The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Bringing Virtue Into Life”
The Buddha teaches us that this precious human rebirth is very, very brief, as brief as a waterfall going down a mountain. You know there is no way that you can appreciate that when you’re young. There is no way. I know because I’ve been young and now I am middle-aged. There is no way. No matter how smart you are. No matter how spiritual you are. No matter how you try to stop and think about it. It is so difficult to understand how quickly our lives pass. When we reach middle age, the big hubbub everybody talks about, we all have mid-life crisis. Well, that’s what it’s about. It’s during the middle of our lives when we realize that basically we have been on a weekend pass and, honey, it is Saturday night late, and the only thing you’ve got left is Sunday. Remember how you used to feel when you were a kid? You looked forward to the weekend so much all week long and by the time it was Saturday night you had this kind of funny feeling realizing that it was pretty much gone. The only thing you had left was Sunday and you had to go to church! So that’s how we think, and right around mid-life we begin to understand that life is very short. But it’s very difficult to understand it before that, particularly since in our culture we are not permitted to see death very much. When our relatives die, they put them in a bag and cart them off. We never get to see them. We get to see them when they look pretty. That’s true! They pretty them up, and then they show them to us after that; but we never really understand what has happened. So we’re shielded even from having that kind of sensibility.
Not only is life quick but there are certain hidden rules within our lives that we cannot take in. Why can’t we take them in? First of all, our minds don’t want to take them in, in the same way that when we are in a traumatic situation we often shield ourselves by being in denial about that situation. How many of you know about that little psychological trick of denial? Ever had any denial in your life? Any of you married? So we have that wonderful trick of denial. We are in denial about what is happening with our lives. We just don’t think about it at all.
Then the other thing about it—if you think about how our minds work—what are your earliest memories? Some people say they can remember infancy. Some people say they can remember two years old, some people say four. Usually it’s about three or four years that you can have your earliest, earliest shreds of memory. Usually that’s the case. From that time until the age that you are now, that’s all the real memory that you have. So you have a problem, and that is you cannot learn cause and effect. There is no way that you can learn cause and effect thoroughly from your life. Do you know why that is? It’s because many of the causes that have caused your life to be the way that it is now did not happen in this lifetime. According to the Buddha’s teaching, you have lived many times before—not once, not ten times, but uncountable times in many different forms. And most of the causes that bring about the results of your life right now have been brought about or have been birthed previous to this incarnation, so you can’t possibly make the connection between cause and effect.
Many people resent the idea that it’s actually karma, or cause and effect, that causes us to suffer, because we don’t like the idea that we actually deserve this. We don’t like that kind of idea. We don’t like the idea that we may have been bad in the past. That kind of thinking is a bit childlike, isn’t it? Truly, it’s a bit childlike. When you look at your life right now…, let’s say you are experiencing extreme poverty, or let’s say you are experiencing some kind of terrible illness. If you are experiencing extreme poverty, it’s probably because in the past you have had a lack of generosity towards others. If you are experiencing some terrible disease, it’s probably because in the past you have broken some vows or commitments that you made with your body. These are the Buddha’s teachings.
Those things may have happened in this lifetime, but probably have not happened in this lifetime. Maybe in this lifetime you are very generous. Maybe in this lifetime you are keeping as many commitments as you can possibly manage. Maybe you’re doing the very best that you can. Doesn’t it seem unfair, therefore, that you would suffer from something that happened in a previous incarnation? What’s really unfair about it is that you can’t connect the dots. That’s the problem. You can’t connect the dots. There’s no way that we as ordinary samsaric beings, ordinary sentient beings with limited view, can possibly connect those dots. It’s impossible. What if you were seeing that your life was filled with terrible poverty and that, no matter what you did there was no way to get out of it? And yet you look at your life and you think, “Well, I have been generous. I’ve tried, you know. I mean, I’ve tried to give to others. I’ve tried to be kind. I mean I haven’t always done it perfectly, but I tried. So why do I deserve this poverty?” It’s very difficult for us, under that kind of situation, to do anything other than feel sorry for ourselves, and that’s what most of us end up doing. We end up perpetuating the myth that nothing is connected with nothing, that we don’t have to work at it, we don’t have to think about it. It’s just the luck of the draw. So we end up spending most of our lives in denial and complaining, and just not getting the big picture. That is the worst thing about samsara.
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo. All rights reserved
