Karma: Why do results take so long?

Dhr. Seven, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Wisdom Quarterly COMMENTARY

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Aargh! It's so frustrating they get away with it!

Why does karma (the vipaka and phala or results and ripening of actions, which is not actually the "action" that preceded it, which is what karma means) take so long to come to fruition in some people?

Karma in Jainism is a strange thing

It's an odd thing, but the better a person is, the faster karma seems to come to fruit. This is borne out by experience, and it is explained by Baba (recent godman P.R. Sarkar), the founder of India's Ananda Marga, in the book My Tantric Guru by one of his apostles or avadhutas.

It is as if one has accrued great debt. The greater the debt, the longer it will be before each collection agency gets its due. But they'll get it. One may become bankrupt and have nothing to give to the others, but the others have all the time in the world for the comeuppance of a karmic debtor.

• When does the result come? Karma is opportunistic. Results ripen when -- and if -- the opportunity arises and if circumstances allow. Only a very small class of actions have to bear their result in a certain way. This is the Five Heinous Actions.
• What about John Lennon's "instant karma"? Very unlikely. What is more likely is that habitual karma is coming to fruition, and it seems to follow on the kind of action that produces it. In one case of instant karma in the texts is the case of Devadatta, when the world swallowed him up for his evil. But that was hardly instant. He got to do many heinous things before the results finally caught up with him.

(Airplane, 1980) Then all the Bad Karma lined up to finally exact its results. When it rains it pours.

In time that finger will come back on you, Player

That's why karma is different than ordinary "cause and effect." It is the cause of many (an exponential number of) effects. This goes as much for the good as the bad, the skillful as the unskillful.

On the positive extreme, in Hinduism it is explained that taking one step forward toward the embodiment of Good brings the Good 99 steps closer to one by the action of the Good. This is a very general way of saying that a little good goes a long way; it is much more significant than we imagine. How? Karma (action) is exponential. For example, if one were to give, what would be received would be multiplied many times over. A little bad is the same way.

What goes around won't come around?

So while it may seem that some people get away with a lot, it should not be seen this way. Develop absorption and cultivate the divine eye (dibba cakkhu), and you, too, will see beings meeting with the results of their actions all the time.

Again and again they meet it, even as Edgar Cayce was able to see or as Christians say in regard to we "reap what we sow," God is not mocked. Imagine God as the personification of the impersonal process of karma and its results.