Karma Question (was Dali Lama CD Chant)

[Guest guest]

At 06:33 PM 2/13/2008, you wrote:

>Do you think you create karma from it?

 

If you look at karma as reward/punishment on the basis of a moral code, maybe. I

don't see karma as punishment or reward. I see karma as more of a reflection of

our innate reactions, as carried both through the current and past lives.

 

There are four fundamental human reactions, flight, fight, freeze and facade.

All human reactions are one or a combination of these four " methodologies " . Each

of us learns what ones we pick through trial and error, and they are generally

set in childhood. At first, they work for us, but as we grow up, they become

part of our habits, so much so, we even mistake them for our " persona " . A boy

learns " big boys don't cry " , so he learns to hold in his feelings. By the time

he's a man, he has no ability to express emotion at all, and he wonders why all

his relationships are failures. A girl learns that to speak truth is to invite

abuse in her family, so she pretends that everything is okay. She hides behind

lies, hints and flirtation. Then she wonders as an adult why nobody understands

her. A resulting pattern emerges, and we begin to wonder if we are " cursed " when

the truth is, for the most part, it is our own behavior that is creating the

repeating disasters. We don't " choose " the disasters .. but we do choose our

reactions.

 

I think karma works the same way. We use the reactions we learned in this life,

and in lifetimes previously, to set ourselves up over and over again. There is

no mystical karma accounting god sitting in a corner visiting punishment on us.

We don't even do it to ourselves, not deliberately. We just fail to see how

we're our own worst enemy. It's a user-supported energy system <g> ... god/dess

doesn't have to lift a finger. The secret to karma is to learn to find those

patterns, learn to understand our reactions. " Know thyself, and you shall set

yourself free " .

 

Brandi