I came across a post on Kutaki no Mura that I believe everyone in the world should read. It is particularly salient as we strive to make our voices heard in these threads, while at the same time supposedly striving to achieve the "immovable heart" (fudoshin) or the "compassionate heart" (jihi no kokoro).
In the spirit of full disclosure, my editorial background forced me to clean up a couple of punctuation and grammatical points before passing it on. I hope you enjoy it (and I hope the original author doesn't mind my editing work).
Cheers!
-ben
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In life, we often talk about cause and effect, one person supplies a cause and then there is an effect. But that is only part of the equation. The true equation is Cause + Context = Effect.
Within us all we all have cause, built up little potentials of energy that come about through events that have occurred in the past -- karma!! This karma is a stored amount of energy. A cause in and of itself doesn't do anything. Imagine that it is like a match. A match in and of itself will do nothing. But if you strike a match against a flint (the context), suddenly out of nowhere you get an effect (fire!). But the match would not produce fire unless it had found a context. In us as people, we are all bundles of little karma--little balls of karmic potential. In and of itself, the cause in us is useless. Supply it a context, however, and that cause will then produce an effect.
In the dynamic between people, you will find if someone overreacts to a simple statement (or action), it is because whatever we said created the right context for a cause held dormant within them. To us as humans we perceive this as "appropriateness." That person's response doesn't feel an appropriate response to the initial questions/action. Understanding this appropriateness hints at understanding the concept of context in relation to cause and effect. Often though, once a person reacts to a context that we have provided, their reaction then provides a context for us, and then a cause that we hold produces a counter reaction. There it goes back and forth--the karmic wheel of cause and effect turning over and over. Then the next person reacts, then we react, then they react again ... and on and on.
The trick to stopping this karmic wheel is to remove the context. When a cause no longer has a context, the wheel of cause and effect stops. In time, with no context, a cause will cease to exist altogether. This is how we heal. This is why walking away from an argument can be helpful at times; it helps remove the context, giving people a bit of perspective and allowing them to try again to deal with it later in a more calm fashion. This is also why "time heals"; because we remove the context, the cause slowly ceases. In therapy, this is why, for example, alcoholics say "Hi, I'm Dean, and I'm an alcoholic." This statement is the recognition of a cause within them. That is also why alcoholics can never have an alcoholic drink. Abstinence is the removal of context so as not to produce a result: alcoholism.
In us, as people, learning to reduce our karmic effect in life is about removing the context for our causes. This is why enlightenment is so important. It is that recognition of the point where there is no life or death, no context! In that space, the benevolent heart develops because our karmic causes begin to cease, further because they have no context with which to react. From here, we begin to be kind to all humans, and our life becomes easier, happier and better.
The original thread is here: http://www.kutaki.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=3529&forum=16
In the spirit of full disclosure, my editorial background forced me to clean up a couple of punctuation and grammatical points before passing it on. I hope you enjoy it (and I hope the original author doesn't mind my editing work).
Cheers!
-ben
- - - - - - - -
Cause + Context = Effect
by Dean Crabb
by Dean Crabb
In life, we often talk about cause and effect, one person supplies a cause and then there is an effect. But that is only part of the equation. The true equation is Cause + Context = Effect.
Within us all we all have cause, built up little potentials of energy that come about through events that have occurred in the past -- karma!! This karma is a stored amount of energy. A cause in and of itself doesn't do anything. Imagine that it is like a match. A match in and of itself will do nothing. But if you strike a match against a flint (the context), suddenly out of nowhere you get an effect (fire!). But the match would not produce fire unless it had found a context. In us as people, we are all bundles of little karma--little balls of karmic potential. In and of itself, the cause in us is useless. Supply it a context, however, and that cause will then produce an effect.
In the dynamic between people, you will find if someone overreacts to a simple statement (or action), it is because whatever we said created the right context for a cause held dormant within them. To us as humans we perceive this as "appropriateness." That person's response doesn't feel an appropriate response to the initial questions/action. Understanding this appropriateness hints at understanding the concept of context in relation to cause and effect. Often though, once a person reacts to a context that we have provided, their reaction then provides a context for us, and then a cause that we hold produces a counter reaction. There it goes back and forth--the karmic wheel of cause and effect turning over and over. Then the next person reacts, then we react, then they react again ... and on and on.
The trick to stopping this karmic wheel is to remove the context. When a cause no longer has a context, the wheel of cause and effect stops. In time, with no context, a cause will cease to exist altogether. This is how we heal. This is why walking away from an argument can be helpful at times; it helps remove the context, giving people a bit of perspective and allowing them to try again to deal with it later in a more calm fashion. This is also why "time heals"; because we remove the context, the cause slowly ceases. In therapy, this is why, for example, alcoholics say "Hi, I'm Dean, and I'm an alcoholic." This statement is the recognition of a cause within them. That is also why alcoholics can never have an alcoholic drink. Abstinence is the removal of context so as not to produce a result: alcoholism.
In us, as people, learning to reduce our karmic effect in life is about removing the context for our causes. This is why enlightenment is so important. It is that recognition of the point where there is no life or death, no context! In that space, the benevolent heart develops because our karmic causes begin to cease, further because they have no context with which to react. From here, we begin to be kind to all humans, and our life becomes easier, happier and better.
The original thread is here: http://www.kutaki.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=3529&forum=16
