Hmm. I guess the answer to this is yes… and no. I first have to acknowledge that the concept of karma I hold may not even be accurate, as it’s appropriated from another culture that I don’t have any knowledge of and am not part of. So my idea of karma is the westernized one: if you do a bad thing, it comes back to you. Pretty literally. Like if you cheat on someone, you’ll be cheated on or if you steal, you will be stolen from. The concept of the universe meting out ideal punishment. This concept, no, I do not believe in. Lots of people do shit things and don’t have that same pain they’ve inflicted revisited on them. Plenty.
That said, I do think that there’s a slightly sideways way to look at this. If you’re a shit person, if you take advantage of people around you or treat them badly, then you are likely to have fewer (if any) genuinely loving relationships. If you focus on taking from those around you, then you are less likely to receive generosity over time, and also you are denied the pleasure of giving to others. Basically, I think that if you’re not a good person, you’re less likely to be truly happy as defined by genuine connections with your community, loving family, being of service to others, feeling important, and finding joy in the mundane parts of life. I suppose there are probably people who feel happy with what they have without some of these things, but I find it hard to imagine being happy if I’d screwed people over to get things – particularly material success – and ended up with no one to share it with who actually gave a crap about me.
So yeah, I both do and don’t believe in karma. I also think that there’s a lot of value in doing things for others, just for its own sake.
What do you guys think? Do you buy into the concept? Does anyone have a better grasp of the actual meaning of the term beyond our simplified western definition?
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I answered with much the same working definition as you did, and I agree that often the people with a lot of a material success don’t seem to be very happy or fulfilled. But I don’t see it as some sort of universal law, I just think that actions have consequences.
Yep – I guess it all depends on whether the consequences matter to the person or not. But I’d like to think that for the most part there’s a cause and effect to how people behave in life.
if I can, miraculously, leave a comment … I’d just say I agree. Not sure that actual karma exists, but I do believe that you tend to reap what you sow for the most part.
Yes, that’s exactly it!