Holy cow, I wasn’t even gone to lunch that long, and look what develops…
Before I share personal opinion/experience, I wanna state again that there are a lot of ‘takes’ on what Karmic Law involves. I know there are sects that take the whole idea in exceedingly literal, simplistic detail, and who really believe that A) there is such a thing as objective moral good and bad B) you get positive and negative points for good and bad things C) You need a “clean slate” to achieve enlightenment D) you keep being reborn (or your soul, or some near equivalent, which is in and of itself a whole discussion) until you reach enlightenment. There are also sects who pretty much dispense with Karma as a tool used to train weak minds who can’t understand the “real thing”.
I don’t want to claim that I have the sole correct interpretation and that all these other takes are hooey. I can relate ways in which I’ve witnessed these things interpreted, and I can relate how they speak to me.
That being said:
The whole good/bad thing, I think, often misses the point about causes and effects propagate, and how that relates to our entrapment in samsara, and how we can get out, which is the stuff I really focused in on, and which really spoke to me.
Here are some experiences that illustrate my take on this better than a straight explanation:
I grew up being very afraid of failure. It wasn’t until my late 20’s, with the help of counseling, that I started to find my way out of the hole I dug for myself, and now I find myself much happier etc etc. I think my fears came from parents that were terrified of seeing their kids fail. This was never communicated verbally, but it certainly came across in their actions. I eventually talked with them about it, and we explored where they acquired this nervousness about their kids. That took us to the grandparents. Then we asked the grandparents.
Cut to the chase: things happened to my grandparents and great-grandparents when they were young, and those things resulted in the development of certain ways of dealing with the world, and personality traits. When they raised their kids, these traits (expressions of fear from life experiences) worked their way into their kids. Then some of them worked their way into me.
So, in a roundabout way, it’s not really a stretch to say that the reason I may have had a hard time trusting someone is because of something that happened to my grandparents.
And so the wheel turns.
Building on that:
During the period of time where I was digging up my past, I was mulling over an exchange that took place between my mother and I when I was young, something that really scarred me. I was trying to tell her something about myself and I felt like she really insulted me. A lot of insecurity was built on top of that event.
It occurred to me one day that it was entirely possible that I misheard her, and that she had never actually said what I thought she did.
So then, here I am in therapy, rooting around trying to picture this whole cause-and-effect chain that led me to where I am, and I realize that the event that might have kicked the whole thing off might actually be imaginary (now there’s a real slap-in-the-face type shunyata experience!).
So, perhaps if I’d heard correctly, a large part of the reason I was doling out money to a shrink might be non-existant! (Perhaps I’m oversimplifying, but I think you get the point).
Clearly, my reaction, and the way that reaction subsequently set up a large chunk of my life, was based on my perception of reality (not necessarily what really happened) and my expectations (if I had not been predisposed to expecting a negative response, I might have heard correctly. Or, if I had not cared about the response, I might not have been hurt so deeply. Etc.)
Putting two and two together:
Let’s say I had kids, and like my parents and grandparents before me the little traits and neuroses of my life get handed down.
Should I have reacted differently to my mom, perhaps by being more circumspect about my expectations (and I’m not trying to get into a “I should’ve done this” trip - it seems like a lot to expect a child to be so circumspect!) I might have a lot fewer neuroses about perfection and failure and that sort of thing. That might lead to a different environment for my hypothetical kids.
And so the cycle is broken.
To summarize, regardless of what one takes to be right or wrong, all our actions send ripples that have profound effects on ourselves and those around us (butterflies creating thunderstorms and all that).
Our actions are normally based on reflexive emotional reactions to the things that impact us, and rarely circumspect. The law of Karma is simply that these actions cause such habitual reactions, and propagate. As for the chickens coming home to roost, my life experience does show me that these ripples do flow back on oneself. You live in the environment you build for yourself. The generation of Karma is, to my understanding, both a conscious and unconscious process of reacting in this immediate, emotional manner, without stopping to consider the limits that our perceptions and expectations impose on us.
More fundamentally, as in the first anecdote above, actions and reactions become our personalities.
“Right Thought” and “Right Action” can break us out of the cycle by which these actions are perpertuated. We gain an understanding of how the web of Karmic Law works, and can make choices to act in ways that increase compassion and all that other good stuff. Ultimately, by transcending our attachment to the cycle, we escape samsara entirely.
A final thought: I have often mused that in many ways reincarnation can be interpreted as the passing of these characteristics: I.e., if I adopt behaviors that had their roots in reactions that my grandfather had to events that happened to him, the energy of that encounter, the decisions made and the personality of my grandfather, are in some sense reincarnated in me. That’s just a personal idea I’ve been exploring.
While he, is a wide eyed Buddha.