Hi Joe,
We had this discussion previously but it seems you forgot the distinction between suffering and pain. Pleasure and pain, one of the basic features of human beings, is produced by karma and is directly experienced by the physical body. Suffering, on the other hand, the main feature of your reply to my question, is directly experienced by the mind, the subtle body. Both the physical and the subtle body are insentient matter. You, awareness, does not experience pleasure and pain. You observe it as it comes and goes according to the law of karma.
There is no difference between you and me as awareness. You are aware of your karma and I am aware of mine. But there is a difference between your karma and mine. Only people with my type of karma experience an almost total absence of pain all the time, whereas people with your type of karma may not be so “lucky.” Pleasure and pain happen on a scale from 1% to 99%. Luck is earned by karma (the way you live your life) which is determined by the circumstances that supplied you with a physical body. A good strong healthy body is caused by an accumulation of dharma or merit.
For unknown reasons I was born in very auspicious circumstances and picked up the aristocratic attitude of my mother toward hard work and the cheerfulness of a karma yogi from my father. I learned to work smart, not hard. Or, if life gave me an unpleasant task, I did it cheerfully. I am not attracted to doing dangerous, difficult exciting things. Excitement is empty calories. Most people think that hard work itself is virtuous, that it is the only way to work but they are misinformed. You can achieve the absence of pain, which is called pleasure, for the physical and subtle body if you work smart and not too hard. Rome wasn’t built in a day. From what you shared previously, like most people you have a mixture of good and bad karma.
You have the good fortune to have a spiritual vasana but the misfortune to depend on hard physical labor for your livelihood. This is quite fine if you are young and have a strong constitution, not so fine if you are older and have injured your body in various ways over time. The karma stays with the body and produces pain and suffering…in your case worry.
Good karma produces pleasure and bad karma produces pain. Mixed karma produces pleasure and pain.
Awareness (you and I) does not have good, bad or mixed karma. It is karma free. So what? You will experience pain and suffering to the degree that you identify as awareness, which doesn’t experience pain or suffering. When your identity “with” awareness “merges” into awareness you no longer experience pain or suffering. Do you experience pleasure? Yes, because you experience bliss, the other option. The three “features” of awareness are existence, awareness and bliss. Pain and suffering belong to karma and bliss belongs to awareness.
My brother, who was born in the same circumstances, has chronic pain because he was not careful with his body throughout his life. He liked extreme sports and had many “accidents.” He enjoyed tamasic and rajasic food. Accidents are due to lack of appreciation of the conservative nature of the body and mind. I had a few accidents when I was young but quickly realized that I didn’t like pain and quit taking unreasonable chances, so my bad karma gradually disappeared as I replaced it with prudent well-considered good karma. For instance, I always avoided dangerous things, including causal readily available sex, even during the sexual revolution. The law of karma cannot be contravened without unwanted consequences. It’s a law as inexorable as gravity.
I radically changed my diet when I was twenty-five and managed for a healthy balance of sattva, rajas and tamas for the last fifty-eight years. The doctors can’t understand my cheerful jokey attitude as I stand at death’s door with heart disease and blocked arteries. They think I should be worried and depressed. But what good would that do? I’m not living in a fool’s paradise. I created this situation patiently over the years. What happens to the body and mind doesn’t happen to me. I don’t have karma.
You suffer because predominate rajas determined your karma. You worked your butt off physically for low wages and didn’t squirrel away enough get-out-of-jail money to afford yourself leisure and a nice cushion to sit on in your old age. I did, but not because I “got enlightened.” I lived like a sadhu since twenty-five and saved every blessed nickel and dime that came my way. I can easily ignore the impulse buys at the checkout and put the “savings” in my piggy bank, as I’ve done since childhood. So, you’re worried and I wouldn’t be surprised if you think that I have some kind of magic mantra that takes care of my pain and worry.
There isn’t one, or if there is it’s a clear understanding of the relationship between experience and Awareness, as I mentioned already. There is nothing wrong with hard work but without hard and fast knowledge I am Awareness, the pain and suffering pain keep coming.
Is it too late to do anything about the pain and suffering? Yes and no. No, in the sense that what is in the pipeline is going to play out on the body and mind levels. Yes, in the sense that you stand as awareness and “endure” the pain while you are building good karma which will chase out the bad karma, as Krishna says in the second chapter of the Gita. The law of karma is common sense.
The “magic bullet,” which isn’t magic…it’s a law too…is this teaching, nothing else. However, there is no law against keeping a cheerful attitude. My ex-wife, who suffered like a dog, embodied the right spirit and had a casual rejoinder when I scolded her for some small sin. “I fucked up. So what?”, she said.
Love,
James
