Good Luck, Bad Luck. Good Karma, Bad Karma. Who Knows!

Many years ago a wise peasant lived in China.

He had a son who was the apple of his eye. He also was the proud owner of a fine white stallion (horse) which everyone admired. One day his horse escaped from his grounds and disappeared. The villagers came to him one by one and said: “You are such an unlucky man. It is such bad luck that your horse escaped.” The peasant responded: “ Who knows. Maybe it’s bad, maybe it’s good.”

The next day the stallion returned followed by 12 wild horses. The neighbors visited him again and congratulated him on his good luck. Again, he just said: “Who knows. Maybe it’s good, maybe it’s bad.”

As it happened, the next day his son was attempting to train one of the wild horses when he fell and broke his leg. Once more everyone came with their condolences: “It’s terrible.” Again, he replied: “Who knows. Maybe it’s good, maybe it’s bad.” A few days passed and his poor son was limping around the village with his broken leg when the emperor’s army entered the village announcing that a war was starting and they were enrolling all the young men of the village.

However, they left the peasant’s son since he had a broken leg. Everyone was extremely jealous of the peasant. They talked about his sheer good luck, while the old man just muttered:  “Who knows. Maybe it’s good, maybe it’s bad.”

This old story has been doing the rounds for quite a while now. Many of us must have read it and even re-read it. So why did I bring it up now? Well, just the other day I was in a conversation with a friend and the talk veered around to belief in ‘miracles’ and ‘karma’. These are two subjects that are never easy to resolve. 

Beliefs 

Over the last few years, religious beliefs have occupied the center stage in deciding the focus and the course of the narrative of our national agenda. And I on my part have been confronting and questioning my beliefs…especially my religious beliefs. Putting them in proper perspective and also discarding some has reduced the chatter of the clatter the beliefs had formed in my headspace.

Beliefs are important because our behavior depends on our beliefs and behavior is important. Everything we do can be traced back to beliefs we hold about the world. Beliefs also help determine our reactions to others’ behavior. They also act as a glue to bind communities and societies.

Atheists are frequently challenged to explain why they are so critical of religious and theistic beliefs. Why do we care what others believe? Why don’t we just leave people alone to believe what they want? Why do we try to “impose” our beliefs on theirs?

Such questions frequently misunderstand the nature of beliefs and at times they are not candid or sincere. If beliefs weren’t important, believers wouldn’t get so defensive when their beliefs are challenged. We need more challenges to beliefs, not less.

Belief v/s Judgment.

A belief is a mental attitude that some proposition is true. For every given proposition, every person either has or lacks the mental attitude that it is true—there is no middle ground between the presence or absence of a belief. In the case of gods, everyone either has a belief that at least one god of some sort exists or they lack any such belief.

Belief is distinct from judgment, which is a conscious mental activity that involves arriving at a conclusion about a proposition (and thus usually creating a belief). Whereas belief is the mental attitude that some proposition is true rather than false, judgment is the evaluation of a proposition as reasonable, fair, misleading, etc.

Belief vs. Knowledge

Although some people treat them as almost synonymous, belief and knowledge are very distinct. The most widely accepted definition of knowledge is that something is “known” only when it is a “justified, true belief.” This means that if one “knows” some proposition X, then all of the following must be the case:

• One believes X
• X is true
• One has good reasons to believe X

If the first is absent, then one should believe it because it is true and there are good reasons for believing it, but one has made a mistake by believing something else. If the second is absent, then one has an erroneous belief. If the third is absent, then one has made a lucky guess rather than knowing something. 

This distinction between belief and knowledge is why disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods, and the belief that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God are not mutually exclusive.

One also knows a proposition if it can be proved empirically. For example the taste of salt, the Sunrise, and other such phenomena. 

Beliefs About the World

Brought together, beliefs and knowledge form a mental representation of the world around us. A belief about the world is the mental attitude that the world is structured in some way rather than another.

This means that beliefs are necessarily the foundation for action: whatever actions we take in the world around us, they are based on our mental representation of the world. In the case of theistic religions, this representation includes supernatural realms and entities.

As a consequence, if we believe something is true, we must be willing to act as if it were true. If we are unwilling to act as though it is true, we can’t claim to believe it. This is why actions can matter much more than words. 

We can’t know the contents of a person’s mind, but we can know if their actions are consistent with what they say they believe. A religious believer might claim that they love neighbors and sinners, for example, but does their behavior reflect such love?

 

Cause & Effect

In the above story if we substitute the word ‘karma’ in place of ‘luck’ the story would make as much sense to most of us. Karma is essentially defined as, actions or deeds. And according to some, on a deeper level, it also includes thoughts and intentions. Many of us these days use the word ‘karma’ very loosely often for revenge, bad luck, and tit for tat. One seldom hears of people saying that so & so is successful because of good karma, instead, hard work and perseverance are cited. So during the conversation with my friend, I said that I do not subscribe to this loose idea and usage of the word karma. However, this does not mean that I am blind to the law of cause and effect. All wise men have said ‘As you sow, so shall you reap’. I know that if I sow oranges I can not reap apples. It is a no-brainer. This idea has further been emphasized and postulated as Newton’s third law of motion, wherein it is stated that to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. 

So far so good. In the physical world, this is easy to see.  And there is nothing here to believe…it all comes in the realm of knowing. But my point is can these mundane laws be applied to the theory of karma or as some like to call it the law of karma!!?? 

The Matrix Of Time

Coming back to the story cited above, the farmer repeats ‘Good luck, Bad luck. Who knows?’ And if I may add, it could also be construed as ‘Good karma, bad karma. Who knows?’ As the narrative of the story progresses over time it moves from bad to good and again to bad and then good. With every new related event, the judgment of the villagers takes a U-turn from bad to good and vice versa. And all along the wise farmer insists on, ‘Who knows’.

The lesson that we can easily draw from this story is that time plays a major role in understanding the theory/law of karma. Unless we can experience and understand the matrix of time we can not make any judgments. The theory/law of karma assumes reincarnation and pushes the scale of time to unfathomable depths which takes matters beyond our reach in the physical world. I am in no way endorsing or negating the theory/law of karma. What I am trying to get across is that we can never say if an event is a good or bad karma. 

Another contentious issue that I find hard to resolve is how does anyone know which is an act of sowing the seeds of karma and which is an act of reaping the fruits of karma, so to say. In other words which is the cause and which is the effect. Here again, unless we can experience and understand the matrix of time we can not make any judgments. 

In India, with so many sects and sub-sects of different religions, there are quite a few different views professed on the subject of karma. In all my engagements with some who speak about karma and in all that I have read about it, I have found very few views that concur. The words of the wise Chinese farmer chime in my ears…

Who Knows!!??