More about Karma

 I have been thinking about the notion that everything that happens to a person is really the result of their own karma, whether skillful or not skillful. This idea can sometimes lead to the mistaken view that when negative things happen to a person, they are being 'punished' for their previous actions or thoughts. In a way, this is a kind of anthropocentric way of looking at an otherwise very natural process. Thoughts simply "catch up" to a person, eventually leading to either wholesome or unwholesome actions. It's not even necessarily a case of blaming a person so much as it is to know what happens when certain kinds of thought habits are fed. An example might be that of dwelling on what the "crowd" thinks of a person. If I am attached in my heart to gaining praise and avoiding criticism or disdain from others, my result will reflect that attachment: I respond to every situation out of a fear of being disapproved, and out of a craving for approval. While this might work to one's favor for a while (by allowing a person to become skillful in gaining approval) eventually this strategy ends up failing: nobody is popular or liked all the time. In fact, being admired becomes nothing more than a straight-jacket if it locks a person into a state of expecting admiration in the future. The more often I become attached to admiration, the more I crave it in the future and the more sensitive I am if such admiration does not come to me in the future. This is karma at work, because it shows the way the mind is ensnared in its own delusive attachment to states of being that are not permanent.
   "Health" is another example of something that seems like a good thing to have, but can eventually lead to attachments and negative karmic results. For example, some people will spend a lot of money on potions or medicines that are designed to keep them young (or supposedly), only to find later that they cannot sustain such a project forever. There is no special surgery that is going to keep a person permanently young. I even read a story about a person who wanted to make himself look like a doll, only to find that the repeated surgeries were causing him to lose his nose (yes, literally, the doctor said that his nose would collapse if he had another surgery). Such kinds of surgeries are like going against the natural course of things.  Even when one's physical health is good, there is no guarantee that their mental health will be the same. In Tea Words Volume II, Sheng Yen remarks:

From the moment we are born, the threat of illness hovers over us. The person who has not suffered illness has yet to be born, and only after death does illness cease. But the lives of sentient beings are also marked by mental affliction. (p.32)

In other words, nothing can be sustained forever, and the desire to keep something permanent can also lead to mental states of affliction that are even more painful than physical ones.

   Does any of this sound too pessimistic? The point I want to make is that it's healthier to see karma as a pure form of experience from causes and conditions, rather than assigning labels like "punishment" or "blame". There are two reasons for this. The first is, owing to impermanence and the nature of cause and conditions, it simply makes no sense to dwell on blame: things are changing all the time, and time waits for no one. Secondly, the whole point of karma is not feeling unworthy or "bad", but to ask oneself what they can learn from their mental conditioning. If I am suffering because I badly want to stay young, is that suffering eased by trying harder to stay young, or is there something about my mind's attachment to an idea that leads to suffering?  If I am addicted to being "approved" by eyeryone, does that benefit others, or does it only cause me more suffering? The results I receive ask me to continually re-examine the state of my mind to see where I am getting stuck.

Sheng Yen (2013). Tea Words Volume II Elhurst NY: Dharma Drum Publications