Spring 2010 Issue
Third Place Winner
Stories
Happenings Elsewhere
Society Reports
Karmic Stream
by Traveler
Coppell, Texas, March 2010
Several thousand years ago in a village in what is now northern India, a small boy lifts a heavy basket of grain on his back. He is ready to continue struggling home on a cool spring morning. As he lifts he turns too quickly and drops the basket. Grain spills out on the dusty ground. A large black and white bird, much like a raven, quickly drops on the grain. With his beak full the bird takes flight as the boy chases him off. The boy gathers the grain as best he can and this time, with great care, he lifts the basket and shuffles down the path.
What have these things to do with me? Why would I be affected by this boy who has been forgotten in the passing of time? We on this spinning rock of a planet are all intertwined. Those that have come before have an impact on the people of today even if we can’t name it. We can’t know but we also cannot avoid the likely possibility. Is your doctor, or your friend or the person that will save you from a fire next week in the family lineage of that boy? If the bird had not there or the boy did not drop the grain, would any of us be here at all? This swirling, flowing ceaseless chain of events touches every part of our lives. The term for this flow is the Law of Karma. The Dalai Lama calls it simply the Law of Causality, the Law of Cause and Effect.
These truths were remembered and taught by the Tathagata, the Buddha, two millennia ago. You and I are travelers on a grand stream of time. We are forever interconnected, a result of a flowing connection of events and things. We at this time, this specific dot of time, are but the instantaneous coming together of a million, million events and people. Had the day been sunny when your parent met, they may have lingered in the sun and missed one another. What of their parents?
Not just our parents and family, not just their community, not just human souls have all been part of the river before us. The companion creature that lifted the spirits of some fine poet, whose name has been long forgotten, still touches us. Their shared lives may have influenced a child with their beauty. A child who radiated kindness all her days. The influence of that warmth and kindness touched those that touch us. It will be passed on to those we influence with our presence. Even if we accept it as true, what does it means for us?
It means great power! It means great responsibility! Contact, however ever fleeting, will cause a ripple in the karmic stream. The contact may be physical. The contact may be of spirit such as a warming smile to a stranger. You can use the energy of your very existence to add to the positive currents in the stream. What impact could you have? Your smile, your love, your compassion my save millions from horrible suffering in some far distant time. Perhaps, they may cause a chain of events which ease the burden of a small boy with a basket of grain, struggling along a path.
