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It is December and the year is coming to an end, a time for pause and reflection. And my reflective question is “am I karma neutral”? We know about being carbon neutral where the amount of carbon we save through our consideration of the environment is equal to the amount we actually consume. It is often measured in units of football pitches.

Karma neutral, what is that?

The law of karma, or the law of “what goes around comes around” is about the deeds we undertake in our daily lives. Some traditions and faiths talk about a karmic debt, saying we carry the weight of our bad deeds into our next life, some religions talk about being judged for our sins before being sent to either heaven or hell.

If I put religion aside is there another way to look at karma? If I perform a lot of bad deeds and very few good deeds will I be in karmic debt, how can I be in karmic credit? This is not a religious or philosophical question, but a question of
daily loving kindness and wanting to create a state of balance in the world ie
being karma neutral where giving and receiving are equal.

Whether we believe in heaven or hell and buying our way to better afterlife or through reincarnation to a better worldly life is not the issue. The issue is, do I measure myself in terms of thoughts, words and deeds of loving, compassion, kindness and forgiveness to my fellow beings (human or otherwise) and the planet I live on?

This can be measured in many ways, how much I donated to charity, the number of times I said thank you to someone, deeds of kindness that I undertook. How we measure however is not as important as why we measure. Thirty years ago no one considered the impact of CO2 emissions on global warming and how to save the planet. Now it is part of our daily language and habit because we know of the consequences of burning fossil fuels and superheating the planet.

Does measuring our acts of loving kindness also be a part of our daily language and action? Can I say that I gave to others more acts of compassion for my world
than I took away? If we take the time each day to check our scorecard we may be
surprised at how much we give and take. We may find that we are active in our
giving, but not one for receiving, so we may be out of balance and missing out
on the kindness of others who want to share with us. We may find (if we are
honest with ourselves) that we a lacking in what we give to others and we are a
take, take, take person, one who gives a little but wants a lot, no matter what
the cost, humanitarian or environmental.

That may not mean that we do not care, but that we have never taken the time to reflect on karma, that what we do to another will ultimately come back to us in the same form. That does not make us a bad person, but perhaps someone who has never really looked at how the world works in terms of giving and receiving of kind deeds.

So this is your chance, can you every day in December look at whether your year has been in karmic debt or credit? What do you carry into 2012? What will you do in 2012 to address any imbalance you are carrying in 2011? Good luck!
 


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