doc benway

In my view and experience maya and karma are two aspects of the same “thing.” Both speak to the non-separation of self and other, one in terms of appearances and the other in terms of action. While we feel and live the relative truth of our expression of life as individual organisms, there is a level of truth that goes deeper and recognizes the inseparability of all of life. There are no living organisms that exist outside of their environment and through this environment all beings are interconnected in many ways. Any boundary we draw around anything is simply a convention of nomenclature, an artificial categorization, that has no basis in reality, just in concept, although they can be very useful depending on the nature of our practice and understanding. Even modern scientific paradigms in biology, ecology, psychology, sociology, chemistry, and physics acknowledge the non-dual nature of Being, it’s not limited to non-dual spiritual traditions and philosophy. When we see the truth of karma what we (I) see is that I am exactly as I am, this experience at this very moment is exactly as it is, precisely because of every choice, every action taken by myself and every “other" being in time and space going back and forward in time ad infinitum. There is the relative truth of my own actions as an individual and how they affect myself, others, and the environment that I am in contact with. There is also the bigger picture of how everyone I come into contact with is simultaneously in contact with many others, spreading out in an infinite, interconnecting web of actions and reactions that conspire together to create what is here and now in experience, moment to moment. Change anything at all and everything changes to some degree, the butterfly effect. We can certainly isolate individual actions, reactions, and consequences, but that is an artificial distinction. Maya is the misperception of the interconnectedness of Being in terms of appearance. Karma is the expression of the interconnectedness of Being in terms of action and reaction. We can work at categorizing, separating, and healing each and every karmic trace step by step, one at a time and this can be very effective. It can also be extraordinarily complex and time consuming once we get beyond the most obvious and accessible challenges. We can also work at healing karma without all of the separation, dissection, and artificial isolation of individual karmic traces by looking to the root of it all, the misguided sense of separateness itself. This is an equally valid method, more holistic, but not accessible or efficient for everyone. I agree with you. While there is a sense of “self-awareness,” of "awareness recognizing itself,” of “abiding in the nature of mind,” of “non-meditation,” and other such convenient and sexy sounding labels we use to describe our experience (I’m not interested in theory), it’s my opinion and experience that as long as we are human beings, we never completely transcend human experience, although we may come “close,” whether in our day to day life, in our practice, or in the clear light of sleep. These "blessed and pure” enlightening experiences are, in my opinion and experience, what it feels like when a particular obstacle or obscuration is released or dissolved. They are a taste but not a perfect experience of ultimate reality, per se; they are human experiences of a deeper and more pervasive sense of what it is to be human, approaching the purity of the abiding base in an asymptotic manner. This is why distinctions are made in some traditions between base and path rigpa. When different people have these enlightening experiences they use different adjectives and adverbs to describe them - things like pervasive, unbounded, clear, spacious, immortal, unborn and so forth. While all of these are characteristics of the fundamental essence of Being, we are not that, we are human practitioners, and therefore we have human experiences. Each of these experiences represent the transcendence of how we were previously feeling limited in time and space in one way or another.

synth-pop

I was a chem major and worked as an organic lab TA during undergrad. There were always one or two per lab who wreaked havoc, either through inanity or frivolity. They enjoyed seeing me sweat and put out fires, it seemed. Then again, I got to grade their lab assignments...

There is value in visualization for healing, for me. Also in spiritual practice. In Bonpo guru yoga, we first purify the body, speech, and mind first with flame, then wind, then water. It’s a very effective cleansing process.

A time to appease, A time to destroy

One can bring clear and stable attention to the area of pain, or the system, and connect to the feeling of spaciousness that is there if we can open enough to the experience. I think there is a relaxing there as well, @oak and also a loving, caring attention. Touch can be so healing and also the simple touch of awareness. Spaciousness and openness to the experience, not engaging with the psych/emotional side or stories, just being with the direct experience as best you can and open to the genuine warmth that can come up, as if caring for a loved one.

Tears

offal

"The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love - whether we call it friendship or family or romance - is the work of mirroring each other's light. Gentle work. Steadfast work. Life-saving work in those moments when shame and sorrow occlude our own light from view, but there is still a clear-eyed loving person to beam it back. In our best moments, we are that person for another." -James Baldwin

sorry, I’ll put something else here soon

This puts me in mind of the title of a wonderful book published in 1969 by Jiddu Krishnamurti, Freedom From the Known.

I suggest that for everyone such must be dealt with thus not bypassed. I suspect @stirling would concur. To recognize the relative nature of designations such as good and evil doesn’t necessarily mean bypassing. All practitioners need to be aware of bypassing. And I would say you don’t have to be a practitioner to bypass - anyone can repress, suppress, feign ignorance, willfully ignore, look the other way, indulge in escapism, etc… and convince themselves they are doing well for themselves and others, all of that is bypassing. It’s happening all the time “for the rest of us” as well as those of us in la la land, wherever that may be.

On a related note, I offer the example of the dreaded gluten:

It was not meant to be rhetorical. You speak often of good and evil and I wonder if you take them to be absolute or relative. Good and evil are adjectives, labels we use to designate our reaction and relationship to actions, statements, and people mostly. Our reactions are based on individual and collective experience, education, and conditioning. So yes, I consider good and evil designations to be relative designations, dependent on a host of factors. In fact, in many ways they are as dependent on the judge as on the object of said judgment.

Do you believe good and evil to be absolute or relative judgements?