Your believing or not believing in karma has no effect on its existence, nor on its consequences to you. Just as a refusal to believe in the ocean would not prevent you from drowning.
Interpretation
Karma exists regardless of one's belief, much like natural laws that operate independently of personal opinion.
This quote emphasizes the principle of karma, asserting that it is an inherent truth that operates regardless of an individual's belief in it. Just as the ocean's danger remains whether one acknowledges it or not, so too do the consequences of one's actions influenced by karmic law manifest irrespective of personal convictions.
In practice
In a discussion about moral responsibility, one might reference this quote to illustrate the unfaltering nature of karma.
For people raised and programmed on the patriarchal religions of today, religions that affect even the most secular aspects of our society, perhaps there remains a lingering, almost innate memory of sacred shrines and temples tended by priestesses who served in the religion of the original supreme deity. In the beginning, people prayed to the Creatress of Life, the Mistress of Heaven. At the very dawn of religion, God was a woman. Do you remember?
Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer's no. That's not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim American kid believing that he or she could be president?
Man has gone out to explore other worlds and other civilizations without having explored his own labyrinth of dark passages and secret chambers, and without finding what lies behind doorways that he himself has sealed.
What do I think of Western civilization? I think it would be a very good idea.
In other words, we are never freer than when we become most ourselves, most human, most just, most excellent, and the like.
People who are lying are, understandably, more worried about being believed, so they work harder - too hard, as it were - at being believable.
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