If you talk about karma in terms of the Eightfold Path, the first grouping is Right Speech, Action and Livelihood: It's very clear to think of karma as action, as what happens. But when you consider Right Thought, karma is very subtle because it's internal: Karma starts with the thought pattern and has an effect right inside your mind. If you say something, it clearly affects the people around you. Any thought that you have is going to affect you, so the karma is internal, but it will eventually affect others around you because it has affected you. Thus, a Zen student is living some of her teacher's karma --- and so too all the way back to Bodhidharma and the Buddha. Their karma is what we're living out. But also Hitler's. So what's karma? It's not just what you hold in your personal life. It's what has happened in the world. That means that you can think of your personal life as the world, and you can begin to see that you are interconnected with the universe.
Sensei Pat Enkyō O'Hara, Village Zendo, New York City
Enkyō Pat O'Hara is a Soto priest and teacher in the Harada-Yasutani lineage of Zen Buddhism. She is abbot and founder of the Village Zendo in New York City. She serves as co-spiritual director of the Zen Peacemaker Order along with Tetsugen Bernard Glassman. She is also a former professor of interactive media at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. She holds a doctorate in Media ecology. A socially engaged Buddhist, she is a member of the White Plum Asanga and manages the Buddhist AIDS Network.
Biography: In high school, O'Hara read R. H. Blyth’s translations of haiku, Buddhist sutras, and the writings of D. T. Suzuki. This began her studies in Zen which led to her spending a summer at Zen Mountain Monastery in her late thirties.
O'Hara studied with John Daido Loori but differences with her teacher led her to begin studying with Taizan Maezumi, who himself was Loori's teacher. O'Hara was ordained a Soto priest by Hakuyu Taizan Maezumi in 1995 and received shiho from Bernard Glassman in 1997. In June 2004 Glassman gave O'Hara inka. [Source: Wikipedia]
Wandering Ronin commentary: We are all interconnected beings, albeit with seemingly different vantage points and seemingly separate lives in this world. Here we are, coming together in this community as one, interacting and sharing what we have to offer. Such is karma; we all do some good and we all cause some harm in what we say, but what is our ultimate intention here? Is it truly to avoid evil and practice good? Let those among you that wish to speak stand forth.
Submitted March 11, 2018 at 04:41AM by WanderingRonin77 http://ift.tt/2oWEpvN
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