Text: Everything happens for a reason, not for the best.

Context: The participant is Buddhist and adapted this folk speech from the saying, “everything happens for a reason.” In Buddhism, they believe that karma determines events, not fate. The participant’s daughter is Christian and often uses the saying, “everything happens for a reason” to justify any negative events or struggles that she endures. She came up with this saying in response to her daughter, as she believes that everything has a cause, but that does not mean it is necessarily good. Instead, it means that events all happen due to past actions.

Analysis: As someone who knows little about Buddhism, this perspective on the saying, “everything happens for a reason” is very enlightening and interesting. Karma, to me, was always the idea of “what goes around comes around” but I never thought about it in the sense of past lives. Buddhists believe that consequences depend on actions in your past life, meaning you are responsible for anything that happens to you. I have always believed in the Westernized approach to this, which is that everything truly does happen for a reason. However, the Buddhist approach is much more mindful, and it teaches people that instead of ignoring hardships because they have been determined by a God, they should reflect on their past actions, and think about how they will contribute to the future.

Buddhism, itself, is an institutional religion, but the adaptation of this saying is an example of vernacular religion. It is not traditional in Buddhism, but it is a belief that the participant adopted and created, based on the belief of karma. She became an active bearer of this proverb by adapting it from her culture, and spreading it to others. She says that many people in her family have started using this proverb themselves, and believe it to be true because of how strongly she resonates with it.