Karma

Every action has its equal and opposite reaction.

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The actual name for Hinduism is “Sanatana Dharma” or “The ancient way of righteousness.” It is more of a “way of life” than a religion because it teaches us how to conduct ourselves in every aspect of our life so that we are automatically led to the final goal, which is union with the infinite source of life. Hinduism is not an easy religion to understand. The westerners who came to India two hundred years ago condemned it as a mass of superstition and ritual. However, it is only in this age that people are beginning to understand that everything in Hinduism has a scientific basis. In fact, many of the ideas found in Hinduism were discovered only in the 19th century by western scientists. For instance, the rishis, who were the founders of this religion, told us that the world we see is “maya.” This word translates to “illusion.” The west scoffed at the idea that the world was only an illusion. Today quantum physics tells us that matter is not a solid mass as we think, but it’s only “energy in motion” – E=MC2. This is precisely what the rishis meant by the word “maya.” They knew that matter was only energy. In fact, they knew that everything was energy. That is why they said that what we think of as the world is only an illusion created by our minds and our eyes! Similarly, all the so-called superstitions and rituals of Hinduism have a very deep scientific basis which is slowly coming to be recognized by everyone.

The rishis taught us that there are two types of knowledge – “Apara Vidya” and “Para Vidya.” Apara Vidya is experimental, scientific knowledge of the external world. Para Vidya is experiential knowledge of our own selves by which we can know everything else. Their question was, “How can we know the world outside unless we know our own internal world?” “I” am the basis of all my knowledge, and if I don’t know who “I” am, how can I ever know anything else? Hence, they taught us many types of “yogas” by practicing which we can know ourselves. Thus, we have Ashtanga Yoga, Raja Yoga, Jnana Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Karma Yoga, and so on. Today we are going to talk about “Karma Yoga.”  

If I throw a ball at a wall, it will bounce back to me with the same force as I threw it and will not go to anyone else. This is a law of physics, but our ancient rishis discovered that this law also works in the life of human beings. This means; any action which a human being does will have its equal and opposite reaction, which will return to the individual who performed the action. We are dualistic in nature, where we do both bad and good actions. Our good actions will have good results, and our bad actions will have adverse effects. Both these results will return to us since we are the ones who committed the act. This is the Law of Karma, the inevitable law of nature. 

The Law of Karma is a bit complicated because we are judged not only by our actions but also by our intentions. For example: If a thief cuts the hand of a woman in order to steal her bracelet and A surgeon is forced to cut the limb of a person because it has become gangrenous, both are violent actions, but one is done with a cruel intention and the other with the desire to save the life of the person. Therefore, we are punished or rewarded according to the intentions with which we did the action.   

We often say, “I don’t deserve this!” But the fact is that everyone gets exactly what she or he deserves, nothing more and nothing less! There is never a question of a person not getting his or her just deserves. This is another aspect of the Law of Karma that everyone should know. Even though we might do an act, it is not compulsory that we get the benefits of that action immediately. For example, if we eat unhealthy food today, we need not get a heart attack the next day; we might get it years later. Therefore, we find that the Law of Karma is closely related to reincarnation, or the fact that the soul takes on many births in order to pay off the debts it has incurred in a previous life.  

We see many bad people in the world, and they seem to be having a good life – so much of the money, they have got by exploiting and sometimes even by killing other people. Hinduism says that every act and every intention of the human being is recorded somewhere in the Akashic Records. Even though the person appears to be having a good life here, he will definitely be punished for his crimes at some time or other. 

Sometimes he might get punished in this very life and die a miserable death, but what happens when a person dies before he or she gets the effects of her good or bad actions? The Law of Karma will not leave anything undone. The law sees to it that the mind-intellect equipment of the dead person takes another body at some other place and time so that the person will have the same vasanas or desires which he or she had in his or her previous birth. This is called reincarnation. He will have to pay his debt to nature in another life. This is the reason why we see so many inexplicable differences in life. One person is a deaf-mute, another is an opera singer, one is a beggar, another a millionaire, one is healthy and strong, and another is a leper! Other religions say that this is all God’s wish. But how can a compassionate God make one child into an idiot and another into a genius? Even an earthly father will not do that, so how can the all-merciful God in Heaven do such unfair deeds? This is a question that only Hinduism answers. Only in Hinduism do we find a logical explanation for the seemingly unfair things that happen in life. 

Hinduism says that these people are suffering or enjoying the results of the bad or good actions they have done in a previous life. This means that we are all the makers of our own destiny. If we do good actions, we will make our lives a happy place. If we keep doing bad actions, we will create an unhappy life for ourselves. We are being given the results of our actions which have been committed at some time in this life or in some other life. Thus, Hinduism is the only religion that teaches us that we are totally responsible for our lives. We cannot blame God or our parents or our friends, or anyone else for our problems.

The Law of Karma is one of the foundation stones of the Sanatana Dharma, and it declares categorically that our own actions shape our destinies. The relationship between cause and effect, which takes place between physical objects and persons, reflects a natural law that is not limited to physical reality. Everybody and everything in the physical world is part of that universal law, which we as limited human beings, are not able to perceive.

We can control our actions, but we cannot control the results of our actions; they are governed by the Law of Karma. According to this law, we receive from the world what we give to it. To put it simply, the person who hates others will keep receiving hate; the person who feels love for others will keep getting love in return. The Law of Karma is pretty straightforward. As we think or desire, so we shall get and become. So it is very important that we desire the right things. More than our actual actions, it is our intentions that create our future. Every intention and every desire leaves an imperceptible mark on our mind that slowly builds our future. So it is absurd to blame God for anything that happens to us. We have only ourselves to blame or praise. If we hurt others, we are actually hurting ourselves, even though we may not know it. “Do to others what you would have them do to you” is a basic dictum of all religions. “As we sow, so we shall reap.” This is an implacable Law of Nature.

When we act, we should examine our motivation to see if it is pure or tainted with selfishness. The desire or motive with which we do an action has to be fulfilled. The fruit of that desire will come bouncing back to us one day. If some actions do not bring their results in this life, then one has to take another life in order to enjoy the benefits or be punished for the bad. Like all laws of nature, the Law of Karma cannot be diverted or bypassed. This is why the Hindus believe in reincarnation, which is actually based on this scientific Law of Nature. 

The universe does not like to leave anything incomplete. Every cause has to produce an effect. Until it does so, the circle is incomplete. Sometimes it happens that this balancing of energy may not take place in this lifetime. Therefore, the embodied soul has to take on another form in order to complete the process. The effects of our actions have to be experienced by us and not by anyone else. If we die before we experience them, we will be compelled to take on another body so as to complete the process. The jivatma (embodied soul) takes a new birth, carrying what is known as his or her prarabdha karma, which is a collection of all the actions which he has started or caused in a previous life. The effects of these have to be experienced by him. But he can stop from instigating new karmas, which are the causative factors for new effects in the future.

Every time we act with a certain desire or with a certain intention, we are instigating a cause, which will have to end in an effect. This effect may or may not be what we expect. When it turns out to be what we expect, we are very proud of our prowess in having produced such an effect, but when it turns out to be quite different from what we expect, we tend to blame others for the way it has turned out. We are happy to accept results if they are favorable to us but not at all happy about accepting that which is undesirable or unfavorable. We totally forget that both effects have been caused by us – by our intentions, the results of which we cannot judge or gauge.

Every relationship that we have with anyone, however trivial, has a karmic basis. In order to progress spiritually, the individual has to balance his karmic debts. He has to experience the effects of the actions that he has done either in this life or in another. All our relationships are given to us in order to balance some debt or another. Our problem, therefore, is somehow to pay our debts as fast as possible without incurring more karmic debts.

Whether we will finish off our debts in this life will depend on whether we react or respond to the stimuli we receive from them. Like, dislike and indifference are the three types of responses we normally have to anything and anyone. All these might cause further karmic bonds. The only way to go beyond the cycle of cause and effect is to learn to accept and not react. Suppose a person has wronged us. If we react and treat him also very badly, we will be creating another cause for which we have to get the effect or result. If however, instead of reacting, we respond to that person’s bad action with love, it will be the end of that debt. 

If in this life, we find that we’re repeatedly being treated cruelly by others, we might strike back and treat others as they have been treating us (tit for tat). However, if we understand the Law of Karma, we will realize that we must have treated many people cruelly in our previous life, and now we’re being given an opportunity to balance the effects of our past karma by having many people treat us cruelly. If we understand this and accept this without hatred towards those who do injustice to us, then we will have washed off that karma from our plate and can start our next life with a clean conscience.

Every experience we have in this life, whether good or bad, is actually the means employed by a compassionate Creator to enable us to balance our debts and start afresh. The way we accept our lives will pave the way for our future lives. If we lash out with pain and hatred at those who revile us, we might have balanced one karmic debt, but we will be starting another one. If, however, we accept what happens without rancor and without reacting, we will nullify the effects of that particular karma and will be able to end that particular cycle of cause and effect. 

Anyone who performs actions only for himself without any care or consideration for others and for the world around him will have to suffer. This is the Law of Nature. Any selfish act immediately isolates us from the world and from nature; many such acts eventually bring unhappiness, discontent, ill health, and continuous bad luck, which we blame on others and on our fate, never realizing that it is only a consequence of our own selfish actions. Here is where the Law of Karma comes into play. Our world is shaped by our own actions. In this respect, we must understand that our thoughts are also actions. 

Lord Krishna says that we have been given the right only to do the action, but we cannot control the results. This effect or the results of the action are under cosmic law. So all our actions will not have the results we are hoping for. But every action produces a kind of chain reaction – cause and effect, cause and effect. This is what binds us to the Wheel of Karma known as Samsara Chakra. This will continue as long as we expect the results. We expect this because we are ignorant of the cosmic law, which declares that results are not in our hands. The realized sage, on the other hand, knows that the results are not in his hands, so his action is purely a physical one and has no selfish motivation. What binds us is the desire for the results and not the actual act by itself. The act by itself is innocent. It cannot bind us.

The Law of Karma is a Law of Nature and has nothing to do with morality. Ethics and morality are man-made and apt to change with place and time. The Law of Karma, however, is an impersonal law. The universe does not judge. It is only the human being that judges. Moral rules are man-made; breaking them is an offense that has to be punished by the laws of the land. Natural laws are enforced by nature in a totally different way.

The universal law meters out non-judgmental justice. Therefore, according to Hinduism, this law actually serves us as an impersonal teacher of our responsibility. A person who does not understand how this law works may get angry and frustrated and start blaming God, the world, and others – anyone except himself – for how he is being treated. By doing this, the person is actually creating more negative karma for himself. In order to become liberated, each person has to balance his or her karmic debts in this life. Otherwise, the imbalance will be carried on to another life, like an unfinished account book in which the balance is carried over from year to year. Most accountants try to balance their books at the end of every financial year so as not to carry over certain debts. Similarly, we also should make an attempt to finish off our debts in this life. This can be done only when we realize that everything that happens to us has been created by our own intentions, either of the immediate past life or some previous ones.

We might meet many different types of personalities during the course of our life, some supportive, some hostile, some loving, some suspicious, and some unlikeable. If we do not want to acquire more Karma, we should not judge any of their actions. Any experience we have, good or bad, is only the effect of some cause we have started at some other time, perhaps in some other lifetime. If we accept the experience without judgment, that particular cycle of cause and effect will be finished in this life, but if we react, we will be starting another cycle, the effect of which will have to be experienced by us at some other time in this life or some other life.

Of course, we will recognize negativity when we see it, but we should not judge it. Judging is not our business. When we judge, we create negative Karma. Judgment is an action of the personality, never of our true Self. Nature does not judge. God is an impersonal witness of the actions of human beings and will not interfere unless called upon to do so. To blame him for our negative experiences is a waste of time.

When we see a beggar, we can be certain that he is experiencing the effect of a cause he has instigated in a previous life. Probably he refused charity to someone who was desperately in need of it, and now a compassionate Creator is giving him a chance to be on the receiving end and thus balance his debts. Of course, this does not mean that you should not help him. Your duty, if you have the money and the means, is to help him to your fullest capacity. However, it is not your duty to judge his worth or otherwise. If you refuse to help him, you will be starting another cycle of cause and effect, which you will have to experience. Instead of trying to balance the pros and cons yourself, all you have to do is to help the beggar if you have the means to do it without questioning his worth or his past Karma. That is not your problem. Your problem is to make sure that you do not intake more negative Karma by refusing to help a person who appears to be in need. Whether or not he actually deserves to be helped is not your problem.

Naturally, we are bound to see a selfish person as a selfish person and a murderer as a murderer, but we are not the ones to judge them. We cannot see the karmic debt that is being paid off by selfishness and murder. This does not mean that we should not act in a way that is appropriate to the situation. We can and must call the murderer to task and hand him over to the police, but that is all that we are called upon to do. The moment we start judging him from the human point of view, we become involved in the process of cause and effect. In every situation, you can either look at it from the angle of your higher Self or your personality, your lower human self.

Non-judgmental justice allows us a great deal of freedom. Most of us go through life taking on the task of judging others and thus creating a lot of negative Karma for ourselves. The knowledge of the Law of Karma allows us to go our own way without judging but nevertheless doing what we are called upon to do. We can be rest assured that nothing escapes this law, which is all-pervasive, so everyone will get his or her just deserts without our interference.

No one can go against the Law of Karma which is a natural law. But we must remember that it is a very just law. When our actions and intentions are good, most definitely we will be rewarded for them just as we will be punished for our evil thoughts and actions.

Is there any way that we can avoid this law? Yes there is a way. This is by acting according to the universal law of justice. Hinduism tells us that we should always act according to Dharma – the universal law of righteous action. Hence, the real name of Hinduism is “Sanatana Dharma,” or the eternal law of righteousness.

Hari Aum Tat Sat!

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