“Karma has been a pop culture term for ages. But really, what the heck is it?Karma is not an inviolate engine of cosmic punishment. Rather, it is a neutral sequence of acts, results, and consequences.Receiving misfortune does not necessarily indicate that one has committed evil. But it is a sufficient indicator of something else.And that something else can be anything, as long as it is a logical consequence of what has come before.Consider: if you fall into a well, you are not a bad person who deserves to suffer—you are merely someone who took a wrong step. Or someone who had one drink too many. Or got a head rush due to poor circulation. Or forgot to wear your glasses. Or—The reasons are plentiful, and all plausible. But the chain of cause and effect goes way, way back into the deepest hoariest recesses of your personal past.So never rule out retribution. But never expect it.”

“The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.”

“Retribution is tricky. . . . The insult isn't usually worth the risk of punishment. And eventually one learns that karma has a surprising way of taking care of these situations. All you have to do is sit back and watch.”

“Never do a single thing in the anticipation to prove something to someone who has hurt you. If someone has hurt or offended you (whoever that person may be), never perform anything or strive for anything in your life with the mind of proving something to that someone/ to those people. May nothing that you do be done with any thought of them in mind. There is nothing that needs to be proven.”

“There is no sort of wrong deed of which a man can bear the punishment alone: you can't isolate yourself, and say that the evil which is in you shall not spread. Men's lives are as thoroughly blended with each other as the air they breathe: evil spreads as necessarily as disease. I know, I feel the terrible extent of suffering this sin of Arthur's has caused to others; but so does every sin cause suffering to others besides those who commit it. An act of vengeance on your part against Arthur would simply be another evil added to those we are suffering under: you could not bear the punishment alone; you would entail the worst sorrows on every one who loves you. You would have committed an act of blind fury, that would leave all the present evils just as they were, and add worse evils to them. You may tell me that you meditate no fatal act of vengeance: but the feeling in your mind is what gives birth to such actions, and as long as you indulge it, as long as you do not see that to fix your mind on Arthur's punishment is revenge, and not justice, you are in danger of being led on to the commission of some great wrong.”

“After Daskalos returned to his armchair and was getting ready to continue our discussion I asked him whether the affliction of that man was due to karmic debts.“ ‘All illnesses are due to Karma,’ Daskalos replied. ‘It is either the result of your own debts or the debts of others you love.’“ ‘I can understand paying for one’s own Karma but what does it mean paying the Karma of someone you love?’ I asked.“ ‘What do you think Christ meant,’ Daskalos said, ‘when he urged us to bear one another’s burdens?’“ ‘Karma,’ Daskalos explained, ‘has to be paid off in one way or another. This is the universal law of balance. So when we love someone, we may assist him in paying part of his debt. But this,’ he said, ‘is possible only after that person has received his ‘lesson’ and therefore it would not be necessary to pay his debt in full. When most of the Karma has been paid off someone else can assume the remaining burden and relieve the subject from the pain. When we are willing to do that,’ Daskalos continued, ‘the Logos will assume nine-tenths of the remaining debt and we would actually assume only one-tenth. Thus the final debt that will have to be paid would be much less and the necessary pain would be considerably reduced. These are not arbitrary percentages,’ Daskalos insisted, ‘but part of the nature of things.”