Imagine this scenario. All your life you have never harmed a soul, never crossed words with anybody or never done a deed to harm others; why is that your life is full of misery? You are not able to achieve what you truly desire? Why is that you are childless or unable to get married or are not happy with your partner? What have you done to get such a treatment from life?
This is Karma.
Karma is a concept in Hinduism which explains a system where beneficial effects are derived from past beneficial actions and harmful effects from past harmful actions, creating a system of actions and reactions throughout a soul’s reincarnated lives forming a cycle of rebirth. The causality is said to be applicable not only to the material world but also to our thoughts, words, actions and actions that other do under our instructions. When the cycle of rebirth comes to an end, a person is said to have attained moksha or salvation from the world.
Karma is not fate, for man acts out of his free will creating his own destiny. According to the Vedas, whatever we sow, we will reap it later. If we sow goodness, we will reap goodness; if we sow evil, we will reap evil. Karma refers to the totality of our actions and their resultant reactions in this and previous lives, all of which determine our future. The conquest of karma lies in intelligent action and dispassionate reaction. Not all karmas rebound immediately. Some accumulate and return unexpectedly in this or other births. We produce Karma in four ways:[12]
- through thoughts
- through words
- through actions that we perform ourselves
- through actions others do under our instructions
Everything that we have ever thought, spoken, done or caused is Karma; as is also that which we think, speak or do this very moment. Actions performed consciously are weighted more heavily than those done unconsciously. Only human beings that can distinguish right from wrong can do Karma. Animals and young children are not creating new Karma (and thus can not affect their future destiny) as they are incapable of discriminating between right and wrong. But just as poison affects us if taken unknowingly, suffering caused unintentionally will also give appropriate karmic effect.
