Do you believe in Karma? Whether you believe in it or not, like it or not, it is working all the time and no one can escape from one’s Karma, whether one is a king or a pauper.
The story I want to share here is a true one. It happened about 15 years ago to a young couple known to my family. I shall call them Mr. and Mrs. C.
Mr. C is the son of a humble grocery shop owner who use to live opposite my grandpa’s house in Batu Gajah. He was a brilliant and ambitious man. Mrs. C is the daughter of a poor family in Tasek and used to be my elder sister’s best friend. Like her husband, she was equally bright and ambitious. They made a perfect couple and was the envy of friends and relatives from both sides.
Before long, he got the top job in a very big and prestigious construction company in Kuala Lumpur. She, on the other hand, ruled high and mighty in a foreign bank in Kuala Lumpur too.
It was a coincidence that I too, work for this construction company. This company builds shopping malls, shop-lots, houses, condominiums, apartments, medium-cost flats and low-cost flats. Being in top management level, Mr. C and a few big-shots were given the privileges to choose the best units of each project before they were open to the public.
Both Mr. and Mrs. C bought the juiciest units in all the projects undertaken by the company, so can you imagine how many pieces of properties owned between the two of them? They even bought the whole block of low-cost flats, thus depriving many poor people from having a roof over their heads. Such was their greediness.
In time to come, both became instant millionaires, buying and selling properties, all located in prime areas of Kuala Lumpur and Selangor. If you step into their luxury home in Taman Tun Dr. Ismail, your jaw will drop at the sheer size and amenities contained within its walls. Each have a Porsche and overseas trips for them is as common as going to Genting Highlands or Port Dickson for us lesser folks. Their two sons were educated in posh schools in Switzerland and France. Do you envy their lifestyle? I knew many did.
Then came the bomb. The company’s business is waning and retrenchment is eminent. Mr. C was given the responsibility to lay off as many as possible. Many bread-winners lost their jobs and were not compensated. This exercise was carried out many times over a year. He gave the most lame excuse ever – we need to trim so that executives like us could still have our annual bonus! Luckily I had resigned a year before to be a full-time mother or else I will face the indignity of being laid off too. But many of my former colleagues were tearfully forced to leave. Needless to say, many were bitter and unhappy.
A few years back, I met his former secretary in the street and she told me this, “Do you know Mr.C is dying from nasal cancer? His wife had gone too, just last month, from lung cancer even though she did not smoke or drink and being so filthy rich, for years, they had been eating those organic food us poor people could hardly afford for a single day!”
I can’t imagine Mr. C, in the prime of his life, looking pink and in good health all the time, was fighting cancer like a zombie. I was told he was bald from the chemo and could hardly get up from his bed. He was so sick that he had to give up his job for which company would hire a man so sick like him? And his wife, the one who was so articulately groomed all the time, lost all her hair too and was reduced to a pile of bones before Grim Reaper came to drag her away.
I was told too that they had sold off most of their properties to treat their cancers. Now it’s the doctors turn to laugh all the way to the bank. Life is like a dream – one minute you have so much and the next, you were left with nothing.
I have nothing against their wealth, they really have the guts to take risks and deserved to be so rich but along the way, they have trampled on other people’s rice bowls and denied the poor a roof over their heads. That, to me, is very sinful. I was not surprised they were punished in this way.
Do you agree it was their Karma?
“Countless rebirths lie ahead, both good and bad. The effects of karma (actions) are inevitable, and in previous lifetimes we have accumulated negative karma which will inevitably have its fruition in this or future lives. Just as someone witnessed by police in a criminal act will eventually be caught and punished, so we too must face the consequences of faulty actions we have committed in the past, there is no way to be at ease; those actions are irreversible; we must eventually undergo their effects.”
His Holiness the Dalai Lama, from ‘Kindness, Clarity and Insight’
“I am the owner of my karma .
I inherit my karma.
I am born of my karma.
I am related to my karma.
I live supported by my karma.
Whatever karma I create, whether good or evil, that I shall inherit.”
The Buddha, Anguttara Nikaya V.57 – Upajjhatthana Sutta
We’re all the same. What goes around comes around, and karma kicks us all in the butt in the end of the day.
Angie Stone
To pinpoint that this couple “have trampled on other people’s rice bowls and denied the poor a roof over their heads” as the cause of their being inflicted with cancer is definitely a gross misinterpretation of the meaning of karma in the Buddhist context, period.
Nobody knows specifically which one of the bad karma/karmas they have done in their past (which also means countless past lives) that causes them to get this cancer in this time. Anyway, it’s very common for local Msian chinese to interpret karma as something one does within this life. In Cantonese, they called it “pow yin”. Many Dharma written and/or spoken by Chinese monks are not in compliance to the teaching of the Buddha.
You mean writings by Master Hsuan Hua too?
Dear Ma’m,
I think I know who you’re talking about.
But I beg to differ. It’s not karma. Perhaps at a higher level I could be wrong, but it’s not right to say so, in my heart.
I know a lot of rich evil people, but equally I have seen a few really good-hearted millionaires.
Everyone gets what they deserve in the end, but it’s not up to us to say they should get it now or later.
Remember, after the chess game ends, even the queen and king goes back into the same box as the pawns.
Regardless of your belief, no one can escape from Karma, the law of cause and effect. Do good and you get good rewards. Do bad and you get bad punishments. It is as universal as the air we breathe and the water we drink.
could the rich millionaire couple be poisoned slowly ? maybe by someone whom they had trampled on ?
Highly unlikely, Caroline. But many of those who knew them do not display any sadness hearing their misfortune.