Karma is the new swastika-1

Karma is the new swastika-1

The West always decides what words should mean in the global arena.

Say the word swastika in a global workplace, and you are likely to be branded Nazi. Few, if any, will equate it to su-asti, let good things happen, a very common Sanskrit phrase used in Hindu rituals. In fact, in Bali, Indonesia, the standard greeting of local Hindus is Om Suwasti-astu. The West always decides what words should mean in the global arena. So swastika is what Hitler decided it was. So Avatar is what James Cameroon decided it was. And karma is what Western journalists will decide what it should be, after their outrage over Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s comment on trusting karma in the matter of parity of women’s pay.

Words like karma discomforts the West. It equates karma with destiny and accuses Indians of being fatalistic and complacent because of faith in karma. Such views are based not on a wrong understanding but on an incomplete understanding of karma. A deeper understanding of karma will reveal, it is also the force that makes us extremely proactive and responsible.

The word karma occurs in the Rig Samhita, the earliest collection of Vedic verses. But there it means activity, specifically ritual activity. It is not related to consequence of the action. In other words, it means action, but not reaction. Karma means sowing the seed, in the Vedas. In the later texts, the Upanishads, it also means the production of the subsequent fruit. This later meaning is perhaps embedded in the early use of the word also because the karma that is being spoken of is the ritual act of conducting yagna. Yagna involves svaha (input) that results in tathastu (output).

This shift of meaning in karma, from mere action, to action that causes reaction, is attributed to shramanas (thinkers) who refused to be mere brahmanas (ritual doers). They lived around 500 BCE, known as the Axis Age, the age that also saw the rise of Socratic thought in Greece, Confucian thought in China and Zoroastrian thought in Persia. The thinkers of India included Yagnavalkya who was married to two women, and Sakyamuni Buddha and Vardhamana Mahavira, both of whom gave up marriage and family to become monks. Yagnavalkya, despite his radical thoughts, did not break free from the brahmanical ritual fold hence was deemed astika, who believes in the value of the yagna. Buddha started the Buddhist monastic order while Mahavira was seen as a leader of the much older austere Jain order. Both of them were called nastikas, those who do not believe in the value of the yagna.

Traders (vaishyas) felt slighted by brahmanas who preferred to see kshatriyas (kings) as their primary patrons. So many in the mercantile community turned to shramanas who seemed more egalitarian. They perhaps contributed to the understanding of karma for much of karma theory resonates trading practices such as being in debt and receiving returns on investment. Every action came to be seen eventually an investment, with its outcome being seen as return on investment. Good investments meant good returns, bad investments meant bad returns.

But who knows what action is good and what action is bad? Yes, karma may be about reaping the fruit of the seed we sow but you may think you are sowing the seed of a sweet mango but it is quite possible that the fruit will turn out to be a sour tamarind or a fiery chilly. A king was once given a fruit that if consumed by his wife would enable her to bear him a child. the king had two wives and so he gave each one half the fruit. As a result, both queens gave birth to half a child. Thus the action (dividing the fruit to be fair to both wives) was good but the reaction (half a child per wife) was bad. Likewise a thief who climbed to the high branches of a tree to escape the police was blessed by a deity because flowers from the tree accidentally fell on the image of the deity located below on the ground under the tree. This made karma unpredictable, much like market investments.

Om Namah Shivay