Guru Habit: Habits, Destiny & Free Will and the Game of Chess...

Photo kindly provided by Mukumbura under Creative Commons

Its been a stressful week due for various reasons. I ponder on the stress, and how I am handling it, no doubt I am short fused, the only thing that is keeping me in check is Qi Gong, and Meditation. Difficult times demand more meditation to deal with it. Meditation works like magic, somehow it seems to give one the strength to go through life, as well as "smoothing things around the edges".

So how is 1. Habits, 2. Destiny & 3. Free Will & 4. Chess Related? 1, 2, 3 is all animated by the Law of Karma, and it is played out like 4.

A layman's explanation to Karma is provided by one book I read "How to Know God". It says that as a wave approaches the shore it hits the bottom of the ocean flow, and that causes a wave to take place, the cause of the wave is the shape of the bottom of the shore.

In the same way, the life force inside us the Chinese say is Qi made out of Earth (Jing), and Heaven (Shen), this has to take form around something. That something is our Sankaras, these are sort of like Habits and Desires combined accumulated over many life times. The more pure these Sankaras are the higher the physical form acquired, ranging from the microscopic creatures to humans, to Angels.

Buddha once said to something along the lines of "To know your past, you only need to look at your present conditions, to know your future, you only need to look at your present actions". The law of Karma is precise and just. It governs all that is around you, the circumstances you find yourself in, and all that you interact with. These mental sankaras play out over a lifetime and also manifest themselves physically in your body directly and indirectly.

Any neurologist will tell you it is very difficult to change neural pathways in the brain, however what can be done is formation of new pathways. Same with Karma, we cannot change our past karma (the circumstances and limitations we find ourselves in), but we can plant new positive Sankaras by creating positive actions (Karma) and do meditation (moving and non moving) to counteract the bad effect of past Karma.

This has global repercussions as well as personal ones. As more and more people become purer, the global consciousness becomes purer, automatically creating order, peace, harmony and balance for all things around us. One person meditating, creates a resonance of peace, love and order which influences everything around her. Studies has shown 1% of people meditating in a city brought entire crime rate down.

We do not need to become pure, that we already are potentially, we need to stop impure things getting into us, and let the purity shine outwards. These impure things are negative images, sounds, company, intoxicants and impure food. We need to meditate so we can be more sensitive to the inner intelligence just waiting to flow out benefiting all around us.

In Information Technology, there is a programming cliche "Garbage In Garbage Out", this is true for our spiritual progress as well. The more senseless, mindless stuff we put into our senses, the more suffering will come out the other end automatically. If we want happiness, that does not lie in self-gratification and selfishness, although it seems that way in the short run. True happiness lies in connecting and acting in harmony to what we truly are "Spiritual Beings".

To finish, all this actions we take form Sankaras which is a combination of desire and habit, which stays with us to determine our future, one can say they are the only things we can take with us when we die.

These Sankaras in our lives present themselves like a game of chess, where the circumstances are already pre-determined, however there is limited free choice in making the next move, so that we can advantage from it. The next moves are in the present for us to continuously move towards wholeness, truth and realization of the latent divine potential in us.

Wishing you the presence of mind to make the right moves consistent with universal moral values and spiritual progress,

Kirpal