MEDIUM RARE
It’s a Buddhist-Hindu concept, but no one in the Philippines can say that they don’t know what Karma means.
In real life (listen to your neighbors) or in soap operas (turn on your TV), Karma is a word freely thrown about between quarreling parties, words like “Ma-karma ka sana!” (May you experience karma, in this case bad karma.)
Karma is the law of consequences: you reap what you sow. You plant calamansi seeds in a pot, you don’t expect a purple orchid to come out and amaze you. You live with the choice or choices you make, nobody else is responsible. Free will, the freedom to choose, is a good word, except when it is made to sound melodramatic, like a bad word with which to expel Adam and Eve from Eden.
According to the science of metaphysics, karma is instant, even when its effects may be felt later, such as when you throw a ball at the wall and it takes a second for the ball to bounce back. Want good karma before you start a project? Depending on the significance or value of the project, give yourself time to do a good deed days beforehand. It may come in the form of a donation to charity. Paul Lau, feng shui master of happy memory, advised donating blood to the Red Cross. I knew someone, a jeweler, who would personally, all by himself, sweep the floor of his office, living room and bedroom whenever he needed good vibes to ensure success for a project. Apparently, the exercise worked like a charm.
Why, even someone as powerful as the chief presidential legal counsel, Juan Ponce Enrile, a lawyer who has never lost a case, believes in the law of karma. Just a few days ago, JPE was quoted by PNA as saying, “What a pathetic and ghastly irony!” that someone whose “lust, arrogance, hubris and hunger for power and pelf” should now be “drowning, gasping for justice” as he is about to face a criminal court in another country. The law of consequences does not arbitrarily choose to favor or punish anyone. You could say it works like the law of gravity, it applies to all, without conditions or arbitrariness, without fear of or favor for anyone.