimpse of what his future is like. Yes, future meaning after this life, the next future, and we've talked about reincarnation and, and we have to remember that this, the storage, the stockpile container of our karma, is akin to the black box on the airplane. The airplane goes down, crashes into bits and smithereens. You take the black box, you install it in another airplane. Now that airplane has that same, it's the same.
Speaker 3:Every single thing that the airplane did is stored there.
Speaker 2:Or like the content of your computer. You change the computer but you want your stuff in it or your phone, like I want my contacts when I change a phone.
Speaker 2:I need my contacts changed in my apps and all of that how interesting, how interesting that this is what the technology is kind of coming out. I mean it's out but you know it's developing in that direction of what, from the Zen perspective, already is. It's just a material, physical, technological manifestation of that which is already existing, and the idea there is that nothing, in a sense, is invented, it's just rediscovered, it's already existing. So this idea of cloud and we've talked about the ariashic, you know, and the consciousness, the storehouse consciousness, and that kind of thing, so yeah, lifetime to lifetime.
Speaker 2:Now for a nice and tidy episode, as this has been. There are four, as you said right. So we've established in-gwa is the cause and effect or the seed and fruition, un-bo are the conditions that surround it. We have chonin chon gwa chonin um gwa hyonin. Hyon gwa, hyonin um gwa.
Speaker 2:I love these yes so um and sort of yin, yang kind of thing. Think of it, yin yang and yin yang or um yang. Think of that then as a table. What's on the table, what's under the table? That's a good image. So yin and yang, what is under the table? That is visible. You can see what's on top.
Speaker 3:Underneath, you cannot see.
Speaker 2:Yes, visible by everybody. Underneath is as if it were another realm, kind of the hidden side, the dark side, the night side, the unknown kind of thing. So we have the top of the table on the table, under the table, and this is how we further can understand the complexity and why. It's sometimes a trap to think of karma and it's kind of fruition as this eye for an eye. And if it's not eye for an eye, ha see, there's no karma. Because on the table cause On the table result. On the table cause Under the table result.
Speaker 3:Right, let me just give you two. I just thought of imagine a whole dinner set up right, and I and I knock down your drink and then you go and everyone sees that that's sitting at the table right and then you go and grab the person next to his drink and you throw it at my face.
Speaker 2:Everybody sees it's all in all, in the public or in the known, it's all obvious. Everyone saw that.
Speaker 3:I knocked down your drink and everyone saw that you threw the drink back at me.
Speaker 2:Very good.
Speaker 3:Another one is I knocked down your drink.
Speaker 2:Everyone saw that then you kicked me under the table and I kicked you under the table.
Speaker 3:Nobody could see that your shin knows you're in pain.
Speaker 2:Exactly, that's perfect, right. So there's the seen or visible and the cause visible and the result is visible. Like you said, I knock over you thing. It's sort of tit for tat, eye for an eye, we could even say. Then there's the visible cause, invisible result. So people see that I've knocked over your thing, People don't see that I've kicked you in the shin and again. So now, if we leave it at that, consider the countless perspectives that people then have on it. Oh, he did so, he did, I spilled your thing, you threw water, that okay. And people will say that is justice, Kind of you know.
Speaker 1:Because they saw.
Speaker 2:They see, they were exposed to their eyes and they were able to connect the dots. Yes, so justice has been reenacted right and so that may be satisfactory to people. It's like, okay, well, you did that and now you did that and everybody could go home and sleep. Well, Now we do that water in the face, you know, boot to shin, that is unseen, and then that could leave people at the table going oh, no, justice has been served.
Speaker 3:That's almost then, like Al Capone being in like a penthouse suite in the prison Right and people can't see his experience the torment. He was in the hell.
Speaker 1:Didn't sleep howling Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we have that. So the boot to shin. Unknown is the result of the cause known.
Speaker 1:I gotcha so option two Three Option three Shen, I mean boot to.
Speaker 2:Shen, I throw the water in your face.
Speaker 3:I think this is a common one, one because then what does the crowd say or how do they react at that moment?
Speaker 1:I've attacked, I've attacked you.
Speaker 3:They don't know where this came from, because the cause is hidden.
Speaker 2:Right. So they think like this guy just rudely threw water in the other person's face unjustly, without any sort of causality, seemingly right.
Speaker 3:I think this one is is the hardest one for some people to comprehend. That maybe this ties into this idea of like my cause, and this might be a little bit of a tangent. We don't have to go there, but I just want to highlight here I did something in my past life. Today I received the effect and it comes out of nowhere and people oftentimes ask my God, why is this happening to me now? Because you cannot see the cause that was hidden.
Speaker 3:But we know from the law of karma that there was a cause.
Speaker 2:We know from the law of the universe that there's a cause.
Speaker 3:You said the same thing. You just got to observe the world and the universe, and you could see that principle at play there.
Speaker 2:And so what is the warping element is our ego.
Speaker 3:Because another thing too, the ego, can come into play and then harbor not harbor hinder you from working past that moment and finding a way to release yourself from that karma. This might answer some of the other people's questions, because the ego at that moment feels, maybe angry why did this happen to me personally?
Speaker 3:guilty, like some, guilty, shameful uh feeling, feeling uh persecuted like someone, something is punishing me, and all of those hinder your ability to have the perspective or the view of wisdom to be able to work through this situation in a healthy manner that can free yourself, unbind you from, because oftentimes, what do we do? We put back into the system the same thing that was done onto me. You don't like it, but then we now have to relive that once again, over and over again.
Speaker 2:But again, that might be no, it's absolutely so, and and and it's that idea of of I am innocent, that is kind of as a backdrop of that I am innocent, why I was just sitting here. Nothing happened. This is people watching that, this thing unfolding. You know, I put to shin you, you wanted to face me, and and one of us is viewed by the group as as the attacker and and without a cause and without a cause right, and the other is viewed as a victim. And now, if you have a, if this is a kind of on one's personal level, the ego is going to always gravitate towards I am innocent, you know, because even if I've done it in anger, even if I've done a thing in anger, then the ego will then search out for justifications for my anger. And so this is I am simply rebalancing the scales.
Speaker 3:I think a good way to handle that. I'm gonna take a situation that I witnessed with Unsanim, our teacher, and Bokchon, one of his students, where he asked a question somewhere along the lines like how could, uh, this accident, let's say, happen to you when you do so much meditation, so much keto, so much prayer? And his answer to me is brilliant and genius and says at one time you know, today I have light, today I have wisdom, but at one time I was mumian, and I think that goes for everyone across the board. At one time in the way past I was ignorant, I didn't know better, but I still have to if I did something with those terms. It frees you from becoming angry, feeling persecuted, feeling like, oh, but I'm innocent, why is this happening to me? All those unhealthy states of thinking and all those unhealthy emotional reactions that will not free you or unbind you from the karmic consequences. It will just further enhance and amplify whatever is tormenting you today. I like that response well, absolutely, I mean.
Speaker 2:And then so we have that kind of causality is unknown and the result is known. Right, so we're still, we, oh, I think. I think we still have everybody hopefully on board. It's like all right, you do something, it's above the table, action and reaction. Above the table, action, under the table reaction, under the table action, above the table reaction. And we only have one combination left I kick you in the shin. This is the sibling thing, right I?
Speaker 2:kick you in the shin, you kick me in the shin, because mom and dad, if they see us punching each other and kicking each other, we'll both be in trouble. Sorry, I kick you, you kick me, I kick you, you kick me, I kick Nobody at the table knows.
Speaker 3:But they turn around and the parents look and everyone's folding their hands.
Speaker 2:Very pious, nobody did anything Bleeding from the shins, and so, in those cases, it's the action, as we said, is hidden, and then the result, the reaction to, is hidden, that is to say, that is to say, a thief who steals from an empty house under the cover of the dark gets away. Now, if we take into account the way that each individual person's already pre-existing karma collection in that karma jar, right, what kind of a fertilizer they have for the seeds of the growth of their actions. So again, now we have another layer. So it could be very complicated and very thing. The main point is we cannot trace directly one thing to another. What we can, however, do is have this attitude, which is very challenging for people, granted, is that whatever befalls me is mine, and it's not sort of woe is mine, because if I have something nice happen to me, it too is mine. So celebration, isn't, you know, also like you could enjoy it. It's not like, oh, it's. And also, nor is it all predetermination, because now that's a whole other element. It's like, well, then, if everything we've done it's a cause and effect, then we have no choice. Then that's not the case. That's a potential, another topic of that free will business. But so again, we could consider it's if it's I for an eye or I for shin right right, or I for kidney right. So it's not only in the way that we suffer, even when we think of the physical suffering and things, of the karmic terrors, albeit so complicated, and they do not mean that the person is bad, they do not mean that the person was bad right, because then we say well, I did a bedside visit to a gentleman once who asked why me?
Speaker 2:He was riddled with brain tumors riddled, and so this was hospice situation. Riddled with brain tumors riddled, and so this was hospice situation. But he exercised, he ate right, he ran 5Ks, numerous 5Ks. So you know, it's a sort of I did all the things right, why me? Kind of situation. It's an oversimplification of the complexity of life, because someone could, you know, I mean there are cancer doctors who will say one person could smoke their whole life and they'll be fine, and the other person has never, smoked and they have lung cancer, you know.
Speaker 2:So those kinds of things. It's and and this isn't to say now, and and I want to really stress this to our audience who's listening If you have lung cancer, do not even begin to occupy your mind with I must have done something bad, I, what did I do? And that's not what this is. The point of the point of it is, everything has a sort of cause and effect and in that web of the cause and effect, in, in this very moment, my karma in the pure meaning of the word, namely that my action is affecting that storage container of my priorly collected, stockpiled karma. Now to circle back to the questions that that keep on coming back, namely how do we so let's go with the can we pay back our, uh, karmic debt? No, it's not.
Speaker 2:It's not a matter of payback, because payback, then what do you return to? What state of your bank account do you return to when you've paid back? It's there, we did it. It's there, it's stored. Now, think of it more in terms of scales. You know that kind of typical how much heavy karma negative, how much good karma negative you have. So what all what we are in in ought to attempt is to create more of the positive thing, create, create more good karma and not concern ourselves with erasing bad karma. Storage house is a storehouse. It stores everything.
Speaker 3:Ariyashic consciousness stores all of our actions, as we've mentioned before, good and bad If I can maybe highlight this with just a practical example, and it's not exactly the way it works, but it kind of gives the point. If you had just a large container and in that container you had the option of collecting one of two things One is seashells, which are very beautiful and you may like them and they're pretty, or the other one are rocks and, playing into the probability game, it's like depending on how much you've collected. Let's say you've collected three rocks to every seashell. If you think about it, if that's been what you've been doing throughout your lifetime, if you close your eyes and stuck your hand into that container, what might you be more likely to pull out?
Speaker 3:A heavy rock or a beautiful seashell? If you notice that every time you put your hand in there you have this heavy rock and you don't like that. Well, you can't dump all the rocks. What can you do? Well, add more seashells and then, maybe a year or two, we don't know, whenever you stick your hand in there, what do you pull out? A nice, beautiful seashell. So it's on a practical sense, like you're saying, in that scale, once you grow in wisdom and you understand these laws, these uh concepts that we're explaining here. Well, what can you do to better your situation if you just feel like everything that comes to you is against you or isn't what you wish for, or you're working so hard and you're not getting what you want?
Speaker 2:so now to to piggyback on that. What we then have is the question can we know our karma? And so that question still lives in that perspective on karma, as in what the question asks is can we know the container op chang, not op, but op chang? Can we know the container op chang, not op but op chang? Can we know the storehouse of our karma?
Speaker 3:Yes, forget about it, forget about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, forget about it. What is a more necessary thing to do is, as you are acting out your life, wakefulness and we talk about it ad nauseum. Right, Wakefulness is your key here. That is to say, when I begin saying something, when I begin doing something, when I begin thinking something, those mind, body and speech karmas, right, when I begin, I have to recognize how much of a habit energy is involved in that, because those rocks that you've mentioned create a sort of habituation, A magnetic pull towards it.
Speaker 2:So we have a habitual way of living on a physical level. I mean, if you eat your lunch at a certain time, you don't ever have to think about lunch. Your stomach juices and your bile excretion is going to kind of burn your stomach to say we're expecting food because you know if you go to sleep at certain time, you're likely to be sleepy, so there's a habitual energy.
Speaker 2:We could say that as part of this whole karmic network. This is also true emotionally, which is why emotional intelligence is such a critical thing that we're trying to develop, right? If you 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, how many abusive relationships do you have to go through to realize I keep getting myself into these relationships, which then I end up being hurt by. So how late in the game do I wake up to it, right? Or can I recognize the pattern pattern? Can I recognize the habitual kind of proclivity towards being drawn to a certain person, a certain type of personality, whatever, and so in that state of wakefulness is where the interruption in the karmic habitual energies happens.
Speaker 2:And this is how we address the past karma, not because we can't go into the past and do anything there, right, so to sort of. And then there's this other understanding or this kind of flight of fancy to say this thing happened to me, and this usually is connected to that linear, very simplistic perspective. I was in a car accident, or I was coming to the temple and somebody was rushing and shoved me and I fell. And then we have a memory oh, little Johnny, when I was a kid I remember I pushed him. Ah, this is kind of the phantom of little Johnny, kind of reenacting his karmic sentence upon me.
Speaker 3:Forget it those connections, forget it Right Drawing.
Speaker 2:Those connections have no value for when it comes to bettering or improving your life, right, and we have so many stories that are kind of simplistically like that, right, but we have to remember that is not the only expression of it. That happens. And when we fall victim to this thinking that it must be kind of verbatim, then we miss something else, because then we find in other circumstances this is well, I've never pushed anybody into the puddle of mud, so I was kind of faultless in being pushed or shoved. But we said the currencies exchange at various different levels.
Speaker 3:And all that does is just create a ripple of doubt in your heart, and that's going to make you not believe in whatever system you're practicing whatever you thought was happening, or you're engaging into better your life. You're gonna suddenly eject yourself out of that all because it didn't make logical sense to you at that very moment. You couldn't connect the dots. Yeah, that's, that's some asang right there to asangang ego that's some very strong ego, and it is.
Speaker 2:That's the thing. Frequently, what we get with these kind of perspectives is a fanciful reorganization of the mundane, less fancy flavor of suffering. Suffering on account of some spiritual principle is no different than suffering on account of some very kind of materialistic, you know, gross principle of suffering, if you, you know this, ideas that are intertwined into spirituality and religions, and those things are not outside and not available to getting mixed into the gears, the great gears that make us suffer on a day-to-day basis. So now I've learned about karma. For what purpose? For what reason? What are you to do with the information that we just spent, you know, however, many 50 minutes, probably talking about Right?
Speaker 2:So it's not to plunge a person deeper into suffering. It's not to cause, you know now, some depressive state of, oh, this is my life and these are the situations, and so I must have been a horrible person in my past life. And, and you know, consider if you have a glimpse of your past life and it's like ah, I was. You know, cleopatra, I was clear, everybody that has a glimpse everybody's a cleopatra I was a woman stealing in the supermarket Sprite.
Speaker 2:For what? Why, what? What does that mean to me today? You know so.
Speaker 3:I really love your point of wakefulness. I think that's a very significant and an important skill I think our audience should try to cultivate. Of course, puglia, buddhism teaches that through the practice of meditation and, and you've given an example in past podcasts that I think is also relatively a good point here. It's the one from the Dhammapada, where a village that is sleeping when the tsunami comes in at night is just everything is washed away, swept.
Speaker 3:So I guess just to make two different points there, one if you wake up in the middle of that and you aren't sleeping right, you're wakeful, you can do so you can not swim, you can survive but even better, which is, I think, the goal that we work towards is, let's say, like the fire tower or the mountaintop effect, where you see it from a high, from a high point and then you can see it much, much earlier, before the tsunami gets there, and then there you can plan, you can take out the things that you value, you can rescue other people, so forth and so on.
Speaker 3:So yeah, the wakefulness point, though, I think is important, is waking up and being able to that's where life happens, tied in the flow of your life right.
Speaker 2:So no matter what the karma element of our past, karma is, no matter what the you know, and so we didn't even get into the sort of karma producing fortune, because that's really the kind of cause and effect. But you know, it's good enough, I think. I think it's good enough.
Speaker 3:And Pulio does have another remedy for this, and it's boshi.
Speaker 1:And that's something I think we have to also address in future episodes too.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I mean, the temple is a ground for people to cultivate generosity.
Speaker 3:The Buddha, after his enlightenment, what did he have his disciples do? Because he felt very compassionate towards the people in the villages who were very poor. Right, he had them go out and beg, beg, yeah To help them.
Speaker 2:Seven houses on each trip, right, don't discriminate between the houses a shack or a mansion or whatever, who people give what they can give. And I like the I frequently, when I speak on this idea of the begging bowl, I like to say that it's full to the brim with fortune and it's that displacement thing you know, kind of eureka. It's like how you know you get in a bathtub and what amount of water spills out, and so that's the thing. But it's opportunity for, yes, creating karma kind of snowing over the. Let's call it the bad karma to cover up the bad karma with good karma. That's the or tip the scales if you wanna go with that.
Speaker 3:And you could really turn that between the exchange of all the different types clothing Boshi different.
Speaker 2:I mean, that could be a whole episode, right there, yeah, on generosity and the 12 or so various divisions of it. Absolutely, it is important to understand that only in the state of wakefulness and the self-awareness that we could alter karma. Sitting and dwelling on it, sitting, and even, frankly, sitting and pondering it is for nothing, because the pondering of it is either pondering things of the past, you know, and it's Wake up to your life in the here and now. When you are awake, like you said, you could catch the thief, and the thief here being our karmic, habituated mode of operation that perpetuates a certain way and it plunges us again and again and again, repeatedly, into the same set of causes and conditions.
Speaker 3:And the person who is mindless and not aware continuously responds to that same situation that triggered an emotional or a behavioral response, thinking this is the way I must be or this is the way I must act. When the wool is pulled over your eyes and you're not wakeful and you cannot see the causes and conditions or what your karmic and that could be emotional, mental or speech habits that you've formed and created throughout your life, you're just responding and thinking well, this is what I know, this is how I must act. And then the return is just like a merry-go-round or Ferris wheel, with someone going around there with their hands sticking out, just slapping you in the face, and then you slap them back and then the hand comes around again, slap them back and then the hand comes around again, and you have no idea why this is occurring, because you're not aware of where in this continuum you can interrupt. We want to interrupt it and then start a new flow going into a positive, hopeful direction, so that your life can be better and improve.
Speaker 2:Yes, sir, I am Milan Salim.
Speaker 3:Until next time take care of yourselves and each other. I'm Dr Ruben Lambert, from my heart to yours. Subscribe and like, and if you like what you hear, please, please, please, tell somebody about it. Don't keep this a secret. Don't keep it under the table. Bring it to the top so everybody can see how good it is.
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