HIV and Karma: Even Death Cannot Set Us Apart

Karma, a punishment or reward that one gives to oneself.

How karma transcends time and death and how it can be a source of hope and misery for HIV patients.

BY ANNA LOURDES CRUZ

Charlie Sheen’s TV appearance on the “Today” led to a whopping audience of more than 5.5 million viewers this month. Many people watched his interview with Matt Lauer not because he has a new movie or he’s been once again been involved with drugs. But, he recently announced that he has HIV, from Sheen’s interview he made it sound like HIV is an infectious, stigmatizing, and pernicious disease. These three letters, according to the actor, are very hard to absorb. He was diagnosed four years ago, but he just disclosed recently that he is HIV positive because people who knows his medical status used it to blackmail him. He spent $10 million in order for these people to keep their mouths close because Sheen was afraid of the stigmas that are going to be attached to him whenever the public discovers that his HIV rumors are true.

Sheen confessed that his HIV drives him to “karmic confusion, shame, and anger.” Even Sheen believe that his HIV has been possibly caused by karma because he has numerous sexual partners before and even after his HIV diagnosis and because of his use of drugs before. However, Sheen does not have any idea how he contracted HIV.

What is karma? And what does karma have to do with HIV?

Karma is by no means a new concept. The idea and belief of karma started with Buddhism. That is why people who follow Buddhism—who mostly reside in East and Southeast Asian countries—are more likely to believe in karma than any other people who pronounced to be Christian, Muslim, atheist, agnostics, or part of other religion. But this does not mean that non-Buddhists people do not believe in karma, nowadays some of them also do. In Buddhist teachings, karma plays a crucial role in determining the course of one’s life. Mahasi Sayadaw, a Burmese Theravada Buddhist monk and meditation master, defines karma as the “result of our own past actions and our own present doings. We ourselves are responsible for our own happiness and misery. We create our own Heaven. We create our own Hell. We are the architects of our own fate.” Nowadays, people use the term karma, not only in a religious sense, but also to describe the phenomena in one’s life. Karma is viewed as the reward or punishment that one gives to oneself depending on the actions that one do. For Sheen, he believes that HIV has been his karma or as he described it as his “mule kick” for being a womanizer.

What does karma have to do with HIV?

HIV has not been closely associated with karma, especially in the Western countries. It is just now that the relationship of karma and HIV has been brought up by an American actor. Isn’t it absurd to think of HIV as caused by karma, since people have been taught from the start of HIV’s discovery that it is caused by a virus? Surprisingly, Sheen is not the only one who links HIV and karma. There are still some societies predominantly in East and Southeast Asia that believe that HIV is part of the wheel of karma.

When one interviews someone and ask the question: “What causes HIV?” one would most likely to give reasons like injection of drugs, practice of unusual sexual behaviors, prostitution, or promiscuity, and not like punishment from God because one is a sinner, or result of bad karma from one’s past life, as Feldman explains, an anthropologist from The College of Brockport. These kinds of answers are what one would normally expect because HIV has been taught in schools through only a medical viewpoint. This has also been the reason why medical and, sometimes, social misunderstandings about HIV drive and create the discriminations that still exists today. These stigmas about HIV positive people includes one’s involvement in drug addiction or sex industry. The disgrace that these discriminations bring to an infected person is the one that Sheen is trying to prevent by paying millions of dollars to people he discloses his disease with. The shame that one gets is sometimes more burdening and painful than the illness itself.

From Sheen’s secular view of karma to Asia’s religious view of it, there’s not much of a difference. Both of them believe that a person gets a disease because that person deserves it.

In East and Southeast Asian countries who mostly practiced Buddhism, karma is also considered as one of the underlying factors of HIV, aside from the common medical causes of this disease. The karma of having this disease is believed to be rooted from one’s past life or from one’s present life. Nonetheless, whether a society believes that HIV is caused by karma or by a virus, there are still stigmas that are going to be created based on these beliefs.

Identifying HIV stigmas created by societies that believe that it is due to karma is important because it will shed light on how it is different from discriminations formed within societies that regard HIV as caused by a virus.

Image of Sheen from his recent interview in “Today” announcing that he has HIV

of HIV patients living at The Temple of Buddha’s Footprints, a Buddhist Temple in Thailand that takes care of HIV patients.

Even though all the men in the pictures have HIV, the image of Sheen is very different from the image of the two patients living in the temple. The contrast is obvious, especially in the difference between the physical built of their body. From Sheen’s picture, it’s hard to tell that he has an illness because almost nothing really change on how he looks, but with the two patients, their bodies clearly portray that they have a disease. Even though the bodies of the two men say it all, it is still different on how HIV patients living in third-world countries are usually portrayed. The pictures of HIV patients living in poor countries, especially in Asia or Africa, are usually the ones who have very thin bodies, ragged or no clothes, and ribs that are poking out of their skins. And almost always they show no facial expression at all, just a straight face. But, with the image of the two patients here it is very striking because they are smiling from ear to ear, which is very unusual especially if one wants to present an image of very sick patients. Also, one can see that their smiles seem so genuine and carefree, even though there’s a camera lingering around them. This might have to do with their own personal views of HIV, which they may think of it as a positive life-changing event, because if a patient just views HIV from its medical definition and symptoms it would take time for him or for her to find a reason to smile again for the idea of having HIV is like the idea of having a cancer.

Is it possible that karma can be viewed as a positive phenomenon in a person’s life?

Wat Phra Bhat Nam Phu or “The Temple of Buddha’s Footprints,” a Buddhist Temple in Thailand that takes care of HIV patients.

Wat Phra Bhat Nam Phu or “The Temple of Buddha’s Footprints,” is the Buddhist temple where the two men in the image lives. The temple houses HIV patients and gives them medical care that they need. In Marshall’s “The Temple of Doom” he recounts his experience in Thailand where he visited this Buddhist temple. The Temple of Buddha’s Footprints is located in a hillside. From the image of the temple, it looks very peaceful, away from the noise pollution and city distractions. It projects an image of hope that an HIV positive individual could really get healed and live longer in this kind of place. However, the truth is very different from the kind of image that it projects to tourists or foreigners because “the temple’s name [has become] synonymous with suffering and death.”

Karma may be a source of hope for some, but it is usually a source of misery for almost everyone.

Marshall’s interview with Michael Bassano, an American Catholic Priest who is the longest-serving volunteer, reveals the Buddhist view that Thais have about HIV and probably the reason why the temple was given negative connotations. Bassano believes that the Buddhist notion of karma is the one that keeps the Thai nurses being “not really hands on” to their patients because “when anyone is near death, usually the staff will tell [him], ‘Don’t bother with [the patients]. The next life will be better’.” The belief of the Thai nurses for the possibility of a better life once a person has been incarnated is visible on how they treat their patients. This may result to not taking care of patients in the best way, but this line of thought gives one a glimpse of the other way that they could react to HIV and karma. Even though most of them regard that HIV can be caused by a karma, this does not mean that they also view it in the same way. From the statement of the nurse and Marshall’s interviews with other patients, karma can also be a good thing because a patient may suffer in his or her present life because of karma, but it also gives hope to the patient that the next life might be better once he or she experience incarnation because that patient already paid for the sins that he or she committed. In short, karma does not rollover once it has been paid.

The patients that Marshall interviewed “believe that HIV is a karmic death sentence.” This kind of belief is nothing new in Buddhism. Raymond Smith , an adjunct assistant professor of political science at both Columbia University and New York University, describes Buddhism as “a [religion] that explains HIV/AIDS as the karmic result of [wicked] actions.” Even though our world is medically-driven and information-saturated, there is still a possibility that some countries view foreign notions or phenomena, like HIV outbreak, from their religious standpoints. Especially countries like Thailand where religion plays an important factor in their community. It is not only because these kinds of views are commonly shared by people who practiced the same religion, but it may also tell one that Buddhists teachings and the idea of karma has been part of how they make sense of what is happening to the world and its people.

HIV stigmas are created depending on how Buddhists think of HIV and its connection to karma. Professor Gerald West of the University of KwaZulu-Natal explains the most common religious response to HIV is that it is “some kind of punishment or lesson from God, angels, ancestors, or the universe.” For Buddhists, karma is their “religious response” to HIV so it is not uncommon for them to think of karma as the possible cause for this disease.

Following the train of thought of karma and HIV, the belief that the person is suffering from HIV is due to karma because he or she is a sinner in one’s current life or past life may be considered as one of the main HIV stigmas that exist today in Buddhists or in some non-Buddhists society. This kind of correlation between karma and HIV is similar to how Sham Hinduja, an activist and spiritual counselor in India, describes karma as “the law of cause and effect, action and reaction; as you sow, so you shall reap.”

For some, karma is not viewed in a religious context, but a kind of a myth that survived and passed on to the current generation. In the Philippines, the country that I came from, we also believe in karma even though we are a Catholic country, but we view it differently. Even though we believe in the existence and possibility of karma, we still do not account it for the sole cause of the phenomena in one’s life, but one of the factors that may contribute to it. This kind of belief about karma is also the same for my Brazilian roommate, even though her family does not practice Buddhism, the idea of karma is still present and applied as a possible cause for what is happening to a person. Just like how Sheen views his HIV as a result of karma, it may not be the only cause, but it can be one of the causes.

The different beliefs in karma like that is important to acknowledge in today’s society. Bringing it into discourse will help to prevent HIV from spreading more in a community because the officials can know what beliefs, myths, or religious teachings they need to tackle and how they can use it for interventions. The power of religion in specific countries and its ability to influence one’s mind and actions are a food for thought for government and social groups to think twice before creating and implementing various projects for the treatments and preventions of HIV.

It’s always a tough battle with karma because no matter what one does it still wins most of the time.