Even in this lifetime alone, happiness and peace can only be achieved through positive action.

The high understanding of Karma is rooted in belief in rebirth, the accumulation of a ‘stuff’ called karma that ripens and determines our future births, and a sense of determinism. However, I believe, especially here in the West, that another interpretation of Karma may prove useful; this interpretation does not contradict the high understanding of Karma, but may even lead to belief in it.

Though we perceive our consciousness as a continuously existing entity, it actually arises moment by moment in response to internal and external stimuli, much like a strobe light illuminating the room. The continual arising and dissembling of each thought-moment provides to us the appearance of continuity in the same way we view a movie – a collection of snapshots changing too fast for our perception to notice the break.

Viewing consciousness as single moments like this, we can then begin to speak of each thought-moment as being born and dying. The content of each thought-moment accrues Karma, which not only ripens in the very next thought-moment, but also creates connections in the mind that make similar thought-moments easier. In this manner, negative or harmful thoughts and actions will result in suffering of some sort within this very lifetime. Moreover, these same thoughts and actions, after being allowed to flourish, strengthen the possibility that similar thoughts and actions will occur in the future, like a trickle of water etches a path into rock until it becomes a valley.

Examine the mind of a person who steals. Imagine being a busboy at a busy restaurant, who cleans the tables and retrieves the cash tips for the waiters and waitresses. Imagine that you’re normally given $1 out of the tip for your efforts, but you discover that most of the servers never know how much the guests originally put down, so you pocket an extra dollar or two from every table. What happens after you get used to this practice? You begin to believe that extra money is yours. What happens when guests pay by credit card? What happens when a server retrieves his or her own tip? Suddenly, this twisted anger rises inside you, because you’re being denied what is yours! Not only that, but you start to mistrust the other busboys, who might be doing the same thing. You work harder, try to clear more tables, feel stressed and rushed. You feel no more satisfaction in the extra money, because you feel like you work harder and harder for it. Paranoia sets in. You mistrust everyone, you think they want to take your money, or that they’re watching you. Instead of working with the team, you feel alone, different. But by this time you’ve decided that the nature of the world is that everyone is trying to get ahead, that everyone steals from everyone else, and that’s the only way to come out on top.

Buddhists have a realm of rebirth named for people who feel this way: the realm of the Hungry Ghosts, whose thirst and hunger is never satiated – food bursts into flames before they can eat it, and even if they could, their throats are thinner than hair and their stomachs larger than oceans.

This is the nature of your mind after you indulge in greedy, jealous, mistrusting thoughts. Think about the last time you felt like somebody owed you something because you did something for them. How did you feel as these thoughts flourished in your mind? The more attached you became to your anger and greediness, the more you should be able to see how the Hungry Ghost represents your mind at that time.

Even in this lifetime alone, happiness and peace can only be achieved through positive action. Negative action sometimes bring momentary pleasure, but the ripening of Karma, even in this lifetime, brings much greater suffering. Suffering, in turn, often spawns more negative action.

One doesn’t need to believe in rebirth and the more cosmic understanding of Karma to understand its effects here, in this life. On the contrary, understanding that karma not only may affect us for eons of lifetimes, but also affects us each and every moment of our current lives, might help some of us to seek change.