Ripples in a Pond

Many people misunderstand the law of Karma, especially as it relates to action and reaction. The typical definition of "karma" usually involves the universe taking vengeance upon bad person for negative actions, or rewarding positive actions, kind of like a cosmic Santa Claus. The best example that comes to mind is when you say something bad about someone behind their back, and then turn around and bang your knee on a desk - the person to which you're speaking might say, "well, that's instant karma for you!"

Except that's not what karma is. While karma is a law of cosmic cause and effect, it is best understood not as the universe, or some higher power, wreaking vengeance upon the wicked (this is, in fact, a very incorrect Judeo-Christian understanding of Karma, and it never fails to amaze me how many Western Buddhists still hold this belief). The imagery my Buddhism professor used to describe karma was "ripples in a pond," with your action acting like a force that causes waves in the cosmic water. Eventually, those waves will bounce off the shore and come back to their point of origin.

A more practical way to describe Karma is to imagine yourself having a good day or a bad day. On a good day, you might smile at people you meet on the street, in the office, at home, and so on. Someone having a marginal day might see you smile, and think "hey, things aren't so bad," and start smiling. Then someone else might see them smile, and the cycle continues. If you're having a bad day, and someone cuts you off in traffic, you flip them the bird. Then you cut someone else off. That person flips you the bird, and if they were having a neutral day, now they're having a worse one.

Therefore, Karma isn't necessarily something you see the results of right away, like, say, Calvinist Christianity (if you do good, God gives you money!) But it's a general law of cause and effect: if you spread positive-ness, then others will be more inclined to do the same. If you spread negativity, hatred, and so on, it's only going to cause others to do so as well.

I've been thinking a lot about this lately because a few days ago, I began thinking about the war in Iraq again, with the renewed offensive in Fallujah. While Mosul is falling, we're attacking Fallujah, and although we're missing statistics on civilian casualties, the number being floated around a couple of weeks ago was that one hundred thousand Iraqi civilians have been killed since the invasion.

While that number is certainly sobering, what worries me about it isn't the people who died, it's the cause-and-effect of the whole thing. That has worried me since we invaded Afghanistan. The terrorists are people who have somehow been wronged by the United States; an Arab businessman, comfortable in his home with his wife and kids, will no more pick up a gun to kill an abstract enemy villified by a fundamentalist sect than an American businessman with a house, wife, and kids would have done what Tim McVeigh did. The terrorists are orphans created by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, by Saddam's genocidal acts against the Kurds, by American support of both sides in the Iran-Iraq war, and by American weapons in the first Gulf War. Al Qaeda cannot recruit if there is no one out there who has been hurt, personally, by us. And a hundred thousand dead - that's a lot of orphans with nothing left to lose, and with a hell of a lot to hate. With each civilian fatality, we should be afraid simply because that person might have five children to swell Al Qaeda's ranks.

But the problem is that all killing begets more killing. Hate begets more hate, and violence begets more violence - by creating orphans, creating hatred, creating enemies, whatever. The hardliners in the Middle East are repsonding to American military action, a large part of which is a result of our support of Israel and its military actions. Israel was created as a result of Sho'ah in Nazi Germany. Nazi Germany was a result of economic hardship brought on by a mixture of shitty economies and punitive policies following the First World War, which was a result of... you get the idea.

The more I consider, the less effective military intervention in the Middle East becomes. We can change the nature of the ripples on the pond, and right now, all we're doing is sowing hatred and negativity. I have always felt this way, but I realized that the same principles must be applied to myself, my job, my daily interactions with people, and my relationships first. Because the ripples work upwards, too: the more positiveness my own actions create, the more chance we have to affect larger things in a positive way.

Sounds kind of mushy and weak, doesn't it? With all the crap going on at work these days, I found myself returning to the things I think I've neglected too long. Of course, getting out of the habits into which I've fallen will be difficult, but I don't think it will be impossible.