Pirate's Cove

It has something to do with ripples in a pool and the brain is a cosmos. This comes to us from Tim McHenry, who is the Director of Programs and Engagement at the Rubin Museum of Art

Why Is Climate Change Not Like Being Mauled by Wild Lions?

Whoopi Goldberg had a lot on her mind when she met the star of PBS’ “The Brain” at the Rubin Museum in New York City a few weeks ago. “What makes me me?” she demanded. Well, other folks make you you came the answer: “A lot of brain activity is in relation to other brains,” replied Dr. David Eagleman. This was one of 22 onstage conversations the Rubin is mounting this fall to explore the nature of Karma – the thing that almost everyone seems to think is either about retribution, what you come back as in your next life, or a nifty T-shirt slogan.

Ripples in a pool
You won’t find that sort of T-shirt at the Rubin shop; but head up the museum’s signature spiral staircase and you will find that every other work on its walls is from the Tibetan Himalayas, karma central. The simple translation from the Sanskrit of karma is ‘action’. Yet, to the Buddha, karma is not the linear ‘do good and good things come back to you’. Individual actions do not necessarily lead to a corresponding reward or punishment. Instead actions are more like a stone dropped in water–the ripples extend out 360 degrees. And the ripples created by other dropped stones in the same pool intersect in such a way as to create unfathomably complex and unanticipated patterns. A full awareness of these rich intersections, and how we are connected to and responsible for all past, present, and future events, that is karma.

Um, Ok? This leads into The brain is a cosmos, why don’t we care?, a Fear personified, ending with

Is there a Buddhist solution to the paralysis affecting most nations in confronting the perils of climate change? Yes: compassion. If you understand how everything is interconnected, you will not feel yourself as far removed from the circumstances of the near future. Compassion is action. Action is karma. A full circle. I guess it’s what goes around, comes around after all.

Nothing says “compassion” like doing all you can to restrict 3rd world people from using cheap, affordable, reliable energy methods that you yourself in the 1st world have benefited from, and which you won’t give up in your own life. Nothing says compassion like enabling more government dominance over people’s lives. Nothing says compassion like causing the cost of living for the poor and middle classes to skyrocket, all for a political issue for which you aren’t committed enough to make your own life carbon neutral.