What goes around

I was reading about Vajrayana Buddhism earlier today. One of its doctrines is that every event in life is specifically geared to teach you something about your present circumstance. Painful occurences emerge from a boiling cauldron of karmic debt to say: "Hey, fuckhead, wake up you miserable bastard and PAY ATTENTION." The problem is being awake enough to notice and interpret these continuous synchronicities.

I can't get over the fact that out of the blue I received an enormous bill for back taxes from 2005. I mean, we owe more than I paid for my car a few months ago. The IRS found three errors in our return for that year, 'professionally' prepared and all.

What is most striking is the specific amount owed. It's precisely the amount I'd saved, the exact amount of the cushion I'd been so pleased to have between check-to-check living and a comfy worry-free existence. Only slightly less striking than the amount is the timing of this bill. I'd been gleefully thinking about this money for weeks, about how I was going to put it in a CD for a rainy day, about how nice it was to have money to think about.

Poof!

Were I enlightened I'd be able to puzzle out what karmic obligations brought this about. For now I resolve not to care. It could be worse, after all--we could owe MORE than I have in savings. I suppose being comfortable is bad for my degree of enlightenment. I needed an event that, in the words of Reginald A. Ray, "adresses [my] entrapment." Unfortunately I don't feel liberated.

[Image courtesy of people.tribe.net]