Karma on the Tennis Court?

A funny thing happened on the tennis court the other day. Our opponent failed to call a fairly obvious double bounce on herself before she hit the ball.   My partner and I called for a line judge rather than risk the agitation of worrying about future calls since we were at a critical part in the first set. The opponent exclaimed "Well, I believe in karma, and since we won the next point it means it wasn't a double bounce."  She wasn't kidding!

Little did she know who she was talking to.  Rather than give her a lecture about karma, however, my partner and I went on to win the tie break in the first set, and then carried on to dominate the second set and win the match.  Hummm.  Wonder what that karma meant about her double bounce?

Really, the concept of karma can be equated with the old adage, "what goes around, comes around."  But it's certainly not an immediate, predictable, trivial thing.  From the perspective of prior lifetimes, it means that you will have the opportunity to revisit your transgressions somewhere down the line, in order to learn and correct the misbehavior, perhaps by being on the receiving end of a similar injury or insult.  And helping others -- the good deeds in our past -- will also eventually reap rewards; we just don't know exactly when.  Many traditions have words that convey this same concept.  Think of the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.   After all, karma tells us that they eventually will!