By Lisa Feissner, RDR, CRR, CRI
As an international court reporter for Planet Depos, I’ve had the opportunity to travel extensively throughout Asia for nearly a year. The places I have visited – Japan, Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, and Hong Kong – each claim Buddhism as a significant part of their culture. Though the practices of Buddhism may vary from country to country, the concept of karma is common to all.
Karma is commonly understood as something similar to cosmic cause and effect. That is to say, if you do good things, then good things will happen to you. While that is no doubt true, a more comprehensive definition of karma would include cultivating virtue for its own sake. According to Buddhist doctrine, cultivating virtue means being a person of spontaneous compassion.
I’ve seen spontaneous expressions of compassion everywhere I’ve traveled and on every scale, from the national outpouring of grief that accompanied the Seoul ferry sinking in Korea to the many individual acts of self-sacrifice which occurred after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan. Even the simple act of stopping to give a stranger directions is an act of spontaneous compassion. No matter the scale, the effect on me is always the same — it makes me want to emulate this kind of compassionate behavior in both my personal and professional life.
My own karma was recently put to the test on assignment in Taiwan. After having spent a great deal of time researching the subject matter of a complex patent case, compiling an extensive word list, and creating a large number of job-specific brief forms and a job dictionary, I was ready for the depositions. The day before the job was to take place, I learned that a second track was added and another court reporter from the Asia team would be joining me. I knew he would not have much time to prepare, so I emailed him all of my materials.
The first week of depositions went smoothly, and with the second track concluded, the other reporter flew on to Japan. Two more days of discovery were scheduled the following week, albeit in a different city, but I was confident that I was completely prepared. What I had not anticipated, however, was that my computer would crash the day before the second round of depositions were to begin.
Being an international court reporter means being prepared for contingencies and always carrying backup equipment. I had my CAT software loaded on another computer so that I could provide realtime to the client the next day. All of my case materials, however, were lost. At least they would have been, if not for the fact that I emailed them to my colleague. I had no idea at the time, but by helping him I was actually helping myself. That is to say, the good karma I created by the simple act of sharing my prep materials protected me from the disaster I would have experienced by losing those same prep materials when my computer crashed. The circle of karma was now complete, and that is what good karma court reporting is all about.