Karma as drama

One way to understand the Buddhist term karma is to replace it with the word drama.

‘This is my karma’ becomes this is my drama, or better, this is the role I am playing in my drama.

It’s my role in my drama and thus I can play my part the way I want.

The best way to do that is to follow the Noble Eightfold Path, but it’s up to you.

Seeing your karma as a drama you are acting in removes the very deeply mistaken misinterpretation that karma is a form of punishment or reward.

Drama also implies group drama, other actors, and in one way or another some sort of playwright, which might be understood as the grand scheme of things or you yourself.

Buddhism is a mind-opening practice, so we are free to interpret it in a way we understand and can use creatively and productively.

Modern physics suggests a strong possibility that a fundamental quality or force in the cosmos is consciousness itself.

In that sense we are participants in the consciousness and unfolding dramatic evolution of the universe.

If you want to put God in there, go ahead, no problem.

The Buddha left God and many other lines of thought out of his descriptions of human existence to keep people from clinging to words or relying on a supreme being without doing anything for themselves.

There are many ways we can understand our lives, but a central theme in Buddhism is we progress through our own efforts and life is sort of drama, which resolves in whatever way it does due to our own thoughts, views, and behaviors. ABN