A dissertation upon Spiritual Work in general and Karma in particular, by Crash
It's been a long time since I wrote anything about spiritual work, except insofar as it's all spiritual work. I've quit encouraging people because I've discovered that if you pursue the path of knowledge, impeccably and with perfect diligence, regardless of where it leads, sooner or later you're going to get the horrors. You'd be better off on a motorcycle. And indeed I met one man who made just that choice. I wondered why, at the time.
But people continue to do spiritual work anyway. Some of them, even while riding motorcycles. I do it myself: I don't know how to stop. They call me Crash.
Today I wrote a comment on a post in a journal of religious exploration. The substance of the post is that deservedness is a toxic concept - an assertion with which I wholeheartedly agree. Looking over my comment, I think a part of it deserves repetition here. (Blekh! You're poisoned!) How do I reconcile that with my general reluctance to write about spiritual work? I don't: I go with what feels right, so here it is:
You got me thinking about karma, and the way the word is used. As a consequence of contemplating what you wrote here, I've come to recognize that the most common understanding of karma involves a sense of deserving. I use the word to refer to a set of natural laws that's a superset of the laws of physics. (The laws of karma that are not also laws of physics differ from the laws of physics only in that we can't easily and precisely measure their operation.) It makes no more sense to me to pull the concept of deservedness out of a description of the operation of a karmic engine (as a magician might pull a rabbit out of a hat) than it does to pull the same concept out of a description of a steam engine. There are many other (philosophers? degenerates?) who think of karma as I do, but I now understand that there's a lot of folks who are committed to the other view, or who have only a passing familiarity with the concept, who can't even imagine where we're coming from.
But people continue to do spiritual work anyway. Some of them, even while riding motorcycles. I do it myself: I don't know how to stop. They call me Crash.
Today I wrote a comment on a post in a journal of religious exploration. The substance of the post is that deservedness is a toxic concept - an assertion with which I wholeheartedly agree. Looking over my comment, I think a part of it deserves repetition here. (Blekh! You're poisoned!) How do I reconcile that with my general reluctance to write about spiritual work? I don't: I go with what feels right, so here it is:
You got me thinking about karma, and the way the word is used. As a consequence of contemplating what you wrote here, I've come to recognize that the most common understanding of karma involves a sense of deserving. I use the word to refer to a set of natural laws that's a superset of the laws of physics. (The laws of karma that are not also laws of physics differ from the laws of physics only in that we can't easily and precisely measure their operation.) It makes no more sense to me to pull the concept of deservedness out of a description of the operation of a karmic engine (as a magician might pull a rabbit out of a hat) than it does to pull the same concept out of a description of a steam engine. There are many other (philosophers? degenerates?) who think of karma as I do, but I now understand that there's a lot of folks who are committed to the other view, or who have only a passing familiarity with the concept, who can't even imagine where we're coming from.