Pick Up Someone Else's Litter

In Today's Karma Builder: We Are Going To Pick Up Someone Else's Litter And Explore What Happens When We Take Responsibility For the Harm Caused By Others.

• ​Karmic Muscle Group: Generosity, Responsibility & Commitment
• Materials: None
• Time Requirement: At Least 15 Minutes

Training Note:   Even a city sidewalk is your living space.  You can be as upset as you want to be about how people who throw things careless on the ground, but it still landed in your living space.  Take responsibility for the quality of your space.  Ignoring messes made by others is nearly as bad as making the mess yourself because it is an attitude that perpetuates the mess one way or the other.  Yes, it is your problem even if you did not put the garbage on the ground.  If you get your friends to help, you may find that your immediate environment improves rapidly and substantially.
Today's Exercise: Pick Up Someone Else's Litter

1. Put a couple of grocery bags in your pockets.  If you have reusable bags that is even better, but they will need to be washed when you are finished with this exercise.
2. Take a walk outside.  Keep an eye out for litter.  Unfortunately, this exercise is very easy to do because there is litter everywhere.
3. Joyfully pick up as much litter as you can.  If you are near a trash can, clean the whole area.
4. Properly dispose of the garbage you collect. 

Practice Note:  Notice if you start to get angry or judge the people who created the litter.  This is your mind making partially rejecting you voluntarily accepting responsibility for a problem caused by someone else.  Notice where in your life you use blame, get mad, ridicule others and then take no responsibility for a problem.  We actually use blame for the purpose of avoiding responsibility - that is blame's primary purpose.  But blaming as a way to avoid taking remedial action is nearly as bad as causing the problem yourself.  It keeps the problem in the world so stop blaming and start cleaning!
Karmic Benefits:

1. Clean The Space, Clean The Earth:  you can be the problem, you can ignore the problem or you can solve the problem.  The choice is yours.  Note that there is very little difference in the end result between these first two alternatives.  It is really easy to make a daily difference in the quality of your living space.  It is not much work, it mostly takes thought and a little motivation.  Making yourself responsible for your living space, and this includes public spaces, is not a burden, it is a commitment to a better world.
2. Transcend Your Laziness:  face it, the reason you do not pick up litter as you walk around is because 1) you think it someone else's problem; 2) you do not have time to save the earth; 3) you are really lazy about these kinds of things.  This exercise is the perfect opportunity to confront all of the opportunities that you pass up to make a difference.
3. Become Responsible For The World:
4. Own Your Space: the truth about life is that you have no right to survive.  In fact, you have no right to anything.  If you want a cleaner space, get a bag and pick it up.  You and only you are responsible for what you allow around you.  The garbage in our world was not put there by sea otters, it was put there by us.

About The Author

David Kenyon is a long-time practicing Tibetan Buddhist practitioner of the Kagyu lineage and formerly, a martial arts instructor in Aikido tradition.  He is president of a holistic healing school in St. Louis, Missouri.