Put simply, karma is an idea that ties cause directly to effect. It holds that things happen for a reason, and that whatever occurs in our life has a cause behind it.
So is karma the reason I developed cancer? Is it the reason one person lives while another dies when both face similar circumstances?
Karma does speak to these difficult questions, suggesting that life carries a rhyme and a reason. So what can we actually know about karma? And how much does it matter for this life of ours, and for those around us?
This is the third blog to explore these questions, and the comments on last week’s topic of reincarnation have been fascinating. If you are new to blogging, as I was when I began this blog six months ago, you click on COMMENTS below any post to read what others have written or to add your own. You probably know that already. It was news to me!
The word karma comes from Sanskrit and is commonly translated as “action”, and sometimes as “effect” or “fate”. The Oxford defines karma as the sum of a person’s actions, especially intentional ones, and regards it as determining that person’s future states of existence. The Oxford also refers to the fate or destiny that follows as an effect of cause.
We can plainly see cause and effect at work in many areas of life. Drink too much alcohol and you are very likely to become drunk. Drive while drunk and you are very likely to have an accident. Alcohol and accident: cause and effect.
Yet when we examine the circumstances or states of mind behind why someone drinks to excess and then drives while drunk, it quickly becomes very complex.
What is that? Drinking and driving? When I was young, it was simply what we did. Talk about good karma; it is a miracle some of my old friends are still alive. And why was I never drawn to getting drunk while some of my friends were? And today? With all the education about not drinking and driving, what is the state of mind, and what can we say is the cause for someone who does it?
Karma is the spiritual law that our actions carry consequences. There are several types of karma.
1. Immediate: for example, drink too much and have an accident. Hit someone and get hit back. Exercise more and lose weight. Immediate cause and effect.
2. Delayed: here the timeframe stretches out and may even include reincarnation. Perhaps great effort went into learning piano in one lifetime, and then Mozart appears and writes his first symphony before he is ten.
3. Metaphorical: perhaps someone refuses to see the difficulties around them, and while in this life we might say they are blind to another’s need, in the next life they are literally blind.
4. Educational: this is my term for how we grow and learn in life. Perhaps in this life we were very hard on someone in a particular way. In the next lifetime the situation reverses, and we now experience the impact of that difficulty in our own life.
This aspect of karma might seem rather punitive, but it is more helpful to see it as a chance to learn. We come to experience why that past action was so unkind, and we learn, we come to see why it makes sense to act more lovingly and constructively.
Who’s Karma?
Some hold that karma is entirely personal, and that whatever happens to you is wholly of your own making. Everything in your life, they say, is caused and created by your own karma.
This view seems especially common in New Age circles, where the individual is given great prominence. But consider this: how much your circumstances are shaped by the family you are in, the friends you have, the tribe or community you belong to, the culture, the race you happen to be part of, the nation you live in. The very fact that you belong to the human family rather than being a dog or a cat is quite significant!
Being born into a wealthy Melbourne family compared with a poor family in the Gaza Strip seems extraordinarily different. Whether one is good or bad, better or worse, it is unwise to say, but it certainly is different.
Karma, then, is complex. To me it speaks of starting points and tendencies.
Being born into a wealthy family may look like good karma, but one individual might squander the opportunities and become a drug addict. A brother or sister might become a world leader or a major philanthropist. The children in the Gaza Strip family might do something similar: one becomes a suicide bomber, another a peace activist.
The Dalai Lama loves science and is a great scholar, yet he says there are two things in life not worth spending much time pondering because they are so complex: karma and past lives.
He also quotes the Buddha, who said that if you want to understand your past, look at your present circumstances. If you want to understand your future, look at your present actions, and especially the motivation and attitude that accompany them.
What this implies is that the circumstances we find ourselves in now, together with the potential they hold, are the sum total of our past. There is a cause behind our current conditions, and it lies in our past actions. It also says that what we do today, why we do it and how we do it will have consequences for the future. What we do really does make a difference.
So although karma is complex and carries a certain air of mystery, here is why I value it:
1. It helps make sense of life. It informs my View.
2. It brings personal accountability. What you think and do, good or bad, comes back to you and shapes your future. You may cheat the law, but not your karma.
3. It offers genuine hope. What we do today can lead to a better tomorrow.
4. No effort is wasted. If we do the best we can in this life, even if we die before seeing any benefit, in the next life we may well be better for it, and so will those around us.
May your karma bring you a long and happy life.
RESOURCES
RELATED BLOGS
BOOKS
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying: Sogyal Rinpoche. Excellent elaboration of reincarnation and karma.
The Dragon’s Blessing: Guy Allenby. My biography that recounts how my own View emerged and developed, how it informed the tough times and the bountiful ones.
You Can Conquer Cancer: Ian Gawler. For the chapters on death and dying and philosophy.
Coping With Grief: Mal McKissock. Very useful and succinct manual on grief. A must read as a life skill.
CD
Understanding Death, Helping the Dying: Ian Gawler. Good to listen to with those you are really close to and use as a focus for discussion.
Counselling and Groups
NALAG National Association for Loss and Grief
Great difficult topic to address. Thanks for giving it a go and getting some perspective into the preoccupation we have with good and bad, and what we understand by lucky.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was diagnosed with cancer I was angry and confused. The why me question was really big. There were all these other people eating badly, smoking and abusing themselves and other people, yet they were OK and I was really sick. Reading You Can Conquer Cancer helped widen my horizons, so thanks Ian for these articles too. They help to make me feel like there is some sense to it and that I can do something about the mess I am in
ReplyDeleteAfter doing alot of soul searching I was able to see clearly how my past actions explained my challenging present situation and now I feel empowered and relieved to know that my actions from one moment to the next can and will form my future.I had never thought of this in the context of karma.It makes complete sense to me.It also makes each moment for me from now on so relevant and so precious.Thankyou for your insight. Madelene
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