Karma for Dummies

I was sat at the computer the other day having a nice cup of tea, and reflecting on the irony of allotmenteers being in so much conflict with nature, as you do. After all, are we not the first to appreciate the beauty and wonder of the natural world, and yet wage a constant war with creatures great and small in an effort to protect the fruits of our labour.

Take butterflies for example. Is it not a sheer joy to see a Peacock dancing about in a light summer breeze, or a Red Admiral lazing in the afternoon sun. Yet if I see a Cabbage White hovering near my brassicas, it instantly becomes an angel of the Devil, to be eradicated at all costs.

I don’t take any delight in killing things, and in reality chase butterflies away hoping they’ll hop over the fence onto my neighbour Jeff’s cabbages instead. After all you have to think about those Buddhist principles of not harming living creatures, because they may be the reincarnated souls of the dead. That big fat slug you’ve just squashed that was munching on your lettuces, might have been someone’s grandad once upon a time!

There’s also the Buddhist concept of Karma to take into consideration as well, something about a person’s ‘bad actions’ creating bad results for that individual. Could all this hostility towards nature be having a negative effect on me, I wondered? Is this why I keep getting scab on my spuds?

This one looked a bit more complicated however. I mean if I kill a slug eating a lettuce, it’s bad for the slug but good for the lettuce, right ?

Wanting to know more about Karma I looked it up on Wikipedia, but it started going on about ‘cause and effect’ and ‘volitional’ activities. My eyes started to glaze over and I got even more confused.

Then a Bluebottle with a chainsaw flew in through the open window, to remind me which insect I definitely don’t like, and why I’ll never be on the Dalai Lama’s Christmas card list. I tried hard to ignore it for a while, but the incessant buzzing eventually raised my blood pressure enough for me to have to take some action.

Having developed my own strategy for dealing with flies over the years, I picked up the A4 pad at the side of me and waited for it to land somewhere. I would then bring the said pad down quickly, but just far enough away from the beast, to cause it to take off and fly into the path of the descending weapon of execution. That way you get a clean kill and avoid spreading fly innards everywhere.

This normally works, but here I was dealing with no ordinary fly, I think it was the reincarnated soul of a Kamikaze pilot on speed, and it buzzed around the room with not the slightest intention of landing for the next 24 hours it seemed. It soon became obvious that my usual method would be useless and that I’d have to go nuclear, so I went for the fly spray instead.

Having eventually found it amongst the multitude of other sprays under the kitchen sink, I returned to the room, but the buzzing had stopped. The little bugger had taken advantage of my absence to hide and have a rest. I was sure I could hear it laughing at me but couldn’t see it anywhere.

Then, without warning, it flew straight at me from the direction of the window, at about 12 o’clock with the full sun behind it to dazzle me, and went for my head.

Luckily, I managed to get a shot in before diving for cover behind the filing cabinet, and from the safety of my bunker watched it flying around the room for quite a while, apparently unaffected, as it hunted for me. In fact it seemed to speed up, so much so that it passed through the sound barrier causing a sonic bang. Or was that me banging my head on the damned filing cabinet drawer I’d left open, as it went for me again?

Eventually after about 5 minutes its engines began to falter, and it had to make a spluttering emergency landing on the windowsill. Though it made several unsuccessful attempts to take off again, its time was obviously up.

Next, it did a very strange thing by flipping over onto its back and doing a break dance. I watched mesmerised as it spun and somersaulted in a macabre dance of death, that lasted about a minute, before suddenly stopping. Wondering if it was now dead, I waited a short while before prodding it with a pen.

It then did no more than spring back to life as if miraculously resurrected, and soared high into the air. Before finally, in what I can only take as a desperate act of revenge, it took one last gasp and fell to earth, straight into my bloody tea.

Ah ! now that must be what they mean by Karma then.