Karma (the act of getting back what you give) is real and the Dalai Lama knows it. Now scientists know it too. In the May 28th edition of the Vancouver Sun, Karen Gram describes his gift of a candy bar to a young street urchin and quotes spiritualist Victor Chan as saying, "This really made his day. That really simple act of giving had a profound effect on the Dalai Lama himself and this is his life’s work."

Psychologist Miriam Mongrain recruited volunteers on Facebook and had them fill out scientifically valid questionnaires about their emotional state. She then randomly divided them into a compassion group and a control group, and asked the compassion group to engage in acts of kindness lasting five to 15 minutes every day for seven days and to answer questions online about it every day. Gram quotes Mongrain as saying, "The effects at one week were very significant." The results were so significant that they could not have occurred by chance.

"I was pleasantly surprised to see that people really seem to feel significantly happier when they do these compassionate acts. That to me is not a small thing. The more they did it the better they felt." Gram quotes Mongrain as saying, "We know for a fact that the increase is real. We are not asking people to become missionaries in Africa. This is (about) small things that don’t take long."

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