“In life, everything comes back to you”

How karma should be practiced: be nice to strangers, respect life, do not cause harm, all else being equal, choose the path which generates the greatest good for the greatest number.

How karma should not be practiced:

• To ease your mind that someone who was mean to you will eventually get paid back in full.
• As an excuse to be stupid.
• As a substitute for business sense.
• To harm yourself for the good of others in order to earn ‘karma points.’ This attitude is actually a rather self-serving one, once you think about it.
• As a means of making money to pay you back for your own generosity (you won’t be).
• As an excuse to be mean.
• To justify to yourself the suffering of others.
• To explain other people’s successes/failures.
• As a good-fortune system whereby ‘karma points’ are redeemed for your own future good fortune.
• To expect good fortune.

Frankly, I think most people miss the point when it comes to karma. Karma is not an actual system that exists, it’s a philosophy. And even if it were a system that occurred in the real world, you should still treat it as a philosophy. Be good to others and the reward is a greater amount of good in the universe. This should be enough, if it isn’t, then you’re looking in the wrong Eastern philosophy, try Kahn, Genghis.

Don’t expect payback, don’t look for evidence of the system, don’t seek to explain anything (positive or negative) through karma, and don’t try to manipulate the system. Finally, and most importantly, don’t cite karma as a excuse to not act. Karma will not pay anybody back for you, it’s not really its business to. When it comes to revenge, karma is too sloppy and too slow. There’s another philosophy that can help you in these situations: it’s called vengeance.

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“En la vida todo te regresa”

Karma is a good philosophy to live by. I say that because I think that a society in which everyone believes in karma is more likely to be nicer, easier and happier than a society which believes in the opposite.

However, I also think Karma is a personal philosophy. While I personally don’t believe in karma, I act (for myself) as if karma actually existed. I am nice to strangers, over tip waitresses, and haven’t poisoned Halloween candy in years!

That— I think— is how karma should be practiced.

Now let me give you some examples of how karma should not be practiced:

Scene #1

• A businessman steals another businessman’s idea and makes a fortune. The second businessman is frustrated, but relieved because he believes that the first businessman’s actions will come back to him.

Scene #2

• A shop owner unwisely extends a line of credit to a customer who never pays up. The shop owner is annoyed, but figures karma will pay him back for his good nature and pay the customer back for his own miserliness. The shop owner is vague about whether he expects actual payment or is talking in the universal grand scheme of things.

Scene #3

• An elderly man develops colon cancer. His neighbors figure he must have done something bad in a previous life. His ex-wife figures he is getting his just deserts from all of his bad actions throughout his life. His son reinvents his life to do good actions for fear of ending up like his father.

Tune in tomorrow for a wonderful explanation for who is wrong in these scenes and why. Hopefully, you’ll rethink your life after this, but if you don’t, hopefully all of my hard work will come back twice-fold for all of my good actions.

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