karma - noun - (Sanskrit) - action
For whatever reason, the definition of karma tends to vary. If you are a Hindu, you believe that karma relates to "the relationship between a person's physical action and the consequences following that action." If you are a Buddhist, karma is "the force generated by a person's actions to perpetuate transmigration and in its ethical consequences to determine the nature of a person's next existence" (Merriam-Webster). The emphasis in all three if you include the Sanskrit is on action. I'd like to think of karma as cause and effect in which balance is involved. Whatever your understanding of the concept is, it is fine with me. Karma is all about actions, how they stimulate reactions. It is more about balance than punishment. You simply earn what you deserve.
Yet how does karma relate to the recent Los Angeles wildfire relief movement? I'm getting to it. Since moving here from Jersey in April, I have found that the residents here are, for the most part, not stereotypes. Most of the angels in the City of Angels are transplants from other regions of the country or world. Most of us are here to live out fantasies acquired during childhood. I'm here to do what I can for the homeless community that has just grown due to loss of property caused by the recent wildfires. The cause has produced a generous effect of much generosity, defying balance, however.
To illustrate what I mean, this past Tuesday, I volunteered to sort through bag upon bag upon bag of miscellaneous clothing donated by miscellaneous Los Angelenos who went out of their way to do their own sorting (through their closets) to come up with wearable items for the newly homeless. Over the course of nearly three hours, a fellow East Coast come-here and I micro-organized over thirty trash bags of clothes only to notice more donations in leaf bags, tumbling through the door en masse. The quantities were daunting. When I asked the higher-ups at the facility where the bags would eventually wind up, no one could give me a straight answer. Basically, my question was ignored. I walked out of the center, hoping that the clothing would find itself to the right, needy individuals and not to a landfill somewhere out of town.
Just what am I getting at here? Karma does include cause and effect, but perhaps balance is a moot point. Does too much of a good thing lead to balance somewhere down the line? Will the clothes eventually be found and worn by just the right people? I hope so, but I don't know. What I do know is that if you believe in the karma that establishes your place in the next life, the citizens of L.A. who are going out of their way to give to the needy are all going to the best possible next-life alternative. The angels of Los Angeles will find their place in actual Heaven.
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