"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."
- Mahatma Gandhi

Like many realizations that I have, it takes me a long time to get to them and then once I do, it seems so obvious that I'm embarrassed that I hadn't realized it before. That's how I feel about a recent epiphany with respect to karma.

I have argued for a while now that karma is not just the Western conception of punishment and reward - if you do good, good will come to you, if you do evil, evil will come to you. More than that, karma says that if you do good, it will be easier for you to do good again in the future, and if you do evil it will be easier to do evil again in the future. The law of karma says that what you do will actually change who you are. You cannot be unaffected by your actions.

So many times, when confronted with what we perceive to be violence and hatred, we are tempted to resort to violence in response. Surely, we argue, it is justified to use violence to get rid of something that causes suffering. A greater good will come from this temporary violence. The ends justify the means.

As with many of these kinds of things, I've known in my gut that the ends do not justify the means, but I didn't fully grasp why. Karma tells me why. What you do will actually change who you are. In seeking to rid the world of violence through violence, we become the source of violence ourselves. And not just temporarily. That last bit is what I had been missing.

We send soldiers to war in order to fight for justice (or so we say). We expect them to kill other human beings, and then, if they live, to come back to us and take their place in society as if nothing has changed.

We kill people who have murdered, and expect that somehow reduces the propensity for murder.

And hardest of all to understand for many of us liberals.... we hate people who hate and expect that somehow reduces the amount of hatred in the world.

Hate has never dispelled hate.
Only love dispels hate.
This is the eternal law.
- Dhammapada 1:5

Karma says that the only way to rid the world of hatred is to love. The only way to achieve peace is to be peaceful. The only way to realize the Beloved Community is to live it.