|
Today's
Meditation:
I
like the idea of karma. I like that it isn't an
immediate result of our actions, too--that the good things
that we do today don't need to have immediate payback to be
worthwhile. In fact, they don't need to have any
payback at all in order to be worthwhile. Karma
ensures that the good will come back to us someway, somewhen,
more than likely in a completely different situation and
setting than in the many cases in which we've done our best
to do good.
Many
people tend to see karma like a cosmic bank account,
though. They think too much of the rewards of their
positive actions, which diminishes the sincerity and the
true kindness of any act. If we do good just because
we think we should be rewarded for it later, then we aren't
really doing good, are we? We're simply trying to make
things better for ourselves.
We
often hear of karma in the negative sense, in the
"Karma's a bitch" way of looking at it. But
it's not at all--karma simply is. It's the way things
are, and it's not something that can be manipulated to our
own ends. As Joan says, karma simply describes how
moral law operates, much like grammar describes how language
works. It doesn't tell you what you should or should
not do; it simply explains how things function when you do
good or when you do bad.
Farmers
know that if they plant corn seeds, they'll be
"rewarded" with corn. But they also know
that sometimes there will be drought, hail, wind, and
freezes, and that planting corn doesn't always guarantee a
huge return. Karma is much the same way--let's plant
our seeds of goodness and kindness, and know that
eventually, those seeds will come back to us many-fold,
though we must let go of our expectations of that happening
when we want it to, or how we want it to. Life will
take care of the details.
|
