LAW OF KARMA
By Sri.L.Sampath Kumar
Courtesy The Hindu
The law of Karma enjoins the immortal Atma to take a suitable birth according to its Karmic deserts and countless Jivatmas are thus born into the cycle of Samsara. It is very difficult for the soul to rid itself of the Karma that has accumulated through endless births.
binding effects of Karma that easily make the soul identify itself with whatever body it takes as its dwelling place. An oft quoted story illustrates the fact that even great Yogis who can divine the past, present and future have succumbed to its compelling force.
It is said that a knowledgeable preceptor once foresaw his imminent death and also his next birth as a pig; as a yogi he detested the idea of being born as a pig and told his disciples to kill the pig in whose body he would be born at a particular place and a particular time. The idea was to get out of the birth as a pig as quickly as possible. But when the Atma was born in the body of a pig, it got attached to it forgetting its earlier aspirations and managed to escape death at the hands of the disciples.
A sincere seeker of salvation has to find the means to get out of Samsara by severing the bond of Karma, and the solution is to be found in the Sastras. But again one has to have faith in the teachings of the Sastras if one has to really understand its import.
The Bhagavad Gita has the Lord as the preceptor and Arjuna, the despondent warrior, is symbolic of the seeker of salvation. The Lord’s teachings are extolled as the very essence of the Upanishads and Lord Krishna’s direct exposition of the esoteric Vedic truths carries a special quality of practicality to such sincere seekers.
The very first advice is to recognise the dichotomy between the body and the soul, and realise the worldly objects are only temporary. With this conviction the Jivatma can seek to nurture the soul rather than the body and slowly make spiritual progress. The real fight is not the manifested one in the battlefield but the one that is enacted within each Jivatma when it has to reject the claims of the physical body and the material world and strive to realise its divine and immortal nature.
What is karma?Cause and effect.
The law of Karma enjoins the immortal Atma to take a suitable birth according to its Karmic deserts and countless Jivatmas are thus born into the cycle of Samsara. It is very difficult for the soul to rid itself of the Karma that has accumulated through endless births.
binding effects of Karma that easily make the soul identify itself with whatever body it takes as its dwelling place. An oft quoted story illustrates the fact that even great Yogis who can divine the past, present and future have succumbed to its compelling force.
It is said that a knowledgeable preceptor once foresaw his imminent death and also his next birth as a pig; as a yogi he detested the idea of being born as a pig and told his disciples to kill the pig in whose body he would be born at a particular place and a particular time. The idea was to get out of the birth as a pig as quickly as possible. But when the Atma was born in the body of a pig, it got attached to it forgetting its earlier aspirations and managed to escape death at the hands of the disciples.
A sincere seeker of salvation has to find the means to get out of Samsara by severing the bond of Karma, and the solution is to be found in the Sastras. But again one has to have faith in the teachings of the Sastras if one has to really understand its import.
The Bhagavad Gita has the Lord as the preceptor and Arjuna, the despondent warrior, is symbolic of the seeker of salvation. The Lord’s teachings are extolled as the very essence of the Upanishads and Lord Krishna’s direct exposition of the esoteric Vedic truths carries a special quality of practicality to such sincere seekers.
The very first advice is to recognise the dichotomy between the body and the soul, and realise the worldly objects are only temporary. With this conviction the Jivatma can seek to nurture the soul rather than the body and slowly make spiritual progress. The real fight is not the manifested one in the battlefield but the one that is enacted within each Jivatma when it has to reject the claims of the physical body and the material world and strive to realise its divine and immortal nature.
What is karma?Cause and effect.
Whatsoever a man soweth, that he shall also reap. For each action there is an equal and opposite reaction. There are a lot ways to describe karma, but it is essentially the belief that your present circumstances are the product of previous actions, and what you do today will affect what happens tomorrow. Karma is also associated with past lives -- each time you're reborn, the energies from your previous lives influence the conditions of your current life.
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