English Version | Karma Chameleon

13 Mar 2023
By Sara Andrade

Chameleon because it can assume a multitude of forms of retribution, whether in a blessed or cursed way. Do you believe in karma? Is luck sown or is this all just a game of chance?

Chameleon because it can assume a multitude of forms of retribution, whether in a blessed or cursed way. Do you believe in karma? Is luck sown or is this all just a game of chance?

Artwork de João Oliveira.
Artwork de João Oliveira.

Truth be told, you don't have to believe in karma to have already summoned it in your everyday life, inadvertently or on purpose. That time someone slipped into your parking space without asking for permission, that hustler who stole your place in line, that betrayal, that injustice, that bad behavior that seems to have left the perpetrator unharmed, without any correction of immorality being achieved at the time… you don’t have to believe in karma to have already wished that it would function as divine justice for impunity without merit. “Karma will catch up with you”, I shouted as an individual shamelessly sat in the taxi that was destined for me. Even today, years after the episode, I think about the enormity of righteous and unlucky scenarios that that not-so-fine gentleman could have faced to pay such infamy. And my anxiety calms down only with the karmic certainty that any one of them have come true. But the idea of this (good or bad) fortune that seems to advocate an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, is not the innocuous word that one throws away without thinking, to rest the nervous system, that a bad action will have its deserved punishment in due time - or, on the opposite side, that a blessing falls on someone who is recurrently pleasant and deserving.

The term, which translates from Sanskrit (language of the classical scriptures originating in Nepal and India), broadly, as “action” or “deliberate act”, is closely related to the idea of cause and effect which, like the binomial indicates, means that the intention and actions of a person influence the future of the same. The justice dimension of karma, or better said, the faith we place in it in a kind of will to give meaning and order to the injustices or graces of life is what makes it so peculiar, because the duo action and reaction is too reductive to encapsulate the meaning of this philosophy. It should be stressed, in this definition that every action has a karmic consequence, that it is essential to consider the morality of the action and not to underestimate the intention. Because it's not just the act that contributes to karma, but the intent or motive as well, which means that being sympathetic from a selfish starting point is not an automatic trigger for good karma. For example, if you help someone but have a hidden agenda because you'll gain something from it, it's not exactly a recipe for a well-deserving reward. Simply put, a good intention and right act contribute to good karma and good fortune; bad intentions and actions trigger bad results and episodes of bad luck, which can be of a moral, material or emotional nature - and which can even manifest themselves only in the next life. Although it is hard for one to think that retroactive effects may no longer happen throughout one’s existence, karma, being at the center of many Eastern doctrines, is also correlated with the cycle of life, death and rebirth that are, as a rule, an appanage for said religions. In this cycle (samsara), rebirth (which is guessed better or worse depending on the moral rectitude of past lives) is implicit in many philosophies of Indian religions, such as Hinduism and Jainism (one of the three ancient religions of India), but the alliance between the two differs slightly from thought to thought. From the point of view of some schools of Hinduism, karma and rebirth are intertwined and are simultaneously essential, something that is not transversal to all schools, which can only consider karma as essential. The specific nuances of each doctrine and the subtle disparity of perspectives do not prevent the creation of a more or less universal explanation for the concept, uniting the currents of thought in common points that synthesize its core. The principle of causality for this law of karma is, of course, elementary to realizing it. A central theme among all Hindu, Buddhist and Jain schools of thought, the causality associated with karma focuses on the double cause/consequence, refining the idea that this applies to actions with intention. What does this mean? That unintentional acts do not have karmic effects. This idea of karma as a consequence of an act, not as a punishment or reward, but rather as a natural law of causality, along with the weight of intention and intent in that same act, is seen by some scholars as a principle of psychology and habit, as suggested by Karl Potter (author of the book Pressuppositions of Indias Philosophies, 1963) and Harold Coward (Canadian author who signs The Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies and professor of Bioethics and Religious Studies). Since karma generates habits, it is these routines that define the nature of Man, as well as the notion of himself, thus influencing the way he lives his daily life and making conscious the capacity for choice and effort in breaking bad habits and pursuing good ones. The idea of karma can therefore be compared to the notion of a person's character, since both fall under the assessment of the individual and are both determined by the thought and way of acting of that same individual. The moral burden placed on each of these thoughts and forms of action that end up determining karma guided the idea that theories of karma are also an ethical theory, since, in ethics, the intentions, attitudes and desires of a person are central to the evaluation of one’s behavior - unintentional results do not make the author morally responsible, even if the causal relationship (the consequence of that act) continues to exist. This means that religions that place karma at the center of their teachings - Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, for example - incite the faithful to seek a moral life, on the path of Goodness and enlightenment and to avoid a life immoral, denying evil. Sound familiar? 

Despite cultural and religious disparities, the concept of karma finds parallels in Christian and Jewish religion (and others) in this way of placing reward and punishment as a consequence of human actions, thus guiding, as much as possible, their social and individual behaviour; these doctrines place the sentence in the hands of a righteous deity, though, while the eastern ones speak of an autonomous law of causality, distinguishing them: there is no divine will or external interference in the relationship between the (im)moral act and its inevitable result, aka, karma. Another fundamental aspect of division is the karmic effect prolonged over time, that is, the consequences of karma in the soul carry over from life to life, in this cycle of death and rebirth, while in Christianity the consequence manifests itself only once, in the Final Judgment, as a one-off review at the end of life. Another parallel that some scholars make is the idea of the divine plan, inherent in Catholic doctrine, with the belief, in line with Hindu and Buddhist thoughts, that we live with the karmic consequences of our past lives, and therefore have no chance of choice, or free will, because one is born from a starting point of predestination (a dichotomy for another completely autonomous conversation), that is, assuming karma as a matter of luck/fate. It is common in the West to reduce karma to the idea of destiny, mainly in this analogous approach of a superior force that determines it. However, given the most elementary definition of karma discussed here, the logical reasoning will be to understand it as a principle that does not depend on luck - or, depending on it, that it is the one that we make. Even this idea that one is born with previous karma, conceiving it as predestination could not be further from the karmic core, which, given the cycle of rebirths, and this notion of awareness of attitudes, thoughts and behaviors of each individual about himself, encourages morally positive decision-making to clear previous karma on the path to liberation and enlightenment. The karmic principle cannot, therefore, be seen as an immutable condemnation, but rather a possibility of consciously altering one's own karma, even as a form of redemption. And it won't exactly be a game of chance or luck, sowing one and the other to later reap the punishments/laurels, it's just the conscious notion that every action has a consequence in equal measure - which can be manifested immediately or deferred, but which is not at all random or predestined. Even removed from its religious context, karma may just be the manifestation of the concept of responsibility, insofar as it attributes to its author a result depending on his way of acting and his intentions. Ultimately, it's the perfect formula for navigating crises and turning them into opportunities, a kind of growing pains that help you mature. In this sense, and apart from any faith or doctrine or philosophy, karma is a kind of incentive for a happier, fuller, holistic life and, thus, modern societies have incorporated the concept, regardless of their beliefs or absence of them.

Incidentally, regardless of whether you are religious, agnostic or atheist, the fact is that we have adopted this spiritual term naturally in Western cultures. Even through popular sayings such as “you reap what you sow”, the internationally acclaimed “what goes around comes around”, the biblical “as you want men to do to you, so do also unto them”, the truth is that, more or less standardized, what we seek is to act correctly, also believing that this will be returned to us. We don't do it just for that reason, obviously (may we remind to the weight of intention in influencing karmic return), because the objective is not to act well and then reap the rewards. It's rather doing good because it's right and consequently everything else falls into place. The more so that we leave a legacy of which we are proud, an awareness that, when the final credits of this movie roll, and this film is rewinded, we appreciate the part we played in it. In the song The End, by The Beatles, the last stanza of this theme that is the last one on the song list in the last album that the band started to record together (funny, isn't it?), the mythical Abbey Road (1969), underlines that, “in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make”. And if this was the best ending for John, Paul, George and Ringo, let it also be the karmic reward for the best ending of this text.

Translated from the original on The Good Luck Issue, published march 2023.Full stories and credits on the print issue.

Sara Andrade By Sara Andrade

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