Tag Archives: karma

All I Had to Do Was Dream

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Last night I had a dream. Of course there’s nothing unusual in that: I dream every night, every time I sleep (and sometimes when I’m supposed to be meditating as well). Actually I’m no different than probably every other living being in the Universe: I dream when I sleep.

No. The particular dream isn’t my point here (though we’ll be discussing it soon enough). What makes it worth noting is the fact that last evening, before going to bed, I watched a documentary on Carl Jung and The Red Book.

Jung compiled The Red Book at a time of personal crisis and distress. Using dream analysis, his own imagination, and intense self reflection, he used both paintings and text to express what he saw and understood from these practices. Hauntingly beautiful, other worldly pictures depicting dream images, archetypes, both personal and universal, helped him delve deeply into his unconscious mind and the collective unconscious.

I gave up trying to interpret dreams a long long time ago. Don’t ask me why: I probably couldn’t say. Most likely something to do with a kind of wariness about going too much into where the mind wants to take me, and my sense that the “dream” doesn’t stop when we wake up.

Still, watching this doco prompted a lot of discussion with my partner hermit, and a lot of thinking on my part. The mind is not our enemy, though sometimes I feel that it is. Well, it can be the enemy if we allow it, but equally we can allow the mind to be our friend. After all, what activity of any kind is possible in the world without mind?

So, with that in mind (get it? in mind?) I will share with you that above mentioned dream from last night.

In the dream I was in a small kitchen, making tea. I’d put on a kettle to boil. A very large, heavy kettle, probably three or four times the size of a normal one. I was in the process of looking for a mug or cup, and just as I picked one up that I liked the look of, a crowd of five or six people came bustling noisily into this very crowded space.

‘I’ve just put the kettle on,’ I called loudly over the din. As it happened I’d filled the kettle almost to overflowing, much more than I needed for myself alone.

‘There’s plenty of boiling water to go round.’

Then I busied myself looking for something (a tea bag perhaps?), and when I finally turned back to the kettle to make my tea, I saw it was gone. I was very unhappy with this disappearance: After all, I was the one who had filled the kettle and put it on to boil. Then without a thought or a, what’s the expression? without a by your leave, it’s all gone, nothing left for me. Not only no more water, but nothing to boil more with.

I looked everywhere, even outside the kitchen. Outside was a camp ground and apartment complex, where I (and presumably all the other people) was staying.

Anyway, that’s it. All I remember at least. So, the meaning? Was I merely processing trivial facts and events from my day in this strange fashion? Or was I in touch with the deepest part of my psyche and with the collective unconscious? Possibly a bit of both.

It’s not a big job to make a guess about the meaning. I had a plentiful supply of water (or whatever), and without thought, put the needs of others before my own. But then, I actively resented what had been ‘taken from me’, even though I had freely given it in the first place.

So, the message I take from this dream? Just as I’ve been studying lately, the fruits of my actions are not my responsibility. I have no say over what, if anything, will happen as a result of actions I take. All I am responsible for is the taking of the action itself, the manner in which I undertake it, and the attitude with which I approach the actions I take. That’s it. That’s all I can do. The rest is up to the laws of the universe. Call it Karma, or Natural Law.

Another idea just occured to me: When I take action (like boiling the kettle) and then serve others, I am serving Self, all life, everyone and everything. And obviously that includes me. I’m not suggesting I should have made sure ahead of time that I’d ‘reserved’ enough water for myself, but at the same time …

I might keep this dream analysis thing as practice to practise occasionally, when the inclination or inspiration is there. No more blocking memories of dreams, no more stubborn refusal to reflect on dreams. After all, I spend a lot of time contemplating and reflecting on what I do in my waking life, how is it any different just because it happens while I’m asleep?

My take on Dharma, Karma, & Living a Good Life Part 2

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The inclination to seek knowledge is, for me, a gift, a blessing. And we live in a time when there are so many sources, so many resources available, and many are freely available too. There seems to be no limit to what the genuine seeker of knowledge can uncover.

Yes, of course, we’re swamped with information from all sides. We are deceived by fake news. And everything these days is a commodity, a thing to be bought, sold, acquired, or otherwise used for profit in the material world.

All true. However, this is where one’s discernment comes into play. It’s up to each of us as seekers of knowledge (on whatever topic or subject) to discern for ourselves the truth or otherwise of the information we use to form the knowledge we are seeking.

In my last post, I began to talk about two notes that I made in my notebook. These notes were quickly jotted down while seeking knowledge from two different sources about two distinct topics. Feel free to have a look at that post here if you happened to miss it.

Do your duty
Follow Dharma
Live a righteous life

These three lines are the sum of what remains of a session with my teacher, Swami Tadatmananda. It’s his short, succinct summary of the teachings I was trying to absorb from him that day.

You’ve probably guessed I am not a great note-taker; I like to just let sink in what wants to sink in, absorb what resonates for me. Perhaps on that day, I felt the summary was all I needed as a basis for later contemplation.

With that in mind, I would like, in this post, to reflect on these three injunctions, try to work out how I’m doing when it comes to taking notice of them, and actually where I’m at with actually living by them.

Do Your Duty

What does it mean, ‘Do your duty’? And what does it mean, for me, to do my duty?

Firstly, let me try to define duty. Not from the dictionary meaning, not from some outside ‘authority’. No, this is me talking about how I define duty.

Duty, for me, is defined by the activities I choose to prioritize in my life. These are the things that I believe best serve my true, essential nature. Acting in accordance with this true nature includes responsibilities such as taking care of my physical, emotional, and mental health. While this may not always be easy and sometimes feels impossible, it is my duty because my mind and body are manifestations of my true self, of the divinity.

Duty, again for me, means persuing activites – in the world as well as within myself – that nurture, protect, and grow, who or what I percieve that Self to be.

This Self I refer to is not restricted to the apparently separate entity I call ‘me’. That apparent separation is just that, an appearance: Self is all there is; I am not simply bonded or joined with all other living (and non-living) beings: I am those beings, just as they are me.

As such, my duty is to act in ways that benefit (or at the very least do as little harm as possible to) all beings, all life. Here, I guess, we could talk about Karma. But let’s leave that for now. It’s enough to say that nobody can tell me – or you – what is our duty. In fact, the truth is I already know the full extent of my duty, as we all do.

The only thing lacking for me is what I might call a full disclosure of what that duty is. That full disclosure can only come from me – as in the Self. As they say, I might know in my head what my duty is, but I’ve yet to fully realise it in my heart. And if I’m honest with myself I can say that my aspiration to do my duty is a constant reminder and motivation to do always the best I can to fulfill my duty.

In some areas I think I do my duty pretty well, but in others I have a long way to go.

Courtesy of @travellinghermit3

In my next post (and the final one in this series: there just seems to be such a lot to think about when contemplating this topic), I will look at what it is to follow Dharma. Once again, it’ll be a very personal, subjctive answer because, to put it perhaps too simply, I like to think that I know right from wrong.

I hope this post has been of at least a little interest and value to you. I will look forward to seeing you here for my next post.

Thank you and I wish you peace.

My take on Dharma, Karma, & Living a Good Life Part 1

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Most likely I’m not alone when I say that when first listening to new information, a lecture, teachings or anything else for that matter, I will often forget either part of what I’m trying to learn or even all of it. In fact, I’m sure there are more than a few scholarly research papers that will tell us all about this universal phenomena with all facts and figures along with all the whys and wherefores.

Anyway, I was listening to my teacher ( Swami Tadatmananda) recently. He summarized the teachings he was giving on that occasion in three succinct, pithy lines. Thinking back now, I have no memory of the teachings being presented, and all I have is a quick note jotted down of the teacher’s summary:

Do your duty
Follow Dharma
Live a righteous life.

Fast forward a couple of days and I was watching a video about 19th Century English poets. Once again I’m not able to tell you the names of all those poets or what the show was about (actually to be honest, I got bored and stopped watching half way).

And, again, all that remains is a scribbled note about the pioneering of a particular rhyming scheme by one of the featured poets.

That revolutionary rhyming scheme is ABBA (where the first line of a verse rhymes with the fourth, and the middle two rhyme with each other). It’s as well that I did jot down a note: I have never been able to take in, much less retain in memory, all the technical stuff to do with poetics. Never.

But for some reason this particular idea appealed to me. Maybe it’s to do with how I was once a big fan of the Swedish pop group Abba? (okay, maybe I still am)

As it happens, my note on this appears in my notebook just below the first one I mentioned above. So, as I thought about ABBA (the rhyming scheme, not the pop group), I saw that first note and started playing with it:

Do your duty
Follow Dharma
Earn good Karma
Do nothing naughty

Okay, I know, it’s not exactly great literature is it? Never mind; it’s only an experiment. But, having said that, I do quite like this little, what shall we call it? This little ditty. It seems to be a nice, even quirky, little rephrasing of my teacher’s own summary.

This is all very well and good you might think, but what does it all mean? Does it actually mean anything? Well, my short answer is yes: for me it does indeed definitely mean something.

Actually, it means a lot. But as this post seems to be dragging on a bit, perhaps we will have to continue in another post.

Meanwhile, be blessed

Received Wisdom: A Good Thing?

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Namaste to all of you. In keeping with my ongoing (and ever frustrating) resolve to live fully in the present, I won’t comment on my long absence from the pages of this blog. Suffice it to say the hermit has been in his cave and acting as monk-like as he has been able. And as well, it’s good to be back!

One thing I have been doing during this, let’s call it, blog sabbatical, is continuing my study of the Bhagavad Gita. Not long ago I rediscovered a couple of verses in my notebook along with some notes I’d made that got me thinking about a kind of trap that gets us all at some time or another, and some of us all the time.

First, let me quote the verses for you so you get a picture before we proceed too far.

Forgoing all religious injunctions, take exclusive refuge in me. I shall deliver you from all sinful reactions. Do not fear. (Bhagavad Gita 18:66)

Just a quick side note: in this verse I think ‘sinful reactions’ refers to the risk of accumulating bad karma. You get it I’m sure.

Now that second verse:

When your mind is fixed and unmoved and not confused by scriptural injunctions you shall attain yogic samadhi. (Bhagavad Gita 2:53)

I don’t think it likely that any scriptural text would be telling us to bypass or ignore the very content of that text. Still, that’s exactly what both these verses seem to be saying.

In any case, here is where we can leave the verses themselves and look at what they are actually saying. The underlying message here I think is really a hint at how to live our lives, how to approach all we hear, see, learn and do. Which kind of sums up what you’d think a good scripture should be doing doesn’t it?

Anyway, it seems to me the essential message here is, don’t believe everything you read. Or hear or see or learn. Don’t slavishly follow any so-called rules laid down by others. Fix your mid on God, or we can say, fix your attention, model your actions and focus your thoughts, on Truth.

Ask questions, think for yourself, and then you will reach truth. Don’t rely on (don’t automatically dismiss either) ‘received ‘wisdom’, whatever the source.

Of course none of this sanctions us to do whatever we like without regard to the consequences of our actions. After all, we all know the difference between right and wrong.

If we focus on doing right (focusing on what is true) and staying away from what is wrong (what is untrue) we won’t necessarily always succeed in actually doing right. But the river of your life will be flowing in the right direction.