Of God and Karma

Since I had this dream which I wrote about today in Tiger Dream I started to think about the dream in deeper terms and meaning than before. I tried to see the Tiger as God and though that also may be the case I thought how seeing the Tiger as (world, national, and individual) karma might be more useful.

In the 1980s my Tibetan Lama Teacher and friend who we brought  with us from Dharmsala, India to California whose name was Geshe Lobsang Gyatso was once lecturing me personally about karma and what it really was and how it actually operated. He said that karma was opportunistic and used as an example what happens when people who are farmers or others try to grow barley in a field full of rocks or without water. The barley won't grow. (Barley has always been a staple in Tibet because it can grow at high altitude). He said the right or even perfect conditions have to exist for the barley to grow at all. He said both good and bad karma and all karma in between were like this barley where you had to have just the right conditions for good, or bad or neutral karma to occur. So, he said that the concept of karma working like a machine didn't really occur in real life but that one must always do good deeds so that only good karma would return both for oneself and for all others. So, the world conditions are also like this. I have also found in life that Descartes philosophical saying always seems to hold true as one passed through life, "There is nothing so good that no bad may come from it, and there is nothing so bad that no good may come from it." If there ever was a non-dualistic saying this is it and it has always been my life experience and the foundation of all pragmatic people who actually survive in this world long term.

Idealism is great but without pragmatism idealists die like flies. I have watched this my whole life watching my idealistic friends perish one by one from their idealism. Don't get me wrong. Idealism is precious. Don't lose your idealism. But unless you temper your idealism with pragmatism and practicality you might be living with your parents your whole lifetime until they die and then die with them.  Pragmatic people start their own businesses and go find their mate and move on. Idealists who don't make it to pragmatism don't.