by
Los
Angeles, CA (USA)
-- What goes around comes around. You reap what you sow.
The idea that one’s experiences are the fruition of
what a person has done, and that what a person will experience tomorrow is the
result of actions he or she takes today, is an ancient concept that spans
culture.
It
probably arose with farming, and as the earth nourished and preserved our
ancestors, they saw that like seeds of wheat, seeds of experience could be
cultivated and nurtured.
The ancient Greeks called it dike,
and its goddess took the form of justice. Through the action of dike, a hero
would fall to his fate or be raised to his destiny. The ancient Celts wove the
concepts of cause and effect into the myths carried to us today through symbols
of ground, path, and fruit.
The Bible alludes to cause and
effect in the book of Job: “I have seen people plough fields of evil and sow
wickedness like seed; now they harvest wickedness and evil.” The Buddhists and
Hindus, most notably, call this phenomena karma.
To Buddhists, karma is simply a
term used to describe cause and effect, nothing more. I am emphasizing this
because mainstream culture is filled with misconceptions about karma from the
Buddhist perspective. The biggest misconception is that a belief in karma means
you believe that you’ll return as a goat if you aren’t good in this life.
To Buddhists, belief in karma can
be tested, whereas belief in reincarnation can only be established by logical
inference. In other words, a belief in karma doesn’t necessarily mean a belief
in reincarnation. The second big misconception is that karma is a bad thing. It
isn’t: karma can be positive, negative, or neutral. It is simply a way to
describe cause and effect.
Karma, from Sanskrit origin, means
action. It implies any action a person can take, from
thoughts to speech to physical action (these are called the three doors of the
self). The concept is that each action creates a causal “seed” for the person
to experience a similar thing at some point in the future. Similarly, each
experience a person undergoes can be seen as the result of an earlier action.
While one’s karma may be a bad
day, karma is also the experience of health, youth, and fortune. Life in its
entirety is karma, a continuation of actions and results that began at some
point that you or I cannot see.
The fact that so many cultures
have held the belief that, to a certain extent, one's actions cause one's
experiences, gives the idea some weight. The beauty of the karma is that you
can test it out: if you see that it works, great. If it doesn’t, great – ditch
the idea and move on to something that does work.
“We
are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.
Speak or act with an impure mind
And trouble will follow you
As the wheel follows the ox that draws the cart.”
(Byrom, "Dhammapada")