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I am no scholar and tend to reduce the most sophisticated philosophy into easily digestible truths I can use in my daily life. Complication and complexity only keep me from going deep, I have discovered, and when ideas become simple, they also become fuel for the blissful enlightenment I seek.

If this ancient teaching is true, I often used to wonder, how then did such fierce individuality spring up, driven by insidious notions of ‘I’, ‘me’ and ‘mine,’ along with the concomitant evils of competition, jealousy, demeaning others so we can shine as the sole jewels in any given scenario, etcetera? How are some humans capable of the worst crimes when they employ their special status or belief in their class, caste, intelligence or privilege as weapons of justification?

The usual answer, of course, is the ego. A friend in Manhattan once defined it as a nasty piece of work…

The root verb of karma means “doing”, which includes thinking, speaking and acting. One classical definition of karma is the movement of the mind and what it produces in terms of speech and action. If, for instance, I were to think of eating an ice-cream, express that desire to a friend, then wolf down a gallon of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia, I would have performed a complete karma.

But “doing” is only one half of the karma scenario. The other half constitutes the consequences that spring from our every thought, word or act. Karmic software has no viruses—it is perfect, infallible and inexorable. So why doesn’t every mafia don who traffics in hard drugs, prostitution and illegal arms end up being riddled with bullets in some dark and filthy alley?Why does a kind and ethical man go down the samsaric tubes, while low-life crooks happily sport Gucci gear…

An emerald green SUV shot past us on the long highway leading back from Washington DC to Takoma Park. I read the bumper sticker displayed prominently on its back and grinned: it read, as you might have guessed: Your Karma Ate My Dogma.

What I enjoy most about Americans on the eastern spiritual path—along with their heart-warming generosity and willingness to embrace the universe in all its crazy splendor—is their irreverent sense of humor. And yet, while the “k” word is bandied around in new age circles almost as much as the “f” word in Manhattan, few westerners seem to discern just how wide-ranging are the implications of karmic theory—by which I mean its potential for transforming human life.

Looking back, I guess my earliest kalyanamitras were Carol and Venu, who dispensed solace and help as I careened wildly in and out of their lives during my frenzied adolescence and twenties; without them, and without exaggeration, I may not have survived.

At a time in Manhattan when I could not see beyond the thicket of my personal problems, Joneve insisted I start writing again. Her persistence unleashed a force within me that soon began to roar like a tiger; simultaneously, a wellspring of courage began to flow, allowing me to grow to meet the challenges I faced.

Silver-haired and gracious talk-therapist Amy met with me once a week for years in her spacious office in lower Manhattan. As I listened to myself trot out a nauseating stream of excuses about why I could not change my domestic circumstances, I realized the sniveling coward in the mirror would have to…

My own tumultuous life-path led me to break free of a marriage that was choking the joy out of me. Post-divorce, I severed my fifteen-year bond with Manhattan and fled to the other side of the planet, to Dharamsala, seat of the Tibetan Buddhist community in exile, nestling in the foothills of Himalayas.

After barely surviving my first brutal Himalayan winter, I had the amazing good fortune to meet Ani Tenzin Palmo, a Buddhist nun of English extraction. Ani-la had recently returned to the area from a small cave located way over the snow line—after a thirteen-year solitary retreat!

I asked Ani-la how she’d survived there for so long, alone, and often in sub-zero weather. She had held my gaze with soul-penetrating blue eyes: those years had been the happiest of her life, she had replied in her crisp British accent. Even when the fellow who had promised to…

Lean on me when you’re in trouble, as that fabulous old hit goes, I’ll be your friend, I’ll help you carry on….Right on, bro,when life administers yet another unkind kick to the butt, there’s nothing like a friend to dispel impending doom: a crabby aunt who gifts you hard cash when the mortgage is due; a stranger who points you in the right direction when you’re panicking in a new city; a muse who whispers encouragement at critical moments; the buddy who stays loyal, even after you tumble off your lofty pedestal, revealing frayed and dirty knickers.

Certainly everyone who supports us in this cold world is a treasure. And yet…to that rare human who ventures into the uncharted territory of inner worlds, a higher level of alliance becomes essential. This is the realm of the kalyanamitra,a friendwhodances to subtle inner rhythms, refusing to…