Sometime during the mid-90s, at a workshop at Omega, situated in Rhinebeck, upstate New York, I asked Bob Thurman, ex-Buddhist monk and father of the lovely Hollywood star, Uma Thurman, to explain the laws of karma. Bob shrugged and said he didn’t know of any. Much later, when I moved to Dharamsala from Manhattan, I realized how many versions of karmic theory there are—and not just in the Hindu world, but reflected in the four different schools of Tibetan Buddhism.Just for the record, the laws of karma according to my Gelupa Buddhist guru are as follows:

• that karma is definite–meaning that acts that cause pleasure result in pleasure, that acts causing pain bring pain back, while neutral acts have no apparent effect;
• that karmic energy increases exponentially–which means that if you steal one measly rupee, at least four rupees will be stolen from you;
• that one cannot become…