When you see someone having a tough time, 

do what you can to ease their suffering. 

Giving, one of the paramitas, comprises three basic categories. The third category—fearlessness—is relieving others’ fearful feelings, which can range from a vague sense of unease to outright terror.

Rarely will we find ourselves in a position to alleviate terror, but all around us anxieties abound.

From the overweight mailman who struggles to deliver a package to an upstairs flat to the mother trying to calm her crying child in a clinic’s packed waiting room to the struggling freshman who just failed her exam. No, we can’t change their situations. It’s their karmic consequence. But rarely are they expecting us to.

What we can do is raise our heads out of our own tiring, frustrating, heart-wrenching traumas and see that we’ve got a lot of company.

Having lugged heavy boxes up the stairs and failed our share of exams, we can sincerely appreciate what they’re going through. And we can forget our own concerns and spend a few minutes letting them know that we care about theirs.

Karma has no expiration date.  

In our ignorance and delusion, we do not truly understand karma. What we think, say, and do will assuredly come back to us—just as surely as our ball thrown against a wall will ricochet back to us. This ricochet may take a million lifetimes to come back to us, but regardless of the time span a cause will give rise to a result.

Many of us will say that we believe in karma. Yet we behave like we do not.

Please reconsider this.

Have we become even a little irritated with someone or something today? That was anger, and we have not understood karma.

Have we ever declared “I want pizza tonight!” (and nothing else).

Have we ever thought, Yes! That gap is enough for me to get into the other lane.

Those were greed—for taste, for self-interest. If we still have ignorance and delusion, still feel anger and craving, then we have not really understood causality. And instead of planting seeds to be born in the Pure Land, we are continuing to plant the wrong seeds, those that would see us suffering in samsara, over and over.