WHAT IS KARMA? UNDERSTANDING THE LAW
Karma is among the most popular and the least understood of Eastern philosophical concepts! Today, even in the West, almost everyone thinks he has a pretty good idea of what karma is.
But what most of them think is, karma is a grand philosophy that needs to be expounded upon through hundreds of pages.
Actually, karma is nothing but the simple law of cause and effect.
Karma is a law of nature, like the force of gravity or electricity.
If you drop a brick on your foot, you are going to get hurt. But do you think of that as a punishment for dropping the brick? NO!
It's a cause and effect relationship; simple.
Karma works exactly this way. Karma is the natural result of certain actions performed by you at an earlier time. Like the Bible says, as you sow, so you reap.
The only difference is, karma is a kind of 'delayed effect'.
Karma also works across lifetimes; which means that, the cause may exist in one life, but the result may be experienced in the next or later lives. This naturally raises the question, Does reincarnation really happen? But we will discuss that another time, not now!
Being human, we naturally cannot remember the cause that has happened in a previous lifetime. Because of our own limited vision, we perceive only the result, and can't understand why this is happening. From primitive times, whenever something happens which is beyond our understanding, we attribute it to punishment by the Gods. Even today, in many civilizations, natural calamities like floods and earthquakes are seen as punishments imposed on us by angry Gods.
That's why a moral angle has been given to karma. It is society that is entirely responsible for explaining karma as a punishment for the 'sins' of a previous life.
In a way, this is also a kind of coping technique. It is easier to bear some misfortune in your life if you feel that your own evil act (in a previous lifetime) must be responsible for it.
The concept of sin and punishment itself is created only by society, partly for its own efficient functioning. If people are not afraid of punishment, society can degenerate into a state of lawlessness.
The truth is, we are not punished for our sins. We are punished by our sins! Every 'sin' brings its own punishment with it. It's a package deal!
Every time you get angry, just watch your body. Your pulse starts racing, your BP goes up, your body gets into a state of stress from which it can take hours to recover. Not only that, you usually end up feeling guilty about it afterwards. Nobody else needs to punish you for getting angry. Your anger itself is punishing you enough!
If you drink too much, you are going to suffer from liver cirrhosis. You are not being punished by some external force for drinking; you are being punished by your drinking habit itself; if you are intelligent enough to perceive it as your punishment.
To a doctor, of course, it is simply the natural result of alcoholism.
Karma operates in the same way. The reason that it is more difficult to understand is, karma doesn't work only on the physical plane, like a falling brick. Karma works on the mental, emotional, even the spiritual plane.
Suppose you are unable to fulfill a particular desire in one life, or suppose you are forced to leave some action incomplete, the unfulfilled desire or unfinished act creates a kind of emotional or mental vacuum in your life. That vacuum can act as a suction force and draw you to fulfill the same desire or repeat the same act in the next life.
So at the emotional and mental level, karma is the sum total of all your unfulfilled desires and incomplete actions - the baggage from a previous life.
And every life, you work out the karmas of a previous life, but keep on adding fresh desires or fresh unfulfilled actions to your current baggage which will become the karmas of your next life. That's why karma is an endless cycle.