Question asked by Anonymous
Dear Pastors, When a negative karma fruitions and we see someone being horrible to us, I can accept it and try to move past it. Although i created that karma to receive the damage does it also mean that person will receive similar kind of harm from others in the future? Or it is tit for tat and that karma has ended between 2 people? Thank you
Dear Anonymous,
Thank you for your interesting question. The study of karma is indeed vast. Most people only think about karma as tit for tat or one-for-one, but it is much more complex than that.
Let’s take an example and examine it. In a previous life you were negative towards someone. This led to a couple of things:
> It created the karma for you to be harmed in the future.
> It strengthened the tendency in your mind to react negatively to people, hence create more karma.
> It strengthened the tendency in the other person’s mind to feel emotional pain when something like that happens again and most probably to react in a negative way when it happens, leading them to create karma for themselves too.
Now, let’s bring the example forward to this life:
> The karma for you to be harmed ripened in this life, so you felt pain. However, since karma multiplies, it is not necessarily tit for tat. Meaning you may still need to suffer such incidents again, even though the causes for all these incidents are just one single action.
> The way you react in such situations creates more karma, either negative or positive, as well as strengthens certain tendencies in your mind. For example if you reacted negatively, it strengthens negative tendencies meaning you will keep creating negative karma. On the other hand, if you reacted with the virtue of patience, it strengthens this virtue in your mind.
> Since the other person acted negatively towards you, this creates negative karma for them, as well as strengthens negative tendencies in their mind stream.
So you see, karma is very complex. It is the reason why we are stuck in cyclic existence. The only way to be free is to become enlightened. That is why when you study karma, it is not meant to be fatalistic but bolster your resolve to escape from all this suffering by becoming enlightened yourself, and then help others achieve freedom from karma as well. I hope this helps. If you have any other questions, please do ask. Your questions show that you think about the Dharma, and we are happy to help you understand better.