ko-hee-zhin is no

i wrote this blog at the airport while wearing a shirt that says, 'just be.' given to me by mandi.  ['mandi' - what does it mean?  this moniker is new to me]

just be.

i'm tryin'.  my intentions are that i am calm, present, kind, selfless, energetic, altruistic, stimulated, stimulating, playful, joyous, fun and funny, able to connect with others but also able to define and respect boundaries.  this is a big one.

how many times have we delved into a good deed, just waiting for that 'feel-good-all-over' sensation to give a little helium puff to heart center before radiating out little bits of warmth to our fingers and toes.

this, too, says lord krishna in the bagavad gita, is attachment.  seriously.  so we go back to BG, where charioteer/god krishna pounds into arjun's head, about 308 ways, the concept of Karma Yoga.

what's cool about karma is its simplicity: do good, and good things will happen.  do bad, and bad things will happen.  it's a big seller on the Do Good Front, at least by my reckoning.

so here we are, good little yogis, doing good deeds and enjoying the sunshine and friendly faces of a good karmite (merr??) and one day we give a beggar some change and they spit on our feet.  ?.  !!.

so let's take four full seconds to imagine our reaction were the drops of spittle to rain on my newly peducured toes?

i'll be honest, ab:  i'd be pissed, at least a little bit.  even in my most sattvic of days i would have felt at least a flare, or a fleeting jolt of pin-prickly anger.

which takes me back to the aforementioned krisha's advice to arjun: 'hey, dude, doesn't matter how it turns out, it matters how much love you have in your heart when you do it.'

can you just imagine arjun's reaction: 'ummm....so....are you saying that i can kill my friends and it's cool with the Universe as long as i do it with love in my heart?'

well, yeah.  kind of.

doesn't matter if you burn the kali-shaped birthday cake you made your buddy for her birthday.  if you did it with heart chirping of love, your buddy got the most delicious part of your gift.

and while karma's really cool in that most of the time good begets good, semetimes it's crafty and yields a result that we're conditioned to label 'unpleasant'.

this is when krishna kicks in - not only are we happier when we do good, but we are most happy when we do good and smile just as widely when we encounter unpleasantries along the way.  it is then that we are so full of Light Juicy Nectar.  it is then that we are so interwoven with the Divine.  it is then that we're on It, and in It.

and while we're all different glints of light off the same sea, every person's got boundaries.  'but,' i counter, 'what if i want to be like the dalai lama and make everyone around me happy as a pig in shizah?'

'well,' krisna would patiently smile, 'that's cool...but you can pour just as much love into a hug with your dad as you can give to a passerby on his ipod in the airport.'  

equanimity, non-attachment.  loving just as much with or without boundaries.  karma's a circle after all - you get the love that you give.  just in case you needed incentive to love more ;)