Baraka_Guru

Fine.

It's just that I find that most people misunderstand karma. They think it's some mystical force that balances things out in the end. Like somehow bad things will happen to bad people and vice versa, which is a corruption of the idea. Bad thoughts happen to bad people might be more accurate.

It's like how most westerners who say they're "into yoga" should instead be saying their into yoga poses for exercise, a kind of gymnastics to keep in shape. Most yoga studios have services and instruction regarding one, maybe two, and at most three or four limbs of yoga. There are eight. When people talk about yoga, they're usually taking about one limb: poses (asanas) and maybe a second limb: breath control (pranayama). I think most studios strip out all that annoying philosophy of life stuff. Otherwise, the practitioners wouldn't be able to go for an organic salad topped with chicken after their sesh of hot fat-shredder power ab-blaster yoga with weights. A true yogi would try to become a vegetarian, and the prime reason has little to do with their own bodies. This is because yoga isn't exercise. Exercise is a part of yoga.

My point? We westerners tend to corrupt all that "hocus pocus" eastern stuff. Ironically, though, that eastern stuff if left intact and unpacked for what it is has great value. If only we just wrap our minds around it.

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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot