Karma, a vocabulary descended from Hinduism and Buddhism. It has been in much use since time immemorial. The word is used frequently by many, popularly associated with the idiom, “You reap what you sow.”
Karma, is a popular name in Bhutan and Tibet, the name is both used by female as well as male. The difference would be in the second name to Karma, for example Karma Dorji would be a male gender whereas Karma Dema would be a female name. I guess you would be able to differentiate if a particular Karma is a male or female, by its second name if you were from that particular part of the world.
For me "Karma" meant a name of a friend of mine in elementary school, Karma Choden, the pretty girl who always shared her American candies with me. Her father was a tour guide and most of his clients were American, so he often received sweets and candies from them, which Karma used to bring in her lunch tiffin and she would share with me during lunch recess. Those delightful candies, I often wondered then if they were made in Heaven. Karma always shared her candies with me, in return I used to help her with her math homework. At the age of 8, Karma was a great friend who shared her candies with me.
Time and tide waits for none, a decade and half passed by, still clueless about Karma yet often found myself quoting, “what goes around comes around,” to friends or family members, when they annoyed me or wronged me or simply making a joke with friends. Karma, the profound word used only by the wise.
It was not until when I was in my 30s did I actually have a proper understanding on Karma, its cause and effect.
One of the Buddhist meditation masters, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, the author of Crazy Wisdom and Meditation in Action, mentioned that our actions bound us in the karmic cycle, with each action we perform a karmic seed is sown. Once the Karmic seed is ripe, no one can stop the initiated karmic wind. He further explained in his books that the antidote to karma is in-action, which thus can be Meditation.
There are many Buddhist as well as Hindu teachers who give teachings on karma, There are many archaic folklore on Karma both from India as well as Tibet.
After much introduction on the subject, my personal understanding of karma is as follows:
Karma, its cause and effect, is a prism though which we can learn to be an altruistic person, and take care of the well being of our mother earth and her inhabitants.
There is also a misinterpretation that karma is the luggage of our past life, which we are carrying in this life. In Hindu culture, if someone is suffering with poverty or ailment etc. they call it “pararabdha” karma, which means the loan from the past life which you are repaying in this life.
As much as I believe in this aspect of karma from past life to present life and then moving forward to our future life, I also strongly believe that the Karmic cycle of sowing the seed and ripening and thus the wind howling or beautifully breezing through, are very much in the present life too.
For example, literally the title of Pema Chodron’s book, When Things Fall Apart, when things fell apart in my life, I first took upon the victim role, and later started blaming karma. It was much years later I realized that, if simply had I adjusted my perspective lens, and accepted the situations, I had the golden ticket to start anew, by acceptance and letting go.
We each have a story, we can either be the victim of our story or the protagonist. We can choose to retain guilt, insecurities, fears and stay stuck or allow our story to be the threshold to empower us into the best we can be.
When we navigate our storms with aplomb, its a proof that we are the captain of our life boat.
Understanding karma, is deconstruction of our rigid mental patterns, habits and belief system. We open our hearts and mind, we are in a place where we can experience the moment of truth, our non-dualistic reality. The virtues we choose to cultivate, can inspire loving-kindness metta to every sentient being across this universe including ourselves.
This is Karma, truly said, “What we sow, is what we reap.” xx