Karma - Do You Deserve Your Punishment?

A friend of mine was mentioning the subject of karma. She did a good turn in the grocery store and then found money in the parking lot. She then laughed it off quipping if, only it could be that way in all of life. Subsequently she crowed about how she got her neighbor evicted for being into bad stuff. While I can understand why you might not want a conscienceless felon living next door, she seemed to justify the fact though he's in jail now, his girlfriend would now become homeless by waving off her "sob story" as 'you get what you put out'. If the girlfriend is going to let people like that be in her life, she has to take the punishment that comes along with it.

I politely ended the conversation before I said something that might put a damper on our relationship. It is easy to say that if you do good things, karma will do good things for you (a la "The Secret") but ignore that the reverse is true. My friend is most certainly willing to accept negative karma as part of another person's suffering, but rejects the idea that positive karma can exist. If she didn't the implications would be that her suffering is likewise earned by only herself (and she has suffered a lot and will continue to suffer for the same reasons her neighbor is getting evicted).

My fascination with the subject of karma has grown over the years. I remember in college a friend getting disgusted because someone suggested my college deserved bad things to happen to it because of the commencement speaker it had chosen. She railed on karma. Another student came to karma's rescue and explained it was not punishment so much as, what you put out there is what you will get. If you put shake 'em up challenge the system vibes out, then vibes will come back to you shaking up and challenging your system. Simple physics my friend. Equal and opposite reaction. If you shove on the wall, the wall shoves back. (Readers of "The Secret" should find this strikingly familiar.)
My Eastern Philosophies and Religion Studies teacher, a native of India, said this was total bullsh*t. (Ok, he's a teacher, he didn't actually say that-but he said the equivalent). He lectured the class that Americans had taken the idea of karma and twisted it. He described the American belief in karma almost exactly as the student who corrected my friend did. And then he said it was wrong. He said that Indians did NOT believe it as so. According to him, in India karma is about righting wrongs. It IS about punishing those who do bad. If you hurt someone or are immoral in this life, expect to suffer in the next. Conversely, if you suffer in this life, expect that suffering to be balanced by reward and peace in the next life. (He never did explain how to tell if someone was suffering because they did bad in a previous life or if they were going to be rewarded in the next).

Instant karma was also shot down as a similar American distortion of Indian principles.

As I thought about this, it seemed to me that karma was the Hindu version of heaven and hell. In cultural Christianity, we believe our spirits go away from the earth, so it is fitting our punishment for misdeeds, or rewards occur in a place under the ground (Hell) or a beautiful sweet vacation spot in the sky (Heaven). The Greeks and Romans, precursors Western society had this too, in the form of Hades and the Elysian Fields.

It made sense to me, since Eastern Religions believe in reincarnation, the subsequent punishment or reward would have to take place wherever the spirit goes-in this case into the next life.

The punishment reward model seems to me to be a way of justifying the absolutely horrific things that happen in life as a way to make it bearable to continue in the face of them.

The Western version of karma (and "The Secret) seems to be a way instead to control these events, by saying you can set your path if you only commit to it deeply enough. And it absolves itself of failure if you suffer or can't attain the path you set for yourself by settling it back squarely on your shoulders for not being committed enough

Or not thinking the right thoughts, or not letting go of negative energy. Pretty convenient, huh?

I am spiritual and Western so I think there is much to the idea that if you pee in your drinking water, you will get sick when you drink it. Yet I just can't subscribe to the idea that if you get crushed by rocks in the mountains it's your own fault for living there. Bad things happen in all systems that are uncontrollable, but there is much within the systems we live in that we can control.

All in all, I don't think this woman deserves to be evicted for being involved with a tough crowd. I do believe she deserves some sympathy and a helping encouraging hand so that she can get away from a damaging lifestyle rather than pushing her further into by making her suffering deeper. But the truth is, karma or not, she will have to continue to face the consequences of being around people who are self-destructive...as will my friend if prefers to throw stones while cleansing her conscience through complex spiritual concepts, rather than facing her own suffering and addressing fully the concept of her own karma to lift the rock off of her own skull.

As for me, sometimes I am convinced I was a paper pusher in the Nazi regime in a former life. Not bad enough for the super suffering, but sufficient to warrant some chronic constant karmic punishment. Of course, maybe I'm just setting my self up to fail with those thoughts.