Karma – a pretty ubiquitous term these days. As fellow blogger and IDP Exec. Dir. Ethan notes, “karma” jars for tips appear at every urban snackery and coffee shop, and karma is invoked to explain everything from a stubbed toe to a job loss. Sometimes it seems like karma is like a spiritual piggybank – put good in, get good out. Sometimes it seems like blind justice, some kind of cosmic scales that balance out good with good and bad with bad. Sometimes is seems like we humans just NEED desperately to believe that we get rewarded for being good and punished for being bad.

And lately, it’s been invoked on collective level to explain not only the horrific cyclone and its consequences in Burma, but the Chinese earthquake. The first assertion led to a minor flareup on Buddhist blogs, the second, made very publicly (youtube herehttps://youtube.com/watch?v=BcRiAytaD6w%26hl) by actress Sharon Stone, led to a major media conflagration involving China and the House of Dior.
Re: Burma
As Daniel Burke, of the Religion News Service, noted in http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2008-05-16-cyclone-karma_N.htm USA Today two weeks ago :
About 80 percent of Myanmar’s estimated 52 million people are Buddhist, and many there rely on the principle of karma to explain the storm, scholars say.
Specifically, many Myanmar people believe Cyclone Nargis is a karmic consequence of military rulers’ brutal crackdown on Buddhist monks last fall, said Ingrid Jordt, an anthropology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who was once a Buddhist nun in Myanmar and maintains ties there.
“The immediate explanation was: This is retribution for killing monks,” Jordt said. “In any cataclysm, human beings seek to make sense of something that completely destroys the continuity of life. It’s an attempt to bring the world back into harmony.”
Hmm, maybe not exactly?
Re: Sharon Stone
At Cannes Film Festival, Stone wondered publicly whether the recent Chinese earthquake was retribution for China’s treatment of Tibet. Chinese cinema owners immediately removed her films from distribution, while Dior removed all advertising featuring Stone from their Chinese stores.
Well, the idea that natural disasters are retribution for moral turpitude is hardly a new one, nor is it peculiar to buddhism. Look at what some fundamentalists said about the attacks on the World Trade Center, or the hurricane that hit New Orleans. Look at ur-story of natural disaster/retribution in Western civilization – Noah and the flood.
So, what about karma, collective-wise? Well, if you listen all the way thru Stone’s clip, she winds up talking about learning compassion from those who want to help those who hurt them. But still, I wish I had a good one-liner response to people who nod sagely, and say “karma!” when bad things happen to people they don’t like.
Any good suggestions?