“That’s bad Karma, Dude”
I started wondering exactly what karma means, and where the word comes from. In Chinese, karma is two characters (因果) which literally translate as “cause and effect”. The original word Karma comes from Sanskrit and it means “act, action, performance.” In Sanskrit (your) karma is what causes the entire cycle of cause and effect (i.e., the cycle called samsara). On wikipedia, I found something very interesting on the karma page:
‘Karma’ is an Eastern religious concept in contradistinction to ‘faith’ espoused by Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), which view all human dramas as the will of God as opposed to present – and past – life actions. In theistic schools of Hinduism, humans have free will to choose good or evil and suffer the consequences, which require the will of God to implement karma’s consequences, unlike Buddhism or Jainism which do not accord any role to a supreme God or gods. In Eastern beliefs, the karmic effects of all deeds are viewed as actively shaping past, present, and future experiences.
One good example of this is how we interpret things we can’t understand. “It’s a miracle!” After thinking about it, a western religious person would say “it came from god,” while an eastern religious person would think that it has some connection to their past or future. In some ways, those two reactions aren’t very different. However, when you start to want to influence or take control of things, in one you’d focus back to god and in the other you’d focus on the present moment. I think this is where the difference becomes significant.
Photo From: BAC*Photography
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