Karma in Everyday Life: Part 2

This week we covered self-reflection and realising our faults. There was a lot of discussion generated, and it became clear that it is a lot harder to self-reflect than first thought.

To self-reflect means to openly and honestly look at what we ourselves think, say, and do. We do not look at what other people say or do, nor do we try to guess what they are thinking, nor do we pick on and judge the faults of others. If we are to look at the "case studies" of others, we immediately reflect on our own thoughts, speech and actions and never judge them. This is quite hard especially when we have conditioned ourselves to come to a conclusion almost by reflex!

The purpose of self-reflection is to help us to realise our faults. We start by looking and correcting our faults for a few reasons. If we do not know and correct our faults, we continue to create causes for the suffering of ourselves and of those around us. By not knowing what are faults, we do not have the wisdom to distinguish between what is beneficial and what is harmful. So when we try to do good, we can actually create a lot of harm. Ignorance is not an excuse!

We had two readings about what is considered as beneficial and what is harmful. The first came from Liaofan's Four Lessons and the second from The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. Both delivered the same message:

To benefit everyone creates causes that are beneficial and to benefit only ourselves creates causes that are harmful to both ourselves and everyone.

This is quite different from our Western point of view of what is "good" and what is "bad"! We we do not realise is that our views are distorted. It is as if we are wearing glasses that distorts light and so we do not see the world as it really is. The problem is we believe that what we see is true! That is why we are astounded and entertained by "David Copperfield" acts. This is the very working of our ordinary, analytical, critical, rational, judgemental mind. It is this very mind that associates an ego and false identity to be essential to our being and so creates selfishness!

This is why self-reflection on our own faults using the standard that any thought, speech, or act that is centred about our own well-being and benefit is considered a fault.

Karma in Everyday Life: Part 1

Welcome everyone to Philosophy @ DP for 2009! We hope you've had a good break and are all refreshed.

The first topic for this year will be Karma in Everyday Life and we had the first part Saturday just past. We covered a brief definition of karma and what constitutes the creation of karma.

We also covered a basic understanding of cause and effect using the very accurate analogy of growing fruit tress. This included the three basic but important points summarised below:

1. Every effect must come from a cause. The fact that there is a "fruit" means that at some point, the seed must have been planted.
   
2. There can be a period of time between planting the seed and for the fruit to ripen.
3. The nature of the fruit is the same nature as the seed. The potential of a seed is to bring forth more of the same kind.
   

We finished with the following:

If you want to know your past, look into your present condition; if you want to know your future, look at your present actions.

The result of our karma is all our circumstances, situations, and experiences. This gives us the opportunity to reflect on our own lives; on all the experiences we've had and all the things that we have done; and come to the realisation that:

We ourselves are responsible for our own happiness and misery. We create our own Heaven. We create our own Hell. We are the architects of our own fate.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone and an awesome New Year!