A. Karma is another Buddhist name for cause and effect. Whatever you may do, you cannot escape from causation. Although it is said that good deeds bear good karma and bad deeds yield bad karma, we cannot tell the former from the latter more often than not since the line between them is blurred. Sometimes the deeds we think of as being good can unexpectedly cause negative effects. Doing nothing has the effect of doing nothing. You can escape from karma even momentarily no more than you can avoid your shadow on a sunny day.
Our problem is to be deluded by the shadows of us. We strive in vain to catch the shadows that look attractive to us and to run away from the ones that look unfavourable to us by all means possible. Attaining enlightenment doesn’t mean that all the shadows disappear but it means that we realise that the shadows are not real but just illusionary. When we have realised that they are illusionary, we are neither lured into struggling to catch them, however brilliant they may appear nor are we fooled into being so scared as to fall into mental turmoil, however terrible they may look.
©Boo Ahm
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