We can be cruel about Karma, blaming the unfortunate or sick or disabled for past actions which caused their present state. Applying this insensitivity to an individual makes it easier to paint your strokes more broadly, blaming entire groups for their own misfortune, undeserving of compassion, even if you believe their transgressions happened eons ago. This can give one distance from actually having to care for that person or help them (and more broadly can play into the hands of those who take that idea and run with it all the way to believing that the rich are where they are due to past perfections or enlightened actions).
No commentary here needed, just a vignette to chew on:
** a friend was once at a retreat with her disabled husband. Members of the Sangha, lay and clergy, came up to her with questions about how her husband may interfere with their zazen: does he make noises? Can he sit still? Chairs and Wheelchairs are so intrusive, etc. One member finally won the ignorance trophy and took my friend aside, whispering “he must have been cruel to the paralyzed in another life.?
I lied; I have a comment: Supposed it was the insensitive sangha member with the heavy karma, and here blew yet another opportunity to recognize his own cruelty?
Perhaps it’s my own karma that causes me to be mindful of how in the past I might have told this story in broad strokes, exaggerating ignorance to the point of evil, and flushing the whole person along with this action; and I certainly am mindful without prompting of the fact that I would not have told this story with self-righteousness, certainly not without some darkly satisfying profanity.
We all will be the one in the wheelchair, the one with cruel remark. Who do you think you are?