During the Surangama Sutra Study group, we had talked about the 25 sages, who had each attained Enlightenment by different means. The methods that are described in the Sutra are quite diverse, as they range from contemplating the whiteness on the tip of the nose when breathing to the impermanence of sounds. But one of the things that touched me was how the sages often have to see an obstacle in a new light. One of the sages, Gavampati, suffers from "an illness which causes me to chew like a cow" (p.213), due to insulting an elder monk in a previous life. In this story, the Buddha shows Gavampati how to contemplate flavors so that he is able to investigate where the flavors come from.
As I read this story, I started to wonder, was the challenge that Gavampati was born with really an example of 'bad' karma? Or was it simply an opportunity to go deeper into awareness of a particular sense, to find its source in mind? This vignette is an example of where something that seems to have a bad result ends up containing a seed of opportunity to practice. I am tempted to refer to this experience as a kind of 'grace', but I don't think that Buddhism has an equivalent to this kind of notion or concept.
Everyday life often provides me with ample evidence to suggest that there are no absolutely bad situations. I recall one time when I was much younger, how I did poorly on a math assignment because I had failed to read the instructions correctly. I think that I had either been too careless or not able to The grade I received was not that great, but the experience gave me an opportunity to communicate better with the teacher to clarify what I needed to do. I ended up revising the assignment to the point where I was able to do something more creative than I had expected.
More recently, I had a similar experience in a different course. During these experiences, I have often felt the frustration of not knowing how to change the assignments, and there was some feeling of fear around having to start anew in what felt like a disadvantageous position. But if I was able to pause and put down who I think I was supposed to be in that moment, I would have realized that there is nothing bad about starting from the beginning or even being 'behind' in some ways.
I think a challenge I am faced with is to have faith that something that seems like ''bad" karma or a "bad' outcome from previous actions, could often furnish possibilities for some good outcomes as well. I suspect that I am not the only person who sometimes associates a bad outcome with 'falling off ' track, falling behind, or being out of some place/time where I am supposed to be. It seems that these situations can create a lot of anxiety for me regarding falling behind a self-created standard. It arouses fears of the isolation that people sometimes feel when they are 'detained' or 'suspended' from the course of things because they are not up to par with others in an average bracket.
I wonder, from an educational perspective: how can the fear of falling behind be addressed? Just as karma is not absolutely 'good' or 'bad', is there a more holistic way of grading that considers student performance from a wide variety of lenses, and assigns more qualitative feedback? It might be helpful to teach students to reflect on both failures and successes, especially when they receive an evaluation that is less than average in terms of grades. Reflection might also be a way for student to empower themselves, rather than seeing their identities exclusively as a fixed set of grades.
Surangama Sutra: A New Translation (2009). Buddhist Text Translation Society
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