Karma is not a theory or something to believe in, and it definitely isn’t ‘destiny’ or ‘fate’. It is the first part of the scientific law of cause and effect. You don’t have to believe in reincarnation or higher mental states to see this demonstrated.
Good and bad are in the eyes of the beholder. How you feel about the end result of your karma and how it makes others feel determines whether it is good or bad. The act itself is just an act without being filtered through the mind. Judgment is a function of the human brain as it attempts to categorize events according to previously held beliefs and experiences. Reality is different for everyone, even identical twins living side by side their whole lives. This is why there is no set of commandments in Buddhism, just suggestions to which there are always exceptions.
Many people think that when something bad or good happens to them, that’s karma. This is not correct. It’s known as the karmic “fruit”, the end result. Karma is the cause, and then there is the effect. You plant a seed (karmic action), the tree grows and gives you an apple (karmic fruit). Once you’ve put the karma in action, you can’t stop it without incurring more karma. That’s why the present moment is such a big deal in Buddhism, as well as other Eastern religions.
Many popular new books and programs have been created in recent years about this because they have discovered this truth. If you can keep a hold of the present moment (mindfulness), you can make the ups and downs of your life level out to a large degree. This is not a mystical prediction- it actually works. Try thinking and acting purposefully negative for a while and you’ll see this in action.
In Thich Nhat Hanh’s book The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching, he gives simple advice for figuring out your karma. All you have to do is ask yourself one question: “What am I doing?” In the present moment are the actions you decide to take, just after you get the initial feeling about a situation. That’s karma. No soul-searching required.
You can catch yourself in the act of feeling something, before that knee jerk reaction actually is acted upon. That moment, and only that moment, is where you can actually enact real change in your own life. You can’t think after the fact, “Oh, that’s right, if I act in anger it spreads like a disease. Well, I noticed it, so that won’t happen again.” By acting on an impulse, even once, you strengthen the likelihood of that impulse rising again, and being stronger the next time. Reacting is re-acting; doing the same thing that you have done before (habit). It compounds and multiplies until the urges and desires are running the show. Is it an unavoidable future? Of course not! We all have a choice, every single moment. But in order to take advantage of it, we have to be fully aware in the present moment (mindful).
Here is a common scenario in which the law of karma is displayed:
It’s your day off from work. You have the week’s laundry piled up, but you had such a rough week that all you want to do is curl up on the couch and watch TV. You get a feeling of annoyance looking at the laundry, and a feeling of relief and anticipation when you look at the couch.
STOP! Right now, before you act, the karma has not been set into motion. It’s just a feeling. Your psychological exhaustion is the karmic fruit of having to work and live in the world- nothing you can do about that unless you intend to take on the monk’s robes. Whatever you do next, that will be your karma, or as it is called in Buddhist terms, volitional formation. You have a choice.
On the one hand, you can do your laundry. Do that, and you’ll have clean clothes, but still be exhausted. You are more likely to get sick and be forced to take time off, but not for fun. On the other hand, you can give in to the comforts of the couch and clean out your DVR, one show at a time. Will this rest your mind? Probably not, but you will feel temporarily satisfied with this respite from any kind of thinking, so it feels like rest in the moment. So much of life is like this- it seems like there’s no good answer. But good and bad are in the mind, not “out there” in the situation.
Then there is the Middle Way that Buddhists practice. You could choose neither path by itself. After all, this isn’t the 18th century, and we don’t take the laundry out to the river and do backbreaking labor over a washboard any more. Doing the laundry these days is a task that allows for other things to happen simultaneously. You could choose not to watch TV more often than not because after you watch TV your thoughts are not your own for a long time afterward. The mind becomes messy and jumbled. Knowing these facts plainly is Right View and Right Understanding (part of the Eightfold Path). Other examples of actions you could take here are to do the laundry one load at a time so there is no pile waiting for you at the end of the week (pro-active karma), or just relax in between loads of clothes.
In this way, the value of karma and understanding things beyond how you feel about them can be seen clearly. Belief is not necessary if the system can be proven. The fruit of your karma in this case- wearing dirty clothes to work, or staying exhausted- is what it is, and is only good or bad depending on how you feel about it. If you don’t care about wearing dirty clothes, then for you it’s not necessarily bad karma (not good karma either). But here is where it gets a little complicated.
It has a ripple effect. Your partner has to live with your karma, as do your friends and coworkers. We’ve all known someone who we like as a person, but they make poor decisions that affect the people around them in a negative way. We can either choose to accept their karma as intermingled with ours (friendship) or we can distance ourselves. Doing something commonly thought poorly of, like wearing dirty clothes to work, can affect the people around you and thereby reflect back on you again once they make a decision based on the situation.
You can be aware of the real situation and act in a premeditated way, with a mind to creating a better future for yourself. I’m not talking about a distant future, though certainly that is something we should think about. But beyond this week and maybe next week, you can only plan so much. Right now, however, you can have a profound effect on Right Now.