New Delhi, Feb. 7 -- Karma. It is spoken of as though it were an immutable ledger, a balance sheet of sins and virtues, a script written long before we learned to read the world. It is wielded like a blade, slicing through suffering with the bluntness of cause and effect--"You suffer because you must, because you have erred, because you must atone."

But what if that is not karma? What if karma has been misread, misused, misunderstood? What if suffering is not a debt to be paid, not a consequence to be endured, not a punishment assigned to the living by some unseen hand? What if karma is simply the quiet movement of energy, not retribution but evolution, not judgment but a call to grace?

A reader wrote to me days ago, speaking of sufferi...