Inner peace combinepdf | Page 9

Karma K arma is the law of moral causation. The theory of Karma is a fundamental doctrine in Buddhism. This belief was prevalent in India before the ad- vent of the Buddha. In this world nothing happens to a person that he does not for some reason or other deserve. Usu- ally, men of ordinary intellect cannot comprehend the actual reason or reasons. The definite invisible cause or causes of the visible effect is not nec- essarily confined to the present life, they may be traced to a proximate or remote past birth. Like many Buddhist concepts, karma is taught to us as children more by experience than through books or re- ligious study. As a child, most every Tibetan is discouraged from killing in- sects – “Don’t kill that…you will get bad karma.” We are told not to treat people badly, for the same reason. The basic understanding is that if you do something bad, it will come back to haunt you, maybe not in this lifetime, but in one of your endless lifetime of lifetimes. Not like a ghost would haunt you, but more like an undeniable, un- avoidable consequence of your ac- tion. You will see that karma commonly re- fers to both as one’s actions and the consequences of those actions. You might think of it simply as cause and effect. The karma is both the initial ac- tion and the eventual result, and the whole process of cause and effect it- self. According to Buddhism, this inequality is due not only to heredity, environment, “nature and nurture”, but also to Karma. In other words, it is the result of our own past actions and our own present doings. We ourselves are responsible for our own happi- ness and misery. We create our own Heaven. We create our own Hell. We are the architects of our own fate.