Last Sunday, I shared some examples of faulty logic that I’ve seen circulating through the yogaverse. I was planning on sharing some other examples today, but I’m going to put that off until next week. This week, I have something else on my mind.
I was one of many protestors standing, waving, chanting, and drumming out in front of the White House this past Tuesday evening. Fortunately, it became another TACO Tuesday before the evening was over.
Of course, I was relieved when news of the two-week cease fire broke, but the criminally insane threat of a civilization-ending attack on top of the death and destruction that’s already taken place is pushing us further and further out onto a precipice that could give way at any moment.
What’s all the more alarming is that the perpetrators of this horror say they are instruments of “God’s almighty providence.” It seems to me that they’re acting on behalf of a God who has forgotten his own law:
The Sermon on the Mount is the part of the Bible that Christian nationalists routinely ignore so it’s not surprising that they missed it — or choose to ignore it.
You might think that the yogic corollary to the Golden Rule is ahimsa, non-harming, but I’m inclined to think that non-harming is the logical conclusion to a different corollary: karma, the law of action and reaction.
Yoga wisdom tells us that the Golden Rule is more than just an ethical directive; it’s the logic of enlightened self-interest. The reason to do unto others as you would have them do unto you is because others will do unto you as you have done unto them. It’s just a matter of time. That’s how karma works.
The time required for what goes around to come back around is usually longer than a single lifetime. In this regard, it’s helpful to remember that karma is the cause of samsara, the cycle of repeated birth and death.
It may be tempting to interpret teachings about karma and samsara in a metaphorical way that takes the edge off of the literal meaning, but yoga wisdom itself doesn’t encourage that approach. From a traditional standpoint, modern interpretations that ignore the self-evident meaning of a yoga wisdom text will, more often than not, make things more complicated than they are while deleting the most important information: as you sow, so shall you reap (Galatians 6:7-9, 2Corinthians 9:6, Job 4:8, Hosea 10:12 — I mean, c’mon Christian nationalists: this is pretty hard to miss).
Here’s the very straightforward way that the yoga wisdom tradition explains how karma and samsara work when you violate the Golden Rule: if you kill someone in this life then in a future life the person you killed will kill you in the same way.
Simple, right?
Now let’s scale it up: if you kill thousands or tens or hundreds of thousands of innocent people (non-combatants), each one of those people will come back and kill you in a future life, which means you will die as they died thousands or tens or hundreds of thousands of times. However many future births and deaths it takes to balance the ledger is what the law of karma requires.
This ought to make the “enlightened self-interest” part clear.
What’s happening to the people in Gaza and Lebanon and Iran is criminal and horrible. What’s happening to the perpetrators of these horrific attacks is that they are condemning themselves to experience as much death and suffering as they’re causing.
Which brings us back to the conclusion of the corollary, ahimsa: non-harming. From a very pragmatic standpoint, practicing ahimsais a strategy for ensuring that no one will be directing violence at us in our future lives:
When we look at the principle of non-harming in the context of karma, we find that ahimsa isn’t just a moral preference; it’s intelligence.
And when we look at the Golden Rule through the eyes of yoga wisdom, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” isn’t just a moral prescription; it’s a description of reality.
The law of karma doesn’t justify indifference to the suffering of others or inaction in the face of grievous harm. We have a duty to do what we can to prevent harm and pursue justice, even if we have faith that cosmic justice will prevail in due course of time.
We also have an opportunity to contemplate how well we’re observing the Golden Rule: how we’re treating people in our lives, where we might be creating future suffering for ourselves under the illusion that who we’re harming won’t come back to bite us.
In a world governed by karma, abiding by the Golden Rule is the only sane way to live.
Wishing you all good fortune,
– Hari-k