The Double Edged Sword of a Belief in Karma

I went to my second meeting of International Ladies in Vietnam today and the speaker was a doctor from the UK, a self described "Viet Kieu," a Vietnamese citizen who left and lived the majority of their lives outside of Vietnam, who was giving a presentation on her recent medical trip to Nepal. Her presentation was very interesting and highlighted both the enormous chasm in health care between people in developing countries and those of us in the west and the dire importance of basic health education in developing countries, but left me thinking not so much about health care, than about the role of chance in people's lives.

The doctor had escaped South Vietnam with her family just before the fall of Saigon, when she was four years old. She went on to gain asylum in the UK and then to study medicine in London, only returning to Vietnam two years ago, to treat people in her native country. I thought about that four year old girl in the boat so long ago and about how her fate/destiny/future was so precarious and how through some twist of fate or turn of chance, she escaped a country in which she would have most likely received a sub-standard education and have had little or no chance at a professional career in medicine, to being a successful doctor, one who cares enough about the world's people to volunteer her time and her skills to help some of the world's poorest citizens. And then I thought about all of the kids I see selling lottery tickets and gum on the streets of Saigon and wonder just who they could become if they had that chance.

After her presentation, they introduced all of the new members (I am now an official member of ILV) and some of the other members came over and introduced themselves and asked me how I came to be in Vietnam and how I liked it so far. I mentioned to one woman that I really liked Vietnam, but was struggling with no longer being a "productive member of society," having left my career behind in the states. I went on to say that I hate to complain, because so many here have so little, and she brushed my comment off saying, "well you have to get past that, too. I don't know if it is karma or what, but we are where we are and they are where they are and we just have to help when we can." I was quite taken aback, but couldn't form an appropriate response, so I just said something about how I still needed to work and moved on to the next well-wisher.

Once on my own, her comment came back to me. Do I really have what I have because of karma, as in, I deserve what I have and alternatively, people who have less, or nothing at all, have nothing because of karma, because they deserve to be where they are? I found that such a repugnant thought that it made me question my flitting belief in karma at all. I used to think of karma as coming back to someone who treated people badly and it being some sort of re-distributive force in the universe. But I can't believe that people who are suffering from lack of health care in Nepal, from war and famine in the Congo, from natural disasters in Haiti, deserve to suffer, while I deserve to be sitting here health, in my clean, safe apartment with a cupboard full of food.

I think it is mere chance that separates me from those who are suffering; chance that I was born to in a stable family, to loving parents in a country with opportunity. Take one of these kids, some of my kids from IRC, whose parents brought them to the states for a better life and compare them, in ten years, to their peers in the states and you will have an example of the difference a chance can make.

I'll get down now. Thanks for listening. Now where is that woman's email....?