One of my favorite internet memes says, “Karma – It’s spelled K-A-R-M-A and it’s pronounced, ‘Ha, ha, fuck you.’”
That’s a perfect explanation of our usual understanding of karma which is basically, “If you do some shit, you get some shit.” If we do something terrible to another person, something terrible is going to happen to us. If we do something nice, something nice is going to happen to us.
OH, WELL, IT’S KARMA
Counter-intuitively, karma is also used an explanation for why bad things happen to good people. We may have a friend who’s a wonderful person and goes through his life supporting and nurturing others, who’s full of love and gentleness and kindness. And then something horrendous happens to him, like he falls of a cliff or discovers his wife is having sex with a Republican.
We simply can’t understand why such a good person would have such bad luck. Certainly, he did nothing to deserve it and, according to the Law of Karma, all of his good behavior should have been rewarded with good things happening to him.
But . . . we’re told . . . perhaps he did something really, really terrible in a previous incarnation. Maybe he pushed someone off of a cliff or maybe he had sex with a Republican. Maybe he actually – shudder – enjoyed having sex with a Republican.
That allows us to restore some sense of cosmic balance and we say, “Oh, well, it’s just karma.”
IT AIN’T ME, BABE
We can certainly understand that concept when something bad happens to someone else, but it’s difficult to swallow when it happens to us.
Let’s face it, most of us are NOT the Dalai Lama and we have very little memory of our past lives. We may accept the general idea that we’ve lived other lives, but we don’t actually remember being a Yak herder in Mongolia in 40 A.D. or a courtesan in Paris during World War I.
From our current point of view, those people who we were in our past lives were literally someone else and not us.
The idea that I broke my wrist today because some other guy kicked a Yak 2000 years ago seems entirely capricious and cruel and unjust. It feels like . . . how shall I put this? . . . bullshit.
KARMA AND DETERMINISM
From that perspective, karma feels very much like determinism. Determinism is the view that every single thing that happens to us is pre-determined from the moment of birth. There really isn’t any free will or choice in life because our lives are a result of our genetics, our cultures, the families we’re born into, and the times we live in.
We can actually make a strong case for that. Even in the United States, where we worship the idea of free will and choosing our own destinies, the statistics say it ain’t so. If we’re born into a dirt poor family, we’ll probably die dirt poor. If we’re born into great wealth, we’ll probably die rich. If our parents were conservative Catholics, we’ll probably be conservative Catholics. If our grandfather hated socialists for no particular reason, we’ll probably hate socialists for no particular reason.
We tell ourselves that we’re making choices about those issues, but for the most part we aren’t. It was all programmed into us before we came down the birth canal. Life is something that happens to us, not something that we create.
Karma can feel a lot the same way. I, me, the person who I am right now, did NOT kick that Yak 2000 years ago, so why am I being punished for it? It’s something that’s just happening to me, not something I can control or make any choices about.
BUT KARMA’S A CHOICE
Paradoxically, being the people who we are, right here, right now, is the good news about karma.
Determinism basically says, “You’re fucked or you’re not fucked and there’s not one damned thing you can do about it. You have NO choice in the matter.” It’s all predetermined.
The Law of Karma, on the other hand, says that what we do right now is what really counts. Far from saying that we have NO choice in the matter, karma is saying that we always have a choice. And our choices are what determine our karma.
As David Michie said in, “Buddhism for Busy People,”
“A lot of Western people wrongly think that karma equals fate or predestination. They think it’s something you don’t have any power to change. This is a misunderstanding. It is we who create our own karma and we can change it in a powerful, dynamic way. We are creating hundreds, even thousands of such causes every day of our lives.”
Put another way, we are creating our own karma ALL THE TIME. It’s not something from the past that just pops up to bite us in the ass every once in a while. It’s not like The Wheel of Fortune, where we have good luck for a while and then bad luck, for no apparent reason. It’s something we personally create by either being good people or being bad people.
THE PRESENT AS PROLOGUE TO THE PAST
Now, there’s a particularly fascinating doctrine in some schools of Buddhism that says that we can actually change our past karma by how we behave in our present lives.
Suppose, for instance, that I was a really notorious Yak kicker in Mongolia in 40 A.D. I didn’t just kick Yaks occasionally. No, I was a mean, nasty, evil spirited son of a bitch who got up every single morning and kicked the hell out of as many Yaks as I could reach.
Fast forward 1985 years to my current life. Suppose I start an, “adopt a Yak program,” and spend years rescuing and feeding homeless Yaks. I learn to love Yaks and have great compassion for them. Perhaps I even dress them in Yak finery for special occasions.
Under this particular doctrine, I wouldn’t JUST be creating good karma for my present self. My good karma would go backwards through time and actually change the character and behavior of my previous self, the notorious Yak kicker. He might learn to love Yaks just as much as I do and my bad Yak karma would be erased.
IT’S NOT THAT WILD
If that sort of time traveling karma sounds a little too wild, just consider what most of us already believe about karma.
We believe that we have one Soul with many different historical identities and that what a previous identity does can travel through time to affect the life of our current identity. So if all of these past identities are somehow in touch with our current identity, why wouldn’t our current identity be in touch with our past identities? If they can affect us, it stands to reason that we can affect them.
KARMA AS AN ONGOING PROJECT
When we shift our perspective in that way, then karma becomes an on-going project. We’re no longer victims of our past. We’re actually re-creating our past through our current actions.
And if that isn’t free will and choice, I don’t know what is.
Being compassionate, decent people every day and right now is good for us and it’s good for the people around us. And, ultimately, it’s good for the Yaks.
Do it for the Yaks.
Just a reminder that my ebook, “Just the Tarot,” is available on Amazon for much less than a bag of Yak feed.
Just the Tarot 