Would You Pay For Good Karma? – Dialectic Two Step

Estimated reading time: 6 minute(s)

Question: 

Would you pay money to get good karma? And if so . . . how much?

Response:

Who would you pay? What would you get in the transaction?

Good Karma? What does that look like? Presumably it means that you will have future good experiences.

What makes a good experience? I’d say there are internal and external factors.

On a personal level, we carry our dispositions. Things like our mood, our preferences and aversion for certain experiences, our habits and so on. We can have bad experiences if we come at it from an angry place or we are exposed to bad people or uncomfortable situations. On the other hand, we have good experiences if we come at it with a positive attitude or it comes with perks. A lot of the time we sleep” through much of our experience, operating like mindless robots, totally missing situations that could otherwise be pleasurable.

There are external circumstances as well. If you’ve lost a loved one or had a similarly traumatic experience, it can be very hard to enjoy life. We ourselves can be unwell. We might also be subject to incredibly good luck, like winning the lottery.

we can bring to the world an attitude of that we are responsible for choosing happiness
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Both internal and external circumstances color each other. Tough circumstances can make it difficult to enjoy good times and vice versa. But, we can bring to the world an attitude of maturity that recognizes that we are ultimately responsible for choosing happiness when we can.

The Transaction

Now back to the question. If we were to pay for good karma, we’d conceivable be conducting two transactions. One with ourselves and the other with someone who would be able to exert fine control over the universe to ensure that we win the lottery regularly, none of our friends or family dies, and that it only rains when we’re asleep.

We can pay ourselves with the fruits of the Eightfold path; love, joy, compassion, and equanimity.
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We can pay ourselves, not with money, but with the fruits of the Eightfold path; love, joy, compassion, and equanimity. Paying to rig our external circumstances seems a little beyond the pocketbook of anyone that lives in this neck of the universe.

Dialectic Two-Step  is an ongoing series of my thoughts on questions that come my way.

Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two. - Octavio

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The post Would You Pay For Good Karma? – Dialectic Two Step written by Andrew Furst appeared on Andrew Furst.