Understanding Karma

“We're always looking for that moment when we can start over or start fresh, without this baggage of our past karma. And that moment does not come! We can only ever operate from the karmic situation that we're in, which has to be dependent on all our different past actions.”

Although these words sound as though they could come from a Dhamma talk from an esteemed monk in guiding practitioners towards the inner realization of Truth, in fact they come from my podcast conversation with author and scholar Rose Metro. And the context of these words is not in fact intended as meditation instructions, but rather a commentary on the main character's action in her novel, "Have Fun In Burma."

Adela, the protagonist, is a young (and decidedly naive) American woman who takes a gap year to teach English at a Buddhist monastery in Myanmar just as the Rohingya crisis is exploding. The short novel packs a big punch, interweaving stories of competing cultural values, messy political realities, and Burmese Buddhist monastic life and meditation.

Adela finds herself in a nexus of all these themes as they are playing out, some of which come as a result of her own doing... which itself is caused by her own past conditioning. And where Adela may be hoping to reinvent herself and let go of her past baggage, the author points out the fallacy in this attempt, and the need for Adela to have to go back and work from a more authentic place in examining and recognizing her own past karma and habit patterns-- a concept which may not be unfamiliar in Buddhist Burma, but is at odds with her American optimistic outlook.