What is karma?

My wife does yoga, I have Indian friends (from India) who play cricket, and a friend’s daughter just did a trek into Nepal for a week. Sanskrit-based “karma” comes alive in many lay conversations, speaking to calm, retribution, aura, and witnessing, eg: what comes around, goes around.” The word has become, like many foreign text assimilations ending in -y; trendy and worldly, but especially handy when confronted by Hari-Krishnas at the airport.

Lately, though, I have had good deed and good intent in mind whilst skiing and snowboarding, for which I am destined to receive good karma and future happiness. Sunday I was on “Talon” and crashed, fracturing my fibula. (not fibia, as my wife says.) I was crushed, (literally) and began experiencing karma-ic disappointment. Did I anger Buddha or Sikh or Tao somehow, with “bad” karma, which results in future suffering? So I laughed, appreciably, at The Simpson’s episode where Apu receives an acceptance letter from Cal-Tech, expanding that it was U/Calcutta. (for the uninformed)

Last year I read an extremely enlightening book, called “Jesus amongst other Gods.” The author, Ravi Zacharias, upon accepting Jesus Christ as his Savior, did research on all other faiths given the non-acceptance he received from hindu family and muslim friends. The cliff notes are that after much intro and extra-spection, that Christianity made the most logical and obvious choice.

To quote him directly:

“We are living in a time when you can believe anything, as long as you not claim it to be true. In the name of “tolerance” (PC, too, I’m guessing) our postmodern culture embraces everything from Eastern mysticism to New Age spirituality. Such unquestioning acceptance of all things spiritual is absurd. All religions, plainly and simply, cannot be true………including, this author might add, “karma”, given that the law of karma operates independent of any deity or any process of divine judgement.

So, in summary: go ahead, practice karma at will, since scholars are divided on a definition. Is it a theory, a model, a paradigm, or a metaphor, because whilst karma-ing you can’t offend any God, or be judged at death.

Do you hear the sitars wailing, and small drums beating at the concourse as you finish this?