predestination – Just the Tarot

The Five of Pentacles, Karma, and God’s Little Baskets of Muffins

Transforming ourselves through karmic selfishness.

I have a younger friend who HATES karma.

More specifically, he hates when he’s in the middle of an, “Oh poor me,” bitching session and someone shrugs her shoulders and says, “Well, that’s karma.”

First of all, it interrupts the rhythm of his complaining and he has to go back and remember what he was so upset about.

“What was I saying? I know it was important . . . oh, I remember . . . life is meaningless and no one understands me . . .”

Secondly, it infuriates him because it suggests that the mess he finds himself in is somehow HIS fault and the whole point of his rap is that it’s everything and everyone else’s fault. Which is just further proof that no one understands him.

This guy was raised by a Buddhist and that may have something to do with his constant irritation. It’s developmentally important that teenagers be able to rebel against their parents. The first way that we really begin to define who we are in the world is by making it clear that we aren’t our parents. I imagine that it must be pretty damned difficult for a teenager to get any rebellion traction against a Buddhist parent.

“You know, Dad, sometimes I really hate you.”

“Well, son, all strong emotions will pass if we simply do a little deep breathing. Remember, you’re the sky and your emotions are just clouds drifting by.”

“I’ve been think about getting a tattoo. What do you think about that?”

“Ah . . . perhaps you should get a tattoo of a double dorje or some other sacred symbol. In a sense, it would be a constant reminder of the spiritual nature that dwells in physical matter.”

“Maybe I’ll paint my face blue and dye my hair orange.”

“Hmmm . . . I wonder if you were a Druid in a past life. Do you feel a particular attraction to oak trees?”

Aargh! So it’s possible that this guy was deeply emotionally scarred by all of that loving kindness and unconditional acceptance from his parents. If only they’d yelled at him or told him he was an idiot occasionally!

Still, he does have a bit of a point about the notion of karma.

It’s perfectly understandable that people get a little riled up over the idea of crappy things happening to them because of what they may have done in a past life. After all, most of us have absolutely no memory of our past lives and so it feels like we’re being punished for something that someone else did.

Suppose I was Attila the Hun in a past life and in a fit of Barbarian Rage I whipped out my scimitar and beheaded a turtle. Then 200 lifetimes later – as Dan Adair – I’m in a traffic accident and I get whiplash BECAUSE I decapitated that turtle. That seems a little . . . unjust. I mean, I’m NOT Attila in any sort of a meaningful sense, so why should I get sent to the principal’s office because Attila was a dick?

And then, to make it even worse, when I’m sitting there in my cervical collar reflecting on exactly HOW unjust it all is, an acquaintance says, “Oh, well, that’s karma.” As my younger friend would put it: “Fuck you.”

Now, there’s a particularly odious Christian doctrine called, “predestination.” It holds that some people are born with the unchangeable destiny that they’re going to heaven when they die. Other people are born with the unchangeable destiny that they’re going straight to hell when they die. It doesn’t matter what we do or how we behave, our ultimate destiny has already been decided at the moment of birth.

It’s like God is up there in the Kosmic Kitchen baking up human Souls and, as he pulls each one out of the Soul Muffin Pan, he tosses them into separate baskets marked, “Heaven,” and, “Hell.”

“Okay, heaven, heaven, heaven – whoops, you’re fucked – hell, heaven, fucked again, heaven . . .” Like the beggars in the Five of Pentacles, we’re out in the cold and we’re going to stay there.

Theologians came up with a perfectly logical reason for this totally insane doctrine. The idea is that God is all powerful and all knowing. So if God knows everything, then that must mean that he knows everything that happened in the past, the present, AND the future! And if God already knows what’s going to happen in the future, then he must already know who’s going to heaven and who’s going to hell. Shazam! There you are – it’s already determined.

That’s the kind of weird, Left-Brain, cuckoo for coco puffs vibe that a lot of people get off of the notion of karma. It seems to be some sort of an inexorable process that was put into motion a long time before we came along and there’s not a damned thing we can do about it. We’re either in the Heaven Basket or we’re in the Oh, You’re So Fucked Basket. Like it’s something that happens TO us for no particular reason.

Of course, the important point that most of us miss is that karma isn’t happening to us, we’re happening to karma. It’s a totally dynamic process and it’s something that we can change every single day simply by the ways that we behave right now.

The most simplistic way to think of it is as a sort of a bank account. Rather than being born into a You’re-Going-to-Hell Basket or a You’re-Going-to-Heaven Basket, we’re born with a certain amount of Karmic Kash that we earned (or didn’t earn) in past lives. The Dalai Lama will probably be reborn with several savings accounts, a really huge checking account, many certificates of deposit and a great coin collection. Attila the Turtle Beheader, on the other hand, will be reborn with 50 cents in the bank and a lot of overdue bills.

The thing is, though, that the way that we’re born isn’t our destiny. The way that we behave is our destiny. Attila, for instance, might start a refuge for homeless turtles. Every single time that he saves a turtle and gives it a meaningful life – KA -CHING – that’s another deposit in his Karma Account. The Dalai Lama, on the other hand, might decide to support Eric Trump for President and – ZAP – that’s a major withdrawal from his Karmic Account.

As David Michie said in, “Buddhism for Busy People,”

In what is one of the most outstandingly ingenious aspects of Buddhist teachings, we come to realize that our own selfish interests lie in being altruistic . . .months, years or decades of being generous for selfish reasons begin to have a predictable effect . . .what starts out as a contrived and self-conscious change of attitude and behavior results in a genuine metamorphosis.

In other words, we don’t have to start out as Mother Theresa or an Awakened Master. We can start out as perfectly normal, selfish, self-centered human beings who are being kind to other beings because we DON’T want to end up wearing a cervical collar. When we pick up a turtle that’s in the middle of the road and leave it safely on the other side, we can be doing it for the completely selfish reason of wanting to fill up our Karmic Account.

As we continue those little acts of kindness they gradually transform us. They become acts of loving/kindness, where we’re actually noticing and caring about the welfare of the people and beings around us. The translation of the word, “karma,” is, “action,” and that’s the key. Our actions change us, even if they originate in selfishness.

And that’s how Attila the Hun becomes the Dalai Lama. Pretty simple.

Predicting the Future, Predestination, and Black Out Drinking

I can state with no hesitation at all that Tarot cards, “work.” What I mean by that is that, after decades of using them, I can attest to the fact that most of the time they’re mostly accurate in predicting the future outcomes of current events.

Which, of course, leaves a lot of questions hanging about exactly what we mean by the future and how it can possibly be predicted if it doesn’t exist yet.

There is a particularly hideous christian doctrine called, “predestination,” which holds that the future is, somehow, already decided. It was espoused in different forms by Augustine and the Calvinists, and is sort of the logical outcome of the christian world view. It holds that

God is all knowing and all powerful;
Which means that God already knows exactly what’s going to happen in the future; and
Human beings don’t have the power to change what God knows to be true;
Therefore, the future is already decided and there’s nothing we can do about it.

The upshot of that – according to their thinking – is that it’s already been decided that some people are going to heaven and some people are going to hell and that’s just the way it is. If you belong to the,“hell group,” it doesn’t matter how good or kind or compassionate you are in this lifetime, you’re still going to hell. Why? Because God already decided what the future is going to be.

Pretty weird, huh? I mean . . . it’s logical, in a strange, twisted way . . . but what a bizarre, cruel way to view life and God.

It has a major flaw in that it’s what philosophers would call a, “closed system.” That means that, if everything’s already been decided, then nothing can change, evolve, grow, or become different in any meaningful sense. And if nothing can grow or change, then it’s dead. And, as we all know, if there’s one thing in the universe that’s constant, it’s change. Everything is constantly growing, changing, and evolving and all we have to do to prove that is to look out the window.

So Predestination was kind of a sick, christian brain fart that grew into a religious doctrine. It would be laughable, except for that belief that the future somehow exists already and, therefore, can be predicted.

Which it can, but not because it already exists. It can be predicted because some things are . . . well . . . predictable.

Here’s an example. I live in Northern California which has been burning down with wildfires all summer. The Western United States has been in a major drought for two years, the forests are overgrown and dry as a match stick, and the government refused to fund any additional firefighters or fire fighting equipment.

THEREFORE . . . it was entirely predictable – last winter – that we were going to have an AWFUL summer of forest fires. No question about it. That doesn’t mean that the forest fires somehow already existed in the future, it just means that all of those factors – drought, overgrown forests, not enough firefighters – added up to a very predictable event. In terms of Tarot cards, it would have been represented by The Tower – disaster and destruction.

Human beings are also very, very predictable. If we have a friend who has a history of being involved with abusive men, the odds are very high that she’s going to go right on getting beaten up, unless she gets therapy. If we have a friend who’s suddenly experiencing black outs when he drinks, the odds are very high that he’s going to devolve into an alcoholic.

We tend to get stuck in patterns – or perhaps ruts would be a better term – and keep going in those directions unless something intervenes and changes our course. To put it in terms of Newton’s Laws of Motion, “an object in motion will stay in motion at constant velocity, unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.” In this case, a life going in a particular direction will tend to keep going in that direction unless something happens to change that.

Essentially, that’s all that a Tarot reading does. There are card positions for the past, the present and the future, as well as possible intervening factors. The reading is just saying, “This is what’s happened in your past, this is where you’re at now, and this is, logically, where that pattern is taking you next. Here’s what you can do to change that, if you want to.”

The magic, of course, is how all of that information gets into a card layout. How do the cards somehow pick up on what’s happening in our lives and transfer that into a discernible, coherent pattern in a reading?

I have no idea. I just know that it works. I really don’t understand exactly how electricity, “works,” either, but that doesn’t stop me from flipping on a light switch if the room is dark.

When we’re talking about, “predicting the future,” it’s always important to remember that nothing’s ever written in stone. It’s very, very likely that a person who is into abusive relationships will go on being abused. BUT – sometimes they find a great therapist. It’s very, very likely that a person who’s having black out drinking will end up dead or in jail. BUT – sometimes they stumble into an AA meeting or just stop drinking.

In a very real sense, we’re not predicting the future at all. We’re predicting the present. And we can always change our present moment.

Dan Adair is the author of, “Just the Tarot,” available on Amazon.com at a very reasonable price.