Law of Karma
28 May
Karma and Destiny
By Mumu Thuja
Does karma effect the road to your destiny?
Continued from Material World – Part II
‘Cause’ and ‘effect’ make the Law of Karma, that is, for every action there is a cause, and this cause produces an effect. Obviously, good karma happens when one does something good and bad karma happens when one does something bad.
So, ‘karma’ is basically ‘the doings in a life’, or ‘the way we work in our life’, or ‘the way we act and behave in our life’.
All of us, every individual has the hand of creating her/his own karma and experiencing the result (effect) in future (later in life, or in the next life). For example, suppose I beat up a person badly without any reason. Later in my life, I will surely get the action back… it can be in the form of beating or any other form… but something bad.
We enjoy as well as suffer due to our past activities, but to get a cynical pleasure, we put the blame on some else. For example, suppose Mr. A in my office asks me to swindle the office cash and then, shares some of it with me. Now, I could have easily refused. But then, I did not or I did not try hard to refuse because somewhere in my mind, I also wanted to do it. So, the bad karma of my past life made me steal and landed me in jail. Mr. A somehow escaped the punishment. That means, in my previous life, I had falsely made someone suffer badly… either I had got him jailed or got him severely punished, and in this life, I face it.
The Chandogya Upanishad (5.10.7) states that those with very good karma attain good birth in the higher strata of the society and those with bad or evil karma attain equally but quick bad birth in the lowest strata of the society.
Of course, we have forgotten our previous birth, but one can at a glance make out what we were if we are now rich, beautiful, healthy, etc. or sickly, ugly, poor, ignorant, etc. We keep shuttling from upper to lower and lower to upper because of our karma. Let me explain it in numerical fashion – suppose this birth of mine is no. 4 and I am born in an aristocratic family. This means that in my birth no. 3, I had done something really good and this birth (no. 4) is the result of my good karma. Now, while leading this no. 4 life, I may indulge myself in sinful actions, thereby end up with bad karma. Then, in my next birth, birth no. 5, I will take birth in a very lowly family and lead a very dreadful life.
But as these are temporary situations, we should not get attached to it. For example, I may have taken birth in an aristocratic family but I may get married to a man or a woman of lower or non-aristocratic family.
This shows that karma is always a mixture of good and bad. No individual can keep on doing only good karma throughout life and no individual can keep on doing only bad karma throughout life.
This means that you may be born good because of good karma but later your life can be miserable because of your bad karma.
It is well said in Srimad Bhagavatam (7.2.21), “My dear mother, in a place for drinking cold water, many travelers are brought together, and after drinking water they resume their journey towards their destination. Similarly, living entities join together in a family, and later, as a result of their own actions, they are led apart to their destinations.”
Srimad Bhagavatam (11.17.53) further says, “The association of children, wife, husband, relatives and friends is just like a brief meeting of travelers. With each change of body, one is separated from all such associates, just as one loses the objects one possesses in a dream when the dream is over.”
How about meeting the people with whom we were associated in our previous birth? Of course, we meet them, or have met them, or will meet them in this birth but we will not know them or recognize them for the fact that they are in different bodies and that we will not remember their faces in this birth.
Also, we will meet such people only if there is a vital reason behind it – paying back some karmic debt or maintaining a karmic connection.
Yes, sometimes we can remember people, places, and activities of our past life……
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