Please explain what is meant by Karma

[Jayhawker Soule]

Quoting from the Wikipedia entry, the 11 March 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami "was was the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan, and the fourth most powerful earthquake recorded in the world since modern seismography began in 1900." The entry goes on to note:

The official figures released in 2021 reported 19,759 deaths,[218] 6,242 injured,[219] and 2,553 people missing[220]. The leading causes of death were drowning (90.64% or 14,308 bodies), burning (0.9% or 145 bodies) and others (4.2% or 667 bodies, mostly crushed by heavy objects).[217] Injuries related to nuclear exposure or the discharge of radioactive water in Fukushima are difficult to trace as 60% of the 20,000 workers on-site declined to participate in state-sponsored free health checks. [source]​

How does the lens of "karma" serve to understand this outcome both for the individual and for the collective?

 

[The Hammer]

How does the lens of "karma" serve to understand this outcome both for the individual and for the collective?

Well we ignored history and built below the ancient warnings stones that said "do not build below here".

These Century-Old Stone "Tsunami Stones" Dot Japan’s Coastline

"Remember the calamity of the great tsunamis. Do not build any homes below this point."

www.smithsonianmag.com

That's cause and effect (karma).

 

[sun rise]

First, I define karma is the law of cause and effect on the human level. Also, people tend to think of it in negative terms but cause and effect can be positive or negative. If someone helps another person, karma might determine that the other person helps the first person in a future lifetime.

I can drive myself more than half mad with speculation. Am I married because I treated my husband badly in a prior life and now I need to balance that with love? Have my wife and I spent uncounted lifetimes as parent/child, brothers/sisters, enemies on the battlefield, murdering each other, saving each other's lives etc all due to unbalanced karma?

Was someone in the tsunami to balance karma by saving another person's life? Was the Baal Shem Tov alluding to karma when he indicated "A soul may descend to earth and live seventy or eighty years for the sole purpose of doing a favor for another. A spiritual favor, or even a material favor."?

There's only a couple of things that I can say. One is that for me karma makes no sense without reincarnation because a strict cause/effect balance needs people in bodies. Another is that if I'm as kind and loving as I can be, then whatever karma I create is positive.