Our Individual Karma Never Lies to Us

"The dharma is about life.  The dharma is life.  It’s about the whole human being, which includes our relationships with others.  We are all living out internal 'programs' and mental self-constructions that we give our identities to, or identify with.   Mostly, we do this unconsciously.  Part of awakening is to be able to see these thought/self patterns playing themselves out without self-identification with them.

As we are able to stand back from ourselves, so to speak then these patterns and ways of being need to be looked into, examined, not just at the deepest level of meditative insight, where everything is ephemeral and flickering, but also in terms of our total humanhood and of our morals, the standards we live by.  True meditation is 24/7.  It’s a way of being and doing that’s alive and filled with love and alertness and presence.

Like skillful, trouble-shooting software programmers, we have to look into to the 'output' of the way we look at ourselves, others, and the world.  This 'output' is our individual karma, the manifestation of the way we think and act as a person.  It’s one of the few things actually have control over, and while we may mistake its nature, our individual karma never lies to us, any more than a computer program we write can lie to us."

Thanissaro Bhikkhu

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