WHAT IS “GOOD” AND “BAD” KARMA?
Interestingly enough, the Buddhist answer to this question forces you to think and decide for yourself. Positive actions are defined as their result being a pleasant experience, negative actions are defined by their unpleasant results. Obviously, the results mentioned here are unlikely to come immediately (so-called ‘instant karma’ is considered rare), instead the karmic result may take lifetimes to ripen. For example, if I steal an ice-cream and enjoy eating it afterwards, the enjoyment is not a karmic result of stealing the ice-cream; it may be the result of helping someone else. The karmic result of stealing an ice-cream is an unpleasant experience, like when something will be stolen from me. In A Living Buddhism for the West, Lama Anagorika Govinda expresses another approach: “All the suffering of this world arises from a wrong attitude. The world is neither good or bad. It is only the relation to our ego that makes it seem the one or the other.” This approach relates to the way ou
