I’m dissatisfied with the direction of Fraught With Peril. I have become “high concept” only writing when I am inspired to write an essay with a specific message or theme. A fellow Shidoshi who had taken the time to explore this site remarked that he would have liked to have seen “daily words of wisdom” or some nice instructions on how to be happier, i.e. a meditation or mantra perhaps.
Well, here goes….
Chant Nam Myoho Renge Kyo. Chant it in a 6 beat continuous rythym. Chant only Nam Myoho Renge Kyo.
Embark on a painful process of self-discovery, discover who you are, and explore every nook and ugly cranny of your own dark psyche. There are no short-cuts. There is no easy way out or place in which you can hide from yourself.
This includes leadership positions in religious organizations by the way. No level of leadership will ever exempt you from the responsibility of painful self-discovery. If you avoid self-discovery, you will suffer.
Often times when I speak of this process (for us Nichiren Buddhists, read Human Revolution) there are those who at first think I’m talking about phobias, neuroticisms, “hang-ups”, fears and the like. If only it were that simple.
I’m talking about discovering, through self-honesty and reflection, who you really are, not who you would like those around you to think you are. We all know right from wrong, the trouble is when we pretend one is the other. Often the best place to start reflecting is in your relationships.
It is one thing to lie to those who do not really wish to hear the truth, the danger is in lying to yourself.
Rev. Greg Dilley, Shidoshi
I care very little for classical or academic Buddhist opinions or writings on the subject of karma, specifically because I believe the authors throughout the ages were no different than many of the writers on Fraughtwithperil. Antiquity lends validation – let a few decades go by and all of the sudden some wannabe Buddhist hack who writes an ill-thought out piece on karma becomes an “authority” by virtue of the distance of time.
Karma is – in my opinion – a concept that describes the very basis for the advent and purpose of individual human life.
Popular usage of the word does not do justice to it, which is quite the understatement. “That’s bad karma dude” says little about the true nature of the concept of karma. Put briefly karma describes the past causes that determine the conditions from which the essence of a human life reemerges from ku (the void), or in short, is reborn. Karma, from a more immediate perspective, also describes the causes we make in our current life which lead to our current suffering or fulfillment.
In my mind to think in terms of “bad karma” and “good karma” is shallow. In light of the Buddhist concept of the decline and renewal of individual human life (in whatever form that really is) the values of good and bad become somewhat obscured. Put differently, if you never really die, then there's really no good and evil, rather merely our karmic residue.
Without the process of karma there really isn’t much point in the universe’s expression of individual human lives.
Provisional Buddhist teachings strive towards the cessation of the creation of karma in the hope of stopping the cycle of birth and death. I would respond "what’s the point of life then?" Myoho is a perfect thing, a concept that describes the entire whole of the universe in which we exist. The expression of life must have some purpose and karma defines the function of that purpose.
The reality we face in a practical light is found in the karmic effects we experience in this lifetime. It doesn’t work to follow a careless karmic policy throughout one’s life – a “who cares, I’ll be reborn anyway” sort of approach because no one seeks out suffering intentionally. (Yes, this is a generalization, I’m sure one could think of exceptions).
The bottom line is that if you make negative causes in this life you experience suffering and are denied fulfillment, in other words, you get bad karma.
The purpose of Buddhist practice is to “direct” our karmic causes because in the end it’s difficult in most circumstances to determine if we’re making bad or good causes or karma. Certainly I do not believe that judging our own karmic causes or the causes of others is possible from an intellectual perspective.
In the final analysis the subject of karma is just, well – complicated…
Rev. Greg Dilley