What We Mean by the Doctrine of Karma

When we speak of karma, we usually mean the doctrine that as we have sown, so shall we reap; and what we reap, that have we also sown. In other words, our fate and fortune are the consequences of our own acts, and we incur reward or penalty according to our exact merits. There is no arbitrary interference of a divine dispensation, nor is anything left to mere "chance." This doctrine is not comprehensible without the accompanying doctrine of reincarnation, because many of the experiences which we meet with are the result of things we did in past lives, and many of the things we do now will not yield their effects until a future life. When we speak of a person's karma, and say (for instance) that his karma is good or bad, we mean not exactly his luck and not exactly his merit, but something between the two.

Thus karma is simply a more fully stated form of the scientific doctrine of the conservation of energy which, as scientists tell us, holds that there is an exact relation between cause and effect in the workings of nature. But karma extends this principle to the realm of moral, mental and spiritual forces, and in fact to the whole of life, making it a universal law.

It may seem almost a truism when stated clearly; yet most people fail to recognize this law, and the chief reason is that they are prevented by their religious and scientific ideas from perceiving its truth. We cannot understand karma unless we admit the soul's eternal existence throughout a long succession of earth-lives, for a single earth-life is but a minute fragment of human life and not enough to show the pattern. And since neither religion nor science teaches us anything about reincarnation, but both represent human life on earth as lasting less than a century, it is impossible to make the notion of absolute justice fit in with them.