Man's Fate and God's Choice by Bhimeswara Challa (ereader for textbooks TXT) 📖

personal will of the individual are the workings of prarabdha. But experiences which result from deliberate and conscious acts that have a pre-meditated background, show that it is a kriyamana karma (instant karma), though it may be sanctioned by the law of the prarabdha karma itself. An experience caused by mere prarabdha does not cause another fresh result but is exhausted thereby; but a kriyamana karma tends to produce a fresh experience in the future as it is

 

attended by the sense of doership.282 Yet another view is that man by his own effort, doing punya (virtuous deeds) and prayaschita (penance), can at least mitigate prarabdha. An ancillary view is that only divine mercy can affect the effects of prarabdha. The third view is that it is human actions that caused karma and hence human effort is essential and only then would God help. Ramana Maharshi attempts to harmonize all three views: “A man might have performed much karma in the past births. A few of these will be chosen for this birth and he will have to enjoy their fruits in this birth. It is something like a slide show where the projectionist picks a few slides to be exhibited at a performance, the remaining slides being reserved for another performance… The different karmas are slides, karmas being the result of past experiences, and the mind is the projector. The projector must be destroyed so that

there will be no further reflection and no further slides and no deaths.”283 On the question of the projectionist he said, “Individuals have to suffer their karmas but Iswara [God] manages to make the best of their karmas for his purpose. God manipulates the fruits of karmas but he does not add or take away from it. The subconscious of man is a warehouse of good and bad karma. Iswara chooses from this warehouse what he sees will best suit the spiritual evolution

at the time of each man, whether pleasant or painful. Thus, there is nothing arbitrary.”284 Differentiating karma and karta (God), he said, “…Karta means Iswara. He is the one who distributes the fruits of actions to each person according to his karma. That means that he is the manifest Brahman. The real Brahman is unmanifest and without motion. It is only the manifest Brahman that is named as Iswara. He gives the fruit to each person according to his actions (karma)”. Another modern-day sage Swami Mukhtananda says, “Kabir (the great poet-saint) says in this connection that on the sixth day after the birth of a child, when a special rite is performed, God himself comes down and decides the destiny of the child, and

that cannot be altered.”285 It means that God, at that time, transforms part of the sanchita into

prarabdha. But the unanswered question is: on what basis and criteria?

Although it is popularly assumed that ‘good deeds’ yield good rewards and future ‘good births’, and that bad deeds yield ‘bad births’, the question arises as to how to reconcile it with the theory of non-dualism. How can one perform ‘good’ deeds or ‘bad’ deeds if there is no ‘I’? The Advaitic philosopher Ramesh Balsekar explains: Good deeds happen through particular body-mind mechanisms and bad deeds happen through certain body-mind organisms. Both good deeds and bad deeds together form the functioning of Totality at that moment. It is only the human being who says, “good deeds, bad deeds”. All are deeds performed, in this life and living by Consciousness, through body-mind organisms according

to their natural characteristics.286 To acquire ‘good’ karma and to expend ‘bad’ karma, one must live in tune with dharma. Dharma is like a cosmic norm and if one goes against the norm, it can result in bad karma. The Hindu shastras say that it is dharma that holds the

 

 

 

282 Sri Swami Sivananda. Prarabdha And Purushartha. September 1997. Accessed at: http://www.dlshq.org/discourse/sep97.htm

283 Cited in: David Godman. Hinduism Articles: Karma and Destiny. The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi. Accessed at: http://www.indiaoz.com.au/hinduism/articles/karma_destiny_maharshi.shtml

284 Cited in: David Godman. Hinduism Articles: Karma and Destiny. The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi. Accessed at: http://www.indiaoz.com.au/hinduism/articles/karma_destiny_maharshi.shtml

285 Cited in: Swami Muktananda. Readings in the Theory of Karma: Prarabdha Karma. Accessed at: http://baharna.com/karma/1_Readings.htm

286 Cited in: Ramesh S. Balsekar. Consciousness Speaks. VedicBooks.net. Accessed at: http://www.vedicbooks.net/consciousness-speaks-p-2649.html

 

universe in balance and maintains the cosmic order. All acts must be judged on their effect, however minute or miniscule, from this paramount principle. There is no neutral act; every one impacts positively or negatively. At the same time, the dharmic effect of any act is also circumscribed by the social context of the perpetrator, by the vruthi, the duties assigned to the individual as an integral part of the social fabric. It is also said that one should ultimately even be detached from dharma and not cling too tightly to it. When the cosmic ‘order’ and ‘balance’ are seriously threatened through the ascendancy of evil, God incarnates on earth.

Dharma is the only friend that accompanies man beyond death. Dharma is the stable basis of every aspect of individual and collective life. A man’s physical, intellectual, aesthetic, as well as spiritual well-being rests on the observance of dharma. Moral conduct sustains man’s inner nature. Vedanta firmly emphasizes that the one secret to sound mental health is adherence to moral principles. The great rishis of ancient India like Adi Shankara and Vyasa have said that through dharma one can attain worldly wealth as well as final beatitude or moksha. Dharma affects the future according to the karma accumulated. Therefore, one’s dharmic path in the next life is determined by their past karma. It is the collision of karmas that make a family, a community, what we call a country, and ultimately a particular generation of a particular species. In that sense, the package or baggage an individual carries contains not only a bit of his own sanchita but also a bit of the collective sanchita, of a group of souls somehow linked together over past lives. That is the ‘missing link’ in mass deaths, in war, or a flood, or an earthquake or an accident. The doctrine of dharma too applies to all these categories. In short, we have all created the causes that compel us to experience horrific results in some of our finite lives, ‘putting’ ourselves in a collective situation to experience the cumulative results and share the bitter fruits. There are many reasons beyond our knowing that could cause a particular group of people to come together at the ‘right’ time to experience horrendous events. We must find a way to cleanse our collective karma to be able to ascend to a higher plateau of consciousness. Cleansing and ascension require inner focus, not external searching. Practice of virtue and righteous conduct are also cleansers. In Buddhism, there are three types of virtue: first there is the virtue that is not embraced by either means or discernment, and this is called merely meritorious virtue. Then there is the virtue that is embraced by the discernment, that is realization of selflessness, and this is called virtue that is merely conducive to liberation. Finally, there is virtue that is embraced by both

means and discernment, and this is called the virtue of the Mahayana.287 The third is considered the highest. ‘Means’ refers to compassion for all sentient beings, and ‘discernment’ to focus on full awakening. In the Indian epic Mahabharata, it is said that righteousness and its reverse arise from one’s acts producing happiness or misery to others, and they both affect one’s future life with respect to the happiness and misery enjoyed or endured therein.

The doctrine of dharma is also very subtle and complex, and there are so many dharmas, some situational and person-specific, and some universal and eternal, which makes it difficult to harmonize them. The axiom that dharma protects those that protect it is variously interpreted. And it is often used to justify adharmic actions. And that it is okay, for example, to slay an evil person through evil ways. And the two examples often cited in the Hindu epics are the killing of Vali while he was fighting his brother Sugriva, and the killing of the unarmed Karna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra by Arjuna, at the urging of his charioteer Lord Krishna himself who incarnated on earth to restore dharma. It means that

 

 

 

287 Cited in: Bardor Tulku Rinpoche. Why We should Give up Anger. 2005. Densal, Issue 1703. June 2005. Karma Triyana Dharmachakra. Accessed at: http://www.kagyu.org/ktd/densal/archives/1703/anger.php

 

both dharma and adharma, right and wrong, are contextual and contingent upon the greater good or lesser evil. The message is that one cannot protect adharma or evil through dharma or personal piety, and if anyone, however noble they might be and are actually practicing their own swadharma, they must be punished or sacrificed at the altar of the greater dharma or collective good. In a way, it means that the end justifies the means but it does not mean the converse. How to balance and blend the two is a daily conundrum. Almost all choices we make raise such questions. And we do not have the kind of ‘intelligence’ that is needed. It is not only a question of the nature of karmic action, or of ends and means, but also of the perpetrator. For example, it is dharmic for the State to kill even if it violates the law; an individual cannot. What a soldier or policeman can do in the call of duty, the same person cannot in a different setting. Some actions are dharmic or mandatory in marriage and are prohibited outside or even deemed a sin. Whether an act is dharmic or adharmic is also a matter of culture and context. Ravana even justified his abduction of Sita as dharmic according to the dharma of the rakshasas, the demons. Rama triumphed because his swadharma was more dharmic than Ravana’s swadharma, which was based on coercion, force, and cruelty. As an aside, it is worth remembering that the wives of both Rama and Ravana are two of the five greatest Pativratas in the Hindu pantheon of chaste wives, and both were adherents of pativrata dharma, which demands total devotion to the husband and to regard him as God-incarnate. It is so powerful that even gods are powerless before this dharma. It is a clash of wills of two persons observant of the same dharma: Mandodari, the wife of Ravana, could not save her husband, while Sita — not really Rama — triumphed, not because she was superior but because the pativrata power of Mandodari was powerless in the face of Ravana’s adharma. The only rule of thumb so to speak, in every dharmic dilemma is to look at it from the other person’s perspective.

The Buddha taught that one should live in a dharmic way that would produce no more karma while enduring whatever karmic reactions destiny brings. This, he said, would free one from further rebirth. The Buddha also said that understanding dharma is as difficult as catching a snake; if you do not do it properly it can kill you. Our intellect can be blurred and clouded by the power exerted upon it by the senses. Our senses are very potent, and their power is such that what they desire can produce an impact on the mind and the intellect to such an extent that the mind can think and the intellect can understand things only in terms of the senses. The Upanishads warn us against this fall, and offer the path of dharma to prevent the fall. There are many dharmas, specific to a person or time or a circumstance, but the one that is given particular importance is swadharma, which means the mode of life and duty that is natural to us and consistent with our social