Awakening the Buddha Within _ Eight Steps to Enlightenment - Lama Surya Das [51]
Something happens to you. You respond with an action, a word, or a thought. This action leaves an imprint in your mind (or, to be more technically precise, in your stream-of-being) that creates further karma. When you become accustomed to behaving a certain way, or being treated and reacting in a certain way, you become conditioned to it. This conditioning is part of your karma. It reminds me of the feeling we all know so well of being stuck in a rut that just keeps getting deeper from the spinning wheels. The more we deepen that rut through use, the harder it becomes to break free of it.
New karma is being made all the time. When one acts with a positive motivation, goodness is furthered. When one acts out of negative motivation, negativity is furthered. We can recondition ourselves to act with wisdom. The important thing to understand here is that you are not a victim. You are your own master. “As you sow, so shall you reap.”
Maybe yesterday when you were making lunch, the phone rang just as you were putting a jar of pickles into the refrigerator. In your haste, you weren’t attentive, forgot to be mindful, and didn’t put the top back on correctly. Today when you take the pickle jar out of the refrigerator, you pick it up by the top and it all spills on the floor—pickles, pickle juice, and the glass container, which breaks into many jagged pieces. That’s simply karmic cause and effect. There is no one else to blame. This is the bad news, but also the good news, all in one. If you pick up the remains of the pickles mindfully and carefully, you won’t get cut. But, if you’re not careful, you will need Band-Aids. You may even need stitches.
The law of karma spells out very meticulously that everything has its implications; every thought, word, and deed has an effect. Everything, absolutely everything, we think, say, or do makes a difference. Wrap your mind around that thought. Karma implies conditioning and repetition. This is a joyous liberating message because every moment we are presented with the possibility of changing the future. We change, and our future changes too. This is the truth. This is karma. We are responsible; the lever of our own destiny remains in our hands.
REBIRTH:
IT’S NOT OVER TILL IT’S OVER
The Buddha did not introduce the notion of reincarnation. Rebirth is a timeless belief that comes from the ancient wisdom traditions of this world. It’s found in both Hinduism and Taoism, which predate Buddhism, as well as in the ancient mystic teachings of Christianity and Judaism. Before the Buddha’s enlightenment, the concept as it was understood in India was that there was an eternal soul, called the atman, which came into being to fulfill its spiritual lessons, to evolve toward liberation and illumination. A pre-Buddhist prayer from the mystical scriptures of Hinduism, known as the Upanishads, says, “Lead me from darkness to the light, lead me from ignorance to knowledge, lead me from bondage to freedom, lead me from death to immortality.” Hinduism taught that this eternal soul would continue to be reborn again and again in order to complete its spiritual growth.
The Buddha, however, said he had looked throughout the entire universe through the wisdom of clear vision and didn’t find any fixed, eternal atman or soul. The Buddha took an agnostic position on the existence of a creator or God. When asked whether he was a god or a man, Buddha replied, simply, “I am awake.” During his lifetime, there were actually fourteen questions that the Buddha did not answer because he said speculation about these questions was not conducive to nirvanic peace, freedom, and the end of suffering, which was his sole message. Buddhism today is best thought of as an ethical psychological philosophy or nontheistic spiritual practice, needing neither dogma nor belief to be practiced and accomplished.
When asked,