Karma and Consequences || By Beth Hinnen, Certified Mindfulness and Meditation Teacher
The spiritual path is not for the hesitant. Besides the search for teachings that resonate with you, which can be quite tedious, there’s the actual practice itself. Sure, it’s helpful to have beliefs to turn to, some reassurance to give a sense of order and structure to the world. However, where the rubber meets the road is in embodying and incorporating said teachings into everyday life. And to do that, you have to know when you aren’t doing that. This requires consequences, and being aware of said consequences.
The Buddha made understanding this very simple, though he did it in the context of reincarnation. He spoke of consequences as karma, which simply means, cause and effect. Skillful actions will land you in future lives that will be prosperous and spiritually fulfilling; unskillful actions, into miserable, spiritually challenging ones. A famous story about this features a murderer the Buddha inspired to take up the robe and vows. The man began practicing intensely and became peaceful, kind, caring, generous. However, when out collecting alms one day a few years later, he was caught by locals who severely beat him. Even then, the man remained centered on his Buddhist practice. When he returned, the other monks were confused why this would happen now when the man was so serene. The Buddha replied something along the lines of, “it was karma from a previous life.” (I grossly paraphrase.)
So, karma can have a long cycle. With consequences, it can be more immediate. I noticed this in Manhattan, riding in taxis. Before I began practicing, I would simply get into a cab and tell the driver my destination. No chit-chat, no acknowledgement of the driver’s humanity. Once I started on the path, I began getting into taxis and saying, “hi, how are you?” And with that small change, I noticed the drivers became more conscientious, more relaxed and more receptive to questions or any route alterations I had. One driver even gave me a free ride when I explained I’d forgotten my wallet. (I took his address and sent him cash.) Taxi rides became much more easeful. I found a direct correlation between my attitude and theirs.
Whether you call it karma or consequences I’ll venture to say that it is actually the only way we truly learn. Again, it is another concept the Buddha taught, ehipassiko, “come and see for yourself.” The Buddha did not teach a belief system, he taught ethics. He replaced the old system of ritual — burning incense, sacrificing animals to gods to ensure fortune; to one of — “you reap what you sow.” The point is, he said anyone can begin to learn how to chose different actions given the consequences. The Dhammapada begins with this very teaching, “Our life is shaped by our mind; we become what we think. Suffering follows an evil thought as the wheels of a cart follow the oxen that draw it. … Joy follows a pure thought like a shadow that never leaves.” We constantly live through karma and consequences, the key point is to discern between unskillful (evil) and skillful (joyful) actions and choose the skillful ones.
There is, however, just one little glitch with experiencing karma and consequences. It can hurt. The Little League team loses the game because of errors and no hits and leaves the field despondent. Being told my job performance is sub-par (a true story) becomes a shame spiral. However, the Buddha offered a straightforward way to skillfully approach these situations, so as not to produce more karma to work out later — and that is, to be with the hurt in the present moment, and learn from it. Instead, what often happens is we come up with ways to soften the blow, and in the worst case, ignore it all together. This means we never learn, we perpetuate the belief that we are too fragile to get hurt. Eventually, people, places, and objects start to be excluded from our experience … and our world gets smaller and smaller.
This leads to a narrow life, and high sensitivity. We no longer allow ourselves to encounter situations which challenge our beliefs, projections, status quo. Only that which doesn’t piss me off will I interact with. In such a state, learning stops, and so does growth. While the Buddha taught so many concepts, when questioned, he said he only taught one thing, “suffering and the end of suffering.” Which does not mean that the causes and conditions for suffering stop. What changes is the internal response to such causes and conditions. The team still loses games; the performance review is still bad. The hurt is still there, it’s just that now it is information from which to learn. Maybe the team gets a different coach, or practices every day. In my job example, I took a long drive and then asked a friend for help, and I followed the friend’s advice (I did keep the job, only to quit when I could fully embrace the spiritual path).
Unlike what commercials, self-help books, and oftentimes, friends and family recommend, the skillful action with karma and consequences is to meet them head on, with as much compassion as possible, and enough clarity to see the lesson. Only, we often interpret “life’s lessons” as punishments, as if some superior entity is testing us, or toying with us. Unfortunately, this is a fairly negative projection, one that has been cultivated over millennia by various cultures and religious beliefs and perpetuated in the commercialism of most societies. On the other hand, how I see karma is value neutral. I do this, this happens. No moral judgement whatsoever. When something “bad” happens in my life, it is not personal. Well, maybe personal in a sense that I am reaping karma I sowed at some point. But it isn’t here to make me feel bad. It is here to guide me further along the path.
This is how suffering ends. I no longer perpetuate the painful events by grousing about them, and retelling the story ad nauseam. Instead, on my path, I have learned to broaden my perspective to see 1) how this one incident is not the whole of my life, 2) how looking at it objectively could benefit me and others, and 3) how choosing a different behavior leads to less consequences in the future.
And then, there are times I have to be the one to hold another accountable, to dole out the consequences. My younger-self belief that saying “no” had to be done from anger or resentment, has ripened into a realization that love is very good at saying no. Kindness can draw a razor sharp boundary with nary a scratch. It’s not that I vow to stop hurting people as much as I vow to have integrity, clarity, strength and compassion if I know my skillful actions might be taken as painful. Acknowledging that when I say “no” could hurt someone, I want to do it as respectfully as I can. Which means, it might be done with a hug, or it might be done five feet away, through a fence, with a BFF holding my hand. While many might call this “tough” love, that is not what I would call it. Compassion would be the word I would choose.
In the end, I have no idea what might be painful to others. And I have no idea what might help them on the path. I am still learning to discern what is most beneficial to me. How can I possible know what might be beneficial to someone else? This was brought home to me when I first started my journey. I would hear all these great teachings and then say to my teacher, “oh yeah, I have to share that with so-and-so; they could really benefit from it.” Until one day she said, “here’s the person those teachings will most help,” as she pointed at me. Ah, the Buddha strikes again. His reputed final words were, “be a lamp unto yourself,” or “work with care on your own realization.” It wasn’t until I tried hundreds of times to tell people what I thought would help them, and to have them either ignore it, laugh it off, or point blank tell me to mind my own business, did I realize the reason those teachings resonated so much because they were for my benefit, and mine alone.
It is only through incorporating the teachings into my own life that I can even discern how to skillfully speak and act in the world, recognizing that such words and deeds might feel painful for another. My hope, as the Buddha offered, is that such speech and action is at its core, beneficial. And that, from my experience is a rare gift.
About the Author: Beth Hinnen came to the spiritual path from the corporate world. After experiencing impermanence and greed, she left to study Yoga and has over 1,000 hours in Yoga teacher training, and ended up specializing in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, spiritual scripture that closely aligns with Buddhism. From there, she studied Zen Buddhism for over ten years, including in-person, month-long monastic retreats, until she earned certification, in January, 2023, as a Mindfulness and Meditation Teacher with Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach. Currently, Beth is a co-leader of the IMCD Council, and on the Teachers Collective, as administrator. She hosts a Meetup group called Yoga Meets Buddhism, and for the past three years, has held an online Dharma Wednesdays class that discusses the Yoga Sutras while also bringing in Buddhist teachings, along with Sufi poets, Christianity, Judaism and other spiritual paths that reinforce the words of Sri Swami Satchidananda, the founder of Integral Yoga where Beth studied. “The truth is one, the paths are many.” More information about Beth is at www.samayaco.org.
