Karma

“Intention, I tell you, is kamma. Intending, one does kamma by way of body, speech, & intellect.”

The Buddha, Anguttara Nikaya, 6.63

Lots of people in the modern United States think they know what karma is. Karma, as the saying goes, is a bitch, often accompanied by an image or a story of a person who engages in some obvious misconduct and quickly suffers her/his comeuppance for it.

But karma is not a bitch. Karma is a law of nature, like gravity. It is true that, if you jump off of a building, gravity will seem like more an enemy than a friend, but that’s not…