What Goes Around Comes Around (Karma)

If one would want to examine one’s self about the meaning of a word or phrase by comparison with what others mean with the word or phrase, one will find confirmation of similarity or change in meaning in relation to time. Given such thesis, this essay intends to validate that same by exploring my own assumptions and beliefs about a certain concept or phrase by,  discovering what I believe about and how those ideas have been formed in me, and exploring outside viewpoints of the topic using contemporary and/or literary figures, politicians, poets, authors, media images, institutions, history books, etc.

Exploration of self: What I think and feel about the phrase “What Goes Around Comes Around (Around).”?

As I use the new version of software in the Internet, the computer flashes a message: “Paying is a good karma.”  The word ‘karma’ enters into my mind that if there could is good karma, there must be bad karma.  Before my encounter of the phrase of good karma, the meaning of the word karma for me was negative that whatever error or mistake one must have done will really come back to haunt one back.  The word ‘karma’ or the phrase ‘what goes around comes around’ serves as self-evaluation that would result of self-judgment.  Sometimes, the self judges very harshly, hence , one could just imagine the tendency that I may have done just to avoid the word ‘karma’ before it comes to mind that there could some good in it.  The experience has therefore brought me into the reality of experiencing the meaning of words into my life that though as one is just a word; it carries a message that could turn on or off one’s mood in a day.  This is not surprising because I believe that man is created also an emotional being although he is endowed with a rational mind.  What is to interesting with emotion is that is what one feels at the moment and most of the sometimes, what one feels is more powerful than what one thinks.

 In trying therefore to reflect on the meaning of karma in this paper, I have to admit that words or phrases could change or could have different meaning at different times.  Thus the need to have updated dictionaries.  Let us apply on how Oxford English Dictionary defines the word ‘karma’ in two ways.  One definition for the word goes this way: “From the Sanskrit word (meaning ‘action’ or ‘effect’) used in Hinduism and Buddhism to refer to the principle by which a person’s actions in this world determine the fate that awaits him or her after death.  In English the word is sometimes used more loosely to refer to the processes of destiny, and it has sometimes been chosen as a given name with reference to this idea.”[1] Its other definition goes this way: “the sum of a person’s actions in this and previous states of existence, viewed as affecting their future fate.”[2]  Comparing the two definitions by the same dictionary does not make much difference as to the meaning referring to after life consequences.

Exploration of other viewpoints about the phrase and how the meaning of the phrase or word ‘karma’ has changed over time, how the phrase was formed, etc.

Let us take what other old viewpoints using the phrase ‘What comes around goes around’ or word ‘karma’ and let us take still another who has used the phrase in the context of a given statement.  There is such phrases as law of Karma under various names and this include “the law of compensation”; “the law of balance”; ” the law of action and re-action”.[3] One could easily get some connection with the author’s explanation of the term as bringing it judgment, correcting all wrongs, punishing all vices, and rewarding all virtues.  The inevitability of cause and effect means and ends, and seed and fruit are simply there.  A man’s normal reading of that interpretation by the author would be to look at the cause if something could be done so that the necessary good effect will come out.  One this note therefore the word ‘karma’ from 1894 had had already a positive or negative meaning’ and as I now realize, it may be that I was not that attentive of its meaning then.  I mean, the term could mean also to be positive and not just negative.

Ward explained further the use of the term ‘karma; allows equating it with the law as justice, and when viewed in its applications,   an action of an individual has with it retribution.  If such is the case, there is also reason to agree with authors’ conclusion that “every secret is told, every crime is punished, every virtue rewarded, every wrong redressed, in silence and certainty.”[4]

One could see from karma that nothing comes by accident, that what one reaps, what he or she has sown. There is therefore a universal rule that giving love brings further love.  Sowing brings further reaping.  In more concrete application, it may mean money begets money.

The phrase “What goes around…  Comes Around” happened to be the third single from Justin Timberlake’s second solo album FutureSex/LoveSounds which was released in 2006.[5] People who could relate with the song may interpret the part ‘going around’ as where Timberlake mourned how his ex-lover may have wounded him and in ‘coming around’ as referring how the law of balance came into effect, as Timberlake’s ex-lover new boyfriend now treat said ex-lover in like manner the woman treated Timberlake in the ‘going around’ portion of the song.

Synthesis of two parts

Comparing my personal experience and other’s viewpoints with the word or phrase puts me now into the questions: ‘Do I have a different connotation of the word or phrase with theirs?  What, if any?  If there is no difference, justify.’

I feel that the meaning of the word to me changed overtime as how others may have changed it. Phrases or terms or words are just means to communicate meanings .When one encounters how a word or phrase is meant by other  the person so encountered, he or she also makes a meaning out of how he or she understood the word or phrase in the outside world.   When that new meaning comes into the person, the latter could use the word in a sentence or in expressing thoughts to others.  When many people agree about the usage of phrase of terms or word these agreements and confirmations, produce a part of culture.  This is when people adjust with other members of society as to giving birth to the general acceptability of the word.[6]

It could be said that difference in the meanings of the word ‘karma’ was not really meant in 1894.[7]   It was my mind who created a difference of the meaning because of my lack of exposure to the meaning of karma, that there could also be a good karma not just good karma.  This therefore  brings me another reality that knowledge of one thing or even a simple word and its meaning to every one vary across different people until that person realizes that he or she must understand what others really give to that word so that person could actually relate under a bigger world.  If the world speaks with one word or one language, perhaps the world could be a more peaceful world.  But across cultures are different languages with different words that may have different meanings.

Conclusion:

There is basis to uphold the thesis that if one would want to examine one’s self about the meaning of a word or phrase by comparison with what others mean with the word or phrase, one will find confirmation of similarity or change in meaning in relation to time.

Confirmation of similarity or change in meaning requires one to be honest about the true meaning of the word to himself or herself. After accepting the truth, one must be ready to what is meant by the word or phrase as accepted by majority of people.  The best proof of this is the use of dictionary, which implies that the word may have its meaning reached the point of general acceptability[8].  This may not be hard to understand as human beings communicate using words or terms, and by them, the people’s experience of the word or phrase will be given recognition and acceptance.  I believe that words are defined and used in dictionaries, which may have evolved and changed over time including the chance of expanding the original meaning and even eventually returning to the old meaning.

Works Cited:

David Kaufer, Suguru Ishizaki, Brian Butler, Jeff Collins, The Power of Words: Unveiling the Speaker and Writer’s Hidden Craft ; Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004

Mark Guarino, M.;  Out from the Cocoon Timberlake Re-emerges without Squeaky Clean Image; Daily Herald (Arlington Heights, IL), August 24, 2006

New Fowler’s Modern English Usage, Magazine article; The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 278, December 1996

Oxford University Press, Compact Oxford English Dictionary,2007 {www document} URL http://www.askoxford.com/firstnames/karma?view=uk, Accessed May 29,2007

Ward, P.C. Emerson and Theosophy, A Paper read before the Chiswick Lodge of the Theosophical Society ,December 12th, 1892, 1894 {www document}  http://www.theosophical.ca/EmersonTheosophyPCW.html, Accessed May 29,2007

Oxford University Press, (2007)

 Ibid

Ward, Emerson and Theosophy by P.C. Ward, F.T.S.  A Paper read before the Chiswick Lodge of the Theosophical Society ,December 12th, 1892, 1894 {www document}  http://www.theosophical.ca/EmersonTheosophyPCW.html, Accessed May 29,2007

 Ibid

Guarino,  Out from the Cocoon Timberlake Re-emerges without Squeaky Clean Image; Daily Herald (Arlington Heights, IL), August 24, 2006
New Fowler’s Modern English Usage , Magazine article; The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 278, December 1996
Ward, Emerson and Theosophy, see above
David Kaufer, Suguru Ishizaki, Brian Butler, Jeff Collins, The Power of Words: Unveiling the Speaker and Writer’s Hidden Craft ; Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004