Karma and Dead Kittens

Karma is a complex idea. Ask a Buddhist monk or a dedicated yogi to explain it to you and they will sigh deeply and start brewing a hi-octane French roast. Our colloquial, pop-cultural understanding of karma is somewhat less complex, however, and can be boiled down to the catchphrase, “karma is a bitch.” Add “and so am I,” or “LOL,” and you have the bumper sticker or Facebook status of everyone who got dumped ever.

This idea of karma as a sort of magical universal force that deals out punishments to the wicked and rewards to the virtuous smacks of Judeo-Christian bias. It’s our yoga-fied interpretation of the angry Old Testament God. And while I personally love the idea of swarms of bees attacking, say, Mario Batali for stealing money from his employees, that’s just not how karma works.

Karma is actually a neutral force in the universe. It can be defined simply as cause and effect. It’s not a conscious, judicious entity. It’s more like physics. It’s a law that says if something happens, something else that is basically equal will happen in response. In other words, no one can escape karma, but it’s not out to get you, either.

I have a story to tell about karma. And it’s a terrible one, so if you’re squeamish you might want to just watch the trailer for Maleficent instead. Otherwise, here goes.

On New Years Day, my girlfriend and I stopped at Hank’s Super Market in the Marigny to pick up some cheap champagne for a celebratory dinner. In the parking lot were some very drunk and probably very high street kids arguing about something that was completely incomprehensible to outsiders.

One of the kids had a pitbull tied up with rope to a bench. The other kid had a small grey and white kitten mewing loudly from the shoulder of his leather jacket. As the kids got closer to each other, the pitbull strained and pulled against the bench and the kitten’s cries became more panicked.

The boys swung at each other. There was a fight. The kitten got caught between the boys. Someone threw a punch and the kitten was crushed.
Dead.

The other boy jumped on the boy who killed the kitten and beat him until he was unconscious. He kicked him a few last times for good measure, and then walked off with his dog, leaving the unconscious boy and the dead kitten lying on the asphalt in the parking lot entrance.

I thought, “Things die when we allow our actions to be ruled by anger.”

Not just any things, but soft sweet innocent living things like kittens.

I saw the boy who killed the kitten wandering drunk down Frenchman a few hours later. He looked like the most lost person in the world. He looked like he had been crying. He looked like he wanted to die. And even though I was pretty sure he was a terrible person, I felt a little tiny bit of compassion for him.

Our pop-cultural interpretation of karma tells us that boys who kill kittens, however accidentally, deserve to have their asses kicked and to be left for dead in the middle of the road. They deserve to feel lost and sad and lonely and unloved. If they don't die immediately, they at least deserve to want to die.

And it is so unbelievably easy to give in to that line of thinking that I can actually feel my brainwaves magnetized in that direction.

But that, my friends, is not what karma means. Karma does not mean: I think you are a bad person and so you deserve it when bad things happen to you. In fact, I don’t get to know what you deserve and what you don’t. Buddhists say that only the omniscient mind of a Buddha can comprehend the intricacies of the play of karma.

So, as easy and fun as it would be for me to sit back on my yoga mat and judge gutter punks, that’s not my place. My job is to try to figure out what my karma has to do with this situation. Why was I the witness to this? Why me? What did I do in the past to belong in this equation? 

I was haunted by images of this beaten boy and this dead kitten for weeks. I felt completely overwhelmed by the sadness of this animal life lost, this human life broken. Bloody memories crept into my meditations, my yoga practice, my daily life. I was traumatized.

Finally, I talked to another teacher about it. He said, “Maybe you were meant to see it so that there would be someone to say a prayer for that boy and that kitten. Maybe you were there to see it so that someone would be there to spiritually digest this event and bring it meaning. Maybe you were there to do the spiritual work that the boy isn’t able to do.”

Maybe he was right.

I don’t understand the intricacies of how my karma brought me to bear witness to that event. I don't know if my deep spiritual work allowed me to be present or if it's some other kind of lesson. I don't even know if me being there is a cause or an effect. But I don't really need to know the answers to those questions. 

It’s what I do in response that’s important. I am in control of the karma that I create as a result of being a witness. And it is my job to make sure that I use that experience to expand my consciousness. 

My initial response was to feel traumatized and powerless, as though I am the victim of world I can’t control. But since I’ve had a bit more time to digest, being the witness to this violent but probably fairly common event has made me think a lot more carefully about my actions.

When I feel angry, I think, “Things die when we allow our actions to be ruled by anger.”

When I see street kids with kittens, I practice compassion. (Maybe not with a great deal of dexterity, but I'm working on it.)

Seeing what seemed like a textbook rendering of karma at work has forced me to think in a more sophisticated way about the whole idea of karma, how we think it works, and how it actually works. It has made me more attentive to the possible effects of my actions, not just on myself, but on the sweet fluffy world around me. 

Replacing Cigarette Butts With Baby Carrots, or My Drunk Neighbors, Part Two

My neighbors are drunk again. I know, big deal, right? Anyways, this party started sometime late on Mother’s Day and ended on Tuesday. Yeah, I said Tuesday.

This is New Orleans, y’all.

So, you’re probably wondering whether I judged my drunk neighbors as I groggily walked my dogs past them at 8am. This answer is yes…kind of…and it’s complicated.

I actually didn’t judge them on Monday. On Monday, I wondered whether they knew someone who had been shot in the second line on Mother’s Day. I felt sorry for them, which is like a stepping stone to feeling compassion, only totally not the same thing at all. I noted the difference between sympathy and compassion, and sent them prayers as I scooped up my dog’s poop.

So, yeah, I’m basically Enlightened.

On Tuesday, though, guess what? I judged them. I stopped myself pretty quickly, though. I stopped myself by instead actively wondering what kind of drugs they were on. Molly? Coke? Adderall? Crystal meth seems unlikely but possible? Does anyone do crack anymore? I really don’t know.

Lay Back, It's All Been Done Before

A couple of years ago I was charged with the task of minding my friend's Avril Lavigne fan blog while she was on vacation. It was a paying gig for both of us, not a product of our passions. We were hired to track then current news and gossip. So, for a few weeks I knew a lot about Avril Lavigne.

Please forgive me. I needed to pay the rent.

Does it go without saying that I have never been a fan? Her pink-pop-punk gives me cavities. But I always want to be a fair writer, so I did a lot of research about her. Frankly, I wanted to find something about her that redeemed her in my eyes. Instead I found a (not very flattering) interview in which she was asked to name a song by the Sex Pistols and couldn't, but then claimed to be "Sid Vicious for a new generation."

Later she would respond to criticisms about her lack of knowledge about punk history by saying:

People are like, 'Well, she doesn't know the Sex Pistols.' Why would I know that stuff? Look how young I am. That stuff's old, right?

I feel like I don't actually need to draw out the nuances of why it's not okay to proclaim yourself a member of (sub)cultures that you don't actually know anything about. Right? You don't get to be the next Sid Vicious if you don't know who the first one was.

This is Sid Vicious. He couldn't actually play any instruments and he couldn't actually sing and he is arguably the most famous punk icon. Why? Because he got on stage and made a band and played the shows and didn't give a fuck about what he was supposed to be or do. Am I saying this DIY attitude is what Avril Lavigne is expressing when she says she doesn't need to know about punk (even know she is one)?

Absolutely not.

Sid Vicious was probably a dick, but he wasn't a shiny pink product. He wasn't trying to sell punk. One of the dominant ideas behind punk is that you can't buy it and you can't sell it. You have to embody it.

So, there's a couple of ideas I want to tease out about this. The first one is that, as a yoga culture, a lot of the time we act like a big crowd of Avril Lavignes. We call ourselves yogis, but we don't know where the tradition came from. We say namaste, but we don't really know what it means. And sometimes we get scared to ask questions because it seems like everyone else already knows.

Yoga For Smart People

I apologize for not being terribly on-the-ball about posting this past week or so. I've been launching a new site called Yoga For Smart People. If you want to read what I have to say about Celebrity Yoga Culture, Johnny Depp, and yoga sex scandals, check out my essay, "Gotta Getta Guru." Otherwise, I will be posting again here in a few days.

Compassion and the High Life

My neighbors down the street have been drunk since 4pm yesterday, roughly two hours after the explosions in Boston. I could hear their hollering from inside my kitchen all afternoon and evening. They’ve been out on their porch again today since I walked my dogs this morning, holding cans of beer in soggy paper bags.

Does this make me nervous? Yeah, kind of. When they’re sober, they wave and say hello, but when they’re drunk they just stare at me hard when I walk by. If you aren’t the kind of person that’s drunk at 9am on a Tuesday, it’s just sort of hard to wrap your head around, which is why I’ve been thinking about it all morning.

I’ve been trying really hard to practice feeling compassion for them. I was mostly failing until a few minutes ago. And then I thought about how I felt when I heard the news about Boston.

I felt scared, angry, sad, and confused. I felt like something bad had happened and there was nothing I could do about it. I felt like something bad might happen to me, my loved ones, or my home and there was nothing I could do about it.

You name it, I felt it. We all did.

And maybe if I hadn’t sworn off drinking for 2013, I would be drunk right now, too. Because that moment when you are overwhelmed by grief and confusion always seems like the best time to have a beer.

I can imagine my neighbors watching the news for an hour, growing increasingly more agitated, when finally someone suggested that they turn off the TV and roll a blunt on the porch. What a relief that first hit and that first crisp swallow of cold High Life must have been.

And maybe for a few hours they talked, and consoled each other in the way that a lot of men (and not just men) seem to; by theorizing about who to blame and how to get revenge. And then a few hours of beer and weed and talk of vengeance might have passed and eventually settled into angry despondence.

And that’s when I walked by with my dogs and waved and my neighbors were just too drunk and overwhelmed to acknowledge me, to do anything but stare. And their stares seemed scary because they were scared.

And then I was scared.

NOW OLD New New NOLA Schedule and New Sliding Scale Starts at $5!!!

HEY Y'ALL: THIS SCHEDULE IS NO LONGER UP TO DATE. PLEASE CHECK MY GOOGLE CALENDAR FOR AN UP TO DATE TRACEY-FINDER. 

Rage Against The Machine. Together.

The other day I was feeling kind of 90's nostalgic. I'm thirty-six, so the 90's were my teenage years, and even though I had all the usual angst (and then some), what I remember now is that the music was good and the people I hung out with were fun and super supportive. To add a little musical score to memory lane, I decided to look up an old favorite song. 

In case you don't feel like watching, it's "Killing In The Name Of," by Rage Against The Machine. 

Not exactly a rare cut, but a fine moment for the still young rap rock genre. 

Bam! There they were, the 90's in all their flannel-clad be-Doc Marten-ed ecstasy, complete with terrible white boy dreadlocks. Actually, though, I was blown away. Not by my split attraction-revulsion to the whole scene, but by the very visceral memory of the sea of dudes that attended every single punk/ska/hardcore/metal show I went to. They looked something like this (although stillness does them no justice):

Granted, this was a big, festival-like show and nothing like most of the tiny venues that most of the bands I saw played in, but you get the picture. Or do you? See this seemingly endless mass of writhing bodies? It's all (mostly) men. Some of them are drunk. All of them are worked up into an incredible frenzy, moshing and crowd-surfing, and oh, just being boys. Great, right?