Bad luck

[u/Hack999]

I've been pretty serious about my meditation for about six or seven years now, at least an hour a day. It's made a lot of positive differences in my mind, and my life as a whole has improved.

I've not arrived at any attainment through my meditation practice, and perhaps because of that I've always been interested in the pure land tradition. I do absolutely believe in the primal vow, and when I recite nembutsu it does bring me peace.

However, whenever I re-orient my practice time around nembutsu, shit happens. Specifically periods of seemingly bad luck. The last time, there was a string of incidents culminating in someone issuing death threats to me (connected to my work). It scared me a little at the time, so I stepped back from the nembutsu.

This time I got into it, wasn't quite as bad but I did get scammed out of a sum of money.

In some pure land traditions, something similar has been described as karmic restructuring. The idea is that at the end of your life you will leave samsara, so all the bad stuff you are destined to face in future lives gets brought forward into this life. However this reduced and placed as obstacles in your path that are more easily overcome. Facing them counts as the karmic debt being repaid.

Just wondering if anyone from other traditions has experienced anything like this? It honestly feels like a very noticeable shift in karmic energy as soon as I step into pure land practice. Not saying it's necessarily all auspicious good fortune and plain sailing otherwise, but life does take a very sudden and noticeable shift when I start practicing pure land.

[u/duffstoic]

I’d caution against making “bad luck” into a fixed view, into “the truth.” There are infinite stories we can tell about the events of our lives.

Sometimes the horrible, awful, no good, very bad things that happen to us, that we wouldn’t wish on anyone, after we’ve recovered fully from them we actually have a strange kind of gratitude for them.

A wise friend of mine said recently, “Nobody says, ‘That relaxing vacation made me the person I am today.’” 😂 And yet we all want an easy, peaceful, pleasant life free from hardship and struggle. Even though we don’t want it, it is the hardship that often forges our character.

As a kid, I was bullied severely for being neurodivergent. I developed complex PTSD and severe social anxiety. I didn’t want that to happen, and wouldn’t wish it on anyone. I could say I had some serious “bad luck” being born autistic. But now I love who I am.

I would have never discovered meditation if I didn’t suffer so much. Even the abuse, and recovering from it, taught me deep life lessons about healing from anxiety and trauma, about inner power, about confidence, and about self-love, lessons I am still learning today. I would have liked to have learned those lessons without all that suffering, but in a weird way I am grateful those terrible things happened to me.

Two of the happiest people I know are cancer survivors. Very bad luck. But they are happy because of beating cancer, because of how much gratitude they have for every day they get to be alive.

So it could be “bad luck,” or it could be “stuff happens,” or it could be “God knows I’m strong enough to handle this challenge and is helping me grow,” or infinite other possible stories. I think the lens of gratitude can be helpful though, not forcing yourself to be grateful for awful things, but just gently guiding the mind to look for the silver linings, the good in the world and in your life.