Buddhists and Hindus are facing challenges due to a misunderstanding of karma, and the related concept of rebirth. In Asia, some are reassessing their beliefs about karma and the next life as a way to combat the abuse of women and entrenched poverty, as Kerry Stewart writes.

The word karma is frequently heard spoken in the street, sung in popular songs and mentioned in mainstream media. It’s been taken out of its spiritual context, but everyone seems to think they know what it means—what goes around comes around. This is partly true, but the concept becomes more complex when rebirth is linked to one’s actions in this life.

Instant karma's gonna get you

Gonna knock you right on the head

You better get yourself together

Pretty soon you're gonna be dead

What in the world you thinking of

Laughing in the face of love

What on earth you tryin' to do

It's up to you, yeah you...

John Lennon’s song ‘Instant Karma’ mentions getting yourself together and not laughing in the face of love, but what does that mean in Buddhist and Hindu terms?

An understanding of karma is the most important issue for Buddhism and the modern world, according to Zen Buddhist teacher and professor of Buddhist and comparative philosophy, David Loy, because it has enormous implications for how we understand who we are and how we should be living with each other. He says that the most prevalent understanding today is a social Darwinist one, where you have to climb over the next person on your way to the top.

You can’t talk about karma without talking about restraining your actions, not harming with your speech, not lying, not gossiping, not killing, not stealing, those are the actions that produce lower karma. Karen Schaefer, Buddhist nun.

‘Karma is really important because it implies that happiness and a fulfilling life aren’t simply a matter of getting as much as you can, but rather have a lot to do with relationships,' says Loy.

Buddhists and Hindus are facing challenges today due to a misunderstanding of karma and its twin, rebirth. Many Buddhists in the west reject the traditional understanding of rebirth, and in Asia Buddhists and Hindus are reassessing their beliefs about karma and the next life as a way to combat the abuse of women and entrenched poverty.

Buddhists define karma in terms of our ethical actions, or lack of them, affecting our life and the lives around us, today and into the future. Karen Schaefer is a Buddhist nun living in Thailand who has trained in several spiritual traditions, including becoming an ordained swami in the classical Indian tradition.

'You can’t talk about karma without talking about restraining your actions, not harming with your speech, not lying, not gossiping, not killing, not stealing, those are the actions that produce lower karma,' says Schaefer.

Karma is about cause and effect, but the usual way of thinking about karma is to emphasis the effect—the consequences of one’s actions. The word karma literally means action, so the emphasis should be on the cause, not the effect.

When the Buddha spoke about our motivations and intentions as being central to the teachings, Loy believes he was giving us is a simple golden key that can transform the way we experience the world and the way the world responds to us. He says we have to transform our motivations, which in Buddhist terms are called the three poisons or fires: greed, ill will and delusion.

‘Transform them in to their more positive counterparts, greed into generosity, ill will into loving kindness, delusion into wisdom, especially the wisdom that recognises our interdependence, the fact that we’re all a part of each other,' says Loy.

Read more: Young, single and Buddhist

However, in the 21st century things aren’t so simple. The practice of generosity, or dana in Buddhist terminology, is a positive action and is promoted as a way for Buddhists to create good karma. But this has morphed into the practice of merit making. This is an interpretation of karma that emphasises accumulating merit as a kind of spiritual bank account.

The misunderstanding of karma as merit making is often linked in Asia to a belief that the only way to improve one’s circumstances is to donate to Buddhist or Hindu temples. This has created many challenges for Hindus and Buddhists today, particularly women.

In Asia karma has commonly been used to rationalise people’s bad luck, or fortunate situation in life. So if you’re born into a wealthy home or in a slum, disabled or a woman, you deserve it because of what you did in a previous life.

In Thailand it’s not uncommon for poor families to send their daughters to the cities, to work in the sex industry, to help out financially. The belief that woman have inherent bad karma is used as a rationalisation. There’s also a kind of karma that comes from working as a prostitute, so women are encouraged to improve their karma by making offerings to temples. Consequently, some Buddhist temples have become very wealthy on the backs of these women.

The karma of being born a woman, according to many scholars in the east and west, is no different to being born a man, but this understanding has been subverted by cultural beliefs and then reinforced by some religious leaders.

Recently in India, there have been an increasing number of reports of women being raped and beaten, but this situation, sadly, isn’t restricted to Hindu women. Buddhist women in Asia also suffer because the society is convinced that their karma demands such treatment.

Karen Schaefer has come across this narrow interpretation of karma in Thailand when she worked for an activist group, Liberation and Justice for Women. They target this issue because they see many women in violent and abusive relationships who think they’re lowly and don’t make the effort to get out.

Narmatha Thillainathan is a psychologist living and practicing in Sydney. She’s a Tamil Hindu who works with locals and Sri Lankan refugees. Thillainathan says religion and culture don’t always match. She believes that men and women don’t inherently have different karmas, because in Hinduism the soul has no gender. But the critical question to ask is: how can religion influence culture to overcome the issue of women being mistreated? Her answer is that the level of men’s religious education has to rise. ‘They don’t understand their own religion, because if they did they wouldn’t be causing harm to women, to anything, because Hinduism says not to do this,' Thillainathan says.

When karma is linked to past and future lives it becomes more complex. Tibetan Lamas have a long history of recognising children as the incarnation of deceased teachers. Jigme Khyentse Rinpoche, who is recognised as the incarnation of a revered Tibetan spiritual teacher, says there are different sorts of consciousness that can be identified and each one varies in its refinement: the senses, which are a gross form; dream states; dream states while we are awake; and the consciousness that is revealed when we meditate. This last form, which is the most subtle form of consciousness, is said to be carried into the next life.

The Dalai Lama says that suicide is tragic because a difficult situation that causes great suffering can be the resolution of a past karma, after which things will improve. Buddhist nun, Karen Schaefer believes that, ‘some spiritual awakening can open up, we can meet a teacher, we can start to do charitable work, we can benefit others, so we should never give up hope in the difficult situations’.

Instant Karma's gonna get you Saturday 5 July 2014 Listen to Encounter for more on the contemporary challenges Buddhists and Hindus are facing. More This [series episode segment] has image, and transcript

In therapy Narmatha Thillainathan’s Hindu clients reveal the belief that their present suffering is caused by their past lives. Her response is to acknowledge their beliefs but she also says to them: ‘Life is short, this may have been your past, but let’s do something about it to change what can happen in your future.’

Over the past couple of decades there’s been a fascination in the west with past lives and reincarnation.

‘I can see good scientific reasons to be very dubious about the notion of some survival after death,' says David Loy. ‘But that’s not my main concern.’

He thinks we need to focus on this world, and if we do the best that we can here and now the other realms that exist after we die will take care of themselves.

Encounter invites listeners to explore the connections between religion and life—intellectually, emotionally and intuitively—across a broad spectrum of topics.