Karma : Logical and Universal

Karma, also known to the western world as "you reap what you sow", "what goes up must come down" or "a bitch", is one of the few concepts from eastern culture which has made its way into our repertoire of references. It will often be casually thrown into a conversation when someone finds out that, for instance, a major sports star gets caught cheating on his wife and then proceeds to lose many of his sponsorship deals (hypothetical situation, of course).

Many people understand karma through this sort of usage but very few understand exactly why and how karma works. Until I truly began studying karma, I understood very little other than the fact that if someone did something bad, something bad would happen to them, and vice versa. I couldn't tell you why, how, who/what keeps track of it, etc. as though karma were a sort of incomprehensible force that must simply be taken as is.

This is not the case.

As it turns out, karma is not only completely understandable, it's completely logical and sensible.

Where does karma come from?

Karma begins with the concept of complete interdependence, the dependence of all beings on all other beings. This is a difficult statement to swallow if you are used to the western mindset which tends to emphasize independence. Your life, your sustainability, all of your material goods lay wholly in the hands of every other being on the planet. It is because of other beings that you have everything you have:

1. The reason you're alive is because of your parents and because no one has taken it from you.
   
2. The reason you have clothes is because of the people who sold them to you, the people that made them, the people that wove the fabric, the people who picked the cotton or harvested the silk worms, and the silkworms themselves.
   
3. The reason you have food to eat is because of the farmers that grew them, the people who taught the farmers how to grow them, the indigenous people in your area who at one point learned what could be eaten and grown there, and the person who gave you money to buy it.
   
4. The reason you have a house is more than likely because someone else built it for you, and if you built it yourself, it's because someone taught you how. One can also say that you have a house because no one has burned it down.
   
5. Look around at everything else you have and think of the possible chains of people or things that have allowed you to possess it.

Your life from this point on is just as based on the actions of other people. Without the beneficial actions of others, you would not have what you have today and if others were less compassionate and acted irrationally, you would have nothing just the same. You are wholly dependent on others as they are dependent on you. This forms a vast web of dependence that spans the entire earth.

I refer to this web of dependence as karma.

When you do something harmful to someone else, you are by definition harming someone that you are dependent on. This will inevitably, in the long- or short-run, harm you in some way. Your actions towards other beings on this planet eventually determine how those beings affect you, so if you do something good, then good will follow, and if you do something harmful, then harm will follow. As such, doing significant damage to your own personal web will cause significant harm in return.

So remember to treat all others with pure compassion for they are part of your web.

I hope this was helpful.

Smile, breathe, and go slowly.