Heir to my kamma

EFFECT --- 2nd PRECEPT

This is a guided meditation on what it means to be HEIR OF MY KAMMA.

As always, when we do sitting meditation together, please find a place on your own
(only parents with small children keep them near to themselves).

Find a position in which you can sit comfortably for about 5 minutes, back upright, but relaxed.
Please stop talking, and slowly close your eyes, directing your attention inward. ---
You may want to take a couple of DEEP in-breaths, making space inside ---

remembering the peace and freedom we have in our hearts. ---

Feel your body, which you have inherited from birth. ---

And feel your breath, going in -- and out. -----

The sensations of breathing helping you to remember your NOSE -- , your THROAT --- , your CHEST --- , your BELLY. ------ You can feel your body breathing. -----

Focusing our attention on the body breathing has an EFFECT on our hearts and minds ----- :
We tend to calm down naturally, and we are less focused on things from past or future. --- Right? -

Although small children find it difficult sometimes, because --- often they are restless and want attention or want to be entertained. So when we meditate together like this, I need to make it interesting for them too.

So I will tell you a STORY now, a TRUE story. ---

It’s a story about how we are HEIR TO OUR KAMMA: how we have to live with the results of our actions.

And it’s a story about the 2nd precept too.

A while ago, a man came to the monastery. He came to pay back quite an amount of money he had stolen from the donation box here 15 years ago! At that time, he had got away with it – nobody had seen him. There was nobody who could tell him to pay it back. – Really nobody? ---

He came on his own accord now, 15 years later, saying that he couldn’t live any longer with this burden of wrong-doing and shame in himself. After all these years of unease in himself, he had finally made an effort to earn enough money, save it up to the full amount he had stolen 15 years ago, and then he had come to pay it back. ---

After that, he felt relieved and even a bit proud of himself. He felt he could trust himself again.– Finally he had responded to the deepest wish of his heart, he had taken responsi-ability. He could pay it back, and was a free man again. ---
Isn’t that beautiful?

Can you relate to this story? --- Do you remember something from your own life, where you had taken something that didn’t belong to you, and may be, after a short while of triumph, that you had been clever enough to get away with it, started to feel uneasy and miserable: somehow it didn’t feel right any longer, and you started wishing, you wouldn’t have done it? – This is how we learn to know that we NEVER get away with it, because we can’t betray our own heart.

We are the owner of our actions, and heir to the results of our actions. The results of what we are doing are with us, even if we try to not notice. And even if others didn’t notice. ---

So, in case that you have any unfinished business, anything that you regret to have taken, even if it is long ago --- : Can you pay attention to how your heart is feeling about that now? --- And can you think of a way how to ‘pay it back’, so to speak, how to relieve your heart from that burden, how to feel trustworthy again? ----- May be, you can make a resolution now, for later: how to do that? ---

So if you do something good, it may be that you want to impress somebody else and get praised. – But in the first place, the effect will be that YOU feel good in yourself. ---

And if you do something bad … - notice, what happens. ---

Can you come back to your breath again? – Breathing in – and out. ---

bell

Please, slowly open your eyes again.

---

---