I was reading an article in Yoga Journal (March 2012 issue) the other day about Karma and it said that when you are drawn to someone, this is karma at work and that when it ends, you are have worked out what Karma needed you to work out with each other.
To me, I see this as having the same reasoning as “all things happen for a reason” or “God’s Plan for your life.” It’s the same principle, and to me, the same ‘power’ at work.
What I don’t like is that these cosmic meetings or planned life intersections with others are to end. If this is true, what’s the point? Is this some evil form of “it is better to have loved and lost, then to not ever have loved at all?” And I supposed I can see the Karma principal functioning with friends, co-workers or bosses but love?
Perhaps, yogis and other Eastern thinkers would tell me the Karmic meetings don’t have to end. To be clear: my God is a kind one, one who gave me free will and thus, the Problem of Evil is a result of this free will. We are free to love and to destroy each other. Blessing and miracles occur, but life isn’t pretty. And I see that this might be what karma is kind of about, too.
When you bring the word Karma into the discussion, it carries with it the belief of ‘you get what you give.’ The Yoga Journal article says this view of karma is way too simplified. Karma works without our intake/output as its prime source but instead works things out between people as they need to be done.
As a poet, I have always found the intricacies of humanity: the way we treat each other, the ebb and flow of intimacy, the rise and fall of wars (in the human mind to the traditional sense of the word), to be the subjects of my poems. And you can call me a confessional poet, if you want. I am in good company.
But what is important is working through being human and right now this karma dosage is messing with my head. Something like this wouldn’t normally shake my grasp on the idea of a ‘higher power’ but to try and find meaning, in what seems like needless torture between any two given people, doesn’t make sense.
So I go back to the ‘click’ of revelation I had while reading John Hick in Forrest Baird’s Philosophy of Religion course at Whitworth University. The sense of calm I felt in knowing the different Being(s) the world believes in are one entity of power. And that this Being’s name(s) change(s) due to the culture of one’s birth and the familial culture of your life. It was within that “click” moment inside Weyerhauser Hall in which my faith was born.
So I have to take this Karmic piece and look at it through my poet eye because for me, Buddhist thought is just another culture’s view of my faith. And for now, I have to say Karma is the name of Buddha’s view of free will defined as this: As humans we come together, love and hurt each other, and ultimately part in one way or another.
I have to be ok with that definition right now.
As for synthesizing it all with my life this past year?
Wish me luck.
*Brighid art by Renee Thompson
**Article: "Seeds of Change" by Sally Kempton
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