Karma works (itself out) in mysterious ways. Those who act together sometimes even experience the results together. Why does anyone win the lottery?It is not because s/he buys a lottery ticket. If that were a sufficient reason, every buyer would have won. Nor is it the number of tickets one buys. If that were the reason, those who buy more tickets would win with greater frequency (twice as often for every doubling of number of extra tickets).
Now, even if one were to win by chance alone, one would not be able to hold onto the winnings for very long. One would revert to the previous state because there was no karma to sustain the new elevated state. Merit (profitable karma or deeds willed, engaged in, and accumulated) is the real reason behind winning.
Good things do not always happen to "good people" because such individuals were not always "good." We opportunistically inherit the results of past deeds from a countless number of lives when deeds good and ill were done.
Moreover, what are "good things"? Winning the lottery is not boon because human life is short. Had that merit come to fruition in a longer lived plane of existence, it would have benefited the recipient much more than a mansion or yacht in old age on this plane.
When we judge who is or is not "good," what anyone deserves, or when karmic results would be most beneficial to receive, we completely go astray.
We are in no position to judge. Impersonal karma knows (and much of its "choice" depends on what we are doing NOW). What position are we in?
We are in a position to be greedy, to complain (gripe), and to condemn ourselves and others when we should be happy for everyone and happy for ourselves knowing that the merit we accumulate (sow) now is sure to follow us into the future looking for an opportunities to ripen.
Here is one case of a village that must have planted beneficial seeds in the past, minus the one interloping resident who got left out. He on some level knew not to buy a ticket.
- The same collective karma idea came up very controversially when Hollywood celebrity Buddhist and Dalai Lama fan Sharon Stone blamed the Chinese government's treatment of Tibetans for the massive China quake. That is not how karma works. If it worked that mechanically or clearly, no one would doubt the pervasive power of karma.
Back in December, the tiny Spanish village of Sodeto collectively won a major stake in the annual $950 million Spanish national lottery. Today, the village of farmers and construction workers is enjoying a minimum payout of $130,000 per resident.And yet for all of the new wealth making its way around Sodeto, one villager came away empty-handed. Costis Mitsotakis, a Greek filmmaker who moved to the village for a woman, is the only resident of Sodeto who did not purchase a ticket. Mitsotakis says he is no longer with the woman and now lives in a barn he is restoring just outside the village:
Mr. Mitsotakis said it would have been nice to win. But he has benefited nonetheless. He had been trying to sell some land without much success. The day after the lottery a neighbor called to say he would buy it. The next day another neighbor called. But Mr. Mitsotakis refused to get into a bidding war. "This is a small village," he said. "You don't want bad feelings." More
