Is Karma a Law of Nature?
It seems Matthew Gindin is destined to ask, and answer, this question.
Sure, it’s one thing to speculate that “overall” karma has a role to play in our lives. Clearly there are behaviors that we can choose that precipitate consequences that come back to impact our lives in either a constructive or destructive manner. And, up to a point, this can be calculated in a reasonable manner. Cause and effect here is calibrated day in and day out by many of us. Given the gap between what we think we know about any particular situation and all that can be known. But then to reconfigure this into a religious narrative where karma becomes linked to either enlightened or unenlightened choices leading to an afterlife where one is better or worse off…?
How is that brought down to earth?
Here of course the “absolute law” is ever and always encompassed in the religious narrative itself. Subscribe to Buddhism and you have one set of moral parameters, subscribe to Catholicism and you have another, subscribe to Scientology and you have another still. Some with a God, the God, others with altogether different fonts.
But, for me, it always comes down to this: that while karma “exerts an influence over all things”, what does it mean to speak of “Cosmic Justice” here and now in this set of circumstances given all that is at stake?
Either this or that denomination can, demonstrably, encompass the optimal choices that one can make, or, instead, it’s the way it actually seems to be: leaps of faith taken to any number of denominations that are ever evolving and changing over time historically or across space culturally.
Then coming down experientially to the actual experiences that any individual has predisposing him or her to this rather than that leap of faith.
But just how “absolute” are the paths here? And what happens when they come into conflict? It’s no wonder then that any number of “ecumenical” pathways are forged through the dogmatic thickets. That way religion becomes a kind of cafeteria. You pick and choose only those behaviors that provide you with the least possible restrictions. You bet on a more progressive or liberal God to judge your soul.
Sure, if you’re after a “workable theory of morality”, almost any “world of words” can suffice. But either enlightened behavior and karma are better suited to, say, giving birth to unborn babies or it’s okay to abort them. Well-being may revolve for any particular pregnant woman around giving birth or in killing the unborn baby. Same with suffering. And given the manner in which someone “gets” Buddhism that will translate into a better afterlife or a worse one.
But which? And how can that actually be demonstrated?