The Right Thing, Regardless of Reason
Nov. 28th, 2007 03:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tanarillConfession: I donated bone marrow for the wrong reason. I mean, really the wrong reason entirely. I didn't do it to save a life. I did it to have saved a life, which is really a selfish motive and not at all as altruistic as everyone seems to think I am. But.
I was thinking today, about the difference between saving people and saving oneself, and then this thing came out of nowhere an smacked me over the head.
It’s all about karma.
Of course, the word karma does not mean what it’s used to mean. It is not supposed to be a tally of good and bad on your soul; that’s the Judeo-Christian showing. And it’s not something that can be paid back in a single lifetime. It means the balance of good you did in your life to the balance of evil you did. The evil you’ve done to others comes back upon you; and in the next life, you may be a worm. Of course, if on balance the world has felt good from you–not necessarily that you haven’t done bad things, or that you are a good person, merely what others felt from you–then in the next life you may become something greater.
The point is that your soul is wiped clean for the next go-round by the circumstances of your birth, but the damage done to your soul by harming others still hurts, just like having helped others still heals. A soul might spend a thousand lifetimes earning the right to be a human king, and in a single lifetime undo all the good and continue to fall for a thousand more.
It’s all about karma.
Dharma is something entirely different. It means two things: the way you should act, and the running tally of your deeds when compared to what is the best you could have done, under the circumstance. Dharma happens within a lifetime; at the end, it is added up, and its effects become, for better or worse, your karma.
Of course, a basic assumption here is that at some point, the soul dies and is directed by karma to a new life. Immortals don’t really have to worry about it, and that’s okay because the only really true immortals are those who have attained a karma so pure that there is no life to which they can fairly be born and they return anyway. They come back because as long as a single person whose karma is not so pure remains, they feel the need to heal. And this, in turn, purifies them even more.
It’s all about karma.
And you have to be careful, frugal in your selfishness and generous in yourself. Heal people where you can. You never know when the soul you save is going to be your own.
And I read that, and realized I believe it. If I look at why I did it, it was indeed a selfish motive. But the result remains the same. I don't have to be a nice person for the world at large to have been improved by my having lived. And it changed me too. Maybe the soul I saved was mine, after all.
Maybe I'm not as selfish a person as I thought I was.
I was thinking today, about the difference between saving people and saving oneself, and then this thing came out of nowhere an smacked me over the head.
It’s all about karma.
Of course, the word karma does not mean what it’s used to mean. It is not supposed to be a tally of good and bad on your soul; that’s the Judeo-Christian showing. And it’s not something that can be paid back in a single lifetime. It means the balance of good you did in your life to the balance of evil you did. The evil you’ve done to others comes back upon you; and in the next life, you may be a worm. Of course, if on balance the world has felt good from you–not necessarily that you haven’t done bad things, or that you are a good person, merely what others felt from you–then in the next life you may become something greater.
The point is that your soul is wiped clean for the next go-round by the circumstances of your birth, but the damage done to your soul by harming others still hurts, just like having helped others still heals. A soul might spend a thousand lifetimes earning the right to be a human king, and in a single lifetime undo all the good and continue to fall for a thousand more.
It’s all about karma.
Dharma is something entirely different. It means two things: the way you should act, and the running tally of your deeds when compared to what is the best you could have done, under the circumstance. Dharma happens within a lifetime; at the end, it is added up, and its effects become, for better or worse, your karma.
Of course, a basic assumption here is that at some point, the soul dies and is directed by karma to a new life. Immortals don’t really have to worry about it, and that’s okay because the only really true immortals are those who have attained a karma so pure that there is no life to which they can fairly be born and they return anyway. They come back because as long as a single person whose karma is not so pure remains, they feel the need to heal. And this, in turn, purifies them even more.
It’s all about karma.
And you have to be careful, frugal in your selfishness and generous in yourself. Heal people where you can. You never know when the soul you save is going to be your own.
And I read that, and realized I believe it. If I look at why I did it, it was indeed a selfish motive. But the result remains the same. I don't have to be a nice person for the world at large to have been improved by my having lived. And it changed me too. Maybe the soul I saved was mine, after all.
Maybe I'm not as selfish a person as I thought I was.
