Question 1

Osho,

What do you have to say about the law of karma?

 

 

I have very little to say about it -- but it will still take two and a half hours!

 

The law of karma, in the first place, is not a law. That word gives it an aroma as if it is something scientific, like the law of gravitation. It is merely a hope, not a law at all.

 

It has been hoped for centuries that if you do good you will attain to good results. It is a human hope in existence which is absolutely neutral. If you look at nature, there are laws -- the whole of science is nothing but discovery of those laws -- but science has not come even close to detecting anything like the law of karma. Yes, it is certain that any action is going to bring certain reactions, but the law of karma is hoping for much more.

 

If you simply say any action is bound to produce some reactions, it is possible to have scientific support for it. But man is hoping for much more. He is asking that a good action inevitably brings a good consequence with it, and the same with a bad action. Now, there are many things implied in this.

 

First, What is good?

Each society defines good according to itself.

 

What is good to a Jew is not good to a Jaina; what is good to a Christian is not good to a Confucian. Not only that, what is good in one culture is bad in another culture.

 

A law has to be universal. For example, if you heat water to one hundred degrees centigrade, it will evaporate -- in Tibet, in Russia, in America, even in Oregon. In Oregon it will be a little puzzled, but all the same at one hundred degrees water will evaporate.

 

A law has to be universal if it is a scientific law. If it is a law created by people themselves, by creating a constitution, a legal system, then it is nothing to do with science and nothing to do with existence. Then it is applicable only within the society that creates it. It is arbitrary, artificial. You can change it -- and laws do go on changing. Something that was legal yesterday is illegal today; what is illegal today, tomorrow may become legal. These are man-made laws.

 

Certainly the law of karma is neither a scientific law nor part of any legal system. Then what kind of law is it? It is a hope. A man wandering in immense darkness, groping his way, clings to anything that gives a little hope, a little light -- because what you observe in life itself is something totally different from the law of karma. A man who is a well-known criminal may succeed and become the president, the prime minister; or vice versa: he was not a criminal before, but when he becomes the president or prime minister of a country he becomes a criminal.

 

Lord Acton's famous statement I have thought about from every possible angle, and I have found it always gives some new insight. Acton says: Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I don't think so, because I don't see it happening the way Lord Acton is saying. But Lord Acton was speaking from his whole life's experience; he was a politician himself, and what he was saying was not unfounded.

 

Still, I dare to disagree with him, because my understanding is that power certainly corrupts, but it corrupts only a person who was potentially corruptible.

 

He may not have been known as corrupted before because he had no opportunity, he had no power. But power itself cannot corrupt a man who has no potential for corruption. So it is not the power that is corrupting the man; in fact the power is simply revealing the man to you. The power is making actual what was only potential; it is exposing the person to you and to himself.

 

If you look in a mirror and you see an ugly face, are you going to say that the mirror corrupts? The poor mirror simply reflects. If you have an ugly face what can the mirror do about it?

 

I have heard about a mad woman, who whenever she came across a mirror would immediately destroy it. She was ugly, but her belief was that mirrors were the reason for her ugliness. If there were no mirror she would not be ugly. Perfect logic!

 

In a certain way she is not being absolutely illogical. If she were alone on the earth -- no mirror, no eyes, because eyes are also mirrors -- do you think she would be ugly? Alone on the earth without any mirrors, without any eyes to mirror her, she would be just herself, neither beautiful nor ugly. But she would just be the same. The change that has happened is that now she cannot see her reflection. Nothing has changed, only the reflectors have been removed.

 

The same is true about Lord Acton's famous dictum, "Power corrupts" -- it seems so. I would like to say that power mirrors. If you are potentially ready to be corrupted, power gives you the chance. And if you have an absolute potential -- like an Adolf Hitler, a Joseph Stalin, a Mussolini -- then what can power do about it?

 

Power is simply available to you. You can do much with it.

 

If you are a corruptible person you will do what you always wanted to do but did not have the power to do. But if you are not potentially corruptible, then it is impossible for power to corrupt you. You will use the power, but it will not be corruption, it will be creation.

 

It will not be destructive:

It will be a blessing to people.

 

And if you have the potential of being a blessing to people, then absolute power will be an absolute blessing in the world.

 

But man's life has many strange things in it. Only the potentially corruptible person moves towards power. The potentially good person has no desire for power. The will-to-power is the need of a corrupted being, because he knows that without power he will not be able to do what he wants to do.

 

[....]

 

So in life this strange situation happens: bad people reach good positions, become respectable or honored, not only in their time but throughout history. It is full of their names.

 

In history, Gautam Buddha, Mahavira, Kanad, Gautam, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu -- people like these you will not find even in the footnotes. And Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Nadirshah, Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolf Hitler -- they make up the major portion of history. In fact, we have to write the whole of history again because all these people have to be completely erased. Even the memory of them should not be carried on, because even their memory may have evil effects on people.

 

A better humanity will not give these names even a place in the footnotes; there is no need. They were nightmares; it is better they are completely forgotten so they don't follow you like shadows. And we have to discover people who have lived on this earth and made it in every way beautiful; shared their joy, their dance, their music, shared their ecstasies -- but lived anonymously. People have completely forgotten even their names.

 

People don't have any idea how many religious people have lived on this earth and are not known. The reason that you know those few names that are known, is not simply that they were religious -- there are some extra reasons. Just think: If Jesus was not crucified, would you have ever heard his name? So it is not Jesus -- not his qualities, not his goodness -- but crucifixion which makes him a historical figure

 

You know Gautam the Buddha, not because he was an enlightened man, but because he was the son of a very great king. And when the son of such a great king renounces his kingdom, of course the whole country far and wide buzzes with his name. It is not because he is religious but because he has renounced such a big kingdom -- the same kingdom that you have been aspiring to and dreaming of perhaps for many lives. And this man has some nerve -- he just drops the whole kingdom without ever looking back.

 

That's why you remember Gautam Buddha. Somewhere they have to mention his name because he was a king who renounced his kingdom. If he had been a poor man's son then nobody would have even heard about him. And there have been many whose names are not known at all. Even while they were alive only a few people came to feel that they had a different kind of presence. Goodness has its own intrinsic power, and it has its own benefit, blessing. It is not somewhere else in some other life — that if you do good now, in your other life you will get paid for it. That is a strange kind of law -- and that's what the law of karma is.

 

If you are living a poor, miserable, suffering life, the law of karma says it is because in a past life you committed evil acts -- this is the result of them. If somebody is enjoying good health, money, power, all the joys of life, you need not be jealous of him: he has done good deeds in a past life and now he is reaping the crop. He has sown the seeds in his past life.

 

But why so much distance between sowing the seeds and reaping the crop? Is it that always in one life you do good or bad, and in another life comes the result? To me there seems to be some conspiracy in it. It is not a law, it is a conspiracy, because the priest cannot manage to explain why somebody is rich when everybody knows that what he is doing is evil -- and still he goes on becoming richer. And we know that somebody is good, but he is starving. So what good is good?

 

Now, the priesthood is in a difficulty to explain this situation which is occurring everywhere. Good people will be found in every corner of the earth -- poor, starving, suffering. Bad people will be successful. The cunning -- who are ready to cut anybody's throat, who have cut many people's throats, who have been stepping up on people's heads towards power and riches, who have used people as if they were things -- they have all that should really belong to the good people.

 

How is the priest going to explain it away? He has found a way: the law of karma. He cannot explain it herenow so he shifts the whole scene. He makes death come in between your actions and their results; results will be after death, in the next life. But why? You put your hand in the fire and you will be burned in the next life? If you put your hand in the fire now, you will be burned now.

 

So any priest, any monk, anybody coming from the East talking about the law of karma -- take him to the fireplace. Tell him, "Put your hand in the fire so we can see whether the law of karma works herenow. Or does it take so much time that it is necessary for death to happen first, and then the result will follow? Action -- death -- result? Death has to intervene absolutely?" I know he will not be ready to put his arm into the fire.

 

That's why I said I don't have much to say about the law of karma, only very little, just two words: boo boo. [....]

 

The law of karma is nothing but boo boo. And you understand the meaning now, so there is no problem.

 

To me, certainly each action has its result, but not somewhere far away in a future life. the action and the result are continuous, they are part of one process. Do you think sowing the seed and reaping the crop are separate? It is one process. What begins in sowing the seed, grows, and one day the one seed has become thousands of seeds. That's what you call your crop. It is the same seed which has exploded into thousands of seeds. No death is intervening, no afterlife is needed; it is a continuum.

 

So the one thing to be remembered is: in my vision of life, yes, every action is bound to have some consequences, but they will not be somewhere else, you will have them here and now. Most probably you will get them almost simultaneously.

 

When you are kind to someone, don't you feel a certain joy? A certain peace? A certain meaningfulness? Don't you feel that you are contented with what you have done? There is a kind of deep satisfaction. Have you ever felt that contentment when you are angry, when you are boiling with anger, when you hurt somebody, when you are mad with rage? Have you ever felt a peace, a silence descending in you? No, it is impossible.

 

You will certainly feel something, but it will be a sadness that you again acted like a fool, that again you have done the same stupid thing that you decided again and again not to do. You will feel a tremendous unworthiness in yourself. You will feel that you are not a man but a machine, because you don't respond, you react. A man may have done something, and you reacted. That man had the key in his hands, and you just danced according to his desire; he had power over you.

 

When somebody abuses you and you start fighting, what does it mean? It means that you don't have any capacity not to react.

 

-Osho, "From Personality to Individuality, #9, Q1"