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The iron hand of "karma" has ruled religion in India for millennia. Several of that country's great traditions, such as Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, share belief in this law of cosmic justice.
"Karma" is a Sanskrit word that means "action". According to the principle of karma, every morally significant action we perform--including our thoughts and feelings--generates either good or bad karma. At the end of a person's life, the net result of the good and bad karma leads to the condition of one's rebirth: either higher or lower on the scale of being. If the net result is negative, one descends to a lower caste of humanity, or possibly to the level of the nonhuman, as one "pays off" one's bad karma. If the net result is positive, one ascends the scale of human society, ultimately reaching the highest level of the Brahmins. At this point, one can aspire to leaving normal society behind and retreating to the forest in order to concentrate entirely on spiritual development. Ultimately, one hopes to leave earthly existence entirely for the bliss of heaven. The principle of karma rules even heaven, however. For no matter how good a person was in his or her earthly life, he or she can generate only a limited amount of karma. When a person's account runs out, he or she descends again to the wheel of life, death and rebirth.
This principle of strict retribution has its parallels in other religions. Many believers in other religions see life in terms of a code of behaviour that they must keep in order to satisfy a demanding deity. If they measure up, they get heaven. If not, they go to hell.
Others of no traditional religion also believe that they must say and do and think what is right, all the time, in order to get what they want out of life--so that people will like them and treat them well.
The principle of karma makes sense to so many because it seems like basic justice. Yet it also is a severe vision. Only an elite can succeed in such a quest for moral correctness.
So Indian religion has generated alternative paths that lead off the wheel of rebirth. Popular forms of Hinduism, for example, teach people to worship divinities such as Shiva and Vishnu, who are supposed to help devotees to reach heavens they could not reach on their own. Popular Buddhism offers the services of buddhas and bodhisattvas. These people have themselves supposedly achieved enlightenment and aid those who could otherwise never achieve it by themselves.
Christianity teaches that God loves human beings and not only gives them moral assistance, but also forgives their sins in the first place. This element of forgiveness is very relevant to the challenges in contemporary Canadian society, whether we are traditional religious believers or not.
Forgiveness is not blind: It is necessary precisely when wrong is fully acknowledged to have been done. Forgiveness is not cheap: Someone has to decide to absorb an injury and not retaliate. And forgiveness is risky: Cynical people might try to exploit it.
But the only credible moral alternative seems to be strict justice. "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" reads one ancient code--which is, as one sage has remarked, an excellent prescription for a sightless, toothless world.
Karma and other principles of retribution square with our sense of basic justice, and perhaps that's all we have to go on. But forgiveness cuts the chain of revenge, stops the cycle of "if this, then that" and lets a new start be made.
As we face national constitutional issues, as we conduct our business, as we deal with troubled relationships in our personal lives, some of the world's great religions tell us to make sure that we do so with no less than the karmic principle, with nothing less than true justice. But perhaps we can do better than that, at least sometimes. Perhaps we can go beyond justice, and forgive. Karma is what we deserve. But forgiveness is perhaps what we all really need.
John G. Stackhouse Jr., a professor of religion at the University of Manitoba, moved last summer to become a professor at Regent College in Vancouver. This article is reprinted, with permission, from the Aug. 23, 1997 issue of the Winnipeg Free Press.
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