Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site fortune.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!floyd!harpo!ihnp4!fortune!rpw3
From: rpw3@fortune.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: latest bright thought - (nf)
Message-ID: <2393@fortune.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 31-Jan-84 11:05:31 EST
Article-I.D.: fortune.2393
Posted: Tue Jan 31 11:05:31 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 7-Feb-84 05:09:34 EST
Sender: notes@fortune.UUCP
Organization: Fortune Systems, Redwood City, CA
Lines: 50

#R:utcsstat:-169100:fortune:21900008:000:2438
fortune!rpw3    Jan 31 04:40:00 1984

Laura, the traditional Buddhist view might not cheer you up, but a least
it's neither of your extremes, to wit:

1. You cannot ignore your past actions (even unto previous lives, if you
   want to be really traditional), since the trace/echo/residue/attachment
   of those actions keeps popping up. (The word 'karma' literally means
   'action'. Figuratively it means 'cause and effect'. It does NOT mean
   'fate', unless you want to call it 'fate' that the light goes off when
   you turn off the switch, or that the water started running when you
   turned on the faucet.)

2. On the other hand, there is nothing 'originally sinful' about having
   a history of past actions, with all that implies. Your accumulation
   of karma (residue/inertia of past actions) just is, like a mountain
   or a cocked trigger or a tornado. Meditation practice is a bit like
   bird watching, in that you begin to see the (inexorable) patterns of
   cause and effect that go on in one's mind.

3. The only hope (having see the mechanistic way we play out our little
   movie scripts) is the realization that it's not really solid; we don't
   exist as a continual "thing"; there are "gaps". The grip of karma is
   in our persistence in playing the thing out, even when we know it
   doesn't work. Since there are "gaps", we actually have some choice
   about waking up vs. repeating the same old thing. Meditation helps
   bias that choice towards waking up; most of our past behaviour (karma)
   re-enforces staying asleep (i.e, angry, ignorant, passionate, jealous,
   prideful, etc.).

As one who got really stuck for a long time (during the college years) in
S.K.'s "Fear and Trembling", I would now say that the problem of the
French existentialists was (is?) that they had absolutely no sense of
humor, no sense of the absurdity of their "absurd". "The Problem" was
declared to be such a solid immovable "thing", despite the fact that
the fact of their own deaths showed it wasn't solid, either.

(Kierkagaard I'm not sure about. He made such a big deal out of
"cowardice" that I'm tempted to call it laziness, instead.)

So I would agree. They didn't know how to live. Although they WERE trying
to put SOME "meaning" into it (even if they deified it as "meaninglessness").

Rob Warnock

UUCP:	{sri-unix,amd70,hpda,harpo,ihnp4,allegra}!fortune!rpw3
DDD:	(415)595-8444
USPS:	Fortune Systems Corp, 101 Twin Dolphins Drive, Redwood City, CA 94065