This from Josh Korda: In sri lanka there was a wonderful cultural practice that developed virtue and self-esteem: When children first started to attend school, their teachers would set a side a journal for each student, known as a merit book, (punna-potthaka). So each morning the teacher could ask her or his student What good deed have you done? After the student would answer—perhaps I helped my grandmother carry the groceries home…etc—the teacher could instruct the student to Write it in the punna. If the students kept up with the practice of writing regularly in their merit books, eventually, over the course of a lifetime, these journals would be filled up with good deeds. Naturally, the years passed and the time would arrive when the student became old and sick and, having reached their deathbeds, their family members and friends would gather around and read their merit books back to them, as a way to put their minds at ease as they faced death. When you were six years old, you helped carry your grandmothers groceries home. Imagine how that would ease the fears of death, having ones life reflected back in terms of acts of generosity and kindness? Of course, not many of us invariably look on the bright side, and we tend to carry around an imaginary demerit book as well. (Some of us only carry around the latter, sadly.) And so we keep track of our failures, missteps, gaffes, errors in judgment and, when when feeling a little sad or worn down, rather than have at hand our merit book, we search the memory files labelled my mistakes and settle in for a long, uncomfortable reflection. As we make our entries, in the form of constructing lasting memories, its tempting to rationalize away the times weve acted selfishly, judged others harshly, avoided those we could have comforted, so as to make our life stories a little easier to peruse. But the justifications dont really convince us, and no matter how elaborate and convincing, they fail to prevent feelings of guilt, shame and low esteem from arising over time. We can pretty-up our dramas, but the real motives weve concealed from ourselves are felt deep in the emotional mind. And so its important to steer clear the habit of entering false or overinflated entries in our merit book. For example, we may think that fiscal success, self-reliance, being really clever or smarter than others are examples of merit. While these qualities might help us survive, but they arent examples of merit that brings about self-worth. Now, its difficult to remember the bulk of our life stories, and if we dont have real merit books to read from, well develop, for lack of a better term, a gist or summary of self, our lifes dramas, the overall tally if our demerits could be subtracted from our merit file: How theyve all added up. This is can be thought of as a very simplistic way of thinking of karma, a basic emotional thrust of our lives: Did we develop a human experience that was steered by busyness, stress or fear, or was it a story filled with examples of courage, connecting, compassion, balance, exploration? To the degree that weve been conditioned by social factors, we may find our personal merit books thin of entries, while our minds are swamped with regret, opportunities missed. In such cases, well definitely fear death for, as the Buddha noted, nothing assuages that fear like a life well lived. (Note the Abhaya Sutta, which details the four practices that relieve fear of death.) Fortunately, we can always start to build up a sense of ones merit, no matter how weve lived in the past. This requires us to determine how to relate to each other free of fixed judgments, long held suspicions, an accumulation of needless fears. We can put aside old wounds and make a long postponed phone call, we can volunteer or act from generosity. Breaking the ingrained habits that deter us from acts of integrity and grace are accomplished by sometimes requires us we have to drop our attachment to the past. If we reflect too often on our demerits we can feel entirely disempowered; whats the point? This is the time when the empathetic friend is our best ally; for there comes a time when the only way we can put aside self-lacerating habits, over-exaggerating our faults, is when we hear that kind voice telling us that we did the best we could, while reciting aloud to us all the entries weve forgotten from those old merit books. Thanks Corey Swartsel
Posted on: Mon, 28 Oct 2013 11:01:27 +0000