This month, I’m pulling back the curtain to share with you how my spiritual beliefs shape and guide our business practices at BE MORE with Anu. Last week, I shared with you my fundamental view that these beliefs are inseparable from our triple bottom line of supporting people, planet, and profits as a Benefit Corporation, and we spoke about how dana, or a cultivation of generosity in one’s self, is the backbone of everything we do at BE MORE with Anu. If you missed that post, I encourage you to take a moment to review it. Once you’ve done so, it’s on to our big topic of the week:
Karma!
Of the three words we’re covering this month (dana, karma, and nyaya), karma is the one you’re most likely to have heard of before, even in passing. So let’s take a moment to do some mythbusting up-front: karma is much more complicated than the idea that “people get what they deserve” or “what goes around comes around” or “you reap what you sow.” Karma, for me, is fundamentally the building blocks of our universe. Not only is it cause and effect, but it is also the very acts that make up our daily thoughts, words, and actions. Central to karma are our intentions. They are the starting and ending point for all of our actions and they affect and shape all aspects of our lives and how we relate to ourselves and one another.
This, of course, doesn’t stand in opposition to the idea that impact eclipses intent when we cause harm to others. In fact, if our intentions are such that we walk in the world with the intent to minimize harm, we are appreciative and grateful for the feedback of others – especially when that feedback points out ways that we can more justly interact with our environment and communities.
And, after all, there is something profoundly freeing about the idea that our intentions have so much power, because we control them! Only when we carefully cultivate our intentions, using them to fine-tune our actions and the impact that they have as they ripple outward, do we have the ability to take charge of how others perceive us.
Which brings us back to why we’re discussing karma in the first place today. It is so important to me that BE MORE with Anu and our offerings support the communities we belong to. You read last week about how we use the principle of dana to offer reduced cost offerings to individuals. On a broader level, I and my team strive to give back to our communities, as well. In 2023, I will be teaching a Breaking Bias with the Brahmaviharas course at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, completely free of charge. I also encourage my team to do the same; each full-time staff member at BE MORE with Anu completes hundreds of hours of service to their own communities annually, in line with BE MORE with Anu’s vision of using our economic privilege to better our communities.
When we give freely of our time and our talents, with the intention to use our gifts to make the world a place in which everyone belongs, our communities are better for it.
In closing, I’d like you to take a moment and reflect on your own intentions. In my spiritual practices, I have learned that “karma” by itself is actually an imponderable. In other words, it is so complex that our human mind cannot understand and explain its nuance and complexity. However, we each can see and reflect on our intentions at every moment. Is our intention to alleviate suffering or ease pain? Or is it something else? This is where each one of us can bring the power of mindfulness to shift our attention from unskillful habits to ones that fully reflect and embody our values of compassion, freedom, and peace.
Next week, we’ll wrap up with the concept of nyaya. I hope you’ll join us!