Dharma

You'd be hard pressed to find someone who doesn't know what karma is.

Many utter the word like a curse, or a threat, or even a judgement call.

"That's their karma" people just love to say.

How silly.

The idea that karma stands alone, by itself, as the entire process by which souls evolve is an incomplete one at best.

'Hurt people hurt people.' 

The terrible cliche is partly true.

Personally, I take the concept the full circle which dharma demands, "Hurt people who don't take accountability and responsibility hurt people."

Karma is never alone. 

If karma is the fuel - Dharma is the motorcycle.

I pulled Jimmy's hair (out) and he cried.  It was a rash moment.  He'd been teasing me and his mom had told me to stand up for myself.  But boy howdy did she scream at me when I came away with a whole wad of his pretty brown hair.

The karma is spent, the fuel is gone, but that memory has become a piece of me, a part of how I now move through life.  Not the anger, the rage, the vindication, retaliation, triumph, or regret.  But the knowledge of limits (his, mine, and his mum's). 

It's the way of dharma.

Because dharma is a cup which bears our collection of memories and the wisdom we have gained, it is the culmination of everything we have learned throughout this life. 

And it is through these increments of experience we (little-by-little) build our motorcycle - our vehicle of life - our patterns of behavior - the very  structure of who and what we are.

Because who are we? 
If not the entire culmination of experiences we have lived so far - playing out a cosmic dance of chance.

The day I made Jimmy cry I began the process of standing up for myself.  I knew letting him bully me and tease me was not the answer.  And maybe outright violence wasn't the answer either. 

So, I began what would become a 40-year search for a better way to stand tall in a world that was constantly trying to knock me in the dirt.

Dharma is what moves me - the collection of ideologies, duties, and insights which support me as I move into the next exciting chapter of my life.

Dharma not karma.


Namaste


Exe
07/21/2023



© Raena Exe 2023
 
 

*All rights reserved.

“The apple tree never asks the beech how he shall grow, nor the lion, the horse, how he shall take his prey.”

William Blake

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