Free Create Your Own Religion by Daniele Bolelli Page A

law of cause and effect. Since cause and effect rule every other aspect of life, karma doesn't seem too farfetched a concept. Also, it offers us a great antidote to the endless whining that many human beings love so much. Karma basically tells us that we have total responsibility for everything in our lives. In this worldview, there is no such thing as bad luck, because everything that happens to us is a result of our previous karma. So, rather than complaining about our bad luck, we arebetter off doing something about it and changing our karma at this very moment. Destiny deals us some cards based on our previous behavior, but it's up to us to decide how to play them in the present.
    On the other hand, this seemingly empowering idea can very quickly turn sour and end up smelling of fascism. By suggesting that everything happening to us is a result of our previous behavior, the concept of karma places the blame squarely on the victim. If something horrific happens to you . . . well, that's because you deserve it. A baby dies in childbirth? It's because of his and his parents' karma. While I'm all for emphasizing personal responsibility, karma takes it too far. Extending personal responsibility to actions supposedly taken in previous lives, of which you have no memory and no proof, appears to me as a perversion of personal responsibility. There are too many ifs for my taste, too much desire to rationalize all facets of existence.
    Additionally, Hinduism has historically used the concept of karma to justify an extremely hierarchical view of existence, resulting in the stifling social oppression of the caste system. You are poor because you are born into a lower caste? That's because of your previous karma. Be a good boy by fulfilling the duties of your caste (that is to say, by doing menial labor and accepting suffering without complaining) and in the next life, you'll have a better birth. For much of Indian history, social immobility has been enforced with the threat of negative karmic consequences for those wanting to change their lives here and now.
    Even when the concept of karma is not spoiled by such obvious ploys to defend the socio-political hierarchy, nagging questions still persist. Assuming that reincarnation is real, what exactly is reincarnated? Your physical self dies, and similarly all your memories disappear. In this world, our bodies and our memories determine ourpersonal identity. Without them, how can it still be “I” that goes on to the next life? This is where Hinduism and Buddhism differ in their views of reincarnation. Whereas Hinduism is attached to this single soul that moves from body to body, most schools of Buddhism deny the existence of a permanent self. Rather, they argue that upon death a person's consciousness merges with other energies to give life to a new consciousness, much in the same way that a wave crashing on the sand goes back in the ocean and becomes part of another wave yet to be formed.
    If the theory of reincarnation, in all of its possible variations, leaves me unconvinced, the concept of the afterlife popularized in Christianity and Islam downright disturbs me. At least the cyclical nature of reincarnation gives us plenty of opportunities to correct our mistakes and start anew. The linear ideology of Western religions gives human beings one chance and one chance only. Depending on how people behave and on the strength of their faith (different denominations disagree about whether both faith and actions determine our destiny in the afterlife), at death the individual soul will spend eternity in either heaven or hell.
    This notion of eternal punishment strikes me as one of the most perverse ideas ever devised. Monotheistic religions describe their God as merciful and compassionate, and in the same breath tell us that this merciful and compassionate God will sentence people to eternal torture if they don't believe in his existence, despite a complete lack of objective evidence. Is