Karma & Rebirth
February 29, 2008
We’re born into this world without an instruction booklet. There’s nothing to explain which issues in life are important, which are the important things to know. We do know when we feel suffering and we know when we feel relative ease, but that’s about as much as we know. As we grow up, there are people to explain things to us. This is where human beings have an advantage over animals. There’s nobody to explain anything to a dog or a cat about how to live. There’s that wonderful story by Mark Twain where the mother dog explains the human world to her puppy. Of course that’s fantasy. What’s interesting about that story is the mother has her information all garbled up. “Presbyterian” is the name of a dog breed; “heroism” means “agriculture” — that sort of thing. Actually, getting garbled information can be one of the dangers of the human world, too. Our parents have taught us things from childhood and they may have gotten things all mixed up as well.