Karma

I've been thinking through the concept of karma lately. It's a helpful myth for me in thinking about how we live in the world, even if I can't accept there being an actual moral law in the universe that punishes and rewards us. First, though, what are we as persons, as this or that individual human being with this or that personality? There are many, many factors which play a role and I don't mean to be reductionistic in my proposal. I'm not going to argue for or against the notion of a soul, or of individual existence after death, or what not. I'm just looking at how we forge our lives here and now, and the concept of karma makes sense for that.

How so? Think about this: are you a separate person from your genetics? Keep in mind, your genetics have an awful lot to do with every single aspect of your build and your brain. They give you a predisposition to be a bookish introvert or gregarious extrovert, a night person or a morning person, calm or irascible, capable or incapable of being Michael Jordan or Albert Einstein, and so on. So it would seem that you, as the person you consider yourself to be, would not be that person without your genetic printing.

Of course, your environment and upbringing also play a large role here. Would you be that same person if you had grown up in a different city? Country? In some places, how would being born a block west or east have changed your life? With different parents? With a different number of parents? In a multi-generational home, or with just your nuclear family? This would all seem to play at least as much a role in who you are as genetics.

This is the point, then: you are not you. You are these things that make you up. You might wish you had been born to a different family, but if anyone had been born to that different family, that person would not have been you. This is where karma comes in: you have inherited your karma, your situation in life with all of its implications. If you are born into one home, you'll have one set of skills and virtues. Born into another, you would have a different set, which would you helped "you" and the world around you perhaps more or perhaps less.

I have been born an American. When I look around at political debate in this country, I wish that I had been born at least a Canadian. Scandinavian wouldn't have been so bad either. But I wasn't. I was born here. This is where I actually am. The ideological debates between Republicans and Democrats is part of my karma. The myths of freedom and individualism and capitalism are part of my karma.

I have been "reincarnated" here, to pull on another myth, out of the conditions of my forebears. I am their decisions brought into concrete form, so I am them, in a sense.

So what do I do from here? This is where talk of purifying karma comes in, of dealing with it skillfully. What counts as skillful, I'll leave for other discussions. But one way or another, I need to work with my present situation. Whether or not one can transmute lead into gold, it sure isn't going to work if one doesn't use the lead at hand.

This then leads to my legacy, my own "reincarnation." Whether I deal with the world skillfully or unskillfully, I will leave imprints. These imprints will change those I'm friends with, those I teach, maybe even those I brush up against on the street for a moment. This will leave something for the next generation, one way or another, as a continuation of that karma and of my personhood.