The Boulevard of Karma

The cosmos isn’t a one-way street. It is a circular boulevard, for whatever good and bad we send out into the world eventually returns to us. Consider this Sufi story related by Idries Shah:

One night a thief, trying to climb through the window of a house which he intended to rob, fell because the window-frame broke, hit the ground and broke his leg.

He went to court to sue the owner of the house.

This man said:

“Sue the carpenter who put the window in.”

The carpenter said: “The builder did not make the window-aperture properly.”

When the builder was called, he said: “My fault was caused by a beautiful woman who was passing while I was working at the window.”

The woman was found, and she said: “I was wearing a beautiful gown at the time. Normally, nobody looks at me. It is the fault of the gown, which was cunningly dyed in variegated stripes.”

“Now we have the culprit,” said the judge; “Call the man who did the dyeing and he shall be held responsible for the harm done to the leg of the thief.”

When they found the dyer, he turned out to be the husband of the woman. It so happened that this was – the thief himself.
_{As quoted in Life Is Fair}