GET YOUR HAPPY ON! - a meliorist worldview

Lately, I’ve been getting questions such as “How did I get such bad karma?” or “Why is my karma so rotten?” This is the wrong way to look at karma, my friends. In Sanskrit, karma means “action.” We retain bad karma because of something that we have done or something we did not do. Only a handful of people in the world have no bad karma, but they do walk among us — not that I have met one, nor would I know if I had.

Karma is not the same as sin or luck. The more I think about it, I don’t think luck even exists, and I don’t subscribe to the concept of sin. I don’t believe in sin because sin has no utility as a rational descriptor in an objective test, and guilt is a fruitless emotion. (This is a good post to read if you are burdened by guilt.) Sin and bad karma are similar — just as good deeds and good karma are similar — but it really would be better if you completely discarded every previous misconception about karma.

One’s karma is the aggregate of all the past actions in which one has partaken, all the present actions in which one is partaking, and all future actions in which a person intends to partake. Karma is easily transferred too, so one could easily inherit good and bad karma from a loved one (just as easily as one could from a stranger on the street).

This is an extreme vulgarization, but I sometimes think of karma as a credit card that the Universe issued me when I was born. As soon as I started to exhibit free will, I began accumulating a debt of bad karma by acting selfishly toward others (as is the case with most young people). Eventually, as my conscience and sense of life purpose started evolving, I began behaving more selflessly toward others, and my karma started to improve.

Despite a supportive and loving family, I spent many years alone and unhappy because my debt to the Universe was substantial. Through the diligent employment of the Noble Eightfold Path, I became able to improve my life many times over. Today, I am a happily married man to a gorgeous, intelligent, and kind-hearted woman who reciprocates my devotion to her. I love the life that I am living today, and I have my good karma to thank for it.

Specifically, to improve your karma:

1) Replace all of your negative thoughts with good, non-violent thoughts, but don’t beat yourself up if a negative thought enters your mind (this takes practice, so go easy on yourself but keep at it);

2) Participate in more selfless activities and fewer selfish activities, and never partake in any kind of violence toward yourself or any other living being (this includes emotional and physical violence);

3) Speak well of others or don’t say anything, and always speak honestly but courteously; and

4) Make a living by benefiting other people — or at the very least, stop making a living by hurting others. (Note: this one is the hardest. It is so easy to make a good living by creating disharmony in the world, and often the jobs that help people don’t provide much fiscal revenue. I am sorry, but that is the price of a real happiness that will last you the rest of your life.)

The four steps mentioned above constitute the Ethical Conduct branch of the Noble Eightfold Path (i.e. Loving Thought, Loving Action, Loving Speech, and Loving Livelihood). Truly ethical conduct is the best and only way to improve one’s karma. The four other steps of the Noble Eightfold Path help Buddhists start and continue to maintain the Middle Way, or the path to true liberation.

Be good to yourselves, my friends. Life is too short. I hope you’re able to find happiness in whatever way works for you, as long as you don’t hurt yourself or anyone else in the process.

Buddhism is a system of learning based on logic, on reason, and on a long history of a pre-Cartesian scientific method through philosophical discourse and empirical experimentation. Buddhists have refined the “how”s and “why”s of human suffering to a theory that all are invited to test for themselves. If it doesn’t work, no harm no foul.

The cause of suffering is ignorance, because ignorance is part of and feeds a cycle of causation, known as the Twelve Causes of Suffering. All the distress (anger, sadness, fear, etc.) that you experience is rooted in this cycle, which has plagued humankind for æons; however, it is possible to end the cycle of suffering via adherence to the Noble Eightfold Path as described 2500 years ago by the Shakyamuni Buddha.

#1 As I’ve already noted, ignorance is the cause of suffering. One is not aware of what causes one’s suffering, so one continues to feed their own cycle of causation. Only in the pursuit of true wisdom may one begin the path of true liberation.

#2 Via an innate history of ignorance, one builds the false concept of one’s own selfhood (or ego) as though one’s own self has an intrinsic material value, and this conceptualization is affirmed and reaffirmed by everyone one knows (because they also lack wisdom and have their own selfhood/egos to protect and affirm). If one is wise and is able to escape the illusion of samsara, one realizes that there is no self to protect and affirm.

#3 If one has an ego, it should follow that one is conscious, but what the ignorant person does not understand is that the ego itself bears its own consciousness. The ego consciousness is like a piece of clay that takes shape as one experiences life, and each event results in the molding or scoring of that clay. A wise person does not feed an ego consciousness, and therefore is unaffected by life’s myriad daily events.

#4 And every day, there are thousands maybe millions of events that could affect one’s ego consciousness. If one broke down the consumption of a meal into each separate task and sub-task, the number of events would easily count among the hundreds. Each event that one experiences is a guest or a stranger to which one’s ego consciousness ascribes a name/function that allows the ego consciousness to temporarily cooperate with the guest event. The ego consciousness feels that it must justify its own existence by defining the world around it, but a wise person completely avoids this process. A wise person knows that there is no separation between the self and the other — that all events are part of a fluid continuum — so one needn’t tire oneself with causality. Of course, if one lacks wisdom, one has absolutely no idea that any of this is happening!

#5 After one has welcomed the guest event and slapped a name tag on the guest, one’s ego consciousness introduces the guest to the six senses (i.e. seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, and thinking) so that one may further perceive and categorize the event. A wise person perceives an event as what it is, but the ego consciousness is easily tricked into thinking that an event is something that it is not. For instance, an ignorant person may be easily insulted when no injury was intended.

#6 At this point, the event makes contact with each individual sensory organ. If one is wise, one neither affirms nor ignores the contact that the guest event establishes. A wise person simply acknowledges the contact and continues with one’s day.

#7 After the ego consciousness and the senses have made contact with the event, an ignorant person will experience either a positive or negative sensation (e.g., hunger, pleasure, pain, etc.) but the wise person understands that there is an alternative. A wise person seeks neutral sensation (by employing the Noble Eightfold Path) to avoid the extremes that feed the cycle of suffering; this is also called the Middle Way.

#8 After the ego-consciousness-of-the-person-who-does-not-know-about-the-Middle-Way experiences the event and internalizes the derivative sensation, the ignorant person’s ego consciousness will either tell itself, “Oh! Yes, I like that!” or “No, I did not like that!” Buddhists call this the moment of craving, and every addict knows that it is an extremely dangerous moment.

#9 Attachment (or fixation/compulsion/addiction/obsession) follows craving. An ignorant person who experiences an emotion will almost always choose to heighten that emotion — to become more ecstatic, more angry, more depressed — because they like how a particular event makes the feel. Equally, dangerous is a lifetime spent avoiding a specific event when one does not like how the event makes one feel. Both one’s desire to repeat an event and one’s approach-avoidance toward an event are sources of undue stress.

#10 Now, the attachment becomes a part of the ego consciousness, and the guest is an event that cannot be forgotten or simply erased; it is a part of you. When one welcomes a guest into one’s home and that guest does not leave, one might be forced to call the police to have the unwelcome guest removed from one’s home. When craving becomes attachment, the sensation leaves an indelible stain on the fabric of an ignorant person’s ego consciousness. Returning to the clay metaphor, the attachment often leaves a permanent wedge in the ego consciousness cleaves it or reshapes it into something completely different.

#11 Then the cycle starts all over (usually at the moment of contact) with the birth of the ignorant person’s newly disformed/reformed ego consciousness. And remember this cycle repeats itself with every new event many thousands of times every day! If you have ever gone to bed feeling like a completely different person from the person whom you awoke as, you might now have a better understanding of why that happens.

#12 Anyway, this cycle of suffering just continues to gorge the ego consciousness with sensation, craving, and attachment until the sensation itself ends with a painful ego death — which either results in the birth of another new ego consciousness or Enlightenment (in rare cases).

The preferable, easier path to Enlightenment is via the Noble Eightfold Path, according to the Buddha of this Age. Again, please feel free to try out the Eightfold Path for yourself. It’s easy, and there is no reason why it should conflict with any other belief(s) you may have. If anything, a strong foundation in Buddhism should help reaffirm whatever other faith to which you might choose to adhere. There is no conlflict between Buddhism and Christianiy, Islam, Judaism, Secular Humanism, or any other belief system — even though many of those different religions and non-religions have conflicts among themselves — nor is there anything inherent to Buddhism that should conflict with anyone’s lifestyle as long as a person has love and generosity in their hearts.
Be good to yourselves, my friends. Find contentment where and when you can. Life is too short to waste on anger and hatred and fear.

Many of you might never have seen “Babylon 5,” but its many fans knew it to be one of the best TV shows that ran during the last few years of the 20th Century.

In “The Paragon of Animals” (the third episode of the last season), the leader of an alien race, G’Kar, is commissioned to author a belief statement that would define a tenuous bond among a congress of interstellar species. Entitled ‘The Declaration of Life Principles,’ a paraphrased version of that statement follows:

The Universe speaks in many languages, but only one voice… It speaks in the language of hope; It speaks in the language of trust; It speaks in the language of strength and the language of compassion. It is the language of the heart and the language of the soul. But always, it is the same voice. It is the voice of our ancestors, speaking through us. And the voice of our inheritors, waiting to be born. It is the small, still voice that says, ‘We are one. No matter the blood; No matter the skin… We are one. No matter the pain; No matter the darkness; No matter the loss; No matter the fear; We are one.’ Here, gathered together in common cause. We agree to recognize this singular truth and this singular rule: That we must be kind to one another, because each voice enriches us and ennobles us, and each voice lost diminishes us. We are the voice of the Universe, the soul of creation, the fire that will light the way to a better future. We are one.

I take words of wisdom wherever I can find them, so it shouldn’t be surprising that I would find inspiration from a popular science fiction serial.

Actually, I never saw “Babylon 5″ while it aired. I didn’t discover my love for science fiction until long after college, when I no longer cared what was popular or cool. I’m not certain that I would have appreciated a sentiment like the one above when I was younger and more capricious, but I sure do appreciate those sage words now.

Be kind to each other, my friends. Step into the world each day with love in your heart and you conscience as your guide. And don’t be afraid to look at the world through a new perspective. I love you all very much.