We often talk about how our delusions—anger, attachment, hatred, jealousy, and so forth are the root of our problems. We have discussed ways we can eliminate those from our lives and need to do so. Today, I thought we would flip the script on its head so to speak! How about we talk about how fortunate we are to be here and now?
Those of you from Colorado may have seen this advertisement on TV they used to run 20 or so years ago. They would show you beautiful mountain scenes and a voiceover appears saying some people come here for a vacation and you live here. Don’t you think you are lucky? Buy a lotto. And that pretty much sums up my feeling about where we are in life today.
Let me explain. We will begin with the simplest of points. We have this human life. Now if we believe in reincarnation then you know that a human life is not always guaranteed. Why is it advantageous to have a human life? Well, for one thing, we as humans can do something about our unhappiness or our suffering. We have the freedom to make choices that will affect our lives. I had a discussion about this once with a friend who runs an international charity on humane education. She said, given a choice she would rather come back as a dog in a rich family who cared for her. She thought that was better than a human life because she would not need to worry about anything. That’s because she and all of us for that matter don’t know what a dog is going through. He may be anxious all the time and we would not know it at all. He has no choice about his well-being. He is at the mercy of its owners if you will. So coming back to this human life, we have the ability to make decisions that not only affect our current situation but also our future.
Now granted most humans don’t realize how lucky they are to have this human life. I am going to go back to my lottery analogy. Statistics show that most people who win jackpots, lose it within five years. Think about it, within five years, they have lost it all! Some say they go back to their normal. But to me, it is worse than that. Now they are used to a certain lifestyle and they don’t have a way to provide for it. Before, at least they did not have the lifestyle to support it even though they did not have the money to support it. I hope this makes sense. So most people are in this situation. They don’t have a clue how lucky they are to have this human life and they are wasting away.
Let me put it another way. If you believe in karma, to get this human life, we are using a lot of good karma we must have created in the past. Now that karma is used up. If we don’t do anything about it, that would be such a waste. On the other hand, if we take advantage of this human life and create virtuous karma, it will help us in our future lives. So many causes and conditions have to come together for us to be where we are in life. We talked about having a human life. On top of that, we have been exposed to spirituality in our lives. That exposure to spirituality is not by accident either. Again, our karma played a huge role in that. I know so many of us take this exposure for granted. But think about it, out of 8 billion humans on this planet, not everyone is exposed to spirituality. Now let’s take a step further. Of those, who have been exposed, how many of them actually do something about it on a regular basis? Most people go about their day busy with stuff that in the end has no relevance. But at the time it feels so important so people plug it away.
So here you are, spending at least 40 minutes a week trying to advance your spiritual practice. Trying to find the peace within. Trying to make sure not to disturb others’ peace. Trying to help other people alleviate their suffering and so forth. That creates a lot of positive karma. That bank of virtuous actions is going to come in handy in the future. As you know, the thing with karma is that you never know when it will ripen but it will certainly ripen someday. So the fact that you are creating a bank of this good karma is like having a fat bank account, that will allow you to cash in someday.
When would be the right time someone asked? Well, I don’t know is the honest answer. However, I do know that when we die, depending upon our state of mind at the time of our death, specific karma ripens which decides what the next step is for our continuum. So if that is true, then I would rather have more of those positive karma banked sooner rather than later. Because at that point, it’s a game of probability. For example, if there are 100 total karmas to choose from at the time of death, the more positive karma we have, the better our chance of higher rebirth.
So I come back to where we started. We have this human body, we are exposed to spirituality and we are practicing on a consistent basis. That is an incredibly fortunate position to be in. We must be thankful, for our great fortune.