What's Karma, anywise?

[Robin Landseadel]

On Dec 10, 2010, at 4:28 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen wrote:

> Although the idea of karma had also been present in Pynchon's  
> earlier works (cf. "Turbulences
> in the aether, uncertainties out in the winds of karma", GR: pp.  
> 146-7), it came to full prominence
> not before Pynchon reappeared in the literary public sphere with  
> Vineland, inside which karma is
> a key concept.

Viaduct? Good question. The answer is -- if it walks like a duck,  
hangs out with quasi-new-age metaphysical types, hands out "keys" at  
wedding parties and in general has the visage of a Hippie, then Hippie  
is a critical issue. Of course, the Hippie thing is terribly  
misunderstood, on account of the so called "War on Drugs" and all  
that, but and still -- Pynchon's "take" on the concept of "Karma" is  
heavily filtered through the social filters that the author engaged  
with at the time. Whatever the Hippie movement might or might not have  
been, the author has a lot of the particulars of how that all shook  
out in L.A. in Inherent Vice, providing plenty of context for the  
author's concepts.

> The teaching is Tibetian.

And though it passed to the west on account of the Korean & Vietnamese  
war and the Beats and all that . . .

> Directly related to Tibet is also AtD's idea of Shambhala,

This also places the concept in the context of "Shangri-La" and other  
western fantasies about the Mystic  East, explaining a bit of the skew  
in the Western flavors of Buddhism  . . .

> whereby the physical place is not the crucial point: Shambhala, as  
> it says at least three times in
> the book, is to be found in our hearts.

Now click your heels together three times and say "There's no place  
like home . . "

> The (semi-faked)

Ultra-faked . . .

> Tibetian seal on the cover (and then again
> on the page after the Thelonious Monk intro quote) of Against the  
> Day shows, apart from being
> a self-ironic hint from P that we now enter an oh so holy book, some  
> kinda affection for Tibetian
> culture on Pynchon's side. His approach to it is unavoidably a  
> Western one. So maybe it makes
> sense when we, while looking for Pynchon's concept of karma, do  
> consult an authority among
> the Western adepts of Tibetian Buddhism. Let's hear it from Pema  
> Chödrön:
>
> "What is Karma?
>
> Karma is a difficult subject. Basically it means that what happens  
> in your life is somehow a result
> of things that you have done before. That's why you are encouraged  
> to work with what happens
> to you rather than blame it on others. This kind of teaching on  
> karma can easily be misunderstood.
> People get into a heavy-duty sin-and-guilt trip. They feel that if  
> things are going wrong, it means
> they did something bad and they're being punished. But that's not  
> the idea at all. The idea of karma
> is that you continually get the teachings you need in order to open  
> your heart. To the degree that
> you didn't understand in the past how to stop protecting your soft  
> spot, how to stop armoring your
> heart, now you're given this gift of teachings in the form of your  
> life. Your life gives you everything
> you need to learn how to open further." (Pema Chödrön: Comfortable  
> with Uncertainty, p. 124)

Alternately, you could get into the car, light up and look all around  
as an appropriate ritual preparation for the entrance into this  
literary labyrinth.

> Could imagine that Pynchon would agree wholeheartedly.
>
> We have to stop acting surprised when something happens to us.

Tell it to the GOP!

> (Pynchonesque Questions: Do social figurations have a karma of their  
> own? Like family clans or
> big corporations. Does the Traverse Clan have a genuine  
> 'transpersonal' karma? The East India Trading Company, or the IG  
> Farben?)

You mean like the attraction of like-minded musical types into  
regional clans?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfK-UzQ48JE

> Whatever this weekend has in store for you: I wish you heaven!

"It was the Hexagram of the heavens, it was the strings of my  
Guitar . . ."

if the six white vapor trail was a hexagram in the heavens & the same  
as the
strings of her guitar, it would be six unbroken lines which is the first
hexagram of the i ching...here is an excerpt from the wilhelm  
translation:

"the creative-
the first hexagram is made up of six unbroken lines. these unbroken  
lines
stand for the primal power, which is light giving, active, strong, and  
of
the spirit. the hexagram is consistently strong in character, and  
since it
is without weakness, its essence is power or energy. it's image is  
heaven.
its energy is represented as unrestricted by any fixed conditions in  
space
and is therefore conceived of as motion time is regarded as the basis of
this motion. thus the hexagram includes also the power of time and the  
power
of persisting in time, that is, duration.

the power represented by the hexagram is to be interpreted in a dual
sense-in terms of its action, on the universe and of its action on the  
world
of men. in relation to the universe, the hexagram expresses the strong,
creative action of the deity. in relation to the human world, it  
denotes the
creative action of the hold man or sage, of the ruler or leader of  
men, who
through his power awakens and develops their higher nature.

the hexagram is assigned to the fourth month may-june when the light- 
giving
power is at its zenith, i.e. before the summer solstice has marked the
beginning of the year's decline"

http://www.mail-archive.com/joni@jmdl.com/msg23744.html