I rise early and rush down to the barn to do the morning chores. It is still dark. Shavings and bits of hay litter the center isle. Suppressing the impulse to sweep it up, I quickly flip on the light switches. Not suppressing so well the anger at the person who had done evening chores, I abruptly open the feed containers and scoop up the grain. Without a pause, I go into the hay room and pick up three large flakes of first cut hay.

I feel the tightening in my lower back. A few more steps and a sharp, steady pain spreads up and down the left side of my back. It becomes so intense that I stop for a moment, take a deep, steadying breath and then continue more slowly to the gate. As I open the gate to let the horses into the meadow, the past and future clearly flash through my mind: weeks of pain, spasms with sitting, even the twist of the head sending a jolt, sleeping on the floor, rotating every hour like a chicken on a spit. I close the gate, more slowly, carefully, walk back to the car and veerrryyyy carefully lower my body down into the seat.

By the time I drive into the parking lot a work, the spasms have subsided and I now feel only a steady, intense grip across the low back. I know the routine: Go Slowly. Pull with the arms to get out of the front seat and around the steering wheel. Take small careful steps. Don’t slip. Don’t bend too much in ANY direction. Take it easy for three or four days and then get back into the normal routine. Probably really should have made more time to do the back strengthening exercises these last few months.

I glance at my watch. Already five minutes late for the meeting. I open the office door, and rush down the snow-covered path to the hospital. My mind goes over the meeting agenda again. Hurrying down the last twenty feet to the road “…why do I always end up having to do all the work. Why couldn’t he take better care of the animals, after all they are his. I mean, I am really doing him a favor going up and doing the barn chores anyway…”

One last step onto a small patch of snow-covered ground at the edge of the road and in the next instant I am on my knees on the hidden ice. Spasm after spasm grips my back. My entire body trembles. I cannot move at all for several minutes. Kneeling on the ice in the chill breeze, my whole body is pain.

Now there is intense awareness of each step. Any mindless distraction produces immediate, intense pain. Focus on the step, not on the other side of the room. Just this step. Not on what to fix for lunch. Not analyzing. Just walking. Walking mediation. Pure. Mind!

However, the mind is ever changing and is often asking. In particular, when confronted with pain and suffering, the question asked is often “why”. All too often the question becomes “why me”. Why me becomes “why was this bad thing done to me”. While prior unkind actions may warrant some sort of eventual punishment, one doesn’t have to go beyond the proximate mind states of anger, distraction and inattention to see the causes for the fall and the pain.

This is karma in real time. It is also the opportunity to look directly at cause and effect without the potential obfuscation of the “why me”. The pain becomes a gift: it is a wake up. It abruptly and forcefully takes one out of egocentric distractions and reveries. Karma has been described as that wonderful phenomenon that ensures every time you make a mistake,  you ultimately return to that same situation so that you have an opportunity to get it right, and that this recurs indefatigably until you do get it right.

The question then arises; how do you “get it right?” Focusing on the judgment that whatever happened is bad karma, that it was the result of a failure, that “I deserve the punishment” tends to reinforce the image of a separate self. Thinking of pain or misfortune is a payment for a prior misdeed that must be worked off like an old debt tends to reinforce the sense of independent self rather than fracture the bonds of ego.  And yet the lesson must be learned. The unhealthy habits and actions must be extinguished. Understanding the causes insofar as they can even be remembered and understood may be helpful on one level. Clearly if there are unresolved interpersonal issues, anger and resentment will recur and so working on the interpersonal issues which lead to the anger is indeed important.  But there is more than psychoanalysis. It becomes necessary to live the lesson. In part this happens by living through the “unfortunate” circumstances which have evolved in a very immediate, intimate and non-attached way. The walking with pain meditation keeps one from fantasizing, from being caught up in anger, thoughts of retaliation, dawdling and day dreaming.  All these distractions are just let go as you focus on just this step.

And so the question of whether this is good karma or bad karma is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter whether we used to blow up small animals with firecrackers or offered up our own flesh so that starving creatures might eat. What is important is the karma of this instant…this moment just as it is….no judgements. What is demanded of us is to respond as fully as we can right now, actualizing our understanding of the way, of ourselves, as best we can. Just this immediate, continuous practice. Our future karma will take care of itself. It is is not a matter of coming home, of realizing Self, of improving character, of overcoming shortcomings with analysis….it is just this one step!