Beautifully Broken Issue #17: Instant Karma
Beautifully Broken Issue #17: Instant Karma
IDEAS, ART & WISDOM TO REPAIR YOUR BEAUTIFUL WORLD
Happy Saturday! Welcome to the new, compact format of Beautifully Broken.
IDEAS: Instant Karma
What do we mean when we use the term “karma”?
Karma is a Sanskrit term that literally means "action" or "doing". In the Buddhist tradition, karma refers to action driven by intention (a deed done deliberately through body, speech or mind) which leads to future consequences. Those intentions are considered to be the determining factor in the kind of rebirth one has in the next life.
The Buddhist idea is that our actions decide our reincarnation, the Christian idea is that our actions decide our destination in the afterlife. Who can say for certain one?
During the 1960s the counter culture movement rose up among the children whose parents had been in the Second World War. They promoted peace over war, especially the war in Vietnam. At the tail end of the movement, in the early 1970s, we have John Lennon's song Instant Karma. I wrote a little it about Lennon and Yoko Ono's "Bed-in for peace" here.
Together with his wife, Yoko Ono, John Lennon spent New Year 1970 in Aalborg, Denmark, establishing a relationship with Ono's former husband, artist Tony Cox, and visiting Cox's and Ono's daughter Kyoko. The visit coincided with the start of what Lennon termed "Year 1 AP (After Peace)", following his and Ono's heavily publicised Bed-Ins and other peace-campaign activities throughout 1969.
While in Denmark, the Lennons, Cox, and Cox's current partner, Melinde Kendall, discussed the concept of "instant karma", whereby the causality of one's actions is immediate rather than borne out over a lifetime. Author Philip Norman writes of the concept's appeal: "The idea was quintessential Lennon – the age-old Buddhist law of cause and effect turned into something as modern and synthetic as instant coffee and, simultaneously, into a bogey under the stairs that can get you if you don't watch out." On 27 January, two days after returning to the UK, Lennon woke up with the beginnings of a song inspired by his conversations with Cox and Kendall. Working at home on a piano, he developed the idea and came up with a melody for the composition, which he titled "Instant Karma!"
Lennon and Ono hit upon the interesting idea of linking one's negative action to an immediate consequence—a narrow timeframe between something someone did and a subsequent consequence . I can't help but wonder if we don't get the modern usage of the word karma from Lennon's song. (eg. Someone breaks a window, a few seconds later the same person walks around the corner and face first into a pole, injuring themselves. A passerby calls out "karma!")
Instant karma is an interesting answer to the question: how do we encourage people to choose peace instead of conflict? If people have the idea of an immediate punishment or unwanted consequence, they might be more likely to consider peace. The implication is that people risk negative action for an immediate gain or reward because they think they have the luxury of time. They are willing to risk making bad choices because as time draws on it seems less likely that there will be a negative consequence.
My perception of karma is closer to Lennon's. Not in an external, immediate physical consequence (although an argument can be made that when one commits an evil or selfish act it does elicit a guilt response that can lead to clumsiness or carelessness), but rather an immediate internal, spiritual consequence.
And in terms of a prolonged outlook, instead of being a source of good works, all the bad choices and negative tendencies that we’ve invested in over a lifetime tend to stick to us and warp us in a way that keeps us trapped in the same cycle of suffering. Subsequently, it takes a great deal of spiritual effort to straighten out and realign the afflicted mind and body.
What to do? Actions, be they good or bad, certainly shape our character and how we are perceived. So start the work to rid yourself of fear and desire. Straighten out that which has been bent and twisted by the poisons of the world. Take the lesson of the song to heart and try to align yourself to good works and compassion for others. Instant peace!
HEADLINE FICTION #4: Florida Hurricane Strikes, Family Lost In TV
Here's a new format for short fiction that I've invented. It's a 70-word story in three panels with a pattern of 7-16-47 words, where the first 7 words form a headline style title, the 16 serve to fill out the headline information a little more and the final 47 contain the meat of the story and resolution. I think I'll call it "headline fiction". These micro stories of mine are based on dreams (and nightmares!) :)
ART TO MEDITATE UPON
Mystery and Melancholy of a Street, Giorgio de Chirico, Metaphysical painting 1914, oil on canvas
“To become truly immortal, a work of art must escape all human limits: logic and common sense will only interfere. But once these barriers are broken, it will enter the realms of childhood visions and dreams.”
“What is especially needed is great sensitivity: to look upon everything in the world as enigma….To live in the world as in an immense museum of strange things.”
Giuseppe Maria Alberto Giorgio de Chirico (1888 –1978) was an Italian artist and writer. In the years before World War I, he founded the scuola metafisica (Metaphysical School) art movement, which profoundly influenced the surrealists. His best-known works often feature Roman arcades, long shadows, mannequins, trains, and illogical perspective.
To me, de Chirico's art speaks of the way that we remember things. We don't remember the past like rewatching a movie again, it's something different—a mix of impression fragments: brief scenes, images, colors, smells, bound up with feelings.
Why combine gloves, shadows, a long colonade, a train? Because quite often that's how we experience life. Things stand out, for reasons that are often mysterious. That sunny day, a bunch of bananas on the table. In a warm winter house, looking out at a spider web in the rain. That tree in the back yard with the plumbs. Image, feeling, sometimes a scene. I can't think of an artist who captures the experience of remembering as well.
Here are some other works by di Chirico.
WISDOM OF OTHERS: Excerpt from The Tao Te Ching
by Lao Tzu, Translated by Gia-Fu Feng (馮家福 Feng Jia-fu) and Jane English.
Eight
The highest good is like water.
Water give life to the ten thousand things and does not strive.
It flows in places men reject and so is like the Tao.
In dwelling, be close to the land.
In meditation, go deep in the heart.
In dealing with others, be gentle and kind.
In speech, be true.
In ruling, be just.
In daily life, be competent.
In action, be aware of the time and the season.
No fight: No blame.
Commentary: The beginning and end state that if we are like water we effortlessly move through life without conflict. If we have no conflict we are without blame and can then find the correct way to be in the world (the Tao).
The part in the middle outlines how to live with the Tao once we've fulfilled the criteria of the beginning and end (be like water, no fight/conflict): in dwelling, in meditation, in relationships, in speaking, ruling, and daily life. The last criterion has to do with timing, which is the most important and informs the previous actions on the list. Action is not of the Tao unless it's performed with the right timing (time and season).
PHOTO HAIKU
See: through frost glass eyes,
hear: each sound a buzzing bee -
dive deep, clear water.
Ideas To Live By In The Coming Week:
If we accept that our choices shape our being then we can immediately start straightening out the knotted parts of our life.
If memory is a series of mysteriously charged images then we can become sensitive to our environment and find unexpected moments of significance.
Be like water, go with the flow so you minimize conflict and suffering.
Peace Now,
Morgan ,
22nd June, 2024
