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Karma family wisdom - skill, confidence and accomplishment

From Tibetan Buddhist Encyclopedia
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With Karma family energy, as soon as we take a position or decide on a direction, we automatically get a sense of what's missing and we automatically get a sense of what steps are needed to begin to find these missing pieces. We also become aware of those around us who have within their lives these pieces that we are missing in ours.

At this point, we can panic and feel we have to struggle to get those missing pieces right away, or we can feel inadequate for not already posessing these missing parts of our lives, or we can be jealous of others who already have what we wish for. The other alternative is to recognize that we have just experienced what our current status really is in relation to this particular goal or goals, and we have just learned what we need to do or to acquire in order to achieve our goals. We have also learned who we can go to to find out how to satisfy these ambitions.

In its wisdom form, we recognize these feelings of incompleteness as a natural part of the process of setting goals and working towards them. Noticing what's missing and what the obstacles to our goals are is a very important part of the lesson of interdependence. If we react with patience to this process, it allows us to develop the wisdom of understanding dependent arising.

Through working with dependent arising with this understanding, we develop skillfulness. Without struggling through the process, we set our goals, watch the arising of the ideas of what's missing, what needs to be acquired and what needs to be done, and then we set about acquiring and doing. It appears to be skillful, but all that we are really doing is listening to the messages of the world around us. Instead of fighting with the outside world, or longing for the outside world to be different, we are merely providing what the world is asking from us.

Once we have begun to apply this skillfulness to our different life situations, our confidence increases. As we begin to set goals and then accomplish them, our sense of wholeness, and accomplishment increases. With each achievement, we begin to see better and better results. We begin to develop our creativity and sense of adventure. We begin to recognize how much we are a part of the creative process. We also begin to recognize that we can create almost anything, whether it's for only our own benefit or harm, or for the benefit or harm of ourselves AND others as well.

This is also a place where our values come into play. It may appear that we are being asked by our reality to harm others in order to achieve a certain goal. The question then becomes, is achieving this particular goal or fulfilling this particular desire worth the harm being caused to others in the process. Is getting revenge for others' harm to us part of the reason for wanting to do or to say certain things. Are we indifferent to the effects of our actions on others in obtaining these goals. We need to apply these questions to every moment of our everyday lives. It's in answering these questions that we end up affecting our future in ways that we usually don't understand or are usually unaware of.

From a spiritual point of view, most of the time, the answer is no, it's not worth it. The reason for this is interdependence. Reacting in the above ways reinforces the attachment, the anger, and the indifference in our minds, which then permeates more and more of our decisions in other areas of our lives. This leads us to actually working against our current reality, because our current reality also includes the sentient beings we are dealing with.

Harming others usually means that we're not taking our COMPLETE current reality into account when determining our goals and values. We are forgetting about how our actions towards fulfilling our goals and expressing our values affect the worlds of those around us. Because we are so focussed on a particular goal, we are usually not paying attention to how our future, including our future relationship with other sentient beings are affected by our pursuit of a particular goal. It also includes how other parts of our lives and how our other goals are affected by our pursuit of this goal. It can also mean that the order or timing of our goals needs to be altered and we're failing to recognize this.

Karma wisdom, in its perfected form, makes sure that we are aware of the influence of our actions on others. Karma wisdom never forgets the context within which our goals and pursuit of our goals operates. This means that we never lose sight of how the pursuit of one goal affects our other goals and affects all aspects of our future circumstances.

We also recognize that if we switch to focussing on a different goal, then the steps required to begin to accomplish the new goal come to mind. If we switch goals many times, or if we try to accomplish too many goals at once, we can end up with a huge list of things that we feel HAVE to be done. So part of the wisdom of the Karma family is to prioritize our goals and place a higher value on some goals as opposed to others.

It means recognizing when to work on a goal, and when to stop and allow things to develop on their own. A good artist is aware of the object they are painting and the space around it. A good conversationalist knows when to talk and when to listen. It's like growing a plant. If we feed and water it all the time, we will kill it. We need to know when to water it and when to allow the plant to work on its own growth by itself. We need to know the role of our resources and wisdom within the world around us as well as recognize the limits of our role as well as the limits of our current resources and level of our current wisdom and understanding.

From here, as people who are trying to improve the quality of our spirit, we begin to recognize that we need to examine our goals and decide what goals are really important and valuable. We also need to work out which goals need to be accompished first, and which ones are better left undone.

This is not always easy, and our relations with others can result in the goals, values, and priorities of others affecting our own goals, and values. This can sometimes be positive, but we have the most difficulty when the goals and values of others obstruct our own.

This is where being able to communicate the values and reasoning behind our own goals and priorities is important. This is a skill that also needs to be developed. Of course, in order to communicate our goals and priorities, we have to understand them very well ourselves. Quite often, we haven't taken the time to really understand our own goals and values adequately enough.

This is how we can get into trouble and get distracted from our goals. Karma wisdom is about developing certainty of our direction and purpose. We acquire this certainty through contemplation and analysis, and we use the focus, presence, and awareness developed in shamata meditation to keep our decisions in mind in our day-to-day lives. The Awareness, focus, and presence learned in shamata meditation helps us stay mindful of the effects of our actions on the pursuit of our goals. Through Shamata and analysis, we learn to have goals and pursue them without being attached to the goals or any part of the process.

Karma wisdom is also the energy that recognizes when we are not certain. We need to recognize the energy of uncertainty as a signal that we need to clarify our position and our goals before we continue, or that we need to work to resolve the uncertainty before we can take the next steps. Again this means recognizing "Doubt" as part of the process and taking the time to contemplate and analyze the issues.

So the whole energy of Karma wisdom is about examining goals, direction, and values, being mindful of the effects of pursuit of these goals on our circumstances as well as on others. It's about resolving the doubts and uncertainty, and then working to acquire what needs to be acquired and do what is asked of us from reality in order to accomplish these goals while at the same time developing and reinforcing a wholesome spirit and avoiding and eliminating unwholesome mind-states.

As we become practiced in this process, our sense of accomplishment and confidence increases and our awareness of our role in the creative process becomes stronger. The combination of understanding the process and our role within it, and having confidence and recognition of our abilities helps to increase our sense of skillfulness more and more.

This wisdom can be applied to anything, even worldly ambitions such as acquiring wealth or reputation or any other goals related solely to this world. These qualities would be explained in any seminars or teachings on becoming a success.

From a spritual point of view, we can use this energy to improve the lot of ourselves and those around us. We can use these skills to unravel our own lack of virtue, or lack of wholesome mind-states, and begin to become accomplished in the areas of contentment, non-attachment, patience, compassion, confidence, and spiritual understanding.

We can become skilled in using complete view to counteract our own and others' dissatisfaction, frustration, and confusion. We can expand our understanding of interdependence and interconnection and we can improve our skill in transforming what arises in our lives and improve the circumstances that it depends on. We can expand our influence on the spiritual lives of others. We can end up setting them on their own path to spiritual awakening and increase our own peace and happiness at the same time.

With the full expression of Karma Wisdom we become certain of our goal of increasing Peace and Joy in our lives, which is the purpose of Spiritual development. We gain confidence in our own abilities to make this happen, and faith that our work will lead to spiritual improvements. We become accomplished and skillful in taking whatever circumstances are in front of us and turning them into a way of advancing on the spiritual path for ourselves and others. The result is an increase of Peace and Joy for everyone in our world.

Source

www.peacefulgarden.ca