Karma (or Cause and Effect)

The point of this post is to de-mystify (literally take out of the realm of mysticism) the idea of "Karma." Because I personally feel that Karma is as valuable to a person's everday working-knowledge as knowing arithmetic and the multiplication tables (though admittedly, some would disagree on the usefulness of those...)

The Webster defintion of Karma: the force generated by a person's actions held in Hinduism and Buddhism to perpetuate transmigration and in its ethical consequences to determine the nature of the person's next existence.

That's quite a mouthful, and if you're at all interested in Eastern Philosophy, I say go for it!

But for my purpose, I'm going to use a simpler, etymologically derived definition. In Sanskrit (which is kind of like the Latin of the Indian world. No one speaks it anymore, but it's what Hindi and all other Indian languages are based on), Karma literally means "deed" or "action that has consequences." Of these two, I'm going to work with the second one, though you'll see how the first one also fits beautifully.

So, Karma involves "action[s] that [have] consequences." That's pretty simple. Therefore the alternative title of this post: Cause and Effect. Because in all actuality, that's all that Karma is. The game of cause and effect. If anything happens, it must have a cause and it must have an effect (unless you go all the way back to the unmoved mover and such, but that's a philosophical debate for the heavy weights, not for little old me). In simplest terms, if B --> C, then B not only caused C, but was also caused by A. C was not only caused by B, but will also cause D. Ad infinitum, all the way down, and all the way up.

But keep in mind, events rarely happen linearly. In fact, the world is like one big giant interconnected web. If you do one thing, the affects could go WAY beyond your immediate surroundings. WAY beyond. Take the idea of the butterfly effect. This hypothesis states that the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil could cause a tornado in Texas. I don't know if this is viable. But it sounds real poetic, doesn't it?

Okay. That's real great. Karma and butteflies. Real great. But how the hell is it useful to ME in every day LIFE? Well, what I'm telling you is that no matter what you do, it will have an effect. On both you, and the world at large. No (wo)man is an island. Whether you do something in public or private, whether it's good or bad, doesn't matter. It will have consequences. And more often than not, these consequences are not what you expected.

A beautiful example of this can be found in the movie The Butterfly Effect. I don't want to give away the story if you haven't seen the movie. But let me just tell you, it's not about a buttefly flapping his/her wings. I highly recommend it. And watch the director's cut. That's the better ending (though people who saw the actual ending tell me that's the better ending, so I guess it depends on which you watch first).

The moral of this story? Be mindful of your actions. In doing so, you'll do the most good and the least amount of harm.

Or if you don't want to do that, this is just something cool to think about. At least, I think so.

And so ends this post.

Now, forget everything I've just told you, and go out and live your life.

Later.