Law of Karma

The word karma is translated as action or deed.

Every deed a person performs carries consequences. If your action causes suffering to another being, you will inevitably experience that same suffering yourself. If your action brings joy to someone, you will also experience that same joy. Neutral actions lead to neutral outcomes. With rare exceptions, karma returns in exact proportion – one to one.

From this law follows the principle of the pendulum: every pleasure is balanced by an equal measure of future suffering. The greater the pleasure one indulges in, the stronger the suffering that will later come. This is sometimes called the “Zebra Principle” – after every white stripe of happiness in life, a black stripe of pain is bound to follow.

Merit, or punya, is accumulated through good deeds performed toward beings who are spiritually or morally superior. The highest merit comes from devotion to the Highest God or the Absolute. Spiritual practice is the most powerful way to accumulate such merit. A person who becomes a monk and lives a sincere monastic life generates great merit – so much so that the lifespan of their parents increases by an average of 20 percent.

Most people live ordinary lives and gradually waste their stored merit. This is why many are unusually lucky and successful in youth, but lose that fortune in later years. Luck is not random – it is the fruit of past merit. The main ways people deplete their merit are through sexual pleasure and the indulgence of taste. Any enjoyment – of food, of sensations, of life itself – consumes merit. The more one delights in worldly experiences, the faster one’s spiritual reserves are spent.

All animals – beasts, birds, fish, and insects – possess souls. When they are harmed or killed, they suffer and try to escape. They cry out if they can, twist away, struggle. This very reaction – the instinct to avoid pain – is the clearest sign of a living soul. It is by this criterion that animals must be distinguished from plants.

Plants, including trees and fungi, do not possess souls and therefore do not experience suffering. They do not flee, do not cry, do not resist harm. Yet, both humans and plants are living organisms, and so harming a plant still creates a karmic imprint – specifically, the karma of damaging one’s own body or organism. Moreover, certain trees and plants serve as homes for devas or nature spirits. Destroying such beings may therefore also generate the karma of destroying a dwelling.

Stones have no soul and are not alive. They do not react to harm, for they are not sentient.

Nearly all diseases are the result of karma. Each illness corresponds to a specific type of past action. Cancer, for instance, arises from the karma of greed – the location of the tumor depending on the nature of that greed. Toothache is often the result of slander or harsh speech. Allergies and asthma may stem from the use of chemicals to kill insects – a subtle but real karmic debt.

In war, a soldier accumulates full karmic responsibility for every life he takes. The idea that a commander or national leader can take on that karma, freeing the soldier from guilt, is a falsehood – a dangerous manipulation. The only merit a soldier may gain in such a situation is from serving someone who himself possesses great merit.

A woman who refrains from seeking pleasure in sex will experience little or no pain during childbirth. Her suffering is directly linked to past indulgence.

The exceptional beauty of Russian women is said to result from the vast merit accumulated by their ancestors. Much of this was earned during the Soviet era, through sacrifice, discipline, and collective labor – actions that, though not always recognized as spiritual, still carried deep karmic weight.

Vegetarianism

Within Buddhism, there has long been a debate about whether buying meat constitutes the karma of killing. Some schools have answered this question in the affirmative. However, a considerable number of schools have answered it in the negative. In particular, Tibetan Buddhism has taken a fairly firm stance in favour of the latter view. From the perspective of the second point of view, the following argument is typically put forward.

Imagine a pig. Suppose this pig is wandering somewhere in the mountains, and suddenly a large boulder falls from a cliff and kills it. Now imagine that a monk is travelling in the same mountains and comes across this fresh carcass. The monk, so that nothing goes to waste, prepares and eats the pig. Does the monk accumulate the karma of killing through this action? All schools unanimously answer this specific question with a no: the monk does not accumulate the karma of killing, since he does nothing that could have influenced the animal’s death. And if one asks what caused the animal’s death, everyone logically explains that it was simply the manifestation of the animal’s own karma.

Now imagine that a certain homeowner invites a monk to visit, intending to treat him to whatever God provides. Suppose the monk accepts but promises to come not today but the next day. The homeowner, for such an occasion, slaughters a pig and prepares pork for the monk’s arrival the following day. The question arises: does the monk in this case accumulate the karma of killing? All schools unanimously answer this question in this second scenario with a yes: the monk accumulates the karma of killing, since in this case the animal was killed for his sake. And therefore, when a monk is offered an animal that was killed for his benefit, the monk must refuse the meat – and by doing so, he will thus avoid accumulating the karma of killing.

Next, let us consider the original controversial case – the third scenario: the case where a butcher kills a pig in order to later deliver the meat to a store for sale.

Here is the reasoning of Tibetan Buddhism. Why does this pig die? Just as in the case of the boulder, the pig encounters circumstances of irresistible force. And just as in the boulder case, it dies due to its own karma. The only difference is what or who manifests the karma for this animal: in the first case it was a boulder, in the third case it is the butcher. Of course, the butcher himself in this case does accumulate the karma of killing. But what about the karma of the buyer in this third scenario? He walks through the store, sees already‑dead meat, and buys it. Whether he buys this meat or not, nothing will change for this particular pig: it was already dead, and it will remain dead. That is, it is exactly the same as in the first case with the boulder. Thus, the case of buying meat in a store is identical to the boulder case; consequently, just as in the boulder scenario, the buyer does not accumulate the karma of killing. This is how Tibetan Buddhism reasons.

However, this reasoning is flawed. In reality, the opposite is true: the case of buying meat is identical to the second scenario, where the homeowner killed the pig for the guest. The homeowner kills the pig for the monk. If the monk were not expected to come, the pig would have remained alive. It is exactly the same in the case of the store. The butcher kills the pig for the buyer: if the buyer were not expected to come, the pig would have remained alive. The difference between these two cases lies only in the fact that in the store scenario, the actor is not a specific individual but a community. That is, the global community of all butchers kills pigs for the global community of all those who buy and eat this meat. If there were no such consumers of pork, then butchers would not kill pigs.

Therefore, when a buyer walks through a store, sees meat, and buys it, they automatically become part of this community – the community of meat consumers. And accordingly, since through their purchase they automatically join this community for whose sake these pigs are killed, they naturally accumulate some karma of killing these animals. To put it even more simply: when a buyer purchases a chicken in a store, they reduce the store’s stock of chickens by one. This information is automatically transmitted from the store to the butcher. And the butcher, upon learning that a shortage of chickens has appeared in the store, kills the next chicken. Thus, by buying a chicken in the store, the buyer automatically triggers the mechanism of killing the next chicken. That is, the buyer is not the cause of death for the very chicken they bought, but for the next one.

The above reasoning, of course, does not mean that all the karma of killing a chicken shifts from the butcher to the buyer. No. The butcher still bears nearly all the karma for killing the animals they slaughter. The above reasoning merely indicates that the buyer of this meat also bears some portion of the karma of this killing.

Worldly Desires

Everything that directs a person away from their true self, from their True Ego, from the Absolute, and towards the external world, towards samsara, is called worldly desires. Worldly desires are the cause of all suffering. Worldly desires are opposite to the desire for spiritual growth.

The fewer worldly desires a person has, the more beautiful their appearance.

The fewer worldly desires a person has, the higher their overall level of health.

The fewer worldly desires a person has, the longer they live.

The fewer worldly desires a person has, the fewer stresses they experience and the lower their overall stress level.

The fewer worldly desires a person has, the fewer stresses they have, and as a result, the less they need food – which, for the most part, serves as a way to cope with stress through eating.

The fewer worldly desires a person has, the calmer they are.

The fewer worldly desires a person has, the calmer they are, and the better their reaction time – which gives them greater chances of survival in unforeseen circumstances. Also, a good reaction is a key factor that enables a person to win in a fight or in martial arts.

The fewer worldly desires a person has, the more successful they are in their professional, scientific, or athletic pursuits.

The fewer worldly desires a person has, the more adequately they perceive reality.

The fewer worldly desires a person has, the shorter their sleep.

The fewer worldly desires a person has, the stronger their willpower.

The stronger a person’s willpower, the fewer worldly desires they have.

The ability to endure pain varies. Some people have a low pain threshold, while others have a high one. One of the main factors influencing the level of a person’s pain threshold is the level of their worldly desires. The fewer worldly desires a person has, the higher their pain threshold.

The fewer worldly desires a person has, the greater their merit.

The fewer worldly desires a person has, the higher their spiritual level.

The desire to accumulate merit, the desire for spiritual growth, the desire to engage in spiritual practice, the desire to observe the precepts, the desire to follow the Dharma, the desire to live according to conscience, the desire to save others – all these are not worldly desires.

Any music – Bach (whether dull pieces or popular ones), Beethoven, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, pop music, classical music, variety music, church music, spiritual music, even a church choir, even spiritual songs, even mantras performed to music – all of this is created for the sake of pleasure. Spas, pulp fiction, tourism, travel, adventures, extreme sports, sunsets and sunrises, watching animals, the sound of rain, birdsong, poetry, ballet, opera, any forms of entertainment, any spectacles, fireworks, parades, holidays, festive demonstrations, amusement rides, dancing, puzzles, crosswords, any sport, any games, socializing – all of these are either pleasure itself or created for the sake of pleasure. Any art serves the purpose of providing pleasure, not culture. Any visual art – with the exception of theatre and literature – serves solely and exclusively the purpose of providing pleasure. Theatre and literature, while relying on a persons inclination towards this kind of pleasure, can in principle sometimes perform not only a pleasurable function but also an educational one. Similarly, any game-based or theatre-based teaching methods use students inclination to seek pleasure for educational purposes. A person eats for the sake of pleasure. If a person ate not for pleasure but merely to sustain life, they would eat much less frequently and in far smaller quantities. Pleasure permeates all spheres of human life: from basic bodily sensations to complex spiritual experiences. The craving for pleasure is one of the strongest worldly desires a person has.