There once was a colony of ants living on a piece of wood. The wood wasn’t rooted to earth, so the ants couldn’t dig deep. Instead the ants built upwards. Using leaves and debris, they would construct living spaces. The ants would fight for power. Some wanted a new queen to lead them, while others, fought for control of the colony without a queen. While the ants worked together, for the most part, they were actually quite complex in their relationships. Sometimes they fought in skirmishes, throwing others off the wood to the depths below.

Being born in the ant colony, on that piece of wood, one knew nothing other than the struggle. The wood was seemingly, “all there is.” Those who ventured away from it, were never seen again. This made control of the wood even more precious. But there were a few ants, that did their work and didn’t get involved in the conflicts. They helped where they could and endured. These ants were at peace, as they believed their role on the wood wasn’t to make a lasting empire, but to create the right actions to karmically change their future.

Hold that image of the ants, fighting for control on a piece of wood, in your imagination. Now pull back a bit from the wood and see that it is floating, like a raft. Pull back some more and you can see it’s not floating on still water, but a raging river. Those ants thrown off, they died in the river. Pulling back again, we can see a bit more context: the river is a very long gutter going around a neighborhood. What seemed like lifetimes on the raft is a drop in the bucket. Looking ahead we see an unescapable gutter is rapidly approaching. Soon the entire colony will be lost.

This is like the world we life in. The ants mistakenly believed the raft is all there is. They felt it was their permanence. The wood was simply a temporary station in their life. Those ants who left the conflict behind them, they were capable of being free of the transitory nature of life. Even without knowing of an impending gutter that would destroy all life as they know it, those ants knew life was short. They lived for a greater cause.

When one treats the world as the their storehouse of permanence, they will always suffer. There is always a thief, a storm, a disease, threatening the storehouse. Fighting and conflict will naturally result in a world of scarcity, but mistakenly taken as a world of permanence.

Some might argue, that the spiritual mindset (the ants who chose not to engage in conflict) is to never get involved in helping others. This is another extreme that is equally unbalanced. When I think back to the Bible stories about Jesus (whether real or myth), the stories tell about Jesus never getting involved in politics–even to the point of saying, “this kingdom is not my world.” He emphasized his followers to not store treasure where rust or moth could corrupt. In other words: the Roman government wasn’t his concern. He didn’t fight against the wars, the colosseum games or general brutality of the government. At the same time, he didn’t ignore those in need. He fed the hungry, he healed the sick. Anyone in need, he met their need.

The take-a-way we can learn from the stories of Jesus, like the spiritual ants, is that he helped on a personal level and left the impersonal level to the world. Government operates at the impersonal level. Jesus fed those who were hungry, not through anonymous outreach, but through a one to one connection. That’s where the love is. Without the love, it’s just a machine of government providing for the masses.

This is where karma enriches us: the personal level, the level of love. Trying to “fix the world,” is futile as the world is not perfectible. The world is ruled under an authority that tempts to all negatives. Our relationship to the world is one of bettering ourselves: overcoming our problems, our nature by replacing it with the spiritual ideal. This is how someone can love an enemy, or a stranger, so much that they are willing to die for them.

The ants fighting over an ephemeral piece of wood, is like the common person, who feels they must change the world (or their corner of it). The cause might be just, but if one becomes too entrenched, then the outcome will always be the same. Living for the world doesn’t bring the lasting joy that we think it will. Living for love of all people, that’s the light of God’s will.