The idea of Karma is that our actions do not end with us. They affect many other people, if not all other people. In this manner, our own actions ultimately determine how our own life goes. Though this is far too simplistic, it captures the practical meaing on of the concept.

One way to understand Karma is to realize that it is an Emergent property of one's own actions. When a person helps another, the person that is helped is positively influenced; it improves their mood. This positively influenced person will be more likely to help another person, thereby positively influencing another person. This cycle can continue, though often times one must consider the friction that this process will encounter. By friction, we consider individuals that might already be in a negative mood. These individuals might have their mood improved a bit, but not enough to counteract their current negativity. Even in these individuals though, we still see some improvement, and if enough good things were to happen to them then they might be influenced positively enough to pass on the positivity.

One must realize that not only does a postiive action change the one person that was targeted by it, but perhaps someone was watching. By some strange quirk of fate, people will often do what they see others do. Indirectly, the person who did the positive action has also affected the watchers. If we say that one person was helped, and one other watched, and they each help one person, and just one other person sees the helping, then by the original person's actions, he has now indirectly helped 6 people. As this continues, one can quickly see that the effects can become immense by the time someone from the original chain helps the original person. In this manner, Karma is said to make one's actions come back to one many times more than just what one sends out.

Once again, we have the strange phenomenon of friction. In essence the above is a best case scenario. Considering this though we realize that at some point, if enough good things happen, there is indeed a cycle. When one considers that not only do you affect the person you are helping, but some of the people watching, you would come to imagine that you are affecting more and more people with each action. Eventually, your good deeds will return to you.

An example of the above property of Karma is the simple example of traffic. If someone lets us into traffic, we are more inclined to let the next person into traffic. Further, this often rubs off on the person we let into traffic. It is easy to see that this cycle does continue, while not always, it does seem to continue.

So far, I have only used good examples. Most people refer to Karma in a more negative sense. Karma is usually used to describe what one does that is bad comes back to one many times over. This is also the case. As I vaguely indicated above, there is more negativity in the world. I take this from observation alone. Given the currently cynical attitude of a great many people in the world, this translates to negativity. While this provides the obvious friction above, it also provides addition to any negative actions in the world. While positive actions are tripped up by any negativity in the persons acted upon, it gives a push to any negative actions which are directed at someone.

What this means is that if we assume that negativity already is stronger in the world, then any more negative actions will simply add to that force. To this end, this is what we see by Karma's more common association. If you send out cruel or nasty actions, then this creates more negativity in the world, and therefore are making the probability that you will get treated negatively greater. Further, you have the same problem of positive Karma, that each action affects the target of it and some of those watching, effectively multiplying the negativity added to the world.

I will use an example much like the positive Karma example above. Imagine that someone is cut off in traffic. The person who is cut off will become angry (generally), and so he will be more inclined to do the same to someone else, or he may decide to try and take it out on the person that cut him off (immediate Karmic rebound). If he takes it out on the driver that cut him off, then the person that cut this person off will be immediately rewarded for his misdeeds. If he cuts off someone else, then he has furthered the negative effects. Eventually, enough people will suffer the negative effects of that person that that person will get negativity in response.

One unfortunate thing about this view is that it takes people as much more mechanical than they are. After all, some people decide not to continue the negativity, creating friction for negative actions. There are also really negative people out there that will soak up alot of positivity before becoming positive themselves, so it may not immediately help one out, but the story here is more just about the eventual effects of Karma. Because truly the best idea behind Karma that I have seen is the visualization of a rock being pushed down the slopes of a mountain. It starts off small, and easily stopped, but if it gains enough speed, or gets a hard enough push initially, it will roll through anything, and gain more speed, as it rolls down the mountain, gaining more momentum as well. So this is referring to the situation where each person that you help helps out others, and so on. So initially if you help a negative person, who does not perpetuate that momentum, then the rock stops, but if you help a positive person, then the rock would hit a smooth downhill portion, and gain speed. So, ultimately, when this rock hits the ground, that symbolizes it getting back to you (and it will hit you much harder than your initial push!).

Karma does not have much to do with religious affiliation, but more to do with the simple facts of life.

A Metaphysical view of Karma

While all of the above does not consider anything more than the physical aspects which influence Karma, there is also the view that Karma is a metaphysical property. From this point on, I will view it regarding this property. Incorporating this argument removes Karma as a simple understanding of the laws of reality and pushes it out of the realm where it does not matter what religion you believe in.

When one considers that all beings share a certain amount of themselves with every other being in the universe, we notice that certain aspects of ourself can be transferred to others. Often this is referred to energy, or power, or a myriad of other terms. I will simply argue it from the idea that every living being is connected to every other living being through some sort of energy. This is often viewed as reality, or componentiated into physical reality and a ephemeral reality. But regardless of how one views it, it is still energy the connects you to another being. In affecting this energy through your normal everyday actions, one finds that it changes slightly by each action, whether by extending a cohesive part of the energy that makes up your body to another person to move skin slightly through touch, or by using your mouth to blow out energy so that it ruffles the part of another person's energy that is their hair. Other things though, such as attitudes and thoughts also change reality, just in more subtle ways.

Consider, your thoughts are what triggers the energy that is a neuron, or several within your brain which triggers more neurons, which eventually trigger the muscles in your arm. This is just the energy of your thoughts triggering events in reality. So, it does affect reality. Negative thoughts affect reality in negative ways. Sometimes it can take a long time to build up enough negativity to truly affect the world noticably, but it is always there. Further, if you consider that perhaps your energy escapes you before being used for some action, then this energy is charged by your negativity and as others use it, that negativity may be transferred to them. In fact, if one looks at it from the angle that thoughts are actions, then one is held accountable for more than just what they do, they are held accountable for what they think, as it bears Karmic consequences, simply by being transferred to others.

How does the energy get back to you, taking this view of reality? In order for you to be affected by anything in this view of reality, there must be a transfer of energy, so how can your own energy come back to bite you? You can transfer it out of your energy to another person, so why could they not do the same to you? Or, perhaps they could pass that energy along to another who passes it back to you? Though truly, taking this view of reality, what quantization of energy is there? If we look at physics we have a quantity of energy for each thing... though it is only measured when it is great enough, and dense enough to create a physical representation. Thoughts have no physical representation that we know of, so how much energy do they have? Is there a way to measure energy in those quantities?

It actually does not matter though, eventually such energy adds up. Think about how many thoughts you have in a day. Do you act on all of your thoughts? I know that I do not. Though even considering that, most people would be hard pressed to count the number of discrete actions they take in a day. Then multiplying that number of actions, by the number of thoughts that one has in a day... it becomes a truly huge number, meaning that a number, however small, multiplied by such a number would become large. If one weighs the energy released in terms of negativity or positivity, then we see that we release a large amount of positive energy and negative energy in a day, therefore considering those quantities and then dealing with the fact that it can be passed back and forth between people, you are bound to get some of it back. What form it takes is not always the same, as everything is made of energy, it may be a negative impression of you that other people get, dark thoughts in the minds of others towards you, more physical things, such as someone cutting you off in traffic, or in fact, someone killing or torturing you.

Enough of the negativity though, if such happens with negativity, then if you send out large quantities of positive thoughts, then much of what returns to you, by the above argument should be positive. This can similarly be of many different faces, winning the lottery (in an extreme case), or even having more friends than anyone you know (much more common).

Emergent -- A property which individual pieces do not have but the whole does. Applying this to Karma, we see that ultimately the ease or difficulty of ones life is determined by ones own actions. This is because of the fact that while ones own actions may not influence the ease or difficulty of ones life in noticeable ways, the ways that your actions affect others, and ultimately how they are changed by your actions, is the determining factor.