QUESTION
Hello Dear Robina,
I hope you’re well and have found a safe, solid place to sit during this limiting time.
I have been feeling uncomfortable with the concept of karma.
When I hear that a very wealthy person is enjoying good karma because they were very good in their past life or lives I wonder why that person can be so narcissistic in this life.
And it’s very difficult to accept that children and babies born into suffering deserve it because they messed up in past lives.
For example, my niece had a business and sold it for many millions of dollars a while ago. She’s not happy though. She has a red Ferrari and speeds around town in it.
Her father is sick and desperately needs help, but she will not give one penny.
Could you please tell me how it works?
Much love to you,
G. xox
ANSWER
Good to hear from you, dearest G!
Yes, karma is a strange concept from the materialist perspective, and certainly doesn’t make sense from the creator-religion perspective.
The only way it can make sense is if we take the hypothesis that our consciousness (Buddha doesn’t discuss a soul) is not physical, is not the handiwork of a creator, is not the handiwork of parents, and didn’t begin in the mother’s womb – it’s this river of mental moments that goes back and back and, indeed, forward after death. We don’t need creating! We do fine creating our own selves moment by moment. Then it’s feasible.
Everything we think and do and say now programs us, or sows seeds, and just naturally ripens in the future as who we become, as what we experience. And, crucially, it’s got nothing to do with punishment and reward — there’s no punisher and there’s no rewarder. It’s a natural law.
And it’s good to remember that every single tiny good thing that happens is the fruit of this process as well, not just the bad. We always ask why do bad things happen but never why do good things happen – we don’t care why; just give me more please!
Two of the ways that karma ripens from the past are 1. Our tendencies, personality traits; and 2. Our experiences at the hands of others – roughly speaking.
So, your ridiculous niece has 1. the habit from past lives of being totally mean and miserly, and now there she is continuing that habit. But 2. she is also experiencing the fruits from other lives of generosity: hence she’s rich now. But look at her being mean and miserly now – that can only ripen as poverty etc. in the future.
There are different tracks of karma – as I said one way is that our past habits ripens as more habits and another way is that our past habits ripen as experiences. And remember that we have trillions of karmic seeds stored in our mind – nothing ever goes astray.
Yes, we have a very strong tendency to think that when we begin life as babies we are all perfect, and then life messes us up or turns us into lovely people. Buddha’s view is that we come into this life fully programmed with our tendencies from the first second of conception. Hitler came into this life with his tendencies from those habits in the past; no one made him like that. Mother Teresa, Bach, all of us – same.
This doesn’t mean that our parents etc., don’t play a role; of course they do. But it’s very clear from the Buddhist perspective that you can’t get mental tendencies from someone else. My mother was good at music and she saw that her Bobsie (that’s me!) had the potential, so naturally we’d say that she gave me that capacity for music. No. Her teaching me music encouraged my tendency to be good at music from my habit of it in the past – and that’s why she was good at music, too.
Much love,
Robina