Karma – The Great Executioner

The Strategy: Be mindful and take great care in creating your future.

Its Application: Karma is the great executioner. The Tao does not play favorites. We create through cause and effect. What you concentrate on, your actions are planting the seeds of the future. Your actions now will have consequences in a future now.

Tao Te Ching: Chapter 74
There exists a master executioner that kills
If we substitute for the master executioner to kill
Its like substituting for the great carpenter to cut
Those who substitute for the great carpenter to cut
It is rare that they do not hurt their own hands

The great executioner is called the law of cause and effect. It is also is called karma. Because the Tao does not play favorites, the law of cause and effect applies to everyone. Therefore the wisdom of the Tao is that it is not always or necessarily our place to act as judge and jury and to dispense out punishment. People will receive their punishment or reward regardless of what humanity does. In the case of capital punishment is can be seen now as it was 2500 years ago that criminals are not mindful of it as a deterrent. The understanding here is that regardless of laws and rules set up by humanity, nature and the law of cause and effect will be the creative agent for each person’s destiny. When any of us plant the seeds of self destruction, that is what we will reap in some future now. What we put into the world we will receive back. What goes around will come around.

In every moment of every day along the path, we make choices and choose this or that. Our choices are the seeds that will grow into maturity later on. If we manipulate others for self gain, we will experience being manipulated by others and become the victim later on. If we initiate the suffer of someone by intent, we will experience the greater reward to suffer even more in some distant moment.

The Tao cultivator leaves anger and revenge to the master executioner. Because they know that by holding that sort of negativity in the mind is to create the same negativity along their path. Judgment is a blade that is double edged and cuts two ways. Like an unskilled carpenter who would “try to cut wood” (judge and interfere with another’s life) is more likely to cut themselves in the process.

There may come a time when we are called to judge and punish others, but those times are uncommon and rare. When those times come, we must use virtue to guide us with great care of stepping along this slippery slope.  As leaders, managers or parents we can be empathetic and compassion to help us step carefully. By understanding our own ego and how it works, we can begin to understand other egos and why they do what they do. In this way, understanding that when they are lost and blind in ego they do not know what they are doing and why.

We must use meditation to strengthen our self awareness and remain in clarity and awareness. We must pay attention to ego when judgement begins to arise. Then and only then, when we are awake and present as the true self, can we make wise choices. We can be aware in each moment that these choices are creating our destiny by planting the seeds of the future.

Using the knowledge of karma as guidance will help us make those virtuous choices so that the great executioner become the great benefactor. Living as a spiritual being our steps are guided by inspiration. Planting seeds of virtue will allow us to reap the sweet fruit of harmony and well being. In this way we cultivate the extraordinary life.

This is the true path, this is the Tao.