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.