Instant Karma

There is much talk on a website and forum that I run about Karma and the mechanics of it. In a nutshell, it seems to me that the original eastern notion of Karma is that it carries through lifetimes and what you do wrong or omit in one incarnation must be dealt with in future ones.

We in the west have taken the idea of Karma and popularised it and I have heard mention of instant Karma; you do something good and something nice happens to you, or, you do something bad and you get your come-uppance very quickly. Now, I'm not sure that I subscribe to such a simplistic way of looking at things. It's rather cosy to feel that by doing a good deed something equally good will happen shortly afterwards, but I'm not sure that the universe was ever designed to cater for such order and neatness. Yet, today I have to question my viewpoint.

I tried to do something today that was intended to help someone I know. It wasn't entirely altruistic, as it would certainly not give me any trouble or discomfort, but the motivation was not born of selfishness. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I made the offer, it was warmly received and within half an hour of putting the phone down, in came an email from the most unlikely source offering me the potential for more work.

It would be so easy to think of this as instant Karma, but it can't be that neat! Maybe it's just that I'm managing to see all the positives and exercise gratitude in a way that people like the Dalai Lama recommend. A paragraph from Verse 1 of His Holiness' teachings also springs to mind:

There is another fact concerning the cultivation of thoughts and emotions that cherish the well-being of others: one's own self-interest and wishes are fulfilled as a by-product of actually working for other sentient beings. As Je Tsong Khapa points out in his Great Exposition of the Path to Enlightenment (Lamrim Chenmo), "the more the practitioner engages in activities and thoughts that are focused and directed toward the fulfillment of others' well-being, the fulfillment or realization of his or her own aspiration will come as a by-product without having to make a separate effort." Some of you may have actually heard the remark, which I make quite often, that in some sense the bodhisattvas, the compassionate practitioners of the Buddhist path, are wisely selfish people, whereas people like ourselves are the foolishly selfish. We think of ourselves and disregard others, and the result is that we always remain unhappy and have a miserable time. The time has come to think more wisely, hasn't it? This is my belief. At some point the question comes up, "Can we really change our attitude?"

So, maybe there is the potential for such neatness and instant payback? I have no pretention to being so evolved as the bodhisattvas, but it does make sense. There is much wisdom in Buddhism and who am I to question the deep knowledge and compassion of HH Dalai Lama?