Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Karma tricks

The so-called Third Foundational Thought of Buddhism is Karma, or "inevitable consequence." This very complicated word/concept goes in many directions, but what I want to take on is the aspect of attachment, eg. to "one's worldly circumstances, to one's level of consciousness. I find myself embroiled in what I call "contrary conditions;" perhaps in part brought on by myself, but also, seemingly by the state of the world, greatly (by homo sapiens) modified weather patterns, and the shifting politics of life.

How much am I attached to what I take to be contrary to myself (and others) and thus dependent upon that as a part of my modus operandi? Part of my circumstance has to do with growing things, and the weather has been really messing with that. Part of what I read says that this is the result of weather modification by man, a weatherman from Milwaukee said the other day on the radio that weather conditions are not that abnormal and that a word like "contrary" would hardly be accurate as description.

Positive, negative and neutral karma seem to be simplistic in terms of the complications and contradictions involved. If I am neutralized by conditions the result would be labelled negative, and I'm not sure I can accept that. Bill McGibbon and others have posited that due to the radically changed world we live in we will have to dare to take extremely radical measures to just survive as a species. Another visionary, Rebecca Solnit (in her landmark book, "A Paradise Built in Hell") has described the way communities, groups and individuals have come together to (as she puts it) "arise in disaster." It seems that these visionaries will be absolutely crucial to the future of managing karma tricks and contrary conditions.