UNDERSTANDING KARMA

The word Karma in Sanskrit means “action.” In Hindu philosophy, it connotes moral causality. However, in popular understanding it is far more. A story Indian children are told illustrates its powerful role.

Shiva and Parvati are looking down from Kailas at a poor old man trudging along a desert road, hungry, thirsty and wretched.

“Why don’t you help him?” Parvati asks.

“I can’t” says Shiva. “It’s his karma.”

“You are almighty God. Surely, you can bend the laws of karma to give him some food and water and money.”

“Watch this,” says Shiva waving his hand.

On the road directly in front of the man a table appears with a sumptuous feast and a pot of gold.

Just then the old man thinks to himself, ‘All my life I’ve walked with my eyes open. Here I am on this straight desert road with nothing to see. Let me walk with my eyes closed.’ He closes his eyes and walks past the table.

God in that perspective is as bound by the chains of causality as is the old man to his misery. There is no magical release, no liberating deux ex machina of ancient Greek theater. God can only work as the essence of beneficial causality in a universe of laws.

How then does one escape bad Karma?

There are two steps. The first is to understand the situation. Once it is clear why the situation is unsatisfactory, you can begin to think about what will change it for the better. If your thinking is sound, the corrective course of action — the path of good karma — should suggest itself.

How do you ensure sound thinking?

Every path of spiritual practice provides advice on how that can be done. Perhaps the most cut and dried advice comes from the Buddha, who referred to no divinity in setting out an “Eight-Fold Path.”

It begins with “Right Livelihood.” You must be engaged in decent work if your karma is to be good. If your work is fundamentally dishonest or cruel or destructive, none of the other seven steps will be of much use…

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