“All beings are responsible for their own actions.

Suffering or happiness is created through one’s relationship to experience, not by experience itself.

The freedom and happiness of others is dependent on their actions, not on my wishes for them.”

– Equanimity Meditation

The Buddha addresses karma in his teaching on equanimity. Although the appropriate response to the suffering of the world is compassion, says the Buddha, that response has to be balanced with wisdom. Although we can care for and want to protect each other on a physical and even emotional level, ultimately we can’t do anything to take away the internal attachment and identification with craving and aversion that creates suffering in others. In a desired state of equanimity—balance—we accept that fact: all beings have to do the work for themselves, everyone purifying his or her own karma; we can’t do it for anyone else, and no one else can do it for us. This teaching must be understood on two levels. There is a level of physical suffering that we can and should do our best to alleviate. Then there is the more subtle level of internal suffering, due to clinging and aversion, that we have no control over in others. This second level is what equanimity points toward.