When we explore themes of suffering in different religious traditions, it quickly becomes apparent that humans have a terrible self-image problem. The majority of the world’s religions, perhaps all of them, seem to develop as a response to the idea that life’s suffering results from something we’ve done wrong before we’re even born.
Christians are asked to believe in Augustine’s (not Jesus’) approach to original sin, and Augustine reads Genesis the way only a hedonistic Gentile living half a millennia after Jesus could. In his opinion, life is miserable because we’re all still paying for the original sin Adam and Eve committed in Paradise. But what Augustine means is that we are all hedonists because Augustine was a hedonist.
The Eastern religions don’t treat the human condition much better. Hindus, Buddhists, Jainists, and others believe in Karma, which can be considered spiritual debt built up and paid off over many lifetimes.
Westerners often think of Karma as what goes around, comes around, but that’s not exactly correct. There’s an ancient Hindu parable about a farmer and a thief that illustrates well the general idea about suffering and Karma:
There was a very rich farmer who was also very generous. He used to provide loans to anyone who asked, and he would even allow people to choose whether to pay off their debt in this life or the next. Many honest people borrowed from the rich man and became educated, started businesses and charities, and repaid their debts, contributing to the community.
One day a thief heard about the philanthropist and decided to rob him. He went to the man’s farm and pretended to seek a loan. When the bookkeeper asked, “Do you intend to repay this loan in this life or the next?” the thief answered, “the next, of course!” The bookkeeper made a checkmark and went to the safe to get the thief his money. The thief was happy to learn the location of the safe.
Later that evening, the thief snuck into the rich mans’ farm and waited in a Buffalo shed for the man to go to sleep. Suddenly, the thief saw two Buffalo and overheard them talking. He was amazed he could understand what they were saying. The first Buffalo said, “So, you’ve just arrived here today, huh?” The second Buffalo replied, “Yes, I have come to the rich man’s shed today. How long have you been here?”
“I’ve been here three years. I borrowed from the rich man thinking he was stupid and that I wouldn’t have to repay my loan. But now I’m paying off my debt by giving him milk and will have to stay here until the entire debt is paid.”
Hearing this and realizing he would have to repay what he took in this life or the next, the thief returned his loan and thought better of stealing.
Karma is like the Visa of spiritual philosophy. You keep accruing more spiritual debt even as you work some off, but you ultimately owe for eternity.
Karma doesn’t free you from your stuff. It traps you in it. And while there is some validity to the idea “what goes around comes around,” that the way we treat others is the way we will be treated in return, we sense that idea as accurate because all humans are linked by and formed directly from God. Treating each other poorly is wrong because somewhere buried deep in our psyches, we know that God is our flesh, our cells, the submolecular quantum weirdness forming us all.
All beings share the original creative source, and when we are attuned to that source, we understand that what I do to you, I am also doing to myself because we are essentially parts of the same living organism. Consequently, I treat you well not because I don’t want to work off Karma in the next life but because I understand you and I are sharing this life. Right now.
Instead of continually worrying about racking up a karmic debt; rather than shirking our responsibility in this life and waiting for a Messiah, doesn’t it make more sense, doesn’t it feel more in tune, to consider being human is a blessing, a gift, an adventure for a Conscious Universe?
Doesn’t that make you resonate?
Instead of focusing on how unworthy we are, let’s use Lent to explore how worthwhile it is to be alive, to experience laughter and sorrow, elation and despair; to be aware of being conscious and growing in our understanding of our selves as unique, necessary, loved aspects of a Conscious Universe that shares in, maybe even feels, every moment of every life.
My concept of God (today, anyway) is of a loving universe excited by and amazed at the diversity of life evolving from it. I think God, The Conscious Universe, is so in awe that it is not keeping a spreadsheet of our misdeeds. God is not Santa, keeping a checklist of who’s been naughty or nice.
Being human means doing all the things humans do, all the things we perceive as good or bad, or a little bit of both, but which the universe simply takes in, sharing with us as part of its ever-expanding awakening.
When The Hindu mystics were developing the idea of Karma, long before Jesus was born and a couple thousand years before Augustine ruined religion for everyone, people assumed the human aging process mimicked the cosmos — that all things begin young, then progress to middle age, then get older and eventually die. But new ideas about the multiverse and discoveries in quantum physics force us to rethink what is “a lifetime.” Because it turns out, while a life might be linear, a lifetime itself is not.
If we are paying off cosmic debt through life after death after life ad nauseum, it will take a crazy long time because we don’t ever die. We are always alive in some spacetime construct, eternally ethereal. So, understanding we already have eternal life because nature, we no longer need to worry about reincarnation and Karma. What is a “past life” or a “future in heaven” when we understand that time and reality are non-linear and multidimensional?
Life is not linear, nor even circular, as Karma suggests, but multidimensional. We’re not working anything off, and we’re not born into sin because, despite the unavoidable withering and decay of the body, the purity of our being, consciousness, is never born and never dies. It just continually morphs into new God experiences.
Including, I suppose, being a Buffalo. But only because the Universe, and maybe you, want to feel what being a Buffalo is like. Not because we owe the rich man milk.
Amen.
Question: How might considering life as a joyride with God change our approach to living?
