I see a lot of people invoking karma these days, from FaceBook memes that call on karma for vengeance to ACoNs in support groups expecting karma to punish their narcissistic parents. Their very invocation of karma tells me they have little or no idea what it is or how it works…and may not even like the whole concept, if they knew what it really was.
Karma isn’t sentient
According to my husband, who was born and raised a Hindu,
karma is a force of nature, like gravity. Would you call on gravity to punish
someone who hurt you? If that person fell off a porch and broke his ankle,
would you think gravity consciously injured the person as payback for hurting
you? Of course not…and that is the point with respect to karma…karma is no more
sentient than gravity.
Karma isn’t cosmic
vengeance
Because karma isn’t sentient, it can’t avenge you. It can
wreak havoc on an individual, but not for the purpose of avenging wrong doing.
There is, in fact, no vengeance in karma at all.
You create your own
karma
Think of karma like a ledger sheet: you enter credits (“good”
karma) and you enter debits (“bad” karma). When you have more credits than
debits, your karma is good; when you have more debits than credits…when the
unkind, thoughtless, and selfish thoughts you think, words you say, actions you do, are totted up and you have more of those than acts of selfless
kindness, then your karma is bad.
You cannot manipulate
your karma
You cannot consciously create good karma: to do a good deed
because it is good for your karma is a selfish act. So doing a good deed in
order to benefit from it yourself is an act that will bring you bad karma, not
good. It is only by adopting a kind and generous way of thinking and living, by
living your life doing good for others out of compassion for them, that you can
create good karma for yourself. The moment selfish motives come into the
picture, good karma goes out the window.
Karma works over
multiple lifetimes
We sometimes think that the bad guy “got away with it” and
that makes us feel angry…or even hopeless. We are anguished that our
narcissistic parents continue to get away with hurting us, that the family
sides with them, that you can get no justice or peace.
Mmmm…you may not like this but…if you are a true believer in
karma, you know that the suffering and injustice you endure in this lifetime is
probably your karma for your misdeeds in a previous lifetime. Karma depends on
the concept of reincarnation: that if you think you got away with it in this
lifetime—just wait until the next one. And, to make matters even more
diabolical, you may be suffering punishment for a previous life’s misdeeds, but
you aren’t allowed to know what you did so it is impossible for you to hunt
down your victims, apologize, and obtain their forgiveness. Karma is immutable:
you did bad in a previous life, now the scale will balance itself by life doing bad
to you.
Karma often looks to
be unjust
A lot of people have trouble with the concept of paying in
this life for the sins of a previous one, saying it is not fair to be punished
for something that occurred in a previous life, it is victimizing the innocent,
but that completely misses the point. If you tripped and fell and went over a
cliff, would anyone think gravity was being unfair or victimizing you? Of
course not…everyone knows that gravity is not sentient, it is an indisputable
force of nature. Those who invented the concept of karma, the Hindus, think of
karma in much the same way as Westerners think of gravity.
Western people tend to think of the soul or “life force” as
being an entity that, when the body dies, goes on to its “reward,” and that
each newly born person comes with a brand new, untarnished soul that is all his
own. At death, if the person has lived a virtuous life, the soul goes to Heaven
where it is rewarded richly for eternity; if the person has not lived a
virtuous life, the soul goes to Hell where it is punished for eternity. Hinduism
believes the soul is reborn into subsequent bodies until the person learns the
lessons necessary to move on to a higher plane of existence. That means your
soul not only doesn’t go to Heaven or Hell, it comes back in another body, time
and time again, until you learn to live a life sufficiently virtuous and
selfless to move on to the next stage of existence.
And when your soul comes back in another body, the soul
carries the sins of its previous incarnation. Those sins are not addressed as
punishment: sins are the manifestation of the lessons you need to learn in
order to move up and move out to a higher plane of existence. So, if you think
that karma is punishment or vengeance, you are missing the point: the bad
things that happen to us as a result of karma represent lessons we need to
learn, humility we need to acquire, compassion we need to exercise. The more
reluctant you are to learn this, the more serious the misfortune that can
befall you.
A lot of Westerners tend to think of this as grossly unfair:
what about the baby that is born with some devastating condition and dies soon
after birth? What sin did he commit? What can he possibly learn from the
experience? Western thought does not easily wrap itself around the idea that a
newborn child can arrive not with a shiny new soul but with an old, battered
one, a soul that carries the burdens…and rewards…of many lifetimes. The consciousness
that resides in our brains, that makes up our minds, is not the consciousness
of the soul.
Karma can strike at
any time
Unlike Heaven and Hell, karma does not wait until you are
dead to manifest itself. And, unlike gravity, it does not occur predictably and
instantaneously when challenged. Sometimes an evil person appears to get away
with his evil, but those who truly believe in karma (real karma, not the bastardized Western version of it) know that in
a subsequent life, this evil-doer will reap the fruit of the seeds he has
sown.
But sometimes karma is swift: it can occur almost
instantaneously, it can occur within minutes, it can occur at just the right
time for the victim to witness it. The man who has a heart attack while
cheating on his wife…the bully who discovers the wimpy little guy he is picking
on has a 3rd degree blackbelt…the guy who gets knocked down by a
speeding truck because his arrogance led him to carelessness. In many cases of
irony, there is a hint of karma, a payback with an ironic twist.
Karma is there to
teach you lessons.
Karma exists to teach you lessons, to help you better
yourself, by giving you a taste of your own medicine. How better to learn
compassion than to experience the lack of it from others? How do you handle
that unpleasant experience? By being angry and resentful and even more mean-spirited
than you were in your previous life? Or by learning compassion for others who
are in the same situation…and even having compassion for the people who give
you none because you know what their futures are going to be like? If you
refuse to learn the lessons karma presents to you, then your next incarnation
may have even more troubles than this one, until the lesson is learned.
Karma cannot be
fooled
Karma has no consciousness. It does not choose to punish you
harshly and me leniently. You create your karma, both now and in your past and
future lives. You can have a superficially wonderful life with beauty and money
and luxuries, and yet be fraught with anxiety and fear and emotional pain…might
karma not be presenting you a lesson in counterbalance to a crushing envy you
had in a previous life? You can’t fool karma any more than you can fool
gravity: your thoughts and deeds in this life set the stage for your soul’s
existence in the next.
What do I believe?
I am not a religious person, so religious concepts don’t
mean much to me. Do I believe in karma? Not in the traditional religious sense,
but I do believe that we create our own realities, for good or for ill, from
the choices we make. When we treat people badly, we do not motivate others to
treat us well. When we lie and cheat, when we allow the poor treatment of
others to justify, in our minds, not being the best we can be, then we are
creating for ourselves the blowback that others perceive as karma.
Many of us were badly treated as children and I do not
believe we created that in previous incarnations or even our early lives. I do
believe, however, that much of the anguish we endure as adults is as a result
of choices we made as we left childhood and continue to make as adults. We
choose to allow people to put us on the horns of dilemmas because we don’t want
to make choices that might have repercussions…but we fail to realize that any
choice we make will have consequences, intended or not. If we simply make
different choices, we get a different life. Not necessarily better…life doesn’t
come with guarantees of a happily ever after for any of us…but certainly
different.
Karma, as perceived by the Westerner, is a very different
concept from that of the people who originated it, the Hindus. Western thought
is often imbued with the concepts of vengeance, punishment, and retribution
whereas Eastern thought is more one of harmony and peacefulness. Karma is
envisioned as a way of honing and fine-tuning one’s perceptions of the world
and helping each person to gain the inner peace that leads to compassion,
empathy, selflessness and, eventually, oneness with the Godhead.
Very different from the vengeful, punitive Western concept
of karma, wouldn’t you say?
