Finding the End in the Middle

[Image: “Lemme Out!,” by Alan Levine. Found it on Flickr, of course; there, the photographer explains that he released the wasp unharmed after taking the photo — and pleads, jokingly, for a bit of karmic payback for his good deed. But in the context of this week’s post, I couldn’t help thinking of the wasp’s own experience of karma, before and after release…]

Let’s talk about karma — that mysterious force of revenge or redemption, that Thing Out There which either comes back to bite us or secures our place among the angels (depending on the sort of life we’ve led). Curse or comfort: you pick (because if you don’t, it will happily pick for you!).

I’ve always been suspicious of karma, at least as the term is casually and most often used; if it were actually “true” then the universe must suddenly — instantly — have become much more automated than I’d ever imagined it could be — a condition which seemed at odds with the chaotic jumble of non-cause-and-unlikely-effect I could see just by looking around at a given moment.

(Not of course that I was worried about karma — that dire consequences might lurk around the corner for me, or, for that matter, that fame and fortune lurk there. I haven’t led anywhere near a blameless life, the gods (and far too many humans!) know, but I haven’t been a horrible person, either. I just figure what happens, happens.)

But karma turns out to be a useful concept if you stop thinking about it as a scorekeeping — an accounting — tool. Suppose you imagine the ideal-to-you you, using whatever yardstick you’d like. How would you set out to make that happen? I mean, I don’t know anything about “you” out there, but I bet just going through this mental exercise will move you in the direction of what you’ve imagined. That turns karma not into a force imposed on you from the outside, but into a force sprung from you yourself…

A couple of readings this week along these lines. First, per usual, here’s one from whiskey river (italicized lines) a few days ago:

A Color of the Sky

Windy today and I feel less than brilliant,
driving over the hills from work.
There are the dark parts on the road
when you pass through clumps of wood
and the bright spots where you have a view of the ocean,
but that doesn’t make the road an allegory.

I should call Marie and apologize
for being so boring at dinner last night,
but can I really promise not to be that way again?
And anyway, I’d rather watch the trees, tossing
in what certainly looks like sexual arousal.

Otherwise it’s spring, and everything looks frail;
the sky is baby blue, and the just-unfurling leaves
are full of infant chlorophyll,
the very tint of inexperience.

Last summer’s song is making a comeback on the radio,
and on the highway overpass,
the only metaphysical vandal in America has written
MEMORY LOVES TIME
in big black spraypaint letters,

which makes us wonder if Time loves Memory back.

Last night I dreamed of X again.
She’s like a stain on my subconscious sheets.
Years ago she penetrated me
but though I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed,
I never got her out,
but now I’m glad.

What I thought was an end turned out to be a middle.
What I thought was a brick wall turned out to be a tunnel.
What I thought was an injustice
turned out to be a color of the sky.

Outside the youth center, between the liquor store
and the police station,
a little dogwood tree is losing its mind;

overflowing with blossomfoam,
like a sudsy mug of beer;
like a bride ripping off her clothes,

dropping snow white petals to the ground in clouds,

so Nature’s wastefulness seems quietly obscene.
It’s been doing that all week:
making beauty,
and throwing it away,
and making more.

(Tony Hoagland [source])

…and then, not from whiskey river but from a newsletter I subscribe to (an issue in my inbox this week):

Many often mistake karma for the notion of a fixed destiny. It is more like an accumulation of tendencies that can lock us into particular behavior patterns, which themselves result in further accumulations of tendencies of a similar nature. So, it is easy to become imprisoned by our karma and to think that the cause always lies elsewhere—with other people and conditions beyond our control, never within ourselves. But it is not necessary to be a prisoner of old karma. It is always possible to change your karma. You can make new karma. But there is only one time that you ever have to do it. Can you guess when that might be?

[…]

The very act of stopping, of nurturing moments of non-doing, of simply watching, puts you on an entirely different footing vis-à-vis the future. How? Because it is only by being fully in this moment that any future moment might be one of greater understanding, clarity, and kindness, one less dominated by fear or hurt and more by dignity and acceptance. Only what happens now happens later. If there is no mindfulness or equanimity or compassion now, in the only time we ever have to contact it and nourish ourselves, how likely is it that it will magically appear later, under stress or duress?

(Jon Kabat-Zinn [source])