Karma is the new swastika-2

Karma is the new swastika-2

People have long tried to classify actions as good karma and bad karma, but the fact is paap (bad actions) are usually called so in hindsight when the outcome is negative. Likewise punya (good actions) become so in hindsight when the outcome is positive. At the point of action, we do not know whether the results will favour us or not. We thus have only control on our actions, not on the reactions, or how the future will judge our actions. This point is amplified by Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita in response to Arjuna’s query on karma.

Karma presupposes rebirth. Our current situation in life is a reaction to actions in the past life. That is why some people are born poor, ugly and to horrible parents. The West points to this belief as the cause of India’s complacency, but by attributing current circumstances to fate, rather than to social injustice, there is no motivation to strive or fight. What is overlooked is that the word ‘fate’ comes from Fates, three Greek goddesses who spun the yarn of mortal life and who, on advise of Zeus, king of Olympian gods, determined how long the thread should be, and when it should be cut.

Those who genuinely believe in karma know that just as the past determines the present, the present determines the future. Thus to secure the future, one works really hard in the present. In other words, genuine belief in karma should make a person more proactive and responsible. If a person chooses to be lazy instead, it has nothing to do with the karma philosophy but it has everything to do with laziness.

In fact, the idea of karma yoga rose to counter monastic practices that were seen as promoting inaction. Philosophies were elaborated to cope with fear of karmic consequence and continue to perform duties as householders. These philosophies declared that inaction was also an action, an act of omission that would have consequences. He who fought could kill the killer. He who did not fight enabled the killer to strike another victim. Thus no monk could escape from karma. To liberate oneself from the web of karma, one had to develop the mental equilibrium to worldly circumstances, aware but unperturbed by good or bad circumstances and outcomes.

West rejects the idea of rebirth. Both the religious and rational West believes that a child is born with a clean karmic balance sheet. That when a person dies the balance sheet ceases to exist. There is no carry forward. Not so in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, where there is outstanding balance at the time of birth and an outstanding balance at the time of death. The former comes from the previous life and the latter leads to the next life. Thus karma determines the current circumstances of our life. How we choose to react to past karma is our choice. We may choose to accept it or change it. Our choices may be deemed good by some and bad by others, right by some, wrong by others, but these ethical and moral qualifications that have no impact on the consequences of our action, and the impact on our future circumstances. Whatever has to happen, will happen, our desires notwithstanding.

+The West with its obsession with clarity, certainty and predictability finds such Indian explanations of karma concept exasperating. Thus it rejects all Indian definitions, and prefers simplistic Western ones. We have to learn to allow it.

Om Namah Shivay