Letter: What goes around comes around

Letter: What goes around comes around

THE DALAI Lama was once asked if he could say what it felt like to be a woman, based on his memory of previous lives. He answered: "I can't remember what exactly I did yesterday, so how do you expect me to remember my previous lives?"

His message is devastatingly clear: talk about your honest experience, and give less credence to blind faith especially in such difficult issues as karma. The Buddha himself stated that the workings of karma are so vast and complex that not even a Buddha can predict its operation. In the Bhagavadgita, Krishna said that karma is a vast web of interconnections and tendencies. No human can ever make specific statements about it.

So if both Buddha and Krishna stated that they cannot make statements about karmic consequences, how can Glenn Hoddle? Because of ignorance.

We are constantly extracting sublime concepts like karma from their context and making unexamined statements about them. They pass into popular belief and sometimes can do great damage. If we can stop for a minute and look carefully at our own unexplored credos then Hoddle's dismissal may have been worth something.

STEPHEN FULDER

Doar Nah Oshrat, Israel