#Karma
karma (Sanskrit: action) – an idea discovered by ancient sages and recorded in various texts of the world, stating that every action must receive an ethically matching reaction.
“As you sow, so shall you reap.”
“He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword.”
Often, we observe that bad people live surprisingly well, while good people live surprisingly poorly. Even if death were to reward everyone according to how they lived, we can still see that righteous people often die in agony or in cruel accidents. Many of the world’s religious traditions have tried to solve this question rather unsuccessfully. If God is all-merciful, all-knowing, and all-powerful, why do children die in their mothers’ wombs, and why are they born disabled, without any chance to change their lives?
The Vedic tradition’s answer to this dilemma is the idea of karma. The lives of all living beings consist of a continuous flow of actions, which have a complex impact on our future and the future of those around us. The law of action and reaction ensures that in any situation, the karmas of the participants that best match each other are fulfilled. The scriptures tell stories of people who experienced the consequences of their deeds even after several hundred lives, when the appropriate situation arose in their environment. Therefore, a good person can suffer for what they did many lifetimes ago, even though they lived righteously in this life.
“But is that fair?” an opponent might ask. “Is it fair for a person to suffer after they have changed and no longer need punishment?” Yes, because this suffering reminds a righteous person of the pain they once caused to others. And for those who do evil, suffering reminds them that others feel pain too.
“But the person does not remember what they did. Is there any point in punishing them?” the opponent might ask again. The law of karma is neither punishment nor reward. It is the law of an ethically just reaction. Everyone must experience what they gave to others, both pain and joy. A person who perceives what happened as a punishment will not experience the exact same suffering that they once caused to someone who did not expect it. Therefore, if we believe that any suffering we experience is the result of our own past actions, the suffering will always be lighter than if we think we are suffering undeservedly. This is how we defeat karma :).