Choosing Our Karmic Paths
What is Destiny?
Karma is not destiny. (Inside the Law of Karma, part-1). Destiny will come to you so subtly that you won’t even know. For example, your time and location of birth, parents, siblings, lifespan. These can be called your destiny, which actually is prarabdha karma. (a few fructified results of your past karma from the karmashaya, the storehouse of your accumulated (sanchita) karma.
Destiny, for example, is being at the right place at the right time, (fruits of positive karma of the past or present). After being at the right place at the right time, how you engage further with that experience is your choice, your free will (which then, goes on to decide your agami or future karma).
Universal forces will be ‘behind the scenes’ to make you arrive, ever-so-subtly, at your destiny-point (the turning points in your life). How you choose to engage further on, is up to you.
If all things were pre-destined, then life wouldn’t have held any meaning. The Law of Karma and the Law of Free Will would have been redundant. Karma is action; you are free to take action to change what gives you misery. For example, refusing to live in dire financial conditions or re-framing a non-serving relationship. Karma gives opportunity to re-shape experiences, the pending life-lessons. Destiny’s job is to bring you to that point.
Karma’s Root Cause: Attachment
Your karmic interactions are with many people in your lifetime. This is with the aim of teaching primary and secondary life-lessons; therefore, each interaction has a purpose, a meaning.
A karmic role-play typically involves giver of a difficult experience (‘offender’) and receiver of the difficult experience(‘victim’). The learning is for both the parties. In absence of ‘giver’, a ‘receiver’ will not rise up to the game of learning. And in the absence of a ‘receiver’, the former will not have the opportunity to test his/her karmic upgrade.
Let’s say, if I grew up with a stern and controlling father, who trivialized and undervalued my slow efforts, then the lesson for me while growing up would be to work on my confidence and self- worth, as it would be for my father to learn (his opportunity) to be patient, respectful and compassionate.
However, it is quite possible that my father could ‘overplay’ his (offender’s) role, being harsher and crueler than required, in which case, he will create new karma for himself in addition to his pending lessons. On my part, if I don’t learn my lessons in confidence and worth, I will also have to keep coming back till I learn them. We will continue to have karmic bondage, and played out roughly, till we learn forgiveness and our lessons.
Attaining Karmic Balance
There are many layers to our intricate life on earth and no surmises are absolute. Our job is to focus on the present life and live it with moral values.
Is it possible not to build karma in the first place?
Yes, through cultivation of virtues and abiding
in them. If you notice closely, our karmic lessons are all about putting
us towards the virtuous path! Life dramas are created for this purpose.
Karma builds up due to kleshas/ afflictions of avidya, asmita, raag, dwesha, and abhinivesa as per Patanjali’s yoga sutra (absence of correct knowledge, ego, attachment, aversion and fear). These five ultimately coalesce into one klesha: attachment. Actions borne out of attachment (attachment to pain, pleasure, fear, power, wrong-doing and other vices), leads to karmic build-up.
Karma is not punitive but justice of balance. The virtue of forgiveness (Law of Forgiveness) helps to activate good karma and enables closure of karmic chapters fast. And in working with the Law of Grace, the process of forgiveness comes effortlessly.
-ends
