“From a lack of self-knowledge and restraint, she brings the misfortune on herself.”(I Ching, p.483) “He creates his own reality; there is no one else to blame.”(I Ching, 468)
The concept of karma has a history that goes back long before any of these traditions became identifiable in and of themselves, but it comes to us most explicitly by way of the Vedic Hindus. The word karma literally means work, action, or deed, and is “the mechanism by which spirit works,”(Radhakrishnan) (as revealed in the Rig Veda, the earliest of the four Vedas, in about 1400 B.C.C.)
“The law of karma is the counterpart in the moral world of the physical…law of the conservation of energy.” [1] Or, as we put this idea in the biblical west, “’As a man sows, so shall he reap.’”(Smith, 49) And just as we understand in the west that “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction,” so the law of karma “brooks no exceptions.”(Smith, 49) There is “nothing uncertain or capricious” about it – “we reap what we sow. The good seed brings a harvest of good, the evil of evil.”(Radhakrishnan)
As Native Americans put it, "these are natural laws that have natural consequences." And “The spiritual side of the natural world is absolute…. Our instructions, and I’m talking about for all human beings, our instructions are to get along. Understand what these laws are” telling us. “If you do that, life is endless. It just continues on and on in great cycles of regeneration great powerful cycles of life regenerating and regenerating and regenerating. If you want to tinker with that regeneration, if you want to interrupt it, that’s your choice, but the results that come back can be very severe because again, the laws are absolute. Either you do or you don’t. If you don’t, you pay. It’s quite simple.” (OI, Lyons, 24)
In other words, because the law of karma is always fair, it will not advantage some and disadvantage others, as a god who plays favorites might. In as much as “Karma is a blind unconscious principle governing the whole universe,” it requires no judge to administer it, no higher principle to direct it. It is thus not subject to the control or the exception, even of God.(Radhakrishnan) “Anthropomorphically we can say a divine power controls the process,”(Radhakrishnan) but one cannot count on one’s personal relationship with said God to get one off the hook when it comes time to pay ones dues. Indeed, we should not expect a good God to play favorites anyway, any more than we would expect a good parent to make exceptions for a favorite child. What would that teach them, after all, except to try to escape consequences by playing up to the rule maker? We might see in this latter-day belief the root of injustice, whereby humans begin trying to ‘cheat’ if you will. But karma “renders impossible any arbitrary interference with moral evolution.”(Radhakrishana)
And for this reason, Rhadikrishnan says, any “attempt to overleap the law of karma is as futile as the attempt to leap over one’s shadow. It is the psychological principle that our life carries within it a record that time cannot blur or death erase.”(Radhakrishnan) And the “course that a soul follows is charted by its wants and deeds at each stage of its journey.”(Smith, 49)
But Buddha would be remembered for emphasizing that, unlike those who measured karmic rewards by worldly rewards (as the caste system implied) a proper understanding of karma should make clear that, just as “Every deed must produce its natural effect in the world,” so “it leaves an impression on or forms a tendency in the mind of man.” And just as “all deeds have their fruits in the world,” so too they have their “effects on the mind.” For this reason, so-called good and bad karma cannot be measured in extrinsic fortunes. “Every little action has its effect on character…[and] conscious actions tend to become unconscious habits.”(Radhakrishnan)
In this way, karma keeps the spiritual universe absolutely just, and encourages personal responsibility for the direct and intrinsic connection between one’s goodness and all of its ultimate rewards, including its effect on our state of mind, our ultimate happiness. And so, rather than encouraging an ulterior and extrinsic motive for creating the mere appearance of goodness in the eyes of a god, a church, or the world, karma emphasizes the way that our actions determine our inner states of being, our self knowledge.
And so, while many may consider their fortunes to be gifts from a divine giver, these ancient sages saw such blessings as the just deserts of a potentially divine chooser. For “there is a soul within him which is the master,” and the “more he realizes his true divine nature, the more free is he.”(Rhadakrishnan) And while karma is not incompatible with the idea of God, it holds that even God – indeed, especially God – is bound by the moral law. “The divine expresses itself in law, but law is not God. The Greek fate, the Stoic reason, and the Chinese Tao, are different names for the primary necessity of law.”(Radhakrishnan)
Hindus use a card-playing metaphor to illuminate how karma works. “The hand that a card player picks up he dealt in a former life; but he is free to play it as he chooses.”(Radhakrishnan) Buddha was ultimately not as sure as the ancient Hindu sages that it took many lives to advance spiritually, but this did not change the efficacy of karma, in his eyes. But by this cause and effect necessity, karma does not eliminate freedom, for while the conditions from which we act have been dealt us by our past actions, the will remains free to choose how we will act and react to our present situation.
“Whatever happens to us in this life…is the result of our past doings. Yet the future is in our power, and we can work with hope and confidence” that virtue will bring good. While “every decision must have its inexorable consequences…the decisions themselves are freely arrived at.” “Our karma limits our freedom, but it does not eliminate it.” For “freedom and karma are [but] two aspects of the same reality.”(Radhakrishnan)
And so all are free to learn to be good, and while not all will in a single lifetime, it is nonetheless possible for a diligent soul, Siddhartha surmised, to reach enlightenment in this life – the purest and fullest experience of the here and now.
Siddhartha remembered having had an experience as a boy during which he achieved an uncommon level of absorption, one which he recognized as the first step on “the way to enlightenment.” It was as much out of nostalgia for more of this deep experience, as it was disillusionment with the overindulgence of life as he knew it, that put him on the path of spiritual growth…not merely toward a new philosophy, but a ”change into a different kind of creature.”(Smith, 75) He desired to change himself from one with a poorly focused mind into one that sees clearly by “direct perception,” to be free of the “three poisons” of “’extirpation of delusion, craving, and hostility.’”(Smith, 75)
He would ultimately discover the path to what might be called nirvana, some call satori. The experience of satori is an intuitive understanding of life’s meaning, distinct from a logical or rational knowledge. It is an experience which Zen master Suzuki likens to “the excavation of a long lost treasure.”(p.580) [2] C.G. Jung calls the satori experience “the unexpected, comprehensive, completely illuminating answer” which gives one “the feeling of touching upon a true secret, not something that has been imagined or pretended…not a case of mystifying secrecy, but rather an experience that baffles all language.”(p. 12)[3] It is “the awakening of an inner sense which enables one to look into the actual workings of things…the meaning will reveal itself, and without further questioning, you will be convinced that you now know it all…it gives birth to the unshakable conviction that there is something indeed going on beyond mere intellection.”(p.109)[4]
Satori comes as a surprise, they say, something no one can predict and probably no one has told us about because it is largely ineffable. It is a sudden falling into place of questions and answers, and angle of perspective by which life takes on a comprehensive order, and suddenly things just make sense. There is the immediate realization with this that the answers were there all along; I knew them, everyone knows them, on some level…but we all seem to have forgotten to remember. They are the answers that we probably would have given as children, had we been able to conceive of the questions then. Jung says that “Satori is, in fact, a matter of natural occurrence, of something so very simple that one fails to see the wood for the trees… Not that something different is seen, but that one sees differently.”(p.13-17)[5] Suzuki compares this to the “experience of homecoming,” of “coming back to ourselves,” it is the “feeling of perfect security.”(p.585)[6]
But the key is that this peace of mind is available only to the worthy, that is, to those who have put their karma aright. We have all made mistakes in life, but not all have understood the need to make right what is wrong. The Hawaiian huna call it, hoponopono – the process of making peace with those with whom one has put themselves at war. Which may require balancing ones inner scales, resolving one’s inner conflict, before one can make things right with others.
[1] (Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Indian Philosophy, Chapter 4: The Philosophy of the Upanisads, Section 19. Karma)
[2] (D. T. Suzuki 1973)
[3] (Jung, n.d.)
[4] (D. T. Suzuki 1964)
[5] (Jung n.d.)
[6] (D. T. Suzuki 1973)