Conquering Life: An essay on Karma

It is often difficult for us to feel in control of our lives. Unable to change the past, or control the events around us, it is easy to feel like a paper sailboat being tossed about on a stormy sea. The Dharma, however, offers us a different view. Within the Dharma we discover that we can control the nature of our lives, and that we can find an island of peace amidst this ocean of chaos we call life. Through understanding, we are able to conquer our lives.

The five things that are welcome in this world, but are difficult to attain, are long life, beauty, happiness, honor and heaven. These five auspicious and often sought after pleasures are not found easily. They do not come to us without effort. They do not come to us by way of day dreams or wishful thinking. If we wish to attain these, we must strive for them of our own merit. What is given to us can be easily taken away. Therefore, it is up to us to follow a path that leads us to the pleasures we seek. Those who prudently follow a wise path that leads to the attainment of these five pleasures, is said to attain these things - in both their human and divine existence.

The five things that we can not escape from in this world are age, sickness, change, death and karma. These five things are the nature of Samsara (the cycle of suffering, birth and death). Realizing this, can help improve the nature of our lives. Without clinging to our youth we allow ourselves to grow and mature. Realizing how fragile the nature of our existence is, we nurture ourselves and others. Realizing the impermanence of our lives, we find an appreciation of what is before us in the moment. Realizing death, life has value to us. Realizing we can not escape our karma, we begin to develop and cultivate a path that releases us from our self afflictions.

The life we live, is the result of how we have lived. A life lived with pain and anguish (in dark karma) is a result of having lived controlled by our desire nature. A life lived with merit (in light karma) is a result of having lived in control of our desire nature. A life lived with both pain and joy (in dark and light karma) is a result of having lived both controlled by and in control of our desire nature. A life lived with equanimity and peacefulness (in neither light nor dark karma) is the result of having lived free from our desire nature, and without taking delight in the benefit of our merits.

Karma is the chain that binds us to Samsara. The debts of our dark karma bind us to the wheel of Samsara. Even living in light karma binds us to Samsara, for we are drawn to the delight of our merits. The merits of heaven shall also be spent and bring us rebirth in the lower worlds. Only when we live for the benefit of all living beings, without any intentions of self, can we break the chain of karma and find liberation.

We are the owners of our karma. Karma, the fruit of our intentions, shape our lives. The intentions that create our karma are born of our own desire nature. Our karma manifests in the present, in the future, and even follows us in our future existences. What we run from, we shall run into. All that we reap, we must sow. Even if we allow others to carry our burden, they can not purify our karma for us, and we shall not share in the merit of their virtues.

We can control the nature of our lives. Within this moment, the only moment that exists, the past, present and future are contained. We may not be able to change our past actions or the actions of others, or prevent its results, but we are in control of how we re-act upon them. The Buddha tells us that studying the nature of our actions (before, during and after we act) can help us discern what is helpful and what is a hindrance upon our path. He has given us the Noble Eightfold Path, and adapting this path to our way of life can help us overcome our desire nature, change the light of our karma, and conquer our lives.

May your karma be full of Dharma.

References: The Upajjhatthana, Nibbedhika and the Ittha Suttas of the Anguttara Nikaya (the Further Factored Discourses of the Buddha); The Saleyyaka, Kukkaravatika and Ambalatthikarahulovada Suttas of the Majjhima Nika (the Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha)

The appeal of earthy women

by Brad Viking

They’ve been in some campaigns. Taken a few rounds. They are the battle-tested, highly-sexed, salt-of-the-earth women that bring you back to your senses when you’ve been living at the edge too long. Once you’ve been in the sack with them you know you’ve been well-fucked. These are high mileage women. A little scuffed up by life. But they are the kind of women willing to travel up-river… into the densest reaches of the jungle to deliver that kind of contraband… that sexual nitro-glycerin that feeds the insurrection in your soul. And you never want to go back to civilization again. They’ve got their own spark of divine fire. The pure heat of animal passion. They feel the beauty of being alive. And they make you feel it as you lie beside their glistening bodies… feel yourself consumed by their voluptuous appetite. And drenched in their sweat and gratitude… shedding all the desperate baggage of your past… satiated at long last… the majesty of some emotional truth shines in her eyes… the gratitude she expresses in her soft kisses… the absence of all reason as the echoes of her moans subside… You have made her happy. And she will do the same for you. What greater rush can there be in life? She’s a woman who has come to terms with reality. No more delusions. Life is here and now. Seize what few pleasures there are because it’ll soon be over and we’ll all be gone and there is no more. She carries herself a certain way. An absence of sexual fear that burdens so many women. She knows her body. Knows it’s hers and no one else’s. And she’ll pleasure herself as she damn well pleases. She knows hunger. She knows appetite. And she knows how to satiate it. If there’s a driving force behind her hunger then it’s that look at the back of her eyes… some feeling of loss from way back when… as if there were no remembered embrace in her infancy. And now she longs to recapture that. She has become a hot bundle of infantile passions. Of hungry kisses. And eager touch. And the joy of explosive orgasms. And sucking… the original source of nurturing. She senses all those years of erotic hunger she needs to make up for. Desperately. Passionately. With not a moment to waste. That’s the kind of woman I’m talking about… the kind of woman a man responds to… the kind of woman that keeps the world sane. If she has a motto, it’s the credo of the Rock ‘n’ Roll legacy: Too much is never enough. She senses the arithmetic of life. The closing window of time we have to make love. She is driven by this lust to feel sensation… the feeling of being alive. There is no greater excitement. She doesn’t live by hope or fear. She knows we arose from the swamp and we live a perilous existence and life is basically a long lonely train ride to nowhere. And she’s going to fill those moments with sensation. When you’re in her bed she will whisper that the goal of all life and all lovers is to be set free. Liberation through the joy of sexual release. What higher aspiration could there be? And you’re inclined to agree with her because she has just made you feel incredibly liberated and incredibly free. And when she suddenly goes to flame… another burst… and another… every joy she’s ever felt… every sadness she’s ever endured… is released upon the sky. And in each burst of perfection that explodes inside her you can see it all right there in her eyes… the brilliant collision of ecstasy and pain and cries and feeling and perfection and longing and color and light… released upon the night as pure, incandescent energy… You watch with wonder as she lies there in a mist of sweat and gratitude. Shafts of light stream into the room… caress the voluptuous curve of her breast… the glistening beads of sweat on her body. There is one last quiver of ecstasy on her lips and you cannot help but adore her… to feel a tenderness for this wonderful creature as she floats blissfully to the sky above… up there… up where the sun is rich and warm and forever…