Currently I’m studying Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones with a Dharma friend, the Venerable Tashi Nyima.

This is my contemplation on the first two lines of verse 7 of the root text of Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones.

“Not long ago, your consciousness was wandering along,

Swept along by karma, it took this present birth.

Soon, like a hair pulled out of butter,

Leaving everything behind, you’ll go on alone.”

 

 

Explain to someone else (making it my own)

“Consciousness” and “alone” both imply duality. You cannot be alone unless there is something or someone to be alone from. “Consciousness” demands an object to be conscious of. This first line talks about our experience in the bardo after the death of the body.

Our thought stream continues, uninterrupted, much the same way our thoughts continue uninterrupted, and far more vivid, when we sleep. So, what’s wandering? I think it’s ground consciousness, all our habits, our karmic formations, still held very tightly together like a ball of tightly tangled yarn that rolls along in the bardo, probably careening off the walls.

This thought stream must project a pretty terrifying reality, because here we find ourselves, driven out of the bardo, right back into the cycle of birth and death again. We’ve all had a brief chance to escape, right at the moment of death, but we missed it, and our karma swept us back into the cycle of birth and death, like the tornado that swept Dorothy and Toto into Oz.

All that we experience is a mental representation in the mind. Our consciousness—our thoughts about who we are, what the world is—is always essentially alone. In the bardo, after death, all that will accompany us is our deeds, words, and actions: our karma.

We are alone in our wanderings through lifetime after lifetime, and we will wander alone after death. But, if we practice in our lifetime, we will have one unfailing support, even after death: the Dharma.

***

Apply to a past situation (how would it have been different?)

We spend entire lifetimes in samsara being swept along by karma. Not recognizing this, we plant the same seeds of unhappiness over and over, and then when the bitter fruit ripens and hangs low, we say, “Why me? What have I done to deserve this?” Well, if it’s happening, it’s not so much that you deserve it, as much as your past actions have made it inevitable, unavoidable.

If I had had a better understanding of karma about four years ago, when I had an excellent opportunity to leave my current job, I would have left and not looked back. There was a situation at work that I chose to handle by digging in my heels and hanging on grimly to my workplace, choosing to move to a different position in the company.

Looking back at that time, I can notice how the very minute shift I made to a different position had done nothing but plant seeds for future suffering. I had not addressed anything but the external situation.

I can look back and see that, not only was it a bad change, my suffering increased and has continued to increase until I am in a kind of Dante-like Inferno, being devoured alive by fire-breathing demons.

If I look at the text, and bring it to the level of everyday life, what I see is that I used to regard leaving my job as a kind of death, as though I would be cast out to wander along in desolation beyond imagining. I let fear (my own karma) sweep me along into an unfortunate rebirth ( a new position in the same workplace) and now…the suffering has amplified tenfold.

I look back, and I see that I could have simply let go of clinging to my workplace as though I were a drowning man clinging to the Titanic’s wreckage.

If I had done that, my karma would have swept me along to a new birth. I don’t know what that would have been, but I believe it would have been less suffering than the suffering I have brought on by clinging grimly to a situation that is outworn.

***

Apply to an (ongoing) present situation (how does it matter today?)

Looking for a job is my ongoing situation, even when I’m not actively doing it.

I notice that my perspective on where I am now is subtly changing each day because I know I’m leaving. I view my current workplace more and more as a place to extricate myself from rather than as a place to vest myself in.

I am very mindful of how I work with afflicted emotions that arise like anger, frustration, resentment. I work very hard with these afflicted emotions because I know when I leave my current job, all I’ll take with me are my habits. Viewing my work situation as a road of exit is paradoxically leading to a more satisfying experience of being there. Why? Because everything that comes up, I see as an opportunity to practice, to become stronger in the habits I want to take with me when I go.

In samsara we are all walking a road of exit. No one gets out alive. Before we took a body, we wandered alone. We were driven by our fears, our desires, our clinging—in short, our karma, to return to samsara.

Knowing this, wouldn’t it better to live our life as what it really it is? Prayers remind us, “…I walk toward my end / A culprit to the scaffold.” Yes. Exactly. And knowing this, isn’t it best to live our life as a road of exit? I think this shift in perspective could lead to a very fulfilling life because every circumstance that came up would be a chance to practice and strengthen the habits we want to take with us when we exit.

Ultimately, of course, we don’t want to take any habits (karmic formations) into death. But I think living your life as a path of exit is a good place to start moving toward zero karma.

***

Apply to a potential situation (bringing it home to play)

This one’s easy.

I’m going to die. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow…maybe next year, maybe in ten years.

I don’t think it matters that we don’t know our precise moment of expiration. That would be barbaric actually, like what they do to Death Row prisoners.

I believe that for my spiritual path to take on more depth there needs to be a move from the intellectual knowledge of death to the wisdom of realizing my own approaching death.

This wisdom can be wonderfully liberating, because then my feet would be on a road of exit. In the small-scale exit from my workplace, I’ve found the wisdom of exit gives me so much clarity and a growing equanimity in that situation. I would like that same clarity and equanimity in samsara.

I study, contemplate, meditate, but not seriously. Certainly not as much as I could.

So today, to make this more immediate, I’m going to experiment. Throughout the day, I’ll gently, compassionately remind myself that each step I take, each act I do, each thought—I am walking toward my end. And seen from that perspective, how is what I’m doing strengthening a good habit? How am I preparing for the moment when I will find myself untethered from this body and wandering alone in the bardo?

Sounds kinda creepy.

But I’m very curious about the outcome of today’s experiment in living life as a path of exit. My prediction is that it will lead to living life more fully…but…we’ll see.

As I study the Dharma, I tend to think of rebirth as something big and grand and so incredibly amazing that it can only, exclusively happen after death. But, as I study more, I see that rebirth is something that happens every moment. Every breath we take is brand new. Every thought is brand new. We are constantly, unceasingly being reborn into a new life. Therefore at any moment, we have a chance to shift our karma by planting seeds (causes) of happiness and allowing seeds (causes) of suffering to wither.

If we do this diligently, with fervor, I wonder if that means that eventually the wind of our karma would blow us beyond the cycle of birth and death? Or, would there eventually be no wind at all, and we could go where we wanted?