Calculating Karma

When Might It Be Coming Back Around?

Newton’s Third Law of Motion states, “for every action, there is an equal opposite reaction.” If what goes around comes around, what is the radius of Karma’s circular movement? 

Life proves that Karma's radius is a variable: sometimes the consequence to an action is immediate, and Karma has a very short radius. Once a bully hit me and immediately hit  a sharp object behind me and hurt his hand badly. He laughed it off yet was nice to me the rest of the day. Karma came directly that day, and he kind of worried about messing with me for a while. 

Other times, we may never see someone get what's coming to them in life because it doesn't find them until a few lifetimes later: its radius is THAT long. Each lifetime is like an electron valence shell. Our nucleus is our molecular karma: our protons(positive actions), neutrons(neutral actions), and electrons(negative actions) may determine our atomic weight and number of lifetimes we have to live to pay our karmic debt. Each interaction and each lifetime could be part of so many karmic nuclei interacting with each other towards a universal balance beyond our comprehension!

Each of our actions is like throwing a rock in a pond, and the circular wave that resonates away from it shows how consequences of our actions radiate outwards in all directions. We see if we throw many rocks at the same time: the waves would impact each other, and each of our actions can impact the waves of karma back towards us.

Likewise, each of our relationships impacts our molecular karma. Just like Oxygen has its molecular balance as an element which changes when it pairs with two Hydrogens, when we are in relationships with others, we enter the radii of their karma. Some of the waves we put out will bounce into their waves, and vice versa. For example, I would save bugs I found, and I caught my ex feeding them to spiders.  Just like red and blue have their own unique properties, their combined properties create  an entirely new nature. Thus we each absorbed some of each other's good and bad karma from living within each other's radii for such a long while.

This is why so many proverbs recommend being careful of the company you keep because you don't want to be an innocent bystander of a good friend's bad karma! This is why I like to live alone. I'm like a noble gas that way: perfectly balanced in isolation as a singular atom. I wasn't always like this, though. As atoms can be denatured by their bonds with others, I was denatured in a way that absorbed everything I appreciated about my co-molecule. Like when the cells evolved to include mitochondria and no longer needed a symbiotic relationship with them. It was worth enduring a bit of bad karma to arrive at such blissfully balanced solitude. As Leonard Cohen said, “It was the shape of our love that twisted me.” I’m happy with my current structure!

My understanding of Buddhism leads me to believe they strive to have a 0-balance karma. It makes sense if we can’t possibly calculate the exponential potential consequences of each action, to try to affect as little as possible to ensure causing as little suffering as possible. I also feel responsible for the potential consequences of my inactions. If I hold myself back, am I disrupting the natural flow of Karma and the universe at large? I feel like our intentions must be part of the equation as well.

I like considering all the possible parts of the equation while knowing its scope is beyond my imagination. How ever long it takes, I believe it is coming for us! Take that as a threat or comfort depending on if you've been naughty or nice ;-)

What do you think? What else might be part of the equation? Please share your thoughts in the comments!

Photo by Sven Read on Unsplash