When I started to date my wife, I spent time in Thailand and learned about Buddhism. I remember one of the questions I had was about karma. Even before I was practicing Buddhism, I “believed” in that. Even as a Born-again Christian, I believed that “you will reap what you sow.”

I remember a conversation I had with a friend about her friend taking advantage of her. I told her what I would do if I were in her situation and she said she couldn’t do it. I then told her it’s not about being mean, it’s all about being fair.

Now fast forward a few years. I started attending dhamma class at Wat San Fran. During classes, we would talk about consequences. In my case it was talking about the consequences of how I was raising my son. I was conflicted. As a parent, I have to discipline and teach my child. But as a dhamma practitioner, I was worried about generating bad karma. WHAT DO I DO? Where is the fairness? I thought about how Buddhism is referred to as the middle path. So in disciplining a child, what is the middle path. In interacting with people who take advantage of me, do I turn the other cheek in fear of the negative karma repercussions?

In teaching my child how can I teach him the consequences of his actions if I can’t discipline him? I started to learn that the middle ground was about doing what is appropriate. If a decision is to be made about how to discipline my child. It shouldn’t be done out of anger. It should be what is appropriate given the situation and enough to teach the child and not enough to make him fight back (i.e. the middle ground). What is that middle ground? It’s different for everyone. And for me, I am still find it through trial and error.

Another incident happened one day when I was going through airport security. I was set to go through the metal detector but instead I had to go through the body scanner. I had a belt on with a plastic buckle which is fine with a metal detector, but not a scanner. When I was scanned, I had a “hit” because of the belt buckle. A TSA Supervisor came over and did a pat down. I’ve been patted down before but what this guy did was odd. I won’t go into details, but I didn’t think what he did was appropriate. At first I let it go. I grabbed a seat near my departure gate and started to think about the situation. I thought about my experience travelling and getting a pat down. I should have taken off my belt. I compared his pat down to other pat downs I had. I came to the same conclusion that what he did wasn’t appropriate. I thought about filing a complaint, but I thought about the repercussion of filing one and the bad karma that would be generated for me. But then, I thought that if I don’t say anything and he did the same pat down to another person, I would be partial responsible for the bad karma generated from that incident since I didn’t say anything. What should I do? It seemed like I was damned if I did and damned if I don’t. Then I remembered what LP Anan said to me once. I asked him if it was appropriate if I helped someone going through a divorce with some financial analysis. He basically said it would probably be okay as long as I can stick to the facts and not let my emotions and bias influence what I say. In applying that thought to this statement. I felt it appropriate to file a complaint, but in writing the complaint, I stuck to the facts and didn’t include my anger or bias. After I filed it and submitted it, I was able to let it go. Prior to practicing dhamma, I would have still carried the bad feeling with me, but here I was able to file a complaint and not have the incident bother me.

Finding this “middle” ground is hard, but hopefully with practice I’ll get it.