Karma, according to many Eastern religions, is the ultimate in objective justice ? the innately moral music to which our universe twirls. Karma dictates that, sooner or later, we reap what we sow.
Like many spiritual beliefs, karma is a paradox. It's a concept that predates Christianity by a thousand years, but it isn't widely understood in the Western world. It's simple but filled with subtle complexities.
The concept of karma has another chance to be appreciated with NBC's hit comedy series My Name Is Earl. In it, the title character tries to repair his tattered karma an episode at a time.
Last month, the show won a Humanitas award. Humanitas prizes, created by the late Catholic priest and television producer Ellwood "Bud" Kieser, award $115,000 annually to film and TV scripts that contain thoughtful stories and spiritually uplifting characters.
In the show's pilot episode, smalltime crook Earl J. Hickey won $100,000 in the lottery and then was immediately hit by a car.
Greg Garcia, one of the program's creators and the writer of the pilot, has heard of people using My Name Is Earl in sermons, "which is pretty cool," he said.
But Buddhists and Hindus don't believe in a hands-on deity. It's more that the universe itself is, in some mysterious way, moral: Along with the laws of physics, there are ethical forces at play ? forces that people can no more escape than they can gravity or time.
In Western religions, people are punished for their sins. In karma, people are punished by their sins.
"It all depends on natural laws," said Kailash Jaitly, who is Hindu. "Nobody intervenes. The only one who can intervene is you."
Karma isn't necessarily a tit-for-tat morality system, said Mr. Jaitly, of Colorado Springs, Colo. It's cumulative ? like cholesterol.
"If I do a bad deed, that doesn't mean I'm doomed," he said. "It's kind of a sum total of all the good things I do and all the bad things I do."
That sum can be carried over into another life. Most Hindus and Buddhists believe in reincarnation, and that our present-life circumstances are determined by our past-life actions.
"This is the reason why we believe some people are born in privilege and some people are born in poverty," Mr. Jaitly said. "Karma is continuing and effecting."
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