Karma: Cause and Effect

By Amin Hussain and Clive Hazell

This book is intended as a guide to those who seek to understand the inner meanings of spirituality through Eastern philosophy. It uses exciting metaphors, allegories, and stories that go beyond the traditional way of explaining philosophy. Additionally, the book discusses how karma, which is the aggregation of ones actions carried forward from ones past lives and the current day, plays a role in everyday life. This book describes how one can take control of his or her own karma.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jun 12, 2017
• ISBN: 9781524694869

Amin Hussain

By profession, Amin Hussain is an accountant; however, another passion of his is philosophy. He spent most of his life searching for the “water” of wisdom and insight. However, no matter how much he searched, he had to wait for the water to come to him. At the age of 17, he realized what that water meant and that was the beginning of his journey. He spent the next few decades consuming all the knowledge of the various philosophes and religions and the outcome of that search was this book. Clive Hazell is a counseling psychologist in Chicago. He has written several books and articles on family systems, the psychodynamics of groups and emotional development

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© 2017 Amin Hussain and Clive Hazell. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse   06/13/2017

ISBN: 978-1-5246-9487-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-9486-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017908644

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Introduction

Law, Path, Truth, Infinity

Conclusion

Bibliography

INTRODUCTION

Amin Hussain

Growing up as the eldest of six children, my mother was my best friend. The only time I spent away from her was on Sunday mornings when my father and I would leisurely walk through the mountains passionately discussing history and spirituality. The stories he shared with me were passed down from his parents and mentors who had heard these stories from their prior generations. These Sunday walks were not only great ways for me to bond with my father, but also planted the seeds of desire for knowledge about philosophy.

When my mother abruptly passed away when I was fourteen, Sunday walks, my childhood and life as I knew it had ended. Not only did we move to a different country where I didn’t know the language, but my father began working more often, and I was left to be the primary caretaker of all my siblings when he was away.

One day my father spontaneously planned a movie night with my brother and me. As we were getting dressed for the movies, he excitedly told my brother and I about how he had met an abaysee while at work. An abaysee is someone who is very knowledgeable, but humble enough to call himself a student who still had much to learn. My father mentioned that the abaysee was holding a discussion with a small group of friends that night, and was wondering if we wanted to go to his talk instead of watching a movie. Since my mother’s passing, I had completely forgotten about philosophy, and hearing about the abaysee rekindled an old flame. My brother and I decided that we wanted to see the abaysee instead of the movie. A few minutes into the meeting, the abaysee told us a story and my brother and I began laughing hysterically. For the first time since my mother’s death, I was smiling and I didn’t stop smiling for the entire session. Over the next five years, I regularly joined these discussions with the abaysee and I found his knowledge therapeutic and thought-provoking; I absorbed everything he had to say.

My Sunday walks with my dad and these meetings with the abaysee prepared me for my own philosophical journey. Coming to the US at the ripe age of twenty enabled me to access texts that were never available in my prior countries of residence. During my limited free time, I took philosophy classes, studied the literature of several different religions and schools of thought and spoke with enlightened members of various communities. Through my journey, I have amassed several notions which I hope to share with readers.

The seeds of my motivation to write this particular book were sown when I was attending a course on philosophy in the US. At one point the instructor read a poem by Rumi to the class. As is so often the case with Rumi, the poem was about love. I was surprised and disappointed that the instructor interpreted the poem just as that, as it being about love. I knew that there was much more to Rumi’s work than this literal, somewhat concrete approach. As I continued my spiritual quest, reading philosophers and mystics from a wide array of traditions, I found that this very concrete approach was quite common. I found it quite limiting.

In the story of the execution of Socrates, for example, we come across the idea that it was simply a legal issue, with Socrates being accused of corrupting the youth of Athens. No matter what tale from whatever religion I explored, whether it was the conversation between Krishna and Arjuna or the stories of Christ, I found the same physicalistic interpretation of the narratives. It was as if someone somewhere had decided the meaning of these tales and the whole matter had been settled.

This book seeks to redress that imbalance. It views spiritual development as a quest, as a journey. The human being is searching for answers to eternal mysteries. These stories, these teachings that come from so many traditions all contain clues as to the correct direction to take. Discovering these clues requires an open, inquisitive attitude. Thus, this book offers different interpretations of age-old teachings and tales in the expectation that new insights will be brought forth.

This book is thus intended for anyone who is interested in philosophy in the original sense of the word, meaning love of wisdom. It represents and evolves from a body of knowledge not easily available to the wider public and thus should be of interest to a wide range of seekers. People who are just starting on the pathway of spiritual development will, I hope, find some useful and interesting ideas. Individuals who have been searching and learning for a long time might find a surprise or two in these pages.

The approach that I take is one that synthesizes wisdom teaching from a number of traditions. All religions can have something to offer. Philosophers have something to offer that can help on the highway of spiritual development. No body of knowledge is to be rejected out of hand, just as no prophet is to be rejected because he or she is not wearing the right clothes or is not the right size, shape or color.

Thus, as you read this text, you will find ideas and wisdom and stories that hail from Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism and philosophy, to name but a few. While the sources are widely varied the book and the ideas in it do, I believe, form a consistent, coherent whole. All the pieces seem to fit together into a system which has its own internal logic.

The word system is an apt one, I believe, for this body of knowledge is an open system. This means it is open to change. New ideas can show up and be integrated and old ones might fade away. The important thing is the quest. For just as when one is traveling across the USA, a map of the Midwest will work in the central part of the journey, by the time you have reached California, it is a liability and you need a good new one. Thus, this system is sensitive to history, the time of humanity changes and the map of spiritual development needs to be continually re-booted and updated. Unfortunately so many religious systems do not build in this time sensitive notion of a sell by date and individuals hold on to outdated maps. They get lost and stuck.

Thus the reader is encouraged to approach these pages with an open, inquiring mind, ready to adapt to the changes and developments in the spiritual landscape and not to shy away from new interpretations of old stories. Perhaps even something of a playful attitude might help. Spiritual development is very serious business. It involves the care of souls, but it perhaps does not have to be overly solemn. Solemnity does not foster creativity.

Returning to Rumi, we see that his poetry is saturated with passion. To the Westerner, this often interpreted in narrow sensual terms. However perhaps what Rumi is trying to get across is that spiritual development is, can be and probably should be a passion too, perhaps our deepest passion. These pages are an attempt to meet and perhaps encourage that passion in the reader.

Clive Hazell

Like so many interesting things in my life, this one was initiated by my wife, Rosalinda. Amin is my accountant and one day when we were having a conversation after having discussed our taxes, we drifted off to the topics of religion and philosophy. At this, my wife said, You two should write a book! And so we did. We met once every two weeks and Amin would talk and I would listen and take notes. Later, I would transcribe these notes and send them back to Amin for him to check. Thus, three pages or so at a time, this book grew.

At first, I was unsure of my role. I was not the simple straightforward scribe or amanuensis, simply writing down what Amin said, for in the discussion and in the transcription a few of my own ideas and reactions were stimulated and then included. I have always been interested in philosophy and religions and consider myself fairly widely read. However, as the weeks passed, I found, again and again, that my mind was being stretched and blown as an entirely new way of looking at things was revealed by the system Amin expounded upon.

I use the term ‘system" advisedly, for, to me, these ideas do attain the status of a system. Week after week the ideas that Amin shared struck me as odd, different, alien from my usual way of apprehending and explaining things. And yet, as the months passed by, I saw that the ideas, when placed together did form a coherent whole. I have always been of the perhaps unfortunate opinion that a religious system should also be a logically coherent one, that is, if one thing is claimed as true in one part of the system of beliefs, it should not be held as false in another part of the system. Thus far, the system that Amin shared with me does have this logical consistency and in fact, that is one of its precepts, namely, that it should be logically consistent.

Certainly the system is what philosophers and especially philosophers of science, would regard as a speculative one. Even in these pragmatic and empiricist times, that is not necessarily a damning criticism, for a speculative system seeking to explain and utilize metaphysical phenomena, that is, things that we may not sense or measure with our senses, but only perhaps with our intuition, can still be of terrific use. It may not be subject to falsifiability, but it still may be of pragmatic value. It is certainly one of extreme interest.

The system posited here can, I think, be regarded fruitfully as an additional explanatory system for phenomena, a different way of telling the story of how things got to be the way they are. It also posits, and perhaps this is the most vital part of the theory, ways in which we may improve things, actions that are stunning in their simplicity, familiar to one and all, and yet supremely difficult to do.

I am a counseling psychologist. As such, I am armed with many explanations for why people behave the way they do and ways in which they might be able improve their situations. While the system described here provides a completely different explanation for the phenomena I encounter in my office, oddly enough many of the methods for improvement are commonplace in the counselor’s toolkit.

This system, and casual observation, tells us that these are very difficult times for human beings, very challenging. So many remedies and so many cures for these ills have fallen by the wayside. One could potently argue that this is not the time to narrow our focus and ever more relentlessly pursue those pathways that have led nowhere. Now is the time to open our hearts and minds and creatively explore new pathways.

Since what is being presented here is a system, everything relates to everything else. Thus the presentation takes the form of a random walk, as if we are walking through a city, starting here, now turning down this street, pausing here and there; criss-crossing our path several times. Eventually, we gain a picture of the whole. The exposition, just like the topic is not linear.

LAW, PATH, TRUTH, INFINITY

Much eastern philosophy is nature based. For example, one might look at a tree and a patch of grass, reflect on these and ask how one might derive lessons in living from them. If there is a storm, the tree is knocked down but the grass survives unscathed. Perhaps the lesson we may derive from this is that while there is much to be said for the impressive grandeur of the tree, there is a great deal to be said for the humble, close-to-the ground, unassuming grass.

As an additional example we might ponder the sun and the moon. The sun brings forth its own light while the moon reflects light, light that comes first from the sun. Perhaps the moon may be likened to wise humans who reflect light in the form of enlightenment. The light they emanate is not their own, but is reflected by them from another, stronger source.

Eastern philosophy also makes use of poems and poetic expressions. Often these are hard to understand, as is the case with many of the poems of Rumi. One goal of this book is to take some of these poems and translate them into more easily understood language.

This book aims at being beneficial for students of philosophy and perhaps can serve as a reference book for individuals interested in self-exploration and those in search of their own truth.

How do you understand the Four Steps in Philosophy?

1.    Law

2.    Path

3.    Truth

4.    Infinity

Law and Path go together. They refer to that which is physical and the intellect. Truth and Infinity go together. They refer to the soul and the heart

Law:

Any particular religion has laws or rules to follow of some sort. They might come in the form of prayers, the timing of prayers, the books one is supposed to read, the codes one is supposed to follow. Sometimes these laws might involve washing one’s hands, dress codes, singing, chants and music. These are usually buttressed by books, directives and often interpretations and explanations for the rules or laws.

Talk about the law invariably leads to talk of submitting oneself. All of the foundational religious leaders brought laws with them—Zoroaster, Moses and Mohammed each in their own way brought the containment and direction of laws.

We might ask why such laws are provided. Why do Moslems pray five times a day, and fast? What is the function of the Ten Commandments or the dietary laws one finds in other religions? One way of understanding the function of the laws is through the metaphor of a herd. The laws serve to group the behavior of individuals together, not simply for the regulation of the behavior in and of itself but for the function of protection.

Path:

Path refers to the manner in which the adherent follows the laws. Key to this is the concept of love. For example, if prayer time is at six o’ clock and there is a dress code and perhaps also a cleansing ritual and the person follows these directives then they have followed the law, but not necessarily the path, for they may not be truly present, truly participating in the event and consequently do not truly understand what is going on. Such a point as this is illustrated in the following story.

There was a saint who was attending prayer in a hall of worship. For a while the prayer meeting was going as planned with the leader of the prayers in front. About half way through, however, the saint took out some food and started eating. The other worshippers were stunned at his behavior and afterwards admonished him for his disrespect. Why would you behave in such an inappropriate manner? How could you? No one could be that hungry,, they asked. The saint simply replied that the person who had been leading the prayers was actually leading the prayers until about half way through when he started to wonder about what was happening at his home, so the saint thought, Well, while he is off doing that, I might as well eat my lunch. The people asked the prayer leader and he affirmed that this was indeed the case.

The story illustrates that there are two parts to prayer—actual attendance and adherence to the form, but also to be fully there, to be completely psychologically and spiritually present.

The Path involves reflection, reflection upon the laws, their function and one’s relationship to them. There is an old saying, The lion only shows up to those who have reflection. What could this saying mean? Perhaps the lion symbolizes power, spiritual power, and spiritual power only emerges in someone who reflects, who is mindful. This power is very intricately connected to love, because once we reflect on the Law and our relationship to it, love emerges. Reflection upon the law implies going the extra mile, putting in a little more effort in relation to the Law and the associated rituals. Instead of performing the rituals mindlessly, like a habit, one approaches them with freshness and a creative attitude. This might be done by performing the ritual in a slightly different frame of mind or with a little more preparation. For example, if prayer time is at six o’ clock, one might show up a little early to reflect on the deeper meaning of the prayer. In this way, one may move from the Law and its practice to the Path.

Yet another story that, like much of Eastern religion, uses animals to convey meaning helps elucidate the meaning of the path.

There was a cow eating peacefully in the jungle and as it was eating a lion appeared in front of her. The lion wanted to eat the cow, but the cow said,