I’ve been working on a book about karma (to be published this fall), and I’ve had to think about the many ways the concept is misconstrued and misused. One of those came up recently, when someone asked, “What does Trump 2.0 say about America’s collective karma?”
I’ve seen attempts at answering that question: We’re suffering the consequences of slavery and other evils of our national past; Our sense of morality lapsed, and now we’re paying the price; We have vital lessons to learn about selfishness and materialism.
My own answer is: there is no answer, and if there is one, it can’t be deciphered by the human mind. Therefore, it’s futile to contemplate the question.
This is basically the same response I learned to give when someone tries to time-travel mentally and uncover what they did in the distant past to bring about some turmoil in the present. Rummaging around in long-forgotten weeds—or, in some cases, previous lives—in hopes of finding the cause of this event is a fool’s errand.
This is not my own opinion. It’s wisdom I gleaned from the wise sages who discerned the nature of karma and articulated its laws for the rest of us. The Bhagavad Gita (chapter 4, verse 17) puts it succinctly: “The course of karma is unfathomable”—or, in another translation, impossible to understand.
Everyone whose vocabulary includes the word karma—which probably means everyone reading this—knows that the concept itself is as straightforward as “we reap what we sow,” and its mode of operation is as neat and precise as a scientific principle: “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” If you accept that the cause-and-effect dynamic called karma is at work throughout the universe, then it follows that everything that happens to us in the present, wanted or unwanted, is the result of our actions in the past—and whatever we do in the here and now will lead to consequences, desirable or undesirable, in the future. But the particulars—exactly what we did back when, and exactly what’s going to happen at some future moment—are beyond the capacity of the human mind.
If you accept that the cause-and-effect dynamic called karma is at work throughout the universe, then it follows that everything that happens to us in the present is the result of our actions in the past—and whatever we do in the here and now will lead to consequences, desirable or undesirable, in the future. But exactly what we did back when, and exactly what’s going to happen at some future moment—are beyond the capacity of the human mind.
One could, of course, make the case that karma is baloney altogether. It is, indeed, difficult, if not impossible, to prove. One could also argue that the details of karma are not unfathomable, but are, instead, discernible by exceptional human minds—flawless psychics, enlightened sages, et al. It would be hard to prove that, too; one person’s presumed revelation is, to others, just guesswork, speculation, imagination, or conjecture.
That said, if we proceed on the assumption that karma is real, why would the details be considered unknowable? Well, for one thing, karma isn’t determined by our physical actions alone. The same exact behavior is said to produce entirely different consequences depending on who’s doing it, the circumstances in which it takes place, the intent or motivation behind the action, the individuals who are affected by it, the social milieu, and so on. Accidental harm is karmically different from intentional harm. Lying to gain an advantage over someone is different from lying to protect someone. Plus, we’re all embedded in families, associations, neighborhoods, and other groupings that impact our karma just as we impact that of others.
To get a sense of the immense complexity of karmic dynamics, think of every action—and, if you want to take it a step further, every thought as well—as analogous to a stone dropped into a still pond. Stone hits the water, creating a ripple, which flows to the edge of the pond and returns. A physicist could predict when the ripple will arrive back at the point of origin. But what if ten, twenty, or fifty stones are dropped into the pond at around the same time with varying degrees of force. The ripples collide and combine, altering the direction, speed, and force of every individual wave, and the chaos makes it impossible to trace the effect of any individual stone. Real life is like that, only more so. And if that applies to our individual karma, how much more so to the karma of entities like families and nations?
To be sure, it can be helpful to examine our past behavior and identify patterns that repeatedly lead to difficulties, but that’s different from attributing causality to a single action in the murky past. As the philosopher Aldous Huxley put it, “Karma exists, but its equivalence of act and award is not always obvious and material.”
Not material, meaning that it’s not particularly significant, pertinent, or useful.
That may seem contradictory since the thought of karma naturally turns our attention to the past, where the antecedents of the present occurred. But the practical takeaway is not to try to decipher the indecipherable, but to know that whatever happens is the lawful consequence of what we did in the past—and the responsibility lies squarely on our shoulders. We enjoy in the present the sweet fruit of the seeds we planted through virtuous action, and we gag in the present on the bitter harvest of bad behavior and selfish intentions. No excuses, no one to blame, no feeling sorry for ourselves.
In other words, a right understanding of karma plants us firmly in the present. Right here, right now is where our past behavior catches up to us, and where we have to respond skillfully if we want to move on to the next grade instead of taking the same course over again. Here and now is where we learn our lessons and plant the seeds of a better karmic future. The bottom line is that our task is to raise the quality of our intentions, thoughts, and actions toward greater compassion, generosity, and kindness. That’s how we upgrade our karma. And, to the degree we each contribute to the collective karma, acting righteously also adds a measure of goodness to the larger whole. It may seem as insignificant as placing a stick in a mighty river, but every little stick redirects the karmic current ever so slightly.
The article was first published on Substack – Practical Spirituality with Philip Goldberg: https://philipgoldberg.substack.com/
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