Karma

Karma is commonly understood as "What goes around comes around." This fits traditional Hinduism well, but as with all of the world's religions, traditional statements are not the final word. There is a contemporary edge to Hinduism, which seeks to understand the nature of the laws of the universe, and in that context karma takes on greater meaning.

First, it is easy enough to see that inside the context of a single human life, there is no moral tit-for-tat. Bad people get good things, and good people often get screwed. If there is to be a moral dimension of karma, an afterlife is an essential supposition. However, within single life one can see karma unfold. This requires a different definition: Karma is the energy released by actions. This definition is clearly accepted as scientific theory. Does it fit the rest of life?

Consider the actions of the past. Your grandparents made simple choices -- to go to the store on a given day, to make a phone call at a given moment, to accompany a particular friend -- and they ended up together. Seldom do the stories of couples meeting hinge on a moral choice per se. But the choices make possible future events that otherwise would not have happened.

Metaphorically, the actions set ripples in motion. As a result of a simple choice, your grandparents not only come together, but your mother or father was born. Because of the simple choices your grandparentsd made, it is possible for you to be born. Because of the simple choices your grandparents made, it is possible for you and I to be together in a moment, and your granparents' ripples meet those of my grandparents.

The ripples seem to continue throughout the time the universe exists. Jesus of Nazareth made choices, and you are met with the ripples still. Columbus made choices, slave traders made choices, Thomas Jefferson made choices, Abraham Lincoln made choices -- and all of them continue to have enormous impact on us as Americans, as Indians, as Blacks, as Whites, and more. Their ripples make our present moment.

But whether their choices were originally considered moral choices or not, they play out in both positive and negative ways. Yes, Jesus' choices led to a now that knows colleges, hospitals, free enterprise, and democracy. But the same ripples contribute to moments of the Inquisition, the genocide of tens of millions of American Indians, the Holocaust and countless smaller negative moments. Without Jesus' choice, none of those events would have played out quite the same. So it is that a Latino who knows the short end of American prejudice and the successful American billionaire both can attribute to Jesus and Constantine and Columbus and Jefferson the "cause" of their moment.

In the now that we have been presented, we always have choices ourselves. To an extent, the billions of prior choices determine our moment, but they never completely shut off our own possibilities to choose. We can choose to engage or withdraw; we can choose to love or to hate; we can choose to laugh or cry. We certainly can choose to eat this or that, wear this or that, and much, much more. Then our choices create ripples that join together with the billions that already play into the universe, and a new now is made. That now is not completely ours, but it isn't completely someone else's either. From this moment on, we all participate in every future moment. Every action, from the most serious of moral decisions to the most seemingly trivial unleashes energy that will impact countless other human beings -- and we cannot control our own impact any more than Jesus or Luther did.