cycles on the path

Whatever karma a person experiences at any given time will lay the seeds for future karma of the same type.
In plainer language; "a habit".

When these seeds of karma flower in any moment, then they affect our mood and cause a tendency to lay more seeds of karma to continue the same type of feeling in the future.

The accumulation of these karmic seeds are the 'kilesas', or 'defilements of mind'. They are called this because they are like stains on our spotless mind which, but for the kilesas, would sit in pure, contented awareness of the present moment.

These kilesas pull our minds into dualistic thinking and into thinking about the past and future. In other words, they create our sense of self as a function of time. Kilesas also being the cause of the mental hindrances, the hindrances cause us to lay future karmic seeds and so cause future kilesa, or defilements.

These karmic seeds bloom in a cyclical fashion. Due to their nature as habit-forming, they are regular, as opposed to pure mind which is spontaneous and "not in time".

What we felt last week on this same day will influence us, what we felt last month, last year at this time will influence us, and so on across the cycle of our lives from birth to death. There are also much longer cycles that affect us over spans of thousands or millions of years, like the cycle of bangs and crunches of the universe.

We can divide divide the flow of our lives arbitrarily into cycles of differing lengths. On the level of nanoseconds to years and further, these cycles are in a fractal form, each fragment mimicking the others in behaviour. These karmic cycles are the only things between us and nirvana. They are not dependant on circumstance, although certain circumstances may serve as a trigger for karmic seeds to bloom.

This is why sometimes we feel happy or sad "for no reason". These kilesas make us feel a particular way, like a 'mood' or 'colour' of the moment. Basically they put a compulsion or an emotional spin on the present moment which would not otherwise be there.

Our brains are machines for combining these compulsions and emotional colours with what we perceive to be our present surroundings and circumstances to create a "narrative within time" which forms the basis of our sense of self. Inconsistencies are ignored, things that bolster the narrative, i.e. fit well within the narrative, are emphasised by the mind.

This is why people "see what they want to see", and this is how karma colours our perception and prevents us from seeing mind and the present as it truly is; spontaneous and unadorned.

Enlightenment is breaking this narrative, this petty sense of self, thus freeing us from space and time. We trap ourselves in our own story until it is all that we know or feel comfortable with and we are afraid to leave. This is the endless sea of samsara. Endless, that is, until we see the true nature of mind and reality and choose to leave.

How do we do this? By breaking the narrative and so freeing our minds to be simply in the present, simply spontaneous.

We must stop making the link between our present circumstances (i.e. the actual things around you at any given moment) and the feelings, compulsions and emotional moods that fill our heads. They are not related at all. You have never lived this moment before, so how can you have an emotional or compulsive response to it? You don't even know what it is!!

The magga, or spiritual path, involves realising this nature of mind and refraining from acting upon these cyclical compulsions, therefore laying down no new karma. If we can do this, then when our old karma is exhausted, then there will be no more new karma and we will be free.

We must look for the true causes of our feelings. Sometimes we feel happy or sad, or angry or nostalgic, but the reasons are not obvious. One day we feel one way, and one day we feel another, where nothing has really changed. This is cyclical karma. At some time in the past, in a similar moment, you felt this way also but didn't know it for what it was, and didn't refrain from acting upon it. Because you acted upon it, karmic seeds were sown which are coming to fruition now. That is all.

If you are happy, don't cling to it, don't try to feel a certain way, just note what you are feeling and leave it at that. That is the holy life.

Meditation is the best, and I think only, way to train the mind to do this automatically. Meditation is the path, and without it progress is non-existent. Every time you exercise this faculty of "noting" but don't cling or try to change your feeling or circumstance, this is meditation. It can also be done at anytime, just by turning the mind to this technique of "noting without clinging".

This is the meaning behind the Tao Te Ching saying,

"you cannot improve the universe,
if you try to grasp it, you will lose it, 
if you try to change it, you will ruin it".

The universe is whole and complete, if you try to grasp a part of it and cling to it with your mind, you will suffer.

How can we "grasp" the whole of it? With an open hand and an empty mind. If we can do this, then we are reintegrated with our source, and have reached our end and returned to our beginning. This is the end of the holy life.