So today we're continuing on the theme of karma and the way that I was taught about karma was like there were these two streams in our lives the karmic stream and the dharmic stream.
So the dharmic stream is about what unfolds and what can develop when we free ourselves from the karmic stream and for most people the one that plays the biggest role in our lives is the karmic stream.
It's hard to recognize you know why this is.
It's sort of like business as usual with the karmic stream.
So this inquiry is to start becoming sensitive to how it works moment by moment like how it unfolds in our lives not like some future life this life here and now.
So to speak a little bit about the unconscious nature of the karmic stream it's kind of like a self-perpetuated motion machine.
You know we create these conditions that prompt more of the same conditions in our karmic activity and what makes something karmic is that it conditions us.
It affects us in such a way that there's this continual motion from one thing to another like there's no stop and one of the best places to see this in action is in our thinking because we see it operating moment by moment.
It's like you know the thoughts you know like a monkey swinging on a from branch to branch.
As soon as you grab on to one thought you're already swinging to the next thought.
It's like you're already grabbing the next one.
One thought after the other.
You know we're already generating the next thought and then the next and then the next.
That's a way of understanding karmic thinking.
It's sort of like and as you swing to that next thought that next branch the branch that you just left is still swinging.
It leaves a trace.
It has an effect and what that does is it generates a disposition in a way.
It creates the mood for future thinking.
So often in our daily life these thoughts leave traces and they influence us and it's subtle but the accumulation of many thoughts over many months can be huge.
It's kind of cyclical.
So what comes first is an emotion or a mood and that gives birth to thoughts and sometimes thoughts give birth to more moods and emotional states and then those moods and emotional states become habits and so what we start to see in this cycle is that thinking is not free thinking.
It's not free of any impact.
One of my teachers described it this way.
He said if you take a tube of toothpaste and you keep squeezing it the paste will come out and even if you want it to stop coming out you can keep wiping off the top but it still keeps coming out.
So what you have to do is stop squeezing and then it might stop and sometimes our thoughts are that way.
You know we're squeezing if there's tension and tightness it keeps coming out.
The pressure within us.
So what creates that pressure?
It might be you know certain habitual ways of thinking that perhaps we learned a long time ago.
Ways of thinking that frighten us.
So there's tension in the body from the fear or the anxiety and what anxiety does if unchecked is it gives birth to more and just to say that the karmic stream can be positive also.
So we can have beautiful thoughts of generosity and love and connection and appreciation for other people and those thoughts have a very different impact on our bodies and on our emotional life than the thoughts of lacking of fear.
So one of the qualities of karma both positive beneficial karma and difficult karma is that there's a momentum behind it like the toothpaste like squeezing the toothpaste.
There's a momentum operating that sort of pushes along the karma.
So the key thing here is well what's propelling it?
What is the motivating force?
What are the conditions for the action I'm about to take?
And classically they say that what creates the momentum of karma is the intention behind what we do.
But I think it's not just intention.
You know mindfulness practice one of the things that we do with our thoughts when there's a lot of intense thoughts if we are caught in them that kind of keeps that momentum of karma going.
But mindfulness practice when we see them notice the emotionality notice the mood the conditions.
If we can get below the surface and see there's just layers and layers of conditioning of attachment to these habits that's part of our motivation and they're actually the real issue.
The conditioning they're the things that shape and influence the karmic stream of our life.
So to take a look at the conditioning in yesterday's practice I described the karmic stream is a little bit like Sisyphus pushing the boulder up a steep mountain.
You know he's pushing and pushing and it goes up and up and up.
But what the boulder wants to do is it wants to roll down to the bottom.
So what we're doing is we're pushing our boulder pushing our desires and our concerns doing all these things with the mind the wanting mind the aversive mind.
It creates work for the mind so the karmic mind is always working it's always constructing and when the the karmic work the constructing mind stops then there's space for something else to happen.
The boulder rolls down the hill and when you release the boulder you release that tension of pushing.
The tension in the mind the tension in the body what happens it begins to dissolve and when there's no tension this allows for something else to arise and what can arise is relaxation you know to have breathing room again to have a sense of space.
It's very hard to feel that space when karma is operating because karma is limiting and when there's space there's a whole another line we can take which is this dharmic stream and there are two primary ways that we enter into the dharmic stream.
One is that we let go we let go of the boulder and the other is to know to know to see so to let go is just to let the boulder roll pass to release the tension to release it to stop and it's simple but it's not easy.
Letting go tends to produce the most happiness you know and knowing knowing is like clear seeing knowing produces more clarity and just to say that this happiness and this clarity it's not something that we can will it's not something that we're creating it's not coming from constructing action it's almost like we're getting out of the way we're not interfering there's no longer pushing or compulsion to act or to do the dharmic stream really is a paradigm shift about how we live our lives a shift about what motivates our lives and where the center of our life is.
The dharmic stream is like learning how to float or to swim we learn how to let go of reactivity in our practice let go of clinging and wanting and in that letting go that clarity and getting out of the way there is something that's supporting us it's the water right when we if we use the floating analogy something begins to move us something gets awakened and there's a little bit of faith that's involved with letting go that way you know you when we're about to float there's a little bit of trust there that the water will hold you but clarity and letting go makes available a lot of wisdom so on our way to the dharmic stream what we're doing is we're learning to let go of our attachments learning to let go of our views our opinions of what's right we're learning how to care for ourselves and our friends and our family all these ordinary things that we do but we're learning how to do them without clinging to anything so thank you for your your kind attention on these reflections it may not be the way that you're used to hearing about karma but it's the way that I've been taught in it and it works for me I hope it works for you thank you
