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Pinoy karma

M. L. Tan

There's an amusing passage in Amy Tan’s novel, The Hundred Secret Senses, where an older Chinese woman claims many "yin people" (westerners) want to be reborn as Chinese. The proof of this popularity as an option for rebirth, she says, is China’s large population.

That passage about reincarnation came back to me as I watched a recent GMA (Channel 7) I-witness episode about being Filipino, or rather about how tiring it had become to be Filipino. One part of the program featured interviews around the question, "Would you want to come back as a Filipino?" with people more or less split between "yes" and "no".

If I may do a retake on Amy Tan, I could argue that up there somewhere, wherever it is that souls hang around waiting for their rebirth, there’s probably a long queue of souls clamoring to be reborn as Filipinos, or coming back to live in the Philippines. My "proof"? Why, we’re close to 80 million souls now, with one of the world’s highest population growth rates.

The question, however, is this: what kind of karma do you need to come back as a Filipino? Few Filipinos believe in reincarnation and the Filipino concept of karma – which is supposed to be the driving force behind rebirths -- is quite negative. Erap built up a little harem and in the end, was replaced as president by a woman. People say Erap got his karma and other philanderers are forewarned, "Sige, ma-karma ka, like Erap."

The Filipinized version of karma is quite punitive, a departure from the original concepts in Hinduism and Buddhism where karma refers to a cause-and-effect relationship. You sow what you reap -- it's not considered a reward or a punishment by some supernatural being. If your’re obsessed by sex then you could come back as a boar, literally the macho barako you always wanted to be. You're not being punished by any supernatural being -- it's your macho-obsessed stream of consciousness that brings you back, your soul catapulting into a boar so you can get all you want as a sexual glutton.

In principle then, reincarnation is a choice. You're here because you want to. That’s why ideally, you’re supposed to cultivate a detachment from the world so you don’t ever have to come back at all, as a Filipino, Chinese, Indian, American or whatever.

How come you got reborn as a Filipino? Maybe because you were Filipino in a previous life, or lives, and enjoyed it, making you come back for more. Maybe all your barkada came back as Filipinos. Maybe you joined the long, rowdy queue of souls for the Philippines simply because it was long. (You probably jumped the queue as well, proving you were worthy to be reborn as a Filipino.)

Maybe you didn't really want to be Filipino. Maybe you peeped out of the heavens and saw all these islands with beautiful beaches and didn’t know a few thousand guys were also waiting to be reincarnated as Abu Sayyaf bandidos crazy about beach resorts.

Karma can be "good" or "bad". When your actions are motivated by generosity, kindness or wisdom, then you generate punna, often loosely translated as merit but which really comes closer to a kind of auspicious purifying power that brings you more good in life, this one or future ones.

So, is being Filipino good or bad karma? I think it's all relative. I can imagine why some people think that being Pinoy is the result of terrible karma. But there are, too, Pinoys living in good times, in very good times, and if they believed in reincarnation, they'd strut around believing they had excellent karma.

If indeed you want to be reborn in a better life, then you’re supposed to start generating good karma in this one. That means really being nice and not wishing that your enemies get reborn as fungi on someone’s foot. (Picked that line from an Italian film.)

Good karma shouldn’t be self-conscious. Whenever my friend Margie (yes, that Margie) does something good, she flutters her eyelashes and asks, "So do I get karmic points for being good?" "Nope," I reply, it doesn’t count when you’re conscious about it, as in the way politicians try to get pogi points. When you’re Pinoy, this karma bit gets tricky because when we do things we tend to be conscious about what people think, or what we’ll get out of it. Then, too, our Catholic upbringing reduces life to a never-ending cycle of rewards and punishments. We’re good because we expect to get to heaven, or get a few years off in Purgatory, complete with a Plaque of Appreciation.

It’s time to rethink karma. As the song goes – I think it was from The Sound of Music -- if life’s been looking up lately, maybe it’s because you did something good as a kid, when you were still innocent and unaware of karma brownie points and photo opportunities for the press. And isn’t there another song, too, about being good for goodness’ sake? If we could just set our sights on doing that, maybe we just might produce better collective karma for the country. Then it’d be truly worthwhile coming back as a Filipino.