THE LAWS OF KARMA

Our earlier two posts (here and here) discussed the war economy, and the fact that nations must also face the consequences of their actions. Thus each of these posts was a specific instance of the inexorable laws of karma at work. That should not surprise anyone, given that the blog aims to seek out root causes of the multifarious phenomena we see around us!

At this stage, we thought that a brief discussion about the laws of karma was also needed – and so here it is!

Imagine that, for the first time in your life, you are passing through a thick forest. Foliage is so thick that daylight barely reaches ground level. Turning back is not an option, because you know your life’s goal lies ahead. As you move, you walk into branches and bushes, slip, stumble, hurt yourself, tire, be bitten by bugs, be fearful, be thirsty … and much more. You curse your fate. You curse the forest. But if you are wise, and if you persevere, you will make it through the forest and achieve your life’s goal.

The imagined forest journey is a metaphor for a person’s journey through life, but with a few huge differences.

Firstly, it is assumed that one would be cautious and mindful in the forest, because one is aware of the dangers. As against that, the journey through life is often accompanied by rash behaviour, arrogance, haste et cetera. One is therefore temperamentally more handicapped in life than in the forest.

Secondly, the forest is imagined to have an end. Beyond lies a pleasing country-side and also one’s cherished goal. As against that, it is difficult to define when life’s journey ends, and what is one’s goal.

Thirdly, the forest metaphor is framed as a single person’s journey, whereas the journey of life is very much a multi-person experience. Many questions arise thereby. Are the travellers better off cooperating, or competing? Do they look forward to the same goal? Will the final prize be divided up amongst them, or is there plenty to go around? These are crucial questions. Wrong answers can lead and – throughout history – have led to mindless brutality.

In any journey, if we are fortunate, we get tips from experienced travellers, those who know what works, what doesn’t work, and what is a deadly mistake. A kind-hearted fellow traveller gives you a helpful tip; a mean-spirited person throws you off-trail with a falsehood; a cruel person robs you or kills you.

Mankind has been around Planet Earth for well over a hundred thousand years. Countless valuable tips have been passed from generation to generation. Most of these tips are related to practical matters, such as metallurgy, agriculture, animal husbandry, construction et cetera. However, a significant portion of these valuable tips relate to human behaviour, separating behaviour which is helpful to the community from that which is harmful.

Ancients in all parts of the world passed on such valuable tips from generation to generation. Outwardly, cultures and traditions may appear to be different; even then, most of the core tips – or ‘values’ – exhibit a high degree of commonality. Over millennia, oral traditions were replaced by written ones, constituting the most revered literature of different traditions.

Today, the internet has allowed people from all over the world to learn about each other, to share their stories, to make friends outside their traditional communities, and so on. The word karma today stands for the consequences of one’s actions. The word originates in India, but today just about any educated person in the world is familiar with this word.

Good and bad karma, respectively, refer to actions with beneficial and harmful consequences. A long-term view is implied. Purse-snatching is bad karma, even though, for a time, it enriches me somewhat. Why? Because, in the longer term, I will surely ruin my life as a habitual purse-snatcher.

We may define karma – or the laws of karma – as the empirically discovered laws relating a person’s actions to the long-term consequences of those actions on the person. The laws can only be defined in general terms, because actions have countless variations. The laws of karma are not meticulously recorded by humans in any ‘penal code’. Indeed, they cannot be thus recorded, because life has boundless variety, and no event is exactly replicated again.

The laws of karma can be understood through honest introspection, and through empathy for another person’s condition. None of these qualities are seen in abundance; craving, aversion and delusion block honest introspection and empathy. For these reasons, we do meet people who deny flatly that there is such a thing as laws of karma. The reason is that, in the lives of such people, there has not been sufficient honest introspection and empathy. There are also people who understand these things quite well, but do not share that understanding with others, whom they view as competitors.

The ancients knew they had to pass on to the younger generation the skills of metallurgy, agriculture … or whatever. But they also knew that they had to pass on to the young a basic understanding of karma, the consequences of one’s actions. The moderns seem to have jettisoned this time-tested wisdom. They seem to think that once you have ‘AI’, you do not need any other ‘wisdom’! We look on in disbelief, fingers crossed behind our backs.

QUESTION: Why have these laws not been listed down, one by one? ANSWER: For two reasons: They cannot be thus listed down, and you must discover them yourself.

QUESTION: Can theists and atheists both believe in these laws?ANSWER: Yes. In one case, they can be seen as laws laid down by God. In the other case, these laws can be seen as an integral and inseparable part of the universe.

In subsequent posts, we will examine the working out of these laws in the publicly documented lives of well-known people.