Karma

“Karma” is a Sanskrit word meaning “to perform a deed or action.” The action is inclusive of speech and thinking as well as physically performing an action. Karma is often used in common parlance to refer to past misdeeds and linking them to a current challenging time as payment for the past, the reason for misfortunes people encounter in life. The common idea of karma is akin to the concept that “they’ll get what’s coming to them,” and its corollary, that performing good deeds will provide one with good rewards.

However, in Sanskrit, karma is neither a reward nor a punishment, but simply consequences of deeds and actions, and the inner intentions behind them, that play out over time. It is understood according to the basic metaphysical principle of cause and effect, meaning that actions can lead to good results as well as not so good. Karma is formed by the choices we make according to the tendencies of our soul and the actions we take as a result of our own judgment. The tendencies of the soul are like habits and patterns of thinking individuals have picked up over the course of their lives. When situations similar to those faced in past lives recur, people can repeat the same patterns of action and get caught in the same traps over and over again.

These traps are from delusions of the mind, also called “worldly desires”. Typical worldly desires include greed (excessive desire), anger, foolishness (ignorance), pride (conceit), doubt (suspicious mind) and false view (mistaken opinions). These are known as the “Six Worldly Delusions” in Buddhist thought. I note that these are comparable to the western notion of the seven deadly vices: Envy, Gluttony, Greed, Lust, Pride, Sloth, Wrath/Anger. Orthodox Christianity, interestingly, adds an eighth sin: Despair.

What is commonly known as “reaping the karma,” means atoning in this life for the mistakes we made in previous lives. The way to surmount it is to understand the pattern of mistakes we are repeating and to become aware of the wrong tendencies of the soul that are the source of our suffering. We cannot change our karma unless we make continual efforts to confront our own worldly desires, by self-reflection to discover the old habits underlying our thoughts and actions in the past and the here and now.

This is the true nature of spiritual discipline: that of transforming ourselves into someone not ruled by worldly desires. Buddhists believe that “negative karma” is a part of our “workbook of life”, that we reincarnate into this world in order to improve our karma. Karma is  about learning from one’s experiences in order to achieve personal growth and moving forward, learning what we need to learn from this human experience. Authentic karmic action comes from a selfless place within the heart, for no reward nor recognition. If performed for reward, or for bragging rights or others to see, it is not “good karma” at all. I especially like the Vedantic perspective, that, “Nothing happens to you, it happens for you!”

Just as we accumulate karma as individuals, we do it on a collective level. Our actions as one giant human race have consequences. The 14th Dalai Lama has said, “The universe that we inhabit and our shared perception of it are the results of a common karma. Likewise, the places that we will experience in future rebirths will be the outcome of the karma that we share with the other beings living there. The actions of each of us, human or nonhuman, have contributed to the world in which we live. We all have a common responsibility for our world and are connected with everything in it.”  In Jewish concept, this is described as tikkun olam and our collective and individual responsibilities to do repair.

The concept of karma, while not referred to with this exact word, is not foreign to other cultures, including the Jewish one. In ancient Egypt, it was called “ma’at,” in Greek, “heimarmene” or fate and in Germanic, “wyrd,” and in Jewish concept, “hashgacha” or Divine Providence, that nothing happens by chance. And yet, hashgacha can be taken too literally. Even Rabbi Maimonides has noted that a belief that everything which occurs as Hashgacha Pratis, "divine pre-ordained providence," is incompatible with the Torah, and the fundamental belief of Judaism that humans have free will, and our actions have consequences.

From the traditional Jewish point of view, “karma” doesn’t exist as an abstract law separate from G!d, but as a categorical statement of the way that the Divine characteristically responds. A belief that everything that occurs is Hashgacha Pratis, completely ordained—even preordained by G!d— undermines human free will.

In a very real sense, karma evokes the imagery of “baggage” we may carry. As we have just been reminded in Parashat Toldot, (toldot, from the root yalod, to give birth, evokes a deeper meaning), “These are the generations”, and also the birthings, or the begettings of Isaac and Rebecca. This broader translation reminds us of what is true for the story of every person. We do not exist in a vacuum; we all come from somewhere. Each of us was ‘begotten.’ Each of us carries “baggage” and a legacy from our past, our karma, if you will.

In Toldot, we view these characters through the lenses of their past, and we may explain some of their behavior by the baggage we know they carry. Are Rebekah and Isaac fully defined by the legacies of their families? Of course no, not only that. Which brings us back to the Torah’s guiding word, toldot. Toldot is not only about what and who begets us, about the baggage we are born with; toldot also means generations. Not only the “standard” meaning of generation, a period of time, yet also in the sense that each of us generates something of our own. We generate our own lives. We generate new karma today, based on our responses to the challenges and learning opportunities before us in the here and now.

Isaac and Rebekah may seem somewhat imprisoned in their roles, but the Torah opens the possibility that they also define themselves in ways that resist and break away from their family legacies. Our family stories in the book of Genesis show us how our toldot shape us, and also how we create our own toldot. What we learned in our families, and the roles that we play in them, are carried with us, and can define us, in both helpful and hurtful ways. We’ll always have parents, and karma, and each of us can choose what to keep from our past and our family legacies, and what to leave behind or transform.

In Jewish praxis, we can do teshuvah and good deeds, and transform ourselves, even change our past, just as in an authentic understanding of karma. We are fragmented, too often caught in the hamster wheel of old habit, family dysfunctions, and brain ruts. Even the 12 Steps of A.A. offer a way out, of doing teshuva, service work, and transforming worldly desires that have ruled one up to this point into opportunities for personal growth, not just individual, but passing along the “way out” to others as well.

It all links back to Holy Process.