6)  KARMA

 When I was in college as a physics major, I think it was my junior year, we got to Hamilton’s Principle. I was quite upset and told my professor of my disbelief, that such an important principle was never taught to me in high school physics, just because I wasn’t ready for the math.

Hamilton’s Principle states that in a closed system, the potential and kinetic energies will tend to be equal.

“Closed system” just means that ignoring air resistance or friction or some other outside force, the principle holds.

“Potential energy” is the energy that a body has due to its position. “Kinetic energy” is the energy that a body possesses due to its motion. In physics terms, the mass of the body times its speed makes up its momentum, p = mv, and its energy K = 1/2 pv. The potential energy is equivalent to the kinetic energy that would be generated if the body was allowed to fall to the bottom, whatever that is.

The simplest example is a pendulum. If the pendulum is raised up to the side and held, it has potential energy due to gravity, it wants to fall and the higher it is raised up the higher its potential energy. There is no kinetic energy because it is not moving. When it is released, the potential energy goes down and reaches zero at the bottom. However at the same time the speed of the end of the pendulum goes up and it gains kinetic energy, its maximum at the bottom of the arc. So a pendulum exchanges its potential energy for kinetic energy. After it arrives at the bottom, it keeps going, giving up kinetic energy (its speed) for its potential energy (height). And ignoring air and axle friction, it would keep going back and forth forever, exchanging its kinetic and potential energies.

But the math we learned at that time says the most important factor is that the potential and kinetic energies will tend to be equal. Where are they equal? On both sides halfway up, or thereabouts. The pendulum gives up its speed and gets position and at some point they are equal, it continues up to the zero speed, and then falls back down, reaching the equal point again halfway down.

This is the tendency of the system, it doesn’t reach the equal point and stop, but as soon as it passes one of the 2 equal points, it wants to return to it.

The next example is the orbit of a planet, which is where the kinetic and potential energies achieve the equal point. The potential energy of the planet is how far it is from its star, because gravity wants the planet to fall into the star, and if it was allowed to drop straight in, the speed of the planet at the time of impact combined with its mass would be its kinetic energy, and therefore its potential energy based on its distance. But if the planet is circling around its star, its momentum keeps it going in a straight line, but the gravity keeps pulling it in, therefore the orbit. And where that happens is the distance from the star where the potential energy equals the kinetic energy. Hamilton’s Principle.

So karma? Not yet.

In metaphysics, the unifying principles of science, religion, and philosophy, Hamilton’s Principle is a big deal. It means that if we have the potential to do something, the universe will try to get us moving to match that potential. We don’t have to try to match it, it will happen naturally all on its own. Take any area of life and examine our potential, which will be different from others, and if the potential is high, we are probably already performing highly in that area. I am not even going to give examples because there are so many.

Now karma. Our potentials define our natural actions, but with free-will available, we can always say “no”, “don’t want to go there”. And that is my definition of “karma”, the distance between where we would be naturally and what we have decided to do differently. A friend of mine says it is closer to “free won’t” than “free will”.

We call the natural actions the “Tao”, meaning the path which is effortless at a particular time and place.

That is why the Tao te Ching says to live without doing, not the “doing” of action, but the “doing” of using your “free-won’t”, deviating from what is natural.

Let’s take an example at this point—let’s say money. Sometimes in life, money is abundant and other times scarce. This is natural. It’s kind of goes up and down, like a sine curve, sometimes plenty of money and other times worried about it. If we can accept these changes and just go with them, there is no karma created. But suppose we want more money than is natural at the time, well we can get a second job and the money situation will improve. But there is a cost, the karma, because it isn’t natural. We can become stressed out, not enough sleep, and eventually physically and mentally crash, at which point we can’t even perform our first job for awhile.

I like to draw a graph with a sine curve where the money changes from positive to negative and back over time. Consider this the no-karma money line, actually a curve. But if the curve starts to go down and we can’t allow that, we can keep the line up with some effort. This will carve out an area between the 2 lines, the accumulating karma, which must be paid back at some point. The area of karma above the line must be matched at some point by an equal size area under the line.

When will that occur? Hard to tell. Sometimes we get “instant karma”, which is good, paying back right away, not having it hanging over us. Most are paid during the lifetime, but some can be postponed to another lifetime—thus explaining the children born into bad situations.

We think of karma as being bad, “bad karma”. We hurt someone and that hurt needs to come back. But there is also “good karma”. If we are inappropriately good to someone, that also needs to come back. We don’t want that either, because it means that in some situation in the future we must receive something which distorts our natural flow. It follows that karma is our own personal agenda, the harm we do to one person can be returned to us by another, perhaps in a different way.

Additionally this means that sometimes it is appropriate to hurt someone, if it is in your Tao to do it and their Tao to receive it. In that case, no karma. That’s why rules of behavior written down can cause trouble, because it always depends on the situation. The only rule which matters is to follow your Tao, and we will get into how to do that in later posts.