Karma and emotion

Coming back home can sometimes be a breeze and sometimes it can be real hard, stirring the waters of my mind. I had a pretty rough morning dealing with some personal emotion and resentment's from the past. Things that are a part of me and still need work and reconciliation. Fealing this way I decided to pick up a book a good friend of mine gave me as a gift upon my arrival into Washington.

It is not necessarily a chronological book so I opened it and it fell upon a page which helped me think about what needs some reconciliation. The title is Karma and The Emotions

"The most important thing for us to know is that afflictive emotion is our ultimate enemy and a huge source of suffering. Once it develops within our mind, it immediately destroys our peace of mind, and eventually destroys our health and even our friendships with other people. All negative actions such as killing, bullying,lying,stealing,wrong intent,cheating,selfishness and so forth, stem from afflictive emotion. This, therefore, is our real enemy.

An external enemy may be harmful to you today, but tomorrow could become very helpful, whereas the inner enemy is consistently destructive. Morever, wherever you live the inner enemy is always there with you, and that makes it very dangerous. In contrast, we can often keep an external enemy at some distance. In 1959, for example, we escaped from Tibet since escape was a physical possibility; but in the case of this inner enemy,wether I am in Tibet, or in the Potala, or in Dharmasala, or here in London, wherever I go it follows me. I think the inner enemy is even there in meditation; and even if I visualize a holy place, I may still find this enemy in its very Centre! So this is the main point we have to realize: the real destroyer of our happiness is always there within us.

So what can we do about it ? If it is not possible to work on that enemy and eliminate it, then I think we had better forget the spiritual path and rely on alchol and sex and other such things to improve our lives!

However, if there is a possibility of eliminating the inner enemy, then I think we should take the opportunity of having a human body, a human brain and a good human heart, and combine these strengths to reduce and ultimately uproot it. This is why human life is considered to be so precoius according to the Buddhist teachings, for it alone enables a being to train and transform the mind, mainly by virtue of intelligence and reasoning.

Buddhists distinguis between two kinds of emotion. One type is without reason, and is just based on prejudice. Hatred is one of these. This sort of emotoin will rely on superficial reasons, of coures, such as 'this person has hurt me terribly', but deep down, if you pursue that reasoning futhre , you find it does not go very far. Emotions without proper reason are what we call negative emotions. The other kind of emotion, which includes compassion and altruism, is emotion with reason beause through deep investigation you can prove it is good, necessary and usefull. Furthermore, although by nature it is a type of emotion, it is actually in accord with reason and intelligence. In fact, it is by combining our intelligence and emotion that we can change and transform our inner world.

So long as the inner enemy is there, and so long as we are under its control, there can be no permanant happiness. Understanding the need to defeat this enemy is true realization, and developing a keen desire to overcome it is the aspiration to seek freedom, technically called renunciation. Therfore this practice of analyzing our emotions and our inner world is very crucial.
The scriptures say that so far as the desire to overcome the first level of suffering is concerned, the 'suffering of suffering', even animals have it naturally. And so far as the aspiration to free oneself from the second level of suffering is concerned, the 'suffering of change', this is not something that is unique to the Buddhist path. Many ancient Indian non-Buddhist paths were similar, seeking inner tranquility through samadhi(single pointed concentration). However, the genuine aspiration to seek complete liberation from a exsistence subjected to suffering, can only arise from a recognition of the third level of suffering, the 'suffering of conditioning', where we realize that so long as we remain under the controll of ignorance we will be subject to suffering,and there will be no room for lasting joy and happiness. It may be said that the recognition of this third level of suffering is unique to the Buddhist path."
(quote from the essiantial Dalai Lama)