And let me just start by saying that I was used to deal with pretty boring people who can only see life in black or white and cannot appreciate the shades in between, people that use to pick on every single detail of what you are saying, missing completely the meaning of the whole sentence, correcting the spelling on every word and twisting things around in such a way that in the end they achieve their one and only goal in life: being right.
I'm not like that. I make mistakes and I enjoy it!
All this to warn that my impressions on Buddhism will NOT be 100% correct, they will NOT come from an encyclopedia nor from a doco on The National Geographic and they will most surely be confused and possibly contradicting. Because this is what I feel about Buddhism right now.
Karma for example.
I heard a lot of people saying that Karma was like predetermination. Well, it's not.
With predetermination you feel like curl up in a ball and do nothing for the rest of your life since everything is decided and there's nothing much you can do about it.
Being a good person will not save you from going to hell. So why bother?
But that's not Karma.
Some people compare it to "what goes around comes around". I think it's closer to this one than anything else.
When I was in India I had long discussion with our tour guide.
He used to say he believed more in Karma than Dharma.
I haven't got so far yet as to know exactly what I feel about Dharma, but that didn't prevent me from learning one big truth: he didn't know much about Dharma either!!!!!
And you may very well say that he was living the whole thing, it was his faith, his belief, his way of life.
Anyway in Karma the most fundamental thing is that you really don't want to harm anyone or anything, cause it WILL get back to you.
The story of a monk who chooses to leave his family to join the monastic life and in the end by sacrificing himself he saves some precious manuscripts left by no one less than Padmasambhava.
You would think that such a wonderful person will have a fantastic reincarnation and nothing bad will happen to him in his future life. Wrong, because when he left his family he was cause for sorrow and trouble to his mother, he made her suffer and that's why in his future life he will also suffer.
That's just not fair right?
I've been born and raised a catholic and therefore I know what I'm talking about when I talk about GUILT.
Even so I really don't think he was guilty of making his parents suffering, or maybe he was but surely by saving the manuscripts he would have been forgiven?
Apparently not.
One thing really shocked me about Karma, I read that when you speak ill of someone else you're consuming their karma. In a few words you can change the luck of a person by speaking badly of her.
You will no doubt pay for it one day, but let's focus on the innocent bystander....
They've done no evil and yet their luck will change.
I already forgave myself for not understanding the reasons behind this, but I can finally say I found a solid justification for my huge superstitious "let's not jinx it by talking about it" thing....
Tibetans do exactly the same, let's say a family can send their son to university, now in other cultures you will see them spreading the word, celebrating, even bragging about it with other poorer families that cannot afford that. Tibetans don't tell anyone. And if they really have to they try to minimise the achievement for example by saying the admission test this year was easy, colleges have become more and more affordable, it's no big deal really.
Sounds familiar? I do that too. Why? Because jealousy and envy are the worst enemies. They make people wish something bad will happen to you. And in Buddhism the law of Karma says that it will!!
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