My first introduction to Karma was not from a Western source or study, but rather from the East. I had become a Buddhist in a Tibetan style of Buddhism. After taking my Buddhist vows I was instructed in various teachings, including the Buddhist view of Karma and Emptiness. While the former (Karma) is discussed in the west, the latter (Emptiness) is hardly mentioned. Without an understanding of Emptiness, the richness of Karma is missed.

Emptiness

The more challenging topic to discuss is emptiness. Schools of thought will interpret this differently, one from another. In general, however, we can find agreement with the idea that all things are empty. That is, they are empty of existing in any specific way. If that sounds confusing, it’s ok. Let’s dig into it a bit more. Let’s imagine for the moment that you have a manager at work and you get along with them very well. But your friend and co-worker hates the manager. While you see a manager who is diligent in their work and helping you succeed, the co-worker views the same person as a tyrant jerk who is too demanding and encroaching on their time. Who is correct in their perception? To a Buddhist both are right, and wrong, at the same time. On one hand they are right, because each has their experience. On the other hand they are both wrong, as the person they perceive is through their own perception, which is often not a depiction of reality. The truth is that the manager is “empty” of existing any specific way. If the manager was one way or the other, then everyone should perceive them that way. Because we each see the manager differently (based on our individual perceptions), the manager is dependent upon us for context. It is our perception that creates the manager as a supportive personality, or as a tyrant.

Does that mean the object (in this case a manager) doesn’t actually exist outside our perception? Some schools of thought would say, “correct, he/she only exists in your mind.” More conventional schools of thought would argue, that the manager does exist externally from our perception, but we don’t see the real manager at any time, due to our imperfections.

A Story to Explain Emptiness

One story that helps explain this idea, is a story of three beings that sit at a table. Upon the table is a goblet contain a fluid. The first being, a Holy Deity, drinks from the goblet and shouts praises of the “nectar of the gods,” in the goblet. The second person, a demon, drinks from the goblet and coughs up the fluid screaming, “it’s blood and urine!” But the third person, a human, drinks from the goblet and says, “it’s just water, what’s the big deal?”

Who’s right in this story? They are all right, and wrong. Right in the sense that each is telling their story that is true to their perspective, but wrong in that these perceptions are flawed. They are all based on something, an element that colors the experience: Karma.

Karma

The word Karma is often used in the West, as though it’s a punishment dolled out on the “bad person.” In truth, Karma is just a reaction to an action. Every action is sourced from a prior action. The coin you found in your couch, that relates to a giving gesture you did for someone else. The extra bill from your insurance company is also karmic, perhaps sourced from a greedy or taking action on our part.

From the Buddhist perspective, if you change your karma, you change your world. Hell and heaven can be the same place, but each of us experiences it from a different view, based on our prior actions. This is the salvation message of Buddhism: that although we are the cause of our pain and suffering, we are also the solution to it. By changing our actions we can literally transform our world… from hell into heaven.

Interplay of Karma and Emptiness

A VR Visor is a great way to explain Emptiness and Karma.

Imagine a world outside of us, but we wear VR visors and each one of us has a program running that changes and filters the world. We perceive a world, but each of us has a slightly (or extremely) different experience. One person views a waterfall, while another views a sewage spilling over the edge of a trash dump. The program that filters the data is like our karma. It changes the input, what exists, and replaces it with a variation. What exists outside the visor is a world we don’t truly perceive until we are enlightened. Until then the visor is our only method of seeing. The spiritual experience can take the visor off temporarily, but the full experience of truth isn’t realized until one removes the visor completely.

As the world is empty of existing any particular way, then it is our perception that creates a world of violence or a world of compassion. What we feed within us resonates us with the appropriate world. Our actions in body, thought and feeling change not only us, but by extension the world we think is out there.

Therefore by choosing new actions, we change the resonance and enter a new world of perception.