Karma, Baby
In the west, for the new year, we make wishes and resolutions, or we did, until recently. Now we do more than dream of or commit, often half-heartedly, with a vague intention to follow through. Now, we manifest. We do it on Instagram and Tik Tok, posting pictures that align with our visions of ourselves or who we should be. We manifest the obvious: health, wealth, and that ubiquitous term, "abundance," and we do so without recognition of the origins of manifestation, which comes, like nearly all contemporary "spiritual" content, from Buddhism.
I first became familiar with the concept in 2023, when I was living in a "spiritual" community of Koh Phangan, a tiny island in the Gulf of Thailand. Much like Bali, the island has been overrun in recent years by seekers, the broken and their "healers," often the same people, as well as predators who use the island as hunting grounds for sex, money, and devotion. If I seem attached to scare quotes in this post, it is because in my eleven months on the island I met few genuine healers and a lot of con artists and charlatans.
The idea of manifestation comes ultimately from karma, a theory of life which is basically that you reap what you sow, both on earth in this life and in lives to come. The wheel of samsara dictates that we are all locked into a struggle with essential and unending suffering that can be mitigated not just with beliefs and actions but intentions. I first learned about manifestation from a video by the disgraced American monk Michael Roach, who, after starting a relationship with a student, was urged to disobe by many in the Buddhist community, including the scholar Robert Thurman and the Dalai Lama himself. In 2013, he refashioned himself as an expert in romantic relationships, publishing a book called The Karma of Love: 100 Answers for Your Relationship, which I have not read and never will.
In the video, Roach explained that if you want to make a ton of money, your first step is giving it away. By giving away money, you plant karmic seeds, and thereby set the stage for its eventual return to your bank account. I didn't know Roach's history when I watched the video, only that manifestation was one of the many practices on the island I heard lauded by westerners and not a single Thai. I was told, repeatedly, that it would bring not just healing but massive success in every avenue of my life. One day, while lazing around a campfire at the sauna at my lushly manicured gym (Koh Phangan resembles nothing so much as a summer camp/retirement community for young adults, most with histories of trauma), someone suggested that we all manifest one billion dollars simply by speaking our intentions into the flames. We dutifully followed his advice, but to this day, I remain a billionaire only in Vietnamese dong.
I knew Roach's video was fishy. I did some research and found that Roach had been the guru of Matthew Remski, who co-runs the indispensable Conspirituality podcast. Remski has made a career out of dissecting the dark side of wellness and spirituality, while Roach has made a career in whitewashing the same.
Why is manifestation, in western incarnations, devoid of the concept of karma? Karma is not, in fact, a get-rich-quick scheme or a way to secure love and adulation, the traditional preoccupations of self-help, but a spiritual teaching that translates most directly into the western world as Do Unto Others.
Manifestation without karma is like heaven without faith and good deeds: a summer camp/retirement community for discontented young adults, who have been traumatized by the abuses inherent in our brutal capitalist system. As beautiful as such a place might be, it is also a hollow one, and in the year since I left, Koh Phangan has transformed. The clear green seas are suffused with feces, boats sink, tourists go missing, never to be found. The island has been flooded for weeks because it has no infrastructure: the foreigners invest their money in building pool villas, but put nothing into the community at large. The Thais follow suit.
The island has become not a heaven but a neoliberal hell which its residents are loath to admit no longer shines the way it did. They manifested their own destruction through both action and negligence. It's not rocket science. Just karma.
Happy New Year. May we manifest a better world in 2025: one that is peaceful, healthy, and, finally, shit-free.