I’m still struggling to understand karma, though the lovely people at the e-sangha forums are very helpful. I came across a situation the other day which I thought might be an example of karma. A few weeks ago, I posted an entry talking about trying to manage my anger towards a friend who said something harsh to me after I found out my uni work had gotten a bad grade. Well, the other day he received a piece of work back and his also wasn’t very good, and the tutor had said some similar things to him that she had said to me. I wondered if this was karma, but I’m not sure. Yes, it is a bit of a coincidence, and I am having trouble containing my schadenfreude, but I don’t think that he received a bad grade because he was mean to me when I got a bad grade – I think he got a bad grade because his work wasn’t good enough. I don’t see why the two should be related, why there should be a correlation between him being mean to me and him getting a bad grade. But then, isn’t everything intertwined, interdependent and reliant on everythhing else? I’m still exploring, but I’m dubious. Thinking of karma as actions and the direct results of those actions makes more sense to me – guilt being the karma of stealing, for example. Maybe I’ll come across another experience that’ll make me think again, we’ll see. It is interesting, though.