Your believing or not believing in karma has no effect on its existence, nor on its consequences to you. Just as a refusal to believe in the ocean would not prevent you from drowning.
Interpretation
Karma exists regardless of one's belief, much like natural laws that operate independently of personal opinion.
This quote emphasizes the principle of karma, asserting that it is an inherent truth that operates regardless of an individual's belief in it. Just as the ocean's danger remains whether one acknowledges it or not, so too do the consequences of one's actions influenced by karmic law manifest irrespective of personal convictions.
In practice
In a discussion about moral responsibility, one might reference this quote to illustrate the unfaltering nature of karma.
What is there astonishing in the death of a mortal? But we are grieved at his dying before his time. Are we sure that this was not his time? We do not know how to pick and choose what is good for our souls, or how to fix the limits of the life of man.
Often a noble face hides filthy ways.
My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total, and I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminuation, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution. It is reason and not passion which must guide our deliberations, guide our debate, and guide our decision.
Stories have no point if they don't absorb our terror.
Somewhere beyond the curtain Of distorting days Lives that lonely thing That shone before these eyes Targeted, trod like Spring.
I desire only to know the truth, and to live as well as I can...And, to the utmost of my power, I exhort all other men to do the same...I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly conflict.
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