What Is Karma?

Who am I? I ask myself. And every other question falls in line behind this one.

From this question, entirely pragmatic and basic to any action arising from that I, whatever happens in the world of thoughts stays there as philosophy without purpose.

Who am I? And starting from this question I can dissolve any restlessness of the mind.

And what is karma? asks the mind. And who am I? I answer.

For if I say that karma is a punishment from the universe, I would be implying that I am the victim of the punishment of a universe reacting against me. I would be dividing the nature of something whose very name says it is one. A universe has no one to punish, for even if I back myself into a corner as the punished one, I cannot be separate from that which is everything.

What is karma, then? Could it be a law, something like gravity, establishing that life has a solid consistency whose molecules defensively repel each of my actions to send it back to me? Could I be something trapped in a shell of such unbending rigidity?

This case does not add up for me either. Mathematics keeps telling me that the universe is one. What am I, then, that I could be subjected to so harsh a prison?

There is, however, the glimpse that the universe manifests in multiple individualities. That each individuality appears to carry out actions independent of everything else. And that each of these energies seems to choose its own path. But how true is this, apart from what I can interpret through the eyes of this individuality I am calling I? How reliable is this partial view?

For the universe is still one. None of these theories make sense if I see that, in this unity, the only I that can be real is the universe itself. I am the universe! So, what is karma?

Perhaps it is nothing more than a worn-out word hungry for revenge. Perhaps the universe is so magnificent that it cannot restrict itself, so the actions that happen are free to happen, since everything manifest is an expression of the same single harmony. Perhaps fears lie when the belief of being something separate, punishable or subject to laws appears before me.

Perhaps, then, individualities pass through their own imagined world, while the universe really goes on living in peace, the ocean undisturbed by the coming and going of its little waves. Perhaps nothing matters, except that I am the universe unfolding naturally in all these things the individualities perceive.

But no, the universe is happening too, the universe too is something I am observing. So, who am I?