Has anyone else received this ubiquitous mass-email forward with the numbered Dalai Lama mantra titled "Good Karma"? It's been going around cyberspace for years now. I've even read a satirical version of it.

Aside from the fact that it's always annoying to receive a forward of any kind, I find this one particularly disturbing because of the chain letter instructions at the end.

Of course, the words are very wise (there's no question) and I only hope to aspire to a fraction of the message contained... making it all the more jarring that the mantra ends with needling chain letter instructions. Not to mention the alarming directive that "this mantra must leave your hands within 96 hours"! (I feel like emailing the person who sent it to me, saying "thanks a lot for sending me a bomb!")

I can't help wondering, did the Dalai Lama really wish to originate a chain letter and explicitly urge the inclusion of the instructions at the end? At heart it IS superstition. Why would sending the message to 15 people or more be better luck for the sender than sending it to just one person or none? Whatever the intention is, it triggers in me a kind of manic-panic for good luck - a medieval superstitious anxiety. A fear that if I don't do what is instructed and to the MAX, I'll somehow be shortchanging myself in good fortune. In short, I feel manipulated, like the basest instincts of my personality are being justled. Quite the antithesis of what seems to be the strength of the actual message, if you think about it.

And why would the Dalai Lama or any Buddhist for that matter be encouraging the false, westernized notion of 'karma' as something that one can store up and lay away for oneself like a commodity?