Contrary to what some might think, I like golf. I accumulate many more strokes than most people, and some might suffer if they played as badly as I do at times. But, every so often, I will hit the ball cleanly and it will go where I intended it. Those moments, along with the fresh air, mostly green and lush surroundings and, at times, the people I am playing with can make it enjoyable. I put up with the suffering that takes place when I dub the ball repeatedly, or drive it into the woods or water. I vacillate between seeing it as the result of karmic actions in my past (or past lives, perhaps) or accepting it as a form of penance for my many shortcomings.
Karma, as I understand it, is the influence upon your life of the seeds planted by karmic actions. It really isn't the outcome, rather it is the action itself. We are supposed to avoid actions whose karmic effect produce seeds of future havoc (like my golf scores), i have on occasion wondered if this was what the Buddha was talking about. I even thought, perversely, that playing golf allowed me to expend massive amounts of the 'bad karma' I have accumulated. What other explanation can there be for taking five strokes to escape a scrap bunker alongside the fairway on 13? If golf is a place where I can work off all this bad karma, then all this suffering has a silver lining. It's better to slice a ball into the woods than to incur some mishap in a more important part of life--yes, even though I am retired, there are more important endeavors than excelling at golf. Did I actually use the word "excelling?" If you have every seen me play, you would be shaking your head at my use of "excelling" in reference to me and golf. In any event, playing all this golf might just be my ticket to eliminating the seeds of prior karmic actions of mine.
At other times, I can almost hear my mother telling me to "offer it up" as a penance for some other shortcoming I had developed. I am a Catholic, born and raised as one. I am not among the pillars of our church, and I practice Catholicism only slightly better than I play golf.
I promise God on a regular basis that I will be better, but... I had heard that the Church was playing down some of the punitive aspects of dealing with my shortcomings, even eliminating Purgatory, which is where people like me can expect to wind up even if we end our lives in good standing overall. You see Purgatory is where you spend time if you die in good enough standing to go to heaven, but still have lots of the bad side of the ledger to clean up. But, rumor had it that Purgatory was on the way out.
I was embarrassed to bring this up to my parochial vicar, so I researched it on Google (the next best thing). I thought that my obvious concern about all this punishment might better escape notice that way. However, I now know that Google will add such inquiries to my profile and know that I am sufficiently less than perfect to be pretty concerned about Purgatory. I wonder if they will sell my contact information to some gambling house, beer distributor or other merchant of all things sinful? Ah, but that's another story. Back to Purgatory. The bad news is that Purgatory is alive and well in Catholic catechism, it was limbo that got the ax. Limbo was thought to be the place where innocents who never had a shot at life (e.g., infants who died before having the chance to be baptized, etc.) I am not sure what, if anything has taken its place, but limbo is out. So Purgatory is likely to be my destination when I leave this mortal plain. Unless, i perform enough penance while I remain here? So, if my inadequacies at golf can be offered up as penance, golf might just be my best move. I think I'll google it.
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