there is a certain irony in the notion that insight is ever really sudden. most times, it appears ‘sudden’ only because one must take several runs at it before one is willing to really see/accept it.
recording available: kamma.mp3
it is said that kamma is the influence of effects springing from causes over time. it is said that every act brings a reaction. it is said that every act is like a pebble in the ocean… with all ripples eventually arriving at the shore.
within the context of Buddhism, it is believed that there are acts in previous lives whose kammic ripples return in later lives. in those instances where the negation of effect was impossible in a life, the ripple extends beyond it, and arrives in a later one…. and we are given many chances to ‘get it right’… we receive every chance until we do so.
in some moments, impeded and unable, we miss it. or we fox it. or we are too trapped by our own poisons and never see it. these are unfortunate moments, they mean we are lost and snarled in the mass of kammic return we have created for ourselves over many lives. this is the reason we are so strongly encouraged to practice during this life — during this precious, rare, human birth. while we can. when we can. right now, when it is here and we are here and it is at all possible.
it has been… interesting… to have these ‘sudden’ insights and to slowly begin to realize how certain patterns in and of life seem to be those returning, repeating ripples, reaching the shore.
it has been interesting and challenging to recognize them when they arrive…. to see them in the near distance and feel that sense of recognition; that ‘oh crap… yes… i could not manage it the last time…’ feeling.
it is auspicious to be able to see it at all. and heavy to feel as if seeing may not be enough. heavy and hard to see it and not know if you’re able to do more than that.
it is said there are many ways to transmute kamma. faced with a direct effect, to consciously make a better choice in relation to it. this is one way. but there are others. practice is said to transmute it as well and i find it to be oddly true.
it’s funny, really. when i began my practice, i thought of practice as a self-perpetuating reason to sustain the lineage, the beliefs, and the structure of power and politic that come along with it. but here, now, i realize that the practice really does make a difference.
it makes a difference because through it, one is enabled to see more clearly and the act of the practice creates the distance, buffer, and ability to see those ripples, returning…. in time to consider them, in time to be more than mindless and thoughtless in reaction to them… in time to do something differently, and transmute them instead of doing the same thing and sending yet another round of suffering into the world to return yet again to you, or another, or many others.
this is a profound thing to me, here, in this moment. it is the first time i have had such a sense of clarity in relation to the manner in which these things work together. actually, how all things work together. the truth of kamma and its purpose. the truth of practice and its purpose. the truth of the benefit to all sentient beings… which so often eludes me because i am too busy thinking of myself, being swaddled in hungry, grabby, greedy ego; being thoughtless, without concern or care for more than myself.
strangely, in this moment, i do not mourn my past foolishness as would be common. the notion of giving in to self-loathing is distasteful to me. while it is true that choices i’ve made in the past create this situation, i have the choice in this moment to choose differently.
knowing my past, in this life… knowing all the things i have endured and suffered for poor choices made by others, made by myself, made in this life, likely made in many previous ones…. feeling the weight of it all here, now, as i see this ripple come to shore…. the ‘sudden’ insight that this is so crashes in as well… foamy surf and salty thoughts…. and i stand, drenched in all of it, and for the first time i can remember, and see further than the spasming, greedy grabbiness of my silly self.
and i choose differently. thanks to practice. thanks to the kindnesses of others met along the way, whose ripples washed acidly over me, but were no less gifts for how they prepared for this moment.
i choose differently…. for many reasons, but mostly because i would rather bleed the rest of my life than know i am the cause of a ripple upon someone else’s shore.
kamma, you are a bloody, painful, relentless bitch. and i thank you for it.