Everything is as it should be

Everything is as it should be. That’s a line that gets tossed around often by Buddhists, particularly when things are going well. It seems harder to apply the same thinking to those moments when all hell has broken loose and we just find ourselves wishing it were all over.

The topic came up during my Monday study class and I used it as my dharma talk this morning at Kokoro, the assisted living home for seniors where I conduct services. To be honest, I probably wouldn’t have given it much thought at all if Jerry, who leads the Monday class, hadn’t put a finer point on the topic.

Everything is as it should be because of karmic causes and conditions. How else would it be? Throw in a small change to those circumstances, be it a matter of timing or weather or someone’s mood, all themselves subject to karmic causes and conditions, and a new result rises from the equation. When A and B happen, C is the result. This is always the case.

In other words, even when shit happens, it’s as it should be.

Part of dealing with that, of course, is accepting that nothing is either good or bad. It’s only how we perceive things that make them so. It’s raining as I write this. I like rain. I enjoy watching it fall and I enjoy the sound of the drops as they patter patter patter against my window. For someone who was caught outside in the rain, or the farmer who is trying to harvest strawberries right about now, it’s a different story. Karmic causes and conditions bring us to our various conclusions about whatever is happening around us.

This isn’t a dark sort of fatalism. It isn’t fatalistic at all. When we understand karma, we are free to make more of a particular event or moment. We can change it by changing the conditions that came together to produce a particular outcome. We may not always get the results we want, and we may be disappointed with the ones we get, but understanding that makes acceptance of what’s difficult easier to bear and opens us to the possibilities of making change where ever we can.

Besides, disappointment in a certain outcome is just another form of attachment, another example of our egos refusing to let go. If things don’t work out the way I want them to, I have cause to look for the underlying reasons and maybe I’ll discover something that will help me do things differently in the future.

Namu Amida Butsu.