The Hard Work

With palms together,
Good Morning All,

Everything is as it is and should be. Oh my. What a statement. I hate this! I love that! I vow to cease doing evil. I vow to do good. Yet all are dharma, all are empty of substance, permanence and independence.

When we say good karma or bad karma, we are adding something to cause and effect, a moral judgment, Karma is not about good or bad. Karma is just the process of action.

The hard work is not becoming attached to either. I say hard because we usually understand attachment to mean something like sticking to something of value. To not stick is not to say we don't value. Nor does it mean that we cannot attempt to stop bad from happening. Its like that other sticky wicket word in our vocabulary, acceptance. Accepting and, its emotional action equivalent, 'letting go,' do not imply behavior, but rather refer to in attitudinal position we take relative to what is there before us.

Attachment really points to our contemporary understanding of emotional investment. The more we are emotionally invested in an outcome or object of our desire, the more we suffer as that object eludes or escapes us. Lower the emotional investment, lower the suffering. The object of our desire and our action to achieve it remains, but our suffering in relation to it ends. This is a very important point.

We can love, hate, and value without investing our being in the objects of these.

Accomplishing this is the true work of our practice.

Be well.