Wow! Where Did That Come From?
November 25, 2008 As soon as you notice that negative thought has arisen, ask yourself "Where did that come from? Am I angry with him?" If you realize that you are, ask yourself why. And then give yourself a little Dharma lecture. You know being angry doesn't make you happy. You know it plants the seeds for more anger in the future. You know current enmities stem from past enmities and that if unresolved will only be worse in the future. And you know it wastes your energy. And makes you cranky. So lecture yourself. I often do so.
If it's not even someone you know or if you have no reason to be angry, you might ask ""Am I jealous?" If that strikes a chord, tell yourself to get over it. Obviously the other person has the right conditions for what they have accomplished. Figure out what the causes for those conditions are and if they're good, do them yourself. You can either spend your time envying others for what they have accomplished or spend it in planting your causes for future good conditions.
Or maybe that negative thought arose from fear. Fear of you or someone you care about losing something. This is yet another opportunity for a Dharma talk. Remind yourself that whatever happens to you and whatever you have has been determined by your previous thoughts, speech, and behavior. No one can take from you what you destined yourself to experience or have. Just as you cannot obtain something that you have not destined yourself to experience or have.
As soon as you detect a negative thought, figure out where it came from. Then determine the Buddhist principle that applies and give yourself a mini Dharma talk. In this way, you can eliminate your negative thoughts and increase the positive ones.
Reader Comments (5)
http://isledance.blogspot.com
If we view this life as our only life, then being handicapped since birth would seem extremely unfair. But if we view such a situation from the perspective of rebirth, it is much easier to understand.
Our lives are the result of what we have thought, said, and done in our innumerable past lifetimes. You created your life, I mine. And the handicapped person created the causes that have resulted in her lifetime.
That is not a judgment on my part, but the working of the natural law of cause and effect. We do not judge because we ourselves have planted similar—and much worse—causes. Such causes simply did not mature in this lifetime. But they very easily could in the next, or a hundred, or a thousand lifetimes from now.
The difficulty in seeing the above is that we do not know what we did to bring about such a situation. We feel we are good people and could not have done anything so terrible. But we have not been good people, good beings, in every lifetime.
The important thing to remember is that the law of cause and effect is a natural law. Like gravity. If I let go of the cup I am drinking from it will fall and very likely break. That’s not because someone decreed it would happen, but simply due to the natural law of gravity.
Causality is another such natural law.
As a teenager, when I read about Buddhism and causality, for me it answered all my questions. Like the one about why such terrible things happen to to newborn babies and young children. It was the first answer I heard that made sense, that seemed just.
Try thinking of a lifetime as one day. What we did yesterday carries over to today.
The work that I didn't do yesterday has to be done today. If I selfishly enjoyed something yesterday, I'll feel guilty today. If I was rude to someone yesterday, I'll have to face them today.
Likewise, things I do today, will affect tomorrow. If I don't want to have a bad day tomorrow, I need to work hard, consider the welfare of others, and share whatever I have and whatever happiness (not the grumpiness ;-)) I feel with others today.
We can easily see the carryover from yesterday to today to tomorrow.
Now try expanding that to a past lifetime and a future lifetime. There is the same continuity.