Comfort vs Liberation

Ejo Patrick Mc Mullen Osho is the dharma teacher at Eugene Zendo. Misunderstandings are entirely my own!

There is a difference between the experience of "suffering and the cessation of suffering" and the teachings about it. Teachings vary, describing various numbers of factors and causes, depending on the tradition and circumstances. There is no one "right" teaching. In fact, the litmus for a true teaching is its effect on practitioners. The Buddha said that misunderstandings of the nature of Karma are by definition those that discourage practice and benevolent action on the part of those who subscribe to them.

The present experience of the self is wholly based on previous karma. Actually, it is nothing but previous karma. The fundamental delusion is that there is a "self" that things happen to. There is a very real distinction between saying "I exist in dependence on everything" and "I am everything. Similarly "Everything changes" versus "Everything is change."

The diligent, active acceptance of karma is key foundation for practice. Understanding that karma laid down in the past appears in the present as the sensation of "self." For example, encountering a person who has hurt me brings all the hurt flooding back; I'm right back in that experience, which has lain dormant as a seed until now.

Outside of continual cycling through realms of difficulty and pleasure, there is the possibility of practice: karma which ends karma. The goal of our lives is not comfort, but liberation.


It was so good to be in a didactic class again. I have great respect for Ejo's understanding; I studied karma a fair amount and have found that even otherwise accomplished teachers have trouble discussing it in an accurate and satisfying manner. Ejo's mastery of the history of Buddhist thought is evident, and his manifestation of it in the present is—effortlessly, without fanfare—amazing.