Law of Karma

Its 10 am on a Sunday morning and a baby is born at a posh locality of South Delhi. The parents are overwhelmed with happiness and cant stop rejoicing as the baby is born after 10 years of their marriage. They are rich and thus pledge that they will provide all comforts of the world to their only child.

At exactly the same time, somewhere in rural Bihar another baby is born. Shes the fifth sibling in the family. Parents are worried as they dont know how they will feed another mouth when the family is already so poor.

If we look at these two examples, we can imagine about the kind of lives these two children should have been living. A lot of people will ascribe this as the result of the souls karma. But the question arises What is karma and how does it work. According to Hindu upanishads, Karma means the deed or act which can be broadly defined into more accepted universal terms of cause and effect. Some parts of it are controlled, like birth, environment etc. but majority are of our own making.

Here the karmas of their last birth led these children into two totally different lives.

We are therefore born with a unique genetic makeup. Our memories and perceptions govern our outlook in any situation we face. Our actions reinforce our memories in a feedback loop-type mechanism and whenever a particular situation arises, we react accordingly. Through understanding of this law, we can adjust our actions to either change an ongoing situation, or gain new perspective on a past situation so that we can avoid repetition of the same mistake.

People generally feel gloomy as memories of some unpleasant events etch out.. This leads to sadness and they start feeling depressed.. The level of enthusiasm recedes and slowly leads them to desperation.. If we can understand the law of karma well, these emotional swings can be overcome completely. What we need to do is develop a sense of differentiating between positive and negative thoughts. Its a long process that needs both patience and practice.

We need to identify our own self and think positive. This does not mean that we start suppressing unhappy memories, as that will lead us to a more focused mind towards events that we want to forget. We can instead work on erasing them from our mind completely by willfully doing so.. This would make negative things irrelevant with time and we would be empowered with the force of optimism within us thus leading towards a happy life. For more knowledge based experience, visit me at http://thinkingoffbeat.blogspot.com/

About the author: I am working as a recruitment consultant & also do freelance writing. I believe in offbeat spirituality. And yes - I am from India