Written by David Nichtern

At a certain point, I think it's pretty easy to recognize karma is the whole game.

If you posit the idea that there's some kind of fundamental goodness, fundamental lightness of being, and fundamental pureness — which in the Buddhist tantric tradition is called kadak, or fundamental purity, and is also the basis of the Dzogchen teachings — you end up with this really deep, profound view that there never was a problem. There's never going to be a problem. There isn't a problem. The intrinsic reality is completely pure from beginningless time.

But the more relative view is that, sure, that's true — and it's also true that we've created all kinds of double-backs, double-takes, wrap-arounds, twists, hallucinations, bad actions, mistakes, all at the relative level that need to be cleaned up. There's no way we can just leave that mess on the field and expect to have a happy life. So we begin to say, “Okay, how do I clean this up at simplest level?”

Let's say you are used to lying. Some of us have learned how to lie, to avoid the truth, and to avoid the pain of certain types of experience. There are big lies and there are little lies. But at a certain point, they don't create the benefit that you hope for. I have a chapter in my new book that’s called "Lying, Cheating, and Stealing Are Not Good for You or Anybody Else.”

Now does that mean you should blurt out to everybody, “I saw that you have huge underwear,” or, “You eat like a slob,” or things like that? No, that's not what it means. But it does mean some kind of accountability for using speech and recognizing the sacredness of speech to express really clearly, without obfuscation, what it is you're trying to say to somebody. Without a game, without manipulation, just really using it as an opportunity to communicate. So when you go back through those same channels and try to put some kind of honesty into them, or a naivete, simplicity, I think they clean out.

But some of these things feel like they emanate from the past. Sometimes you have to go to the past and apologize to somebody if you treated them badly or lied to them, and clean it up. Because you may have created ripples that you need to take responsibility for.

So even though our entire sense of self and apparent activity are fundamentally empty of fixed, substantial, and permanent reality, we still have to account for our actions. That is the law of karma.