Understanding Karma

If one has read or has been exposed to the Christian Bible, the easiest way to understand karma would be right from the Bible.
"As ye sow, so shall ye reap".

That basically explains karma the best to a Christian or someone who comes from a secular Christian Country or who has read the Bible.

However, when I asked one of the Tibetan Lamas that I studied with during the 1980s, they gave me a more detailed explanation of karma. One spoke to me like this. He said that karma was dependent upon multiple circumstances. For example, he said that if two people did the same thing there would not necessarily be the same result. This might upset some of you in regard to fairness issues. But let me explain if I can.

First of all, karma depends upon what the soul has been doing and for how long has this soul been doing what it is doing. So, for example, if a soul is new and makes a mistake it could go harder or softer because of this newness. Or if a soul has been around a long time, what the souls basic behavior towards itself and all life would change how karma would occur.

Then another thing that might not occur to a western Christian mind was the next factor. The lama seemed to think that good karma could be just as equally distracting from the goal of enlightenment as bad karma. He spoke of how both good karma and bad karma were both sort of delusional at core and because of this tended to distract the serious dharma student from his or her focus on becoming enlightened like a Buddha to lift all sentient life in the universe out of suffering.

For me, having never entertained this concept before in this lifetime, it was a lot to think about and sort of made my mind hurt at the time. Since I was new to how non-dualism made me feel I found this a hard place to reconcile even though non-dualism made a lot more sense to me by this point than dualism. Dualism, when one is spiritually gifted isn't very useful.

Dualisms usefulness is for people who are children or childlike. However, for really intelligent and gifted people it leads to counterproductive outcomes. For once one makes it to wise right mindful compassion towards oneself and all beings and learns to live this way every day, experiencing dualism becomes completely useless and meaningless.

However, if one is ignorant and is constantly causing harm to themselves and/or others then dualism is not only useful but necessary to avoid a major karmic catastrophe for everyone concerned with that one's life.

However, if one has fully learned and practices kindness all the time towards themselves and all other beings in the universe then the opposite is true.

This is one of the major paradoxes one encounters during the process of enlightenment.

Most seriously gifted people have to become non-dualists after reaching a state of constant kindness to all beings past, present and future in the universe or else their physical bodies could die. This is a serious problem for all saints of all religions as well as a paradox all beings face eventually at some point either while alive in a body on earth or after passing on.