Imagine you're doing a physics experiment, you have a big tray of water about 2 inches deep, in a big square frame. And I'm at one side and I take a rock, and you're at the other side and you take a rock. We both drop the rock at the same time, and we watch the ripples. My ripples go towards your ripples, your ripples go towards mine, and what happens when they meet? They kind of go over each other, they kind of cross, hit the walls at the side, they kind of bounce back. Then all of the sudden within a short period of time there's multiple ripples, hitting each other, hitting the wall, bouncing back and that. Now a super duper scientist can actually measure the height of dropping the rock, weigh the rock, measure this and that, and they could actually map out where the ripples are going to meet at exactly what time. That's how they send satellites up to the moon and all, they're going to map it out, it's going to crisscross exactly five years from now at exactly that spot. That's what scientists can do. So in this tray of water, scientists can do the same thing.
Our life that's happening right now is made up of lots of ripples from rocks in the past. The ripples have crisscrossed and met and this and that, and here we are, based on what happened before. Now to a certain extent that means a lot of things are destined to happen, they're going to happen. However, right now we have another chance to throw a rock into that pool. So that's where our choice comes in. Everything that's coming to us is already set in motion. It's all set in motion. If someone calls or sends an emergency email to the office, saying "Please call home.", everything was set in motion before that moment, it's beyond your control. According to Buddhism, there are certain things that are destined to happen. But it's in our present moment, our reaction to the ripples, that then creates new ripples.
Now, according to Buddhism, certain actions produce set destinies and can not be changed. In one particular story Buddhist story, a prince killed his father so that he could become king. Killing your father is, according to Buddhism, the second worst thing you can do for Kamma. The only thing worse is killing your mother. The prince killed his father, so it's automatic, when he dies in this life it is taught he will go to hell, he can't go anywhere else.
Fixed Kamma cannot be changed. In this particular story in the scriptures, the Buddha was giving a talk to the prince, who was now king. The king was very happy and proclaimed he was now a supporter of the Buddha and left. The Buddha turned to one of the other Monks and he said, "If he hadn't killed his father, he would have become enlightened with that teaching." As a supporter of the Buddha, the King became a better person and make big donations to the Buddha.
However, killing his father was such a powerful Kammic event that the prince, even though he had enough wisdom, was blocked by his bad Kamma and could not get enlightened that life. He had to go to hell first before he could become a human again and get enlightened.
So some things are very strong Kamma, and other things can be diffused.
Not every bit of Dukkha that's destined to come to us has to be felt as pain. What are we teaching tonight? It's the Unpleasant Physical Sensations technique.
Somebody sits in the hall who's never ever done that sort of technique may think, "Ah, I've got so much pain!" as I imagine you probably did in your first retreat. Hopefully now most of you, can observe the unpleasant sensations more objectively for longer periods of time, even if you can't do it for the whole hour
Still, it may be a similar type of discomfort that you had in your first retreat. The person you were then reacted with aversion due to not knowing how to observe it objectively. However, now you can observe it objectively for longer periods without hating it. The physical manifestation of discomfort in the body may be exactly the same, but now your reaction is different, so you have let go of the mental Dukkha. This means that when unpleasant experiences, destined to come to us due to our past Kamma, manifest, if we are ready for it, it may not hurt anymore.
Now before we were talking about doing generous deeds and reflecting on them.
In this light, it's very helpful to think about salt and water. Say you have a glass full of water. And you take two big spoonfuls of salt and you stir it up. Want to drink? Ugh! If anyone puts it in their mouth they're going to probably throw up straight away. It's very difficult to drink down salt water like that, so thick. Physically it's possible, but it's just about impossible for anybody. Now imagine that you have a bathtub full of water, a whole big bathtub full of water, not just a little glass, but a whole big bathtub. You take exactly the same two scoops of salt and you stir it into the bathtub. Can you then take a drink of that water? Yeah! You won't even taste the salt, it's too little. Yet the salt in this glass and the salt in the bathtub were exactly the same amount. The difference is the water.
Now if you've done a lot of good Kamma it's like a lot of water. You've done a lot of good Kamma, so when the bad Kamma fruits, it's okay, it's impermanent, you can have equanimity, see it as sensation, use all these different techniques that you're learning here. But if a person hasn't done any of this practice, if they haven't done that much good Kamma, then every time they have some little problem, they react as if it's terrible, it's a minor hell in itself. So this is important. The more good Kamma you've done, the more you can defuse the bad Kamma when it fruits. So even though a lot of unpleasant things are definitely meant to happen, they don't have to hurt if we know how to react more wisely.