Karma

With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,

Chan practitioner JM recently posted a note to ZenLiving at YahooGroups regarding Karma. I would like to add my three cents. Karma is often misunderstood; it seems to me, as a sort of punishment/reward system or something akin to fate. It is neither.

Karma is simply cause and effect, that’s it. If we look at a living system such as a pond, it may have a karmic balance we might call homeostasis. This is cause and effect in action. If the system goes into disequilibrium, that process is also a cause and effect. This is also cause and effect in action. Now, both equilibrium and disequilibrium are mental constructs. We add our understanding of these to what we experience in the pond. We make discriminations about them: balance good, imbalance, bad, and so on. Yet, in the grand scheme and the long view, no problem. This pond is temporary and is part of the whole environmental system, also temporary, and part of the Earth, also temporary, and so on. Everything changes.

Now, in the relative world, if I add something good to the pond, something good ripples out. If I add something bad to the pond, something bad ripples out. If I expect to use the pond, and I have added something bad, I will receive bad karmic effect. This effect may take on dimensions I do not foresee. Perhaps my children will want to swim in the pond and now they are sick. Or perhaps someone finds out I have done this and puts me in jail. Or perhaps, I recognize I did something wrong and offer amends…each action has a reaction and this reaction ripples out. But, here’s the thing, we are in the ripples and these ripples change us and as we change others change and so on and so on…

So, on the one hand, the Big Mind hand, everything is as it should be and nothing is this or that; on the other hand, in the Small Mind hand, everything happens because everything else happens and we are in the water when it does.

Is there karma or not?

Be well.