Be Nobody (16 page)

The self is
mutating
and therefore
mutable
. Otherwise what would be the point of a spiritual practice? If we weren't
changing
, we couldn't
change
! Every authentic spiritual tradition has always assumed that, because the “somebody self” is just a process and not a thing, the process we call “me” can be redirected and differently channeled.

We can transform our understanding and evaluations—not only of ourselves, but also of other people and of everything about our lives. We can train ourselves to change our minds—not in the blink of an eye, of course, but over time. We can gift ourselves with a different set of ideas about both our inner and outer worlds.

And, as we shall see toward the end of this chapter, these two different conceptualizations of our reality—inner and outer—are in a symbiotic relationship.

By cultivating wisdom, we can learn to think differently about both ourselves and the people and things in our outer world (remember, no annoying people or intrinsically tasty ice cream
out there
). With more awareness of the changing nature of the “autobiographical self,” we learn to direct that change in a more positive way. Wisdom about the externals will help us act, speak, and think in such a way that we'll improve our sense of self—and this, in turn, will transform our view of the world and the other people in it.

As we saw in the last chapter, we all have a bad case of the “if only” syndrome. We are convinced that
if only
we could adjust the external events in our lives to our satisfaction:

If only I had a better job, more money, a nicer home, a new iPhone, a holiday in Bermuda . . .

And
if only
we could figure out how to make other people in our lives change to our liking:

If only my husband or wife were nicer to me . . . if only my boss weren't so demanding . . . if only I could make that annoying person stop being so annoying . . .

Then, finally, we'd be happy. We're all pretty itchy, pretty much all the time.

In our ignorant and self-centered desire to work our will on the world, we usually just send Captain Kirk out on the case. We hope that the good old Cap'n will micromanage the external world and the people in it so that all will become pleasing instead of so problematic.

But as we've seen, the Captain Kirk self is an ineffectual humbug. It is therefore unsurprising that he is impotent to effect the changes we demand. Events in the outer world aren't modified at our command, and other people don't automatically adjust themselves and their actions in accordance with our mandates.

We are perpetually thwarted in our attempts to work the magic that would change the
present in the present
.

There is, however, a more efficacious method at hand for transforming our lives for the better. We can still hope for a happier future,
but we must also accept that there will be a gap between the time of the cause and that of the effect. This gradual method for transformation is what the Eastern traditions would call “changing your karma,” or what Jesus spoke about in terms of “sowing what you will reap,” or what we colloquially mean when we say “what goes around, comes around.”

The basic “laws of karma” can be succinctly stated: “No action in this world goes for naught or brings about a contrary result,” as one ancient Indian text crisply puts it.
²

The first principle—“no action goes for naught”—proclaims that every action will have a reaction; everything we do, say, or even think will have future consequences. And the second rule—“no action brings about a contrary result”—asserts that the kind of outcome one will experience depends on the kind of action that produced it. No cause brings about a “contrary result”: nothing bad can come from something good, and nothing good can come from something bad.

These principles are not the creation of any one religious tradition. They are found, in one form or another, in many and various places. In the Yoga Sutra we read, “There is a causal connection between meritorious and blameworthy acts and their respectively cool and pleasurable or scorching and unpleasurable effects.”
³
Jesus put forward the same karmic law in more metaphorical terms by noting that you don't get grapes from thorns or figs from thistles:

You shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree brings forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree brings forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.
⁴

What makes an action “good” or “bad”? An act (inclusive not just of physical acts but also those of speech and even thought) done with a good intention—that is, with a selfless, kind, altruistic, compassionate motivation—will bring about a good (that is, pleasant) result. Conversely, a bad act is “bad” because it is inspired by an intention fueled by one or another of the mental afflictions, all of which are instigated by selfishness. Such a negative action—motivated by ignorance, self-aggrandizement, or the wish to harm others—will bring an unpleasant consequence in the future.

All authentic spiritual traditions teach some form or another of “karma.” The fundamental principles we've just discussed form the very heart and soul of every moral system. There's no “system”—and therefore no hope for willed self-improvement—if there's not the assumption that:

1. Every action has a consequence, and

2. The type of result (pleasant or unpleasant) invariably correlates to the nature of the cause (kind or unkind, selfish or selfless).

The first principle denies randomness and therefore empowers us, while the second provides the basic method for governing the direction of one's karma in cultivating a better life.

So far, so good. But while the fundamental rules of karma are both easy to grasp and universally advocated in every ethical system, the actual operation of karma works at a level different from the one we usually think. The project of knowing how to improve the “somebody self” depends upon a belief in moral causality (which gives us confidence that improvement is possible), but also on an understanding of
how
such beneficial transformation can really occur.

Karmic management—creating the causes for a more agreeable life in the future—can easily be misconstrued as just another attempt
to magically bend the world and other people to one's self-centered will. When there's only a superficial grasp of karma, the Captain Kirk self is resurrected, albeit in a slightly different guise:

OK, I get it now! I can still have my way with the world and with other people . . . I just have to be a little more patient! If I don't hurt others, in the future no one will hurt me. If I am generous, then the boss will someday give me a raise. If I'm patient with my annoying brother-in-law, he'll eventually change into a friendlier person.

This simplistic, mechanistic, and ultimately narrow-minded and self-seeking understanding of karma is really just the ego grabbing onto a new-and-improved technique in order to once again try to achieve its narcissistic ends. It's the “if only” syndrome at work all over again:
If only others would behave themselves; if only I had more money; if only my brother-in-law were a nice guy
.

The sole difference between this view and the usual version of such wishful thinking is that now we have come into possession of this cool spiritual tool called “karma” in order to realize our longings.

No matter what guise the Captain Kirk self assumes, the egomaniacal assumption persists: We will be able to get whatever we want from the world, and we can make other people behave exactly as we wish, if we can just somehow find and pull the right strings.

•  •  •

There are some presentations of karma that lend themselves to the mechanistic theory discussed above. But even in those versions of karmic causation, bets are very much hedged. For one thing, according to the texts of Tibetan Buddhism, the precise workings of karma
are classified at the level of “very subtle” (as opposed to “obvious” or just plain “subtle”) and they're knowable only to enlightened beings, who, unlike us, are supposedly omniscient.

Futhermore, karmic results—becoming famous through practicing humility, or getting money by being generous—are said to ripen in one of three possible times: in this very life (could be tomorrow, could be seventy years from now), in the very next lifetime (when you'll be a dramatically transfigured version of “you”), or (wait for it . . .) in any lifetime after that.

The exact time when one will reap what one has sown is as unknowable as the exact form the reapage might take.

There's a joke that underlines this point. George is magically transported to heaven and meets with God. The visitor is astounded by how dissimilar God's paradise seems from life on earth.

“Wow, it sure is impressive here! So different from where I come from! Say, God,” George asks, “how much is a million dollars on earth worth in heavenly currency?”

And God answers, “One penny.”

George is, needless to say, quite impressed. Just one of God's pennies is the equivalent of a million dollars!

So he persists in his questioning: “And how long is a hundred years in divine time?”

God replies, “One minute. One minute up here is equal to a hundred human years.”

George, suitably dazzled but with his wits still about him, makes a request: “Before I go back to earth, could I get one of your God pennies to take home with me?”

“Sure,” God answers. “Just wait a minute.”

•  •  •

It's best not to regard self-improvement through karmic management as a matter of manipulating and upgrading outer events and other people. Positive actions of body, speech, and mind will indeed have positive results. But it's more realistic to think about the fruit of good karma ripening internally, not externally.

As Tolstoy once observed, “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
⁵

Karma is not some kind of magical, mystical technique for genetically modifying difficult people or for physically re-engineering events in the material world. Karmic management is primarily a method for
systematically changing one's self-perception
. What we can most effectively, efficiently, and reliably transform is ourselves—and not the world, let alone other people who have their own karma to work out.

In Shantideva's
Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life
, we are given direction as to where to concentrate our efforts when it comes to changing our karma:

And so, although I am unable to exercise control over external phenomena,
I will restrain my own mind
. What else is there that I can really control?
⁶

This verse points us to a more commonsensical understanding of causation and self-improvement. Karma isn't about creating the causes for altering the behavior of other people (
I'm being nice so my husband will change and stop being mean to me
) or directing the processes of the external world (
I'm being generous so more money will come my way
). It isn't about changing the data. The data will change all right, but always in unanticipated, unpredictable, and, as the text says, uncontrollable ways.

In any event, whether other people appear to us as “nice,” or whether a particular amount of money is “enough” are subjective
interpretations
and not objective, measurable phenomena. If one's subjective perspective changes, one's perspective on how much money makes you rich or how nice other people are will change as well.

Karma is not like gravity; it is not some kind of invisible external “law of nature.” It is first and foremost an internal law governing our own state of mind. And so, karmic management is really about changing our own frame of reference—“restraining my own mind” from creating negative karma—so that our outlook on others and on life itself is not so distorted by our own mental afflictions. It's about transforming our perception such that it is conditioned not by our worst tendencies but rather by virtues like forgiveness, compassion, love, wisdom, and a magnanimous spirit.

When we see ourselves struggling to overcome our own negative proclivities and replace them with goodness, we plant “karmic seeds”—a metaphor for what we nowadays would call “memories” (conscious, subconscious, or even unconscious). And as we know, memory does not simply replay what
really
happened but what we
think
happened, which can and does change over time.

It is what we
think
we have done, said, or thought in the past—in a word, our karma—that defines us in the present. Our concept of our personal identity—
who we think we are
—is a function of
who we think we used to be
. And both our present sense of self and the memories that constitute it are perpetually changing and therefore changeable.

In the Buddhist texts, a big debate rages over where, exactly, the karmic “seeds” we planted in the past were “stored” until they were ready to ripen. Given that we always come up empty-handed in any “Where's Waldo?” search for an immutable and enduring individual self, how does karma persist from the time of its creation to the time of its fruition?

The answer is that karma is conserved in the “simple me”—our basic sense of who we are at any given moment. Karma is memory—again, conscious, subconscious, or unconscious—and it is memory that comprises our current identity. If you don't believe me, try to imagine who you would be if you had no past! As filmmaker Luis Buñuel has said, “Life without memory is no life at all. . . . Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it, we are nothing.”
⁷