Workings of Karma

We live a life of making and clearing karma. Our actions create reactions which later on return to us. This is not a concept of Eastern thought, it exists all over the world, in Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and other religions and philosophies. What goes around comes around. The best thing you can do for yourself is being good to the world around you.

It is said that the people we choose to have close relationships in this life, are people we have some karma to sort out from a distant past life. I don’t know about reincarnation, but I know some relationships I had, either sexual or not, were clearly karmic, they released me from a past burden by teaching me a lesson. Yet some relationships create more karma and leave us with a lesson we still have to learn in the future. The art of relationships is in letting it live its course so we can be released from some past karmic burden while avoiding to create more of it. It’s not easy but is necessary for our eventual ‘liberation’.

At the moment I’m very happy that with Maya, we managed to see our lessons and let the relationship evolve into something else without waiting for a heavy heart to force us do it, after having created a whole lot of new karma. I give thanks that she came into my life again, in this lifetime, and together we untangled ourselves from some past stories. When we were together, I felt blessed that it was Maya I had with me to do this with. And now I feel blessed to have received this lesson through her.

But it’s not always like this, things don’t work out so smoothly and we don’t take life’s lessons so easily. Some years ago I had a hard lesson which took some time to be digested. In short I felt betrayed by a close friend who went a bit too far consoling my partner during our hard times. While I was trying to give this some kind of meaning, I had to deal with the pain of the sudden cut of communication. My first reaction was more like “I’ll go and kill him” but having never even hit someone in this lifetime, I decided to talk to him and when I tried to do this what came from my mouth was more like “if you make her unhappy you’ll regret it but anyway sooner or later you’ll pay for what you have done. I deliver you to God.” But the understanding of this came later.

I had few events in my life where I felt powerless against the events that were controlling my life. In such cases, when I resisted them things got more tangled, but when I flowed along with them things also flowed. Flow is surrender, surrender to God, to karma, acknowledging that the best thing one can do is to start any action knowing that what one will experience at the end of it is what one needs to experience. I have a few incidents of “magical” escapes from “certain” disasters when I surrendered. But it is not always easy to be awake when in hardship and pain.

So when I said “I deliver you to God” I was acting out of a feeling of being powerless against my destiny. But later, when the pain subsided, I remembered that it was just stating a fact. I realized, of course, he would pay for his betrayal and there was nothing I could do about it, no punishment I could deliver without creating even more karma. In my frustrated state I wrote a couple of angry e-mails and I know it’s likely that this will one day bounce back at me. But I learned to trust the Universe, God or whatever we may call it, to deliver all our lessons. And to see what I have already lived as some necessary test I had to pass.

Recently I heard that she has left him with another member of their music band, a close friend of theirs, and that he, the friend who took her from me, is in much pain these days. I cannot be happy about this. There is no feeling of accomplishment here. It’s not like I had put a curse and it worked, I prayed for his suffering and it was heard or something like that. It would happen anyway. In fact, I’m surprised to see it happen so fast, and I’m surprised that I sympathize with his pain. I know he remembers and understands me now, so a circle of karma is complete. We all get our lessons. I hope nobody ever experiences the same pain I had to endure to learn my lesson.

On the other hand I say “what about her? What a bitch! What kind of karmic landslide is waiting for her?” But she will learn. We all learn, sooner or later, in this lifetime or the next.

Workings of karma is profound and we don’t have to understand how it works all the time but every once in a while we are given a sign to remember it always does. Then we shall ask: do we ever learn?

“If I were embarking upon the way anew, my plea would be:
‘Teach me how to learn and what to study.’
And even before that ‘Let me really wish to learn how to learn,
as a true aspiration, not simply in self-pretence.’”

Kwaja Ali Ramitani

All Things Must Change

We go through many stages in life. We take many lessons and we grow up. When one stage is over we seldom feel sorry or regretful. We easily accept moving from being the children of our parents to grown ups, from students to non-students. We change works and if the reasons for this change is well understood we easily move on. Deep inside we know that the experience this stage brought into our lives is complete and there is nothing more to be taken out of it. We feel change means life and we move on.

Somehow this seldom happens when that stage in life is about an intimate relationship. We feel sad that we didn’t “live happily ever after”, we feel we “failed” and even that we’ll have to try again, as if one could try the same relationship again, even with the same people. When we are in love we feel it will last “forever” because it makes us feel good and why would we give up anything which makes us feel so good. But then it starts not to feel so good, these good and bad times start to alternate and sometimes there comes a time to see this is not the relationship which will carry us happily ever after. There are two possible reactions to the fact of an ending relationship.

It seems the most common reaction is to feel sad, failed, somehow desperate, accusing the other and oneself. This is the dark side of the coin and for some people it seems as necessary as the ecstasy of being in love; it’s a kind of detox-retox process. Some claim that if you cry it all out it can be easier to move on, and some like to drawn their sorrow in alcohol.

The second possible reaction is accepting what is happening. This is of course much easier said than done. Especially in the case of the death of a loved one, sorrow is always the first on stage first and acceptance only comes after some time. The “loosing” of a loved one through separation is in some situations felt like loosing through death. But there is a big big difference. If we can take hold of the sorrow stage and not give in to feeling failed or become accusative, there is a good chance that we can be close friends. After all who else knows more about you than “ex”? Ok, you may have had many different opinions which eventually separated you but, you very well know that some of your best friends are those who challenge your beliefs and ideas, and there are those aspects that kept you as a couple so long and some are not necessarily for couples. Now you have one more good friend; maybe it’s not that bad.

A relationship teaches us a lesson and has a course to complete. I recently read a research study about aging. It says, today it seems like there are far more separations through divorce, then there were separations in the past but that is not the case. In fact the percentage of married couples still together after 15-20 years hasn’t changed much. It’s just that in the past people would die younger and the marriage would hardly ever had a chance to last many decades. Today we have longer relationships, a longer life and more separations. Perhaps even the strongest relationships can only last that much as long as people involved can release themselves from artificial bonds.

I daresay I’ve learned a lot from each of my relationships and I wouldn’t wish to be in any of them still. Life is change and all things must come to an end. I’m very happy to have made friends with most of my ex-girlfriends. I feel they understand me better than most other people.

So these days I can’t really say if Adam is sad or happy because there is a bit of both. Adam and Eve broke up and because Adam had dreamt of being together longer and doing many things together, he’s a bit sad. But on the other hand they talked and reasoned that their togetherness as a couple has completed it’s course. Holding on to it wouldn’t serve either of them and they separated in a very sweet way. They are good friends now. And this makes Adam very happy because he still loves Eve. So this change of season is not like death but more like rebirth. After all, all things must change.

Sunrise doesn't last all morning
A cloudburst doesn't last all day
Seems my love is up and has left you with no warning
It's not always going to be this gray
All things must pass
All things must pass away

Sunset doesn't last all evening
A mind can blow those clouds away
After all this, my love is up and must be leaving
It's not always going to be this gray

All things must pass
All things must pass away

All things must pass
None of life's strings can last
So, I must be on my way
And face another day

Now the darkness only stays the night-time
In the morning it will fade away
Daylight is good at arriving at the right time
Its not always going to be this gray

All things must pass
All things must pass away

"All Things Must Pass" by George Harrison

WELCOME

Today I announced my first time ever blogs. I have been motivated to do this by Maya who has been blogging for some years and recently started a new blog with the purpose of letting off steam. So I thought I also can use some letting off steam. At first I thought “who’s going to read these anyway?” but then I realized I don’t need to care. It’s more like putting a message in a bottle and tossing it into the ocean of the internet. Someone will read it one day, someone with patience. I have a lot to share and I know I like to keep it as detailed as it gets (one could say “I have a problem with keeping it short” but I rather not see it as a problem). I hope you have the patience

So I started this blog and three others about a month ago. I’ve been updating it quite often ever since but this may not be sustained as I’m not this much online when I’m on the road. I’ve decided to make use of this period of temporarily settling in a ‘civilized’ place by sharing things.

I was waiting to be more satisfied with the first part of the content to invite you here but I realized that’s very hard. I’m not that happy with my blogging skills but it’s a new thing for me anyway. I feel like I’m writing an e-mail to a good, concerned friend who doesn’t have a face or a name. It’s like keeping a diary starting with “dear journal” and then letting the world see it. It’s weird. I just hope it’s not boring and that you have a little patience to see what I have to share.

I just learned that the order of blog posts go reverse. So what you see right below this one is the last post I sent and the first post I wrote is at the bottom of this page, or even on the ‘history’ part which can be reached through the side panel. I would really appreciate it if you can start with the couple of first entries rather than the last ones, so that the blog gains a little relevance.

I would really like to hear some comments about what I wrote so please click the ‘comment’ link right under the posts to give me some feedback. If you really like what I write and want to see what I write as soon as I put it online you can ‘subscribe’ to this blog using the ‘subscribe’ links on the side panel (RSS).

As I said I have 4 blogs now. This one is about my inner journey and I have one on traveling, one on my inner journey and one in Turkish.


Welcome to my little web.

But this is an old tale you tell – they say.

But surely this is a new tale you tell – some say.

Tell it once again – they say;

Or, do not tell it again – others say.

But I have heard all this before –say some;

Or, but this is not how it was told before – say the rest.

And these, these are our people, Dervish Baba, this is man.


Naqshibandi Recital

as quoted in The Way of The Sufi by Idries Shah

What is Love?

At the end of my first meditation retreat in Suan Mokkh, Thailand, in the nice library of the monastery, I found this little booklet called Love and Marriage – A Buddhist Perspective by The Friends of Buddhism of Malaysia. Apart from all the points it made about what relationships are supposed to be like and the dangers today’s life styles bring into them, it made a few nice points about what we shall be looking for in a love relationship. We always find ourselves talking about what love means for you and for me, when you said it was love did you mean this love or that love, is love one or are there different types of love. This little booklet has it’s humble answers from a Buddhist point of view.

The six types of love (least wholesome to wholesome)

• Mania or dependent love (or neurotic love)
• Ludus or self-centered love (sometimes called narcissism)
• Eros or romantic love (or erotic love)
• Storge or friendly love (or platonic love)
• Pragma or practical love (or logical-sensible love)
• Agape or other-centered love (close to loving-kindness)

We all can remember some time in our lives when we felt each of these different types of love (although sometimes we didn’t acknowledge it as love) and it goes to show that it is useless to have discussions like “this is love and that is not love”. I’ve had this with few people who didn’t feel so at home expressing themselves sexually, that they tend to think sexual love (Eros) is not love at all. Although it is a ‘lesser’ form of love it is still love. Even self-love or addicted love is still love. Of course, we must not fool ourselves by thinking that this is it and we need not reach out for something more wholesome. I believe we all are, consciously or unconsciously, on the way to find greater love, the Love of God if you like, but on the way we get our inspiration by feeling other forms of love. The sufi Hakim Jami said “ordinary human love is capable of raising man to the experience of real love” and I believe this. There are moments I feel the love I feel expands to cover all existence and there are times I feel love in a seemingly selfish way. I love to love (“but my baby she loves to dance” :o) )

Alan Watts, who is to some extend responsible for the popularity of Zen Buddhism in the West, the writer of The Way of Zen, has this to say about love in his book Wisdom of Insecurity:

Everyone has love, but it can only come out when convinced of the impossibility and frustration of trying to love himself. This conviction will not come through condemnations, through hating oneself, through calling self-love all the bad names in the universe. It comes only through the awareness that one has no self to love.

Blog

Eve said she won’t read Adam’s blog because she knows that it will make her mind boil. And although Adam knows it’s good to know oneself, he had done this blog mostly for her and he’d been careful with his tone and what he wrote. But Eve said she cannot control her anger and perhaps it’s better she doesn’t read it.

Adam is not very happy about this. Perhaps he won’t write much on this one anymore.

[By the way Eve also didn’t read Adam’s other blogs yet. She said they are too long. Adam had read her blogs completely although they were 10 times longer and even almost studied them and talked about them with her and all. But she doesn’t seem to be that interested about what’s inside Adam as much as he is interested to know what Eve has to write. Now she has a new laptop and he hopes this will improve the situation. His only hope at this moment is that she’ll keep on writing to her two blogs that he already knows the address of and not on one which is hidden from him. Eve doesn’t like being public much (although she blogs) and she has many e-mail addresses, different blogs, some other hidden stuff perhaps. Adam has multiple addresses also, but he uses them only for completely mundane purposes. :) ]

A Dino Buzzati story

The great Italian writer Dino Buzzati has this very nice story about the priest of a little village who saw a UFO land on the roof of his church one night. He picked up his rifle and ran out to welcome them. Two creatures came out and said to him “we’ve been observing you for some time and we know more or less everything about you but there is one thing we couldn’t understand and we are here to ask you that: Why do you have these antennas everywhere?” They pointed at the cross on top of the bell tower. “You put them on top of buildings which we understand but you also put them indoors and sometimes you plant whole fields with many of them. We even noticed that you hang little ones on your necks. But we couldn’t figure out where they are connected to. So can you please tell us what these antennas are for?”

Seeing this as an opportunity to gain more followers even outside his planet, the priest invited them into his house and started to tell them about Jesus.

“God had a son and his son was here on Earth.”

The aliens started to giggle shaking their tentacles.

“God had a son? Really. And you had him here? Wow. So what did you do with him? Did you make him your king and follow every word he said?”

“Not exactly. There was a misunderstanding and that’s why he ended up on the cross.”

“God’s son was here and you killed him?”

Seeing that he won’t reach anywhere from here, the priest decided to change the subject a little.

“Let me tell you the story from the very beginning. When God created the first human beings, Adam and Eve, he put them in the Garden of Eden. In that garden there was the Tree of Knowledge and he told them not to eat it’s fruits.”

“Sure, you can’t eat them,” said the extraterrestrials.

“What? Do you know these trees?”

“Sure, the Trees of Knowledge, where we live they are everywhere.”

“And do you eat their fruits?”

“Never.”

“Why?”

“It’s forbidden.”

It suddenly dawned on the priest that these aliens were as pure as Adam and Eve in Heaven. They have never touched the fruit. After some silence their tentacles started to shake with more giggles. “Oh, you ate the fruits, didn’t you?”

“Yes we did and that’s why we are here on this earth.”

There was silence. Overcoming his first wave of awe the priest thought that God needed humans more than these pure aliens. We made mistakes, we made sins, and we had to follow the path of God and remember him all the time and pray and always strive to correct ourselves. But what good were these pure creatures of Garden of Eden for? God didn’t need them; they were just being; they were perfect and that was it.

The aliens asked his permission and went back to their spaceship. When the UFO lifted off and shot towards the sky the priest took his rifle and shot twice after them. Another threat had successfully been eliminated.

___________________________

Appear originally in Italian as "...e il disco si posò", in the book “Il Crollo della Baliverna”, 1954 and reprinted in other collections later, like "La Boutique del Mistero" (first print 1968, latest 2001), "The Mistery Shop" (1991).

___________________________

This is a humble summary of the original story. I apologize if I have made any mistakes but this is how I remember it and it always brings a smile on my face and some sparks in my mind.

Questions in need of answers

The dance of life they have been dancing leaves Adam pretty confused sometimes. He has lived his life thinking all things can be viewed in different ways and that there is no one correct way of doing things. But Eve brings out the argument that “this is true for most people” or “you are very strange in thinking like this”. Adam knows he is not conventional. He feels “believing” in convention is like accepting a slow death. But he also knows there are no absolute right or wrong. Or does he?

He has all these questions he wants to ask the world and see how that famous “most people” think about them. He puts the responsibility of answering them on the shoulders of whoever is reading them now!


- Can getting violently angry or just angry be legitimized by saying that there is a reason to be angry?

- Can loosing control and clarity due to intense anger legitimize anything at all?

- Can temperamental weaknesses be remedied? Or do we have to accept them as fate?

- Is there a difference between Adam and Eve when it comes to using physical violence?

- Can there be reasons for accidents involving physical violence although, of course, they’d rather not have happened? Is it arrogant to state those reasons after apologizing for the accident?

- Could taste be explained scientifically? Can knowing the scientific facts alter our likes and dislikes? If so, can having unreasonable tastes be legitimized?

- How much lying is acceptable? Can silence or keeping the truth hidden be considered lying? Where is the edge between a white lie and a darker lie?

- Can exaggeration be lying? How much of it would be lying? Under what circumstances is exaggeration equal to being inaccurate?

- Is it just coincidence that “Adam” evolved into “adamant” while “Eve” evolved into “evil”?


These are just a few questions waiting for your comments.

Preaching

Adam has a mind of his own but nevertheless Eve is a preacher.


They both believe they have much to learn from each other and the relationship they have. They believe they must have a karmic connection that brought them together. They are so eager to find out the significance of their togetherness that they tend to forget the process is the destination. They keep thinking of a brighter future while they ignore the fact that all they have is now.

They wish to learn from each other but they don’t know how. They both have sizable egos. They both like to think they’ve been dealing with their egos, as if what they are doing does not make their egos stronger. They imagine themselves to be very flexible and adaptable but they both have their bony parts.

Adam sees life as his teacher. Each person and experience is a guru to him. He doesn’t feel the need to categorize them as useful learning and useless learning. He feels everything happens for a reason and as long as he has a relatively clear vision to feel it, he doesn’t need to be explained what the underlying lesson is. He can learn from life itself. He strongly feels that trying to put his learning into words is vain.

Eve believes in education. She is more educated than Adam. She doesn’t talk much and when she does she talks with a purpose. She is generally closed until she receives a question. That way, she believes, she avoids blah-blah, which is purposeless talking. She feels life is meant to have a purpose which can be explained. She feels all actions need to have an aim.

With the purpose of making this world, Araf, a better place to live, she starts with making Adam a better person. She knows constructive criticism is the way to go. She loves to express her criticism, although Adam feels she doesn’t take criticism that well herself.

Adam feels, although they have to learn from life and grow continuously, teaching and learning can be fun. He accepts the fact that some of life’s learning is not so easy to take, but also thinks criticism is easier to receive when it is done more fun. When Eve criticizes him harshly, he feels hurt and sometimes becomes reactive and responds in ways that he comes to regret later. When he sees she is wrong in some way he rather says it straight and lets go of it rather that making it into the most important thing there is. He is usually pretty afraid of Eve’s explosiveness. He knows he’s not perfect. He knows nobody is (if they were, they wouldn’t have been kicked out of Heaven in the first place). Mostly he says his criticism in a joking way or any other way he thinks won’t hurt Eve. But when Eve sees something in him that needs criticism, she gets angry and her anger makes things harder.

They are learning. Eve is trying to learn to control her anger which she knows takes hold of her pretty often. She says this hadn’t happened before she met Adam but accepts that the seed of it is in her. She says the reason she gets so furious sometimes is that Adam makes her angry! Adam sees he has to learn but he cannot handle Eve’s anger either. He feels hurt and when he is hurt he gets reactive.

They are learning. They are dancing. They don’t wish to hurt each other but they are having many accidents trying not to step on each other’s feet.

The Beginning

It’s not certain how old Adam was when he had that operation which removed a rib from his chest but it is pretty certain that he had a great shock when he opened his eyes and met Eve. He felt a funny feeling in his stomach, his throat knotted and he lost consciousness. To this day he is still trying to gain his consciousness back. Sometimes everything feels so real, sometimes all feels like a dream.

He knew from the first moment he saw her that his life would change for good. He would feel incomplete without her and would want to unite with her somehow. He would try time and time again and many times would give up about it but the feeling of incompleteness would not let him be by himself. He knew he was doomed to seek his female counterpart. He was doomed.

So he had to say goodbye to Heaven but also didn’t immediately make it to Hell. They were caught in a limbo in Araf, the land between Heaven and Hell. One day, they would feel closer to Heaven and the next day they were already at the gates of Hell. They could make do with all the mediocrity of Araf if they wouldn’t be pulled to either side. They wanted to chill out, give thanks and be satisfied with what they had (they had apple gardens all around the place). But could they do it?

Would it be too arrogant to expect to be settled in the middle world in their present state? What was it that they had to give up and let go in order to have some rest under one of those trees? Was there anything like enlightenment without turning into a heavenly angel or burning in hell?

This is the diary of their quest to find out...

Adam and Eve

Adam and Eve
by
Bob Marley

The lord named Adam and Eve,
to live a happy life.
In the Garden of Eden,
but they disobeyed.

I wanna know,
why they sin,
in the Garden of Eden.

It`s a devilman`s affair,
in the shake of a surfband.

And they broke the fruit of life
and everyone of us is living in sin.

Any anywhere you go,
woman is the root of all evil.

He was the first one to break a fruit
and everyone of us is living in sin.

The lord named Adam and Eve,
to live a happy life.
In the Garden of Eden,
but they disobeyed.

I wanna know,
why they sin,
in the Garden of Eden.

It`s a devilman`s affair,
in the shake of a surfband.

And they broke the fruit of life
and everyone of us is living in sin.

Any anywhere you go,
woman is the root of all evil.

He was the first one to break a fruit
and everyone of us is living in sin.

This is an early single by Bob Marley.
Because it hasn't been published as a part of an album it is not very known but it is a great song.
You can click the title to hear it on youtube.