There are two ways you can say "shit happens", one of which is actually very good Zen. The two ways you can say it are the profane way and the sacred way. The profane "shit happens" is dismissing, inconsiderate, vulgar, and uncaring. The sacred "shit happens" is profound, compassionate, observant, and enlightened. It's the latter way, the enlightened "shit happens" way ie the good Zen "shit happens" way which interests me. The sacred "shit happens" resembles "it's raining". And you don't ask "Why Me?" when it's raining, do you? You can't use the sacred "shit happens" to pass the buck, to avoid responsibility. You can however use it as a light under which to look at episodes and incidents in Life which happen yet which defy both explanation and reason and which even defy logic. You can use is as a light under which to examine the way we expect all things to be explainable. And well they may be. But given our skewed view of the world, the truth doesn't fit. Listen: shit in the cosmic sense has been happening for millennia - in fact shit in the cosmic sense is all that ever happens. Gee! I hope you get this. One way of avoiding dealing with ie one way of avoiding confronting the cosmic such-ness, the cosmic thus-ness of "shit happens" is to use the doctrine of karma as a filtering tool to explain the apparent randomness of happenstance. It's built into the machinery of the mind to insist "There must be a reason ..." even when there aren't any reasons. Self, on the other hand, is unreasonable ie it's beyond reason. The doctrine of karma is the balm for ie it's the antidote to the mind futilely insisting "There must be a reason ...". A shortcoming of the doctrine of karma is it avoids being responsible for what's happening now, instead assigning payback for something which happened previously ie for something you did previously. "Being responsible for what's happening now" is being willing to be cause in the matter. Being responsible is senior to and doesn't require the karmic escape of payback ie "you get what you deserve", or blame or fault or guilt (as Werner Erhard" may have said). |
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