It has been a sad few days for some students at my school. Over the weekend, one student was drinking and driving and hit another car killing the family inside. Then, another student died after falling asleep at the wheel.
Of course events like this happen all the time all around the world. The difference for me this time is people's reaction to the news. One person who works in my office and who was a friend of the student who fell asleep at the wheel said, "I wonder what his great sin was."
In other words, it's all about the karma. If someone dies young, everyone wonders what that person did to deserve an early death. Or even worse, they wonder what the parents did wrong to cause the child to die.
Now in some cases, I believe in Karma. I think the Christian way to say it is "You reap what you sow". But I can not believe that the reason someone dies young is because they have committed a great sin. As I told my friend in the office, I personally have lost too many friends who my age and were "good people" and there are too many evil people in the world who live full lives and die at an old age to believe that early death is some kind of karmic justice.
funny, i wrote about karma in my entry yesterday as well. parking karma.
Haha. I often think about "parking karma" as well, especially back in San Francisco. I usually had pretty good luck, and of course would take that to mean I was a pretty good person. ha. But I'm not sure driving around the neighborhood looking for someplace to park your Volvo is exactly what Buddha had in mind ;)