These Lenten blog posts are ever a work in progress; at no time do I say, will I say - "This is it! I have got all the answers!" I haven't, I won't - but that doesn't put me off the quest. I mentioned karma yesterday in the context of punishment for abusing our habitat, and so I would like to examine the concept in greater detail.
Actions have consequences. [That line is repeated three times in the Coen brothers' A Serious Man.] Actions have natural consequences (you break the law, you are caught, brought to trial, found guilty and punished); but do they have supernatural consequences?
Example: you dump your household waste in the park, you get away with it - no one catches you, but six months later a kid on a skateboard bashes into the side of your parked SUV and dents both doors and front wing. Cause and effect? Cosmic, supernatural, metaphysical cause and effect?
Or is it just coincidence that we humans have a tendency to try to fit a narrative around such life events?
The concept of karma arose some 3,000 years ago in India. Like the Christian notions of heaven and hell, the idea that the quality of your afterlife can be changed by your behaviour in this life is useful when it comes to social control. Especially when you don't know for sure whether the trouble that you've stored up in this life will actually impinge on what comes next.
Karma dictates how you will be reincarnated. In traditional Hinduism, if you've led a worthy life, you return in your next life through a 'good birth' into a higher caste. If not - you are reincarnated as a dog or someone from a lower caste. Souls gravitate to specific bodies, it is said, in accordance with karma. The karma one collects is reflected in the next life as movement within the caste system. The promise of upward mobility is simple to understand. This brought about passive acceptance of the lower castes of their position in society. Thus, over the millennia, the karma doctrine turned into an instrument of social control.
I don't buy this at all.
Consciousness 'migrates' only in that it is an omnipresent property of the Universe. Although I have no better construction to make in terms of how this works - I only feel that the process is infinitely more subtle than progression or regression up a social ladder.
But how about karma coming in and biting us in this life, within days, weeks, months or years of your misdeed? Does it happen only if you observe and watch out for it? If you note a misdeed (as I wrote here, it can be an error of judgment, a word wrongly said, something left undone - not just a sin or a crime), can you stave off the karma that is heading your way? Is it heading your way?
From Instant Karma! by John Lennon (1970):
Instant Karma's gonna get you
Gonna knock you off your feet
Better recognise your brothers
Everyone you meet
Why in the world are we here
Surely not to live in pain and fear
Why on earth are you there
When you're everywhere
Come and get your share
Well we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun
Yeah we all shine on
Come on and on and on on on
Come and get your share. Of instant karma.
This time last year:
Prayer and luck
This time two years ago:
Honey, it's post!
This time three years ago:
Consciousness, and the war between Science and Religion
This time four years ago:
The atoms within us
This time five years ago:
Our house gets connected to the town drains
This time six years ago:
No more revelations
This time 10 years ago:
Free will vs. destiny
This time 11 years ago:
Dogs begin to bark, hounds begin to howl
This time 13 years ago:
Winters are getting warmer
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