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The post Are our problems due to past Karma or present Karma? – Chaitanya Charan appeared first on The Spiritual Scientist.
Chaitanya Charan · Are Our Svabhava And Prarabdha – Karma Two Results Of Our Past Karma
Video:
Transcription :
Transcribed by: Sudeep Naik
Question: Are we meant to face our destiny or to fulfill our destiny?
Answer: It is both.
Here we are referring to destiny in two different senses: (i) philosophical (ii) conversational.
Philosophically speaking destiny refers to the sum of our past karma whose reactions have not yet come upon us but are going to come. Sometimes, we may do good but get some bad reactions because it is the reaction for some other action from the past. Such destiny we need to face.
However, destiny also refers to something which we are meant to achieve. This sense of destiny is more referred in a conversational sense and not in a philosophical sense. For example, somebody has great talent for musical since early childhood and the person grows and becomes a musical maestro, then it is said that they have fulfilled their destiny. By our destiny we have been given certain talents and using those talents to achieve something worthwhile is in one sense fulfilling our destiny. That is something we all are meant to do.
Some of us may feel we do not have any special talent so what destiny can I fulfill. Our material talents can lead to the fulfilment of some destiny at a material level in terms of getting some fame or making some contribution in this material world. However, we all have spiritual destiny which every one of us can fulfill irrespective of differences in our material talent. We are at our core souls and the soul has potential for an eternal life and eternal love. The soul is a part of the whole God. If the soul learns to love the whole purely through the evolution of its consciousness, then it can attain eternal life and eternal love by graduating from this temporary material world to the eternal spiritual world. That is the spiritual destiny which we all are meant to fulfill. Through multiple lifetimes and multiple species, we are evolving towards that ultimate destination. By practicing the process of bhakti yoga diligently and directing our love towards the Lord through such practices, everyone irrespective of their material destiny, can fulfill our spiritual destiny of attaining eternal life and love.
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khalvāṭo divaseśvarasya kiraṇaiḥ santāpite mastake
vāñchan deśam anātapaṁ vidhi-vaśāt tālasya mūlaṁ gataḥ
tatrāpy asya mahāphalena patatā bhagnaṁ sa-śabdaṁ śiraḥ
prāyo gacchati yatra bhāgya-rahitas tatraiva yānty āpadaḥ
khalvāṭaḥ — a bald man; divaseśvarasya — of the sun; kiraṇaiḥ — by the rays; santāpite — on experiencing burning; mastake — of the head; vāñchan — desiring; deśam — some place; anātapam — free from heat; vidhi-vaśāt — out of his fate; tālasya — of a palm-tree; mūlam — under; gataḥ — went; tatrāpi — there too; asya — his; mahāphalena — by a big coconut; patatā — by falling; bhagnam — cracked open; sa-śabdam — with a great sound; śiraḥ — head; prāyaḥ — usually; gacchati — goes; yatra — wherever; bhāgya-rahitaḥ — an unfortunate person; tatraiva — there too; yānti — arrive; āpadaḥ — his destined suffering;
“A bald man’s head was burning by the strong rays of the sun. He decided to find some relief from the heat, and by the arrangements of providence he found shelter under a palm-tree. Even after finding relief with such great difficulty, a coconut fell on him, breaking open his head with a loud cracking noise. Truly, wherever an ill-fated person goes, his misfortunes follow him.”
— (Nīti-śataka of Bhartṛhari, Verse 90) We sometimes go through phases of bad fortune when things keep going wrong, one after another. Whatever we do to set things right only makes them worse. Gita wisdom helps us understand that such phases deliver us concentrated doses of reactions to our past karma. To navigate such phases, or even to just survive them, we need patience and tolerance. Kneejerk reactions can cause aggravation, even devastation.
Does this mean that we fatalistically do nothing to solve problems? No, the Vedic tradition wasn’t fatalistic. For example, it didn’t ask the sick to just live with their pain; it treated them with a sophisticated branch of medical knowledge, Ayurveda.
Still, spiritual traditions the world over have been realistic enough to recognize that sometimes, despite our best efforts, nothing works. Such times call for not frantic action, but philosophical contemplation. To become contemplative, we need the capacity to tolerate distress – intolerance keeps us agitated, rushing from one apparent solution to another.
Unfortunately, our capacity to tolerate distress is eroded by modern thought. Most contemporary thought-systems operate on the foundational ideology of self-determination, which holds that we alone are the makers of our destiny. By our intelligence and efforts, we can stave off everything undesirable and attain everything desirable. Or so we are taught to believe. The notion that we are the controllers of our life is so central to our worldview that we define our success and even our self-worth in terms of our capacity to mold our circumstances to our will. Given such self-conceptions, uncontrollable situations don’t just frustrate us – they shatter us. No wonder mental health problems have risen with the spread of modernity.
If we wish to respond to difficulties intelligently, not impulsively, we need to challenge our debilitating beliefs about controllership. Gita wisdom offers a better understanding of our [...]
From: Pancha Pandava Pr
Transcription By: Jyoti Shirsangi Mataji
Edited By: Shyam Venkateswaran P
Question: In explaining how our free will can take us to a better situation even in the presence of destiny, you give the example of a marble moving through a grid of nails. Can you explain this example and also clarify what the example is meant to convey?
Answer: The example is that if there is a grid of nails with nails kept at an equal distance horizontally and vertically so that there is a small space between them, and a marble can barely pass through it. Then when a marble comes, it falls from above, and these grids are kept in such a way that they are not exactly in the straight line. They are all diagonally placed so that no marble can just pass straight down through the gap between all the nails. It may pass through one gap, but it will come across a nail, and like that. So, the point in this example is that the grid is fixed. So similarly, to a large extent, the situations that we are going to face in our life are in many ways fixed. So, we are like the marble that is passing through that grid. Now, when the marble passes through that grid, the marble is basically an unconscious thing. So depending on the force and the angle at which it falls, if it falls on the left side of a nail, then it will just go towards the lower direction from its left side; if it falls on the right side of that nail, it will go on the right side. And like that, the marble’s downward trajectory will be purely determined by the mechanics of the situation because the marble doesn’t have consciousness. But we as souls have consciousness. So although what we meet along the journey, the trajectory of our life may be fixed, how we respond to it doesn’t have to be fixed. For the marble, that will be fixed by the laws of mechanics, but for us it doesn’t have to be fixed. So, if we visualize a marble which could somehow be made to always fall on the right, whenever it meets a nail, instead of going to whichever side of the nail it is falling on, if it always goes towards the right, then, the first fall, it moves towards the right, second fall it moves towards the right, third fall it moves towards the right, and then if it falls round a grid of 100 nails like this, then by the time it reaches the bottom of the nail grid, then it will have fallen at a very different location from what it would have fallen if it had just been randomly falling through the grid. So, the grid remains fixed, and the fact that the marble was falling through the grid remains fixed, but by small micro changes in the way the marble moved at each interaction, at each [...]
From Kiran P
According to my karma, I get results of activities. Suppose I am in crucial service, my karma does not allow me to get good results. So does service gets affected because of my karma?
Trancription By: Swati Jain Mataji
Question: According to my karma, I get results of activities. Suppose I am in crucial service, my karma does not allow me to get good results. So does service gets affected because of my karma?
Answer: How the law of Karma will act in and of itself is difficult to understand. Because there are so many complex and subtle parameters involved that only the super soul can know the best. When the law of Karma interacts with devotional service then what will happen is even more difficult to predict. Because bhakti herself is interdependent and is guided by Krishna’s grace in ultimately sense.
Hence, the only guiding criterion is that Krishna will do which is best for everyone involved. Suppose I have to give a class, it’s a big programme and many people are coming. Also no other speaker is available. And I develop a throat infection. The program has to be cancelled because of it, what does it mean? As far as we are concerned, we try to see every situation in a way that helps us advance in devotional service. If I am as a speaker I should think that actually my body is meant to be used for Krishna’s service and I have to do everything possible to take care of it. I have to check that if I have done anything carelessly that have spoilt my throat.
So at that level I can learn the lesson. At another level I can learn the lesson, if I considered myself as a great speaker and I deliver great lessons while giving classes then that situation is like spiritually egoistic fantasy. Then I see this situation as an opportunity to realize how powerless I am. I think I am the speaker, but I can’t even move my throat and speak if Krishna doesn’t give me the ability to. So ultimately I have a body which is not independent and it is not under my full control. It is not independent of Krishna. I am dependent on Krishna.
Now should I blame Krishna for having spoiled the preaching program? Obviously not! It is probably my own misdeed or because I have become too proud thinking that I am the karta (the doer) and Krishna wanted to purify me of that feeling. So that is Krishna’s arrangement to teach me as far as my level of learning is concerned. Same principal applies to the services also.
As far as other people and their inconveniences are concerned, say people who have organized the program, those who are attending the program, at that time how do I see it? We understand and see that the devotee who have organized have to work so hard to arrange for this program. Now we have to show Krishna our strong desire for [...]