Karma - our own personal conscience
Karma is a buzz word at the moment. When someone does something on us, we say that karma will get them, or the same goes for when we hear of someone doing something bad, we wish bad karma on them, and we are certain in the knowledge that they will be punished somewhere down the line. Karma will get them!
You may also have heard of the “law of karma” or “karmic retribution” and “what goes around comes around”, and from this we can rest easy that everyone gets their just deserts in this life for all the bad things they have done.
My first experience of hearing about karma was when an English footballer said in an interview on TV that people who have a disability are being punished for something they did in a past life. I was extremely upset at this, as my own son has a disability and I couldn’t work out how anyone would think that he was being punished. How could they know? What gave him the right to make this statement with such certainty? The answer to those questions are that he couldn’t know and he had no right. Also, this attitude does not explain why bad things happen to good people, or seemingly bad people have good things happen to them. Since then, I have read a lot and contemplated a lot about this topic, and that is why I have decided to study and write about it.
The word karma comes from the Indian and Buddhist traditions, and it means action, work or deed. The word also refers to the result of the action, so karma refers to both the action and the result of that action. Sometimes it is really obvious an action we have taken has brought about a result, but often it is very hard to tell, it is much more subtle.
There are 2 books that really help us to understand karma: The Bhagavad Gita and The Yoga Sutras. You don’t have to read them to understand karma, but if you are interested in finding out more, then these books are excellent sources for all things yogic. I have listed the versions that I like at the bottom, in case anyone wishes to buy them.
Karma is an integral part of both Buddhist and Indian philosophy, and that in itself can be intimidating to a lot of people, who maybe find it a bit daunting without a proper teacher to turn to, or also if you come from a particular religious background, you may have heard that eastern philosophy is dangerous and somewhat evil, so you might be a bit reluctant to open yourself up to it.
However, I just want to reassure anyone reading this, that eastern philosophy deals with the human condition: what we all experience on a daily basis in our minds and our life long struggles, rather than if there is a God or not. Not only that, it has extremely useful ways in which to reduce our problems in life, and can be studied by anyone, from any background.
Back to karma! Each country on this planet has it’s own set of laws that help us to work out what is right and what is wrong. Those laws will differ from country to country, and sometimes from region to region within a country. If you break the law, you get punished, and the severity depends on the type of crime you have committed. Often there is a disconnection between the law and our own morality, and we break the law anyway, even though we know that we could get punished. Also sometimes the law allows things that are really very immoral - don’t get me started on corporate crime and animal welfare laws. Often you can commit crime and not get caught as well, so you think it’s ok, you’ve got away with it. You might get away with it for life, or for a long period of time, then get caught, but maybe only get punished for the crime you got caught committing. There is no emphasis on personal responsibility, we are handing over this to the law makers and the powers that be.
Karma on the other hand, is universal. It applies to every single person alive, or who has been alive, or who will be alive. Our actions produce consequences and results, and also these actions and results will affect us, other people in our social circle, in our family, workplace, community and sometimes beyond that to have far reaching consequences in the greater community or globally. It is a network of connections and not tied to any deity or religion. There is no higher force dishing out our karma.
According to the Yoga Sutras, there are 3 types of karma, those connected with the past, those that we are currently forming and a further type that will happen in the future. Our past karma cannot be changed, and some of it is karma that we are born with, such as who are parents are, where we were born, our race, hair and eye colour. These things shape us into the person that we are today. Or we maybe did something in the past, perhaps we weren’t kind to our parents, or weren’t good to the people that we were involved with, and those relationships didn’t survive, so this is a good and easy example of action reaction that is in the past, and we can’t do anything to change that. We can feel regret or sadness, or indifference, or blame them for it, but ultimately nothing will change, that karma has come to fruition, and we have felt the results of it.
Our present karma can be described as seeds that we are sewing for the future. The seed analogy can be really helpful in understanding karma. It is possible to just throw seeds into the ground, any old type of soil, without having read the seed packet to find out what type of soil is needed, what position is best for that particular plant, are you hoping for flowers or fruit? There are lots of things to consider. If you have not had great results in the past with planting seeds, and are wondering why, then try reading the instructions! It is the same for our actions. If you have tried many times in the past in your relationships, or in work, or in any aspect of your life, and things have kept going wrong, then repeating the same actions over and over will only bring the same results time after time. Similarly if things have worked out for you and you have good results from past actions then keep doing them! So our present karma can potentially be different in the future when it comes to fruition, if we have learned from our past and make better choices now.
Our future karma depends on what we do in the future. Our future karma though are seeds that have not been planted and in fact we may choose not to. If we have learned enough from the past and present, then our choices in the future may come from a place of higher knowledge and understanding.
Karma therefore is an educative force rather than punitive. This is the key difference in popular culture and the deeper meaning. It is like going to college; if you study and put in the work, you will hopefully be able to leave college with good grades and go on to get a job or study more, or do whatever you want to do. However, if you decide you’d rather have fun at college and not study, more than likely you won’t be able to graduate. You may have to repeat certain subjects until you pass. Or you might pass by the skin of your teeth. In your next project, be it work or study or whatever you go on to do, if you take the same attitude, the results will be the same, and you might start to wonder why the same things keep happening to you. It is this wondering and self reflection that is vital in bringing about change in our lives. If we never question, if we never notice our patterns, then nothing will ever change. A seed can only ever grow into one particular type of plant. So we cannot hope for a different outcome if we keep doing things in the same way.
Our actions then are seeds that produce a result, for ourselves, and as I mentioned earlier on, for the people in our lives and for society as a whole. Our actions have ripples that spread outwards, and then come back towards us, and if we practice self study, we can learn from everything we do, take responsibility, and grow as an individual. It takes away the blame game. Nothing is anyone’s fault, and everything is a lesson to be learned. Imagine how different life would be if everyone took responsibility for their actions, if they spent time studying their own actions and learning from past mistakes? I think it would make a huge difference.
Think of karma as electricity in your home. You can plug an appliance into it and get sound, hot water, light or whatever the appliance is for, or you can stick a fork into the socket and get a shock. The issue is not the electricity, it is how you use it and also your knowledge or lack of knowledge of what electricity is. Hopefully once you get that shock, you will learn from it, but as many of us know, often we have to repeat a mistake a few times to truly get the message. Understanding ourselves takes a great deal of maturity, but maturity doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with age! Sometimes young people can grasp what an older person has not been able to see their whole lives. Often it is a difficult period in our lives that brings about the biggest shift in consciousness and makes us question everything.
I have intended this to be an introduction to the topic of karma. It is not the full picture, rather just the tip of the iceberg, and I intend to write a bit more about it again in the near future. I hope that I have at least changed your perception of it in some way, and that you can begin to examine how past choices have brought about results that you can learn from. You may be able to see patterns in other people but really the biggest lessons you can hope to learn are from your own life story. Self-study, introspection or Svadhyaya, is a very important part of yoga, and is the beginning of your path to liberation from old unhelpful patterns. Karma affects us all, not just if you are into yoga.
If you would like to read more, I’d recommend 2 books, The Four Chapters on Freedom
And The Bhagavad Gita translated by Eknath Easwaran
Thank you so much for reading this, and I look forward to sharing some more on yoga philosophy again.
Namaste