Si quieres cambio verdadero, pues camina distinto.

~ Calle 13 (La Vuelta al Mundo)

This is an idea that has been going around in my mind a lot lately. According to what I said in this post, I should already have written about it by now, but I keep putting it off, mostly because I don't feel I've thought enough about it. However, today I decided it's probably time, as I don't think I'll ever get to the point where I feel, "enough is enough".

The idea is that "karma" is completely interpersonal. There's no such thing as "independent karma".

Here I define karma as the result of one's own actions, be they in this life or others. If I get drunk and break my finger with a hammer, then that's karma. If I improve someone's day and that person goes on to do good for others, then that's also karma. Anything that's an effect of anything I did1 is karma.

The argument I want to make is that even though my actions might have a clear owner, the results of my karma belong to multitudes (perhaps countless numbers) of beings.

There are cases when this distinction is easy, like the example I gave above about improving someone else's day, and then that person goes on to do good for others. Of course, in that case my action contributed to a sort of fanning effect, augmenting and spreading the goodness throughout multiple individuals.

However, some cases would initially seem much more individual, like the example above of getting drunk and hitting my finger with a hammer. Superficially, it might seem like I'm the only one affected by this, but in reality my action will affect everyone around me. A hurt finger might cause a hurt state of mind, affecting those in my immediate vicinity (like my family), and it might also affect my ability to do work, hence affecting my employer, and so on.

Moreover, the effects I have on those I interact with will very likely spread to others, often in indirect ways. I might not come to work today, so someone else has to cover for me; that someone else gets grumpy about it, which affects those in their own immediate surroundings, and so on. Or those in my family, affected by my shame and temporary disability, will themselves find their own "selves" affected and affect those around them, etc.

Whatever affects you also affects me. If you win the lottery and we're friends, then it affects both of us positively (hopefully). If you commit a crime, then that also affects both of us negatively. My karma is your karma, and vice versa. One might even be tempted to say that they're exactly the same thing? I may be spewing nonsense now, but what if there's ever just a "universal karma" that acts in different loci throughout space and time? Maybe, quite literally, your karma is my karma, and the other way around.

This, of course, brings up all sorts of questions to which I really don't have an answer, but I'm reminded of the idea of Indra’s Net that actually fits quite well the concept I'm trying to convey.

Imagine a net that stretches forever; at every intersection there is a jewel with infinite facets. Every single jewel reflects every other jewel in the net. And since every jewel reflects every other jewel, and those also reflect every other jewel, then in every reflection we can see the full net over and over, recursively. That means that even though the jewels are "independent," any change in any of the jewels will cause a change in the whole system, as it changes every reflection everywhere.

Now, perhaps what I was saying about "universal karma" (not sure if this is a real term) is pretty much the same as Indra’s Net? Our whole existence is strung up in this infinite universe, and whatever affects one part affects everything else. Maybe some "jewels" might be affected more dramatically-like some might be actually scratched or blemished-but the reflection changes everywhere. Maybe our monkey brains are just incapable of perceiving that we're all just reflections of each other.

...

If one sees it like this, karma seems more like a never-ending series of ripples rather than the usual simple cause and effect we're accustomed to. The tricky part is that I, at least, can't really pinpoint whether those ripples ever end or not. I think they don't; they just keep going, propagating each other as long as there are things to affect. They might transmute, but they remain there.

It's sort of like dropping a drop of blue ink in a glass of water; no matter how many drops of other colors you might drop in it, the blue will never really go away. It will always contribute to the final color of the water, whatever that is. In a similar way, the effects of our actions will color the shape of the universe forever, often with unforeseeable, unfathomable effects.

Now, perhaps that's a bit too dramatic, but I think it's actually quite a cool thought. If anything, it helps us reflect on how important our actions are. Almost all the time we tend to act without thinking; 99.992% of our time is spent following mental shortcuts, working on autopilot almost. This idea is a reminder that our actions have incalculable weight attached to them, which hopefully helps us be more intent on doing what we actually mean to rather than just going with the flow of things.

Footnotes

  1. I won't get into the messiness of defining who is the one that does things, who's the one to whom the karma belongs. On one hand, I'm not clear on this idea myself. It is something I frequently wonder about, though: what piece of "me" is the one that owns the karma? Depending on your viewpoint, it can either be "no one" or something else. Too advanced for me, I think, so I'll just stop right here. ↩