Buddhism and Karma Lite 

Good karma is more than a healthy bank balance. It involves a healthy dose of kindness and compassion, too. Because karma is not transactional. Karma is relational. It is about the way that things are related more than any scorecard or final reckoning. It is like the special sauce that makes anything taste good that has the good fortune to lie beneath it in a pile of randomly ordered circumstances that happen to occur in succession in a well-ordered life. 

But nothing is random, not really. And I don’t mean past-life karma coming back to enact revenge on the present. No, I just mean that there are always Freudian slips and Jungian archetypes that hover slightly in the background of consciousness that betray all efforts of anonymity and even-handedness when confronted with the necessities of justice and equanimity. ‘Karma’ is our work and our efforts, and so ‘good karma’ the best of these in a world of obscure causes and consequences.   

But so much or our work never escapes the confines of our own consciousness and consequences, and therein lies the depth charge that keeps giving, for better or worse, modern reactions to previous interactions. It is all a question of balance. If extremes are avoided and conciliation invested, then results will likely be salutary, if not today, then tomorrow. In short: do good things and you will have a good life. Do bad things and you will have a bad life, most likely. Keeping score is not necessary. You will know it by how it feels.