Karma and God - Page 25

Originally posted by: return_to_hades

Grr do you see the Prem Jyotish ads where he says astrology is science of planets (astronomy) and numerology is science of numbers (mathematics). 😡

Originally posted by: Gauri_3

Yeah and I picture K looking for that darned remote while cussing Prem ji😆

One day I would like to meet him and Ajmeri baba, preferably at the same time.

Originally posted by: Mister.K.

One day I would like to meet him and Ajmeri baba, preferably at the same time.

Some more interesting articles

http://www.vedanta.org/wiv/philosophy/oneness.html

The Oneness of Existence: Unity in Diversity

The unity of existence is one of the great themes of Vedanta and an essential pillar of its philosophy. Unity is the song of life; it is the grand theme underlying the rich variations that exist throughout the cosmos. Whatever we see, whatever we experience, is only a manifestation of this eternal oneness. The divinity at the core of our being is the same divinity that illumines the sun, the moon, and the stars. There is no place where we, infinite in nature, do not exist.

While the concept of oneness may be intellectually appealing, it is nevertheless difficult to put into practice. It's no hardship to feel oneness with great and noble beings or those we already love. It's also not too much of a stretch to experience a sense of unity with the trees, the ocean, and the sky. But most of us balk at experiencing oneness with the cockroach or the rat—let alone the obnoxious co-worker whom we barely tolerate. Yet this is precisely where we need to apply Vedanta's teachings and realize that all these manifold aspects of creation are united in and through divinity. The Self that is within me, the Atman, is the same Self that is within you—no matter whether the "you" in question is a saint, a murderer, a cat, a fly, a tree, or that irritating driver at the four-way stop.

"The Self is everywhere," says the Isha Upanishad. "Whoever sees all beings in the Self, and the Self in all beings, hates none. For one who sees oneness everywhere, how can there be delusion or grief?"

All fear and all misery arise from our sense of separation from the great cosmic unity, the web of being that enfolds us. "There is fear from the second," says the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. Duality, our sense of separation from the rest of creation, is always a misperception since it implies that something exists other than God. There can be no other. "This grand preaching, the oneness of things, making us one with everything that exists, is the great lesson to learn," said Swami Vivekananda a century ago.

. . . . The Self is the essence of this universe, the essence of all souls . . . You are one with this universe. He who says he is different from others, even by a hair's breadth, immediately becomes miserable. Happiness belongs to him who knows this oneness, who knows he is one with this universe.

http://www.vedanta.org/wiv/philosophy/maya.html

The Concept of Maya

Vedanta declares that our real nature is divine: pure, perfect, eternally free. We do not have to become Brahman, we are Brahman. Our true Self, the Atman, is one with Brahman.

But if our real nature is divine, why then are we so appallingly unaware of it?

The answer to this question lies in the concept of maya, or ignorance. Maya is the veil that covers our real nature and the real nature of the world around us. Maya is fundamentally inscrutable: we don't know why it exists and we don't know when it began. What we do know is that, like any form of ignorance, maya ceases to exist at the dawn of knowledge, the knowledge of our own divine nature.

Brahman is the real truth of our existence: in Brahman we live, move, and have our being. "All this is indeed Brahman," the Upanishads—the scriptures that form Vedanta philosophy—declare. The changing world that we see around us can be compared to the moving images on a movie screen: without the unchanging screen in the background, there can be no movie. Similarly, it is the unchanging Brahman—the substratum of existence—in the background of this changing world that gives the world its reality.

Yet for us this reality is conditioned, like a warped mirror, by time, space, and causality—the law of cause and effect. Our vision of reality is further obscured by wrong identification: we identify ourselves with the body, mind, and ego rather than the Atman, the divine Self.

This original misperception creates more ignorance and pain in a domino effect: identifying ourselves with the body and mind, we fear disease, old age and death; identifying ourselves with the ego, we suffer from anger, hatred, and a hundred other miseries. Yet none of this affects our real nature, the Atman.

Maya can be compared to clouds which cover the sun: the sun remains in the sky but a dense cloud cover prevents us from seeing it. When the clouds disperse, we become aware that the sun has been there all the time. Our clouds—maya appearing as egotism, selfishness, hatred, greed, lust, anger, ambition—are pushed away when we meditate upon our real nature, when we engage in unselfish action, and when we consistently act and think in ways that manifest our true nature: that is, through truthfulness, purity, contentment, self-restraint, and forbearance. This mental purification drives away the clouds of maya and allows our divine nature to shine forth.

Shankara, the great philosopher-sage of seventh-century India, used the example of the rope and the snake to illustrate the concept of maya. Walking down a darkened road, a man sees a snake; his heart pounds, his pulse quickens. On closer inspection the "snake" turns out to be a piece of coiled rope. Once the delusion breaks, the snake vanishes forever.

Similarly, walking down the darkened road of ignorance, we see ourselves as mortal creatures, and around us, the universe of name and form, the universe conditioned by time, space, and causation. We become aware of our limitations, bondage, and suffering. On "closer inspection" both the mortal creature as well as the universe turn out to be Brahman. Once the delusion breaks, our mortality as well as the universe disappear forever. We see Brahman existing everywhere and in everything.

http://www.vedanta.org/wiv/philosophy/karma.html

Karma and Reincarnation

Human suffering is one of religion's most compelling mysteries: Why do the innocent suffer? Why does God permit evil? Is God helpless to act or does he choose not to? And if He chooses not to act, does that mean he is cruel? Or merely indifferent?

Vedanta takes the problem out of God's court and places it firmly in our own. We can blame neither God nor a devil. Nothing happens to us by the whim of some outside agency: we ourselves are responsible for what life brings us; all of us are reaping the results of our own previous actions in this life or in previous lives. To understand this better we first need to understand the law of karma.

The word "karma" comes from the Sanskrit verb kri, to do. Although karma means action, it also means the result of action. Whatever acts we have performed and whatever thoughts we have thought have created an impression, both in our minds and in the universe around us. The universe gives back to us what we have given to it: "As ye sow, so shall ye reap" as Christ said. Good actions and thoughts create good effects, bad ones create bad effects.

Mental Imprints
Whenever we perform any action and whenever we think any thought, an imprint—a kind of subtle groove—is made upon the mind. These imprints or grooves are known as samskaras. Sometimes we are conscious of the imprinting process; just as often we are not. When actions and thoughts are repeated, the grooves become deeper. The combination of "grooves"— samskaras—creates our individual characters and also strongly influences our subsequent thoughts and actions. If we anger easily, for example, we create an angry mind that is predisposed to react with anger rather than with patience or understanding. As water when directed into a narrow canal gains force, so the grooves in the mind create canals of behavior patterns which become extraordinarily difficult to resist or reverse. Changing an ingrained mental habit literally becomes an uphill battle.

If our thoughts are predominantly those of kindness, love, and compassion, our character reflects it, and these very thoughts will be returned to us sooner or later. If we send out thoughts of hatred, anger, or pettiness, those thoughts will also be returned to us.

Our thoughts and actions aren't so much arrows as boomerangs—eventually they find their way back home. The effects of karma may come instantly, later in life, or in another life altogether; what is absolutely certain, however, is that they will appear at some time or other. Until liberation is achieved, we live and we die within the confines of the law of karma, the chain of cause and effect.

Reincarnation
What happens at death if we haven't attained liberation?

When a person dies, the only "death" is that of the physical body. The mind, which contains a person's mental impressions, continues after the body's death. When the person is reborn, the "birth" is of a new physical body accompanied by the old mind with the impressions or "grooves" from previous lives. When the environment becomes conducive, these samskaras again reassert themselves in the new life.

Thankfully, this process doesn't go on eternally. When we attain God-realization or Self-realization, the law of karma is transcended, the Self gives up its identification with the body and mind, and regains its native freedom, perfection and bliss.

An Absurd Universe?
When we take a hard look around us, the world doesn't seem to make much sense. If we go by appearances, it would seem that countless people have escaped the noose of fate: many an evil person has died peacefully in bed. Worse, good and noble people have suffered without apparent cause, their goodness being repaid by hatred and torture. Witness the Holocaust; witness child abuse.

If we look only on the surface, the universe appears absurd at best, malevolent at worst. But that's because we're not looking deeply; we're only viewing this lifetime, seeing neither the lives that precede this one nor the lives that may follow. When we see a calamity or a triumph, we're seeing only one freeze frame of a very, very long movie. We can see neither the beginning nor the end of the movie. What we do know, however, is that everyone, no matter how depraved, will eventually, through the course of many lifetimes and undoubtedly through much suffering, come to realize his or her own divine nature. That is the inevitable happy ending of the movie.

Karma=Fatalism?
Doesn't the law of karma make Vedanta a cold and fatalistic philosophy?

Not in the slightest.

Vedanta is both personally empowering and deeply compassionate. First, if we have created—through our own thoughts and actions—the life that we are leading today, we also have the power to create the life that we will live tomorrow. Whether we like it or not, whether we want to take responsibility or not, that's what we are doing every step of the way. Vedanta doesn't allow us to assign blame elsewhere: every thought and action builds our future experience.

Doesn't the law of karma then imply that we can be indifferent to our fellow beings because, after all, they're only getting what they deserve?

Absolutely not. If a person's karma is such that he or she is suffering, we have an opportunity to alleviate that suffering in whatever way we can: doing so would be good karma. We need not be unduly heroic, but we can always offer a helping hand or at least a kind word. If we choose not to do whatever is in our limited power to alleviate the pain of those around us, we're chalking up bad karma for ourselves. In fact, we're really hurting ourselves.

Oneness is the law of the universe, and that truth is the real root of all acts of love and compassion. The Atman, my true Self, is the same Spirit that dwells in all; there cannot be two Atmans. Consciousness cannot be divided; it's all-pervasive. My Atman and your Atman cannot be different. For that reason Vedanta says: Love your neighbor as yourself because your neighbor IS yourself.

Originally posted by: Mister.K.

😆

I apologize. I jumped from being Krishn (in swabhav) to Arjun momentarily.

You were more like Bheemsen there, K

Originally posted by: Gauri_3

You were more like Bheemsen there, K

Bheem had anger and fury but I doubt he was ever arrogant (Empty might shed some light, hopefully not from sacredtexts.com but from Mohan Ganguly's version :)

Arjun comes across as arrogant but I am not sure if he was arrogant or if he really believed that he could do what he openly boasted he could do (stuff like, "if I so much as wish, I could destroy kaurav sena in a trina matra")

Originally posted by: Mister.K.

Bheem had anger and fury but I doubt he was ever arrogant ......

Oh, Bheem was arrogant too. There's an episode where he comes across Hanumana in the forest during their vanwaas. Hanuman crushed his arrogance. The story goes like this:

Bheem went for a walk during the exile. he came across a raakshas and a brahmin family. The demon wanted one person from the brahmin family because the demon's mother needed a human for nar bali for one of her vrat. Bheem offers to go with the demon. The demon turns out to be his son Ghatotkach.

Bheem was returning from meeting his son Ghatotkach and wife Hidimba when he came across an old vaanar resting in the middle of the dense forest. The vaanar had a long tail that was blocking the way. Bheem did not want to jump over the tail so he very rudely asked the vaanar to move his tail. The vaanar said he is resting and asked Bheem to move the tail himself. Bheem, dripping with arrogance over his strength and expertise with the mace, threatened the vaanar to pay heed to what he was saying or face the consequences. Old vaanar again told him to just move his tail and go on his way if he can't wait for him to get done with his siesta.

Bheem gets really angry and tries to pick the vaanar by his tail but he finds out that he can't even budge the tail. When Bheem was humbled, the old vaanar gave his introduction and also preaches Bheem on being humble and not let his strength go to his head.

This is where Hanumaan agreed to be with Pandvas during the war - but only symbolically and that too on the flag of Arjun's chariot that is driven by Krishna himself.

Originally posted by: Mister.K

Bheem had anger and fury but I doubt he was ever arrogant (Empty might shed some light, hopefully not from sacredtexts.com but from Mohan Ganguly's version :)

Arjun comes across as arrogant but I am not sure if he was arrogant or if he really believed that he could do what he openly boasted he could do (stuff like, "if I so much as wish, I could destroy kaurav sena in a trina matra")

I didnt call you arrogant K, having an attitude is not the same . I did hit like on that post .

Originally posted by: angie.4u

I didnt call you arrogant K, having an attitude is not the same . I did hit like on that post .

Angie, he called himself arrogant and equated that post with being in Arjun mode. I thought it fitted Bhim mode more than Arjun mode. No one's blaming you sweets😆

Originally posted by: Gauri_3

Angie, he called himself arrogant and equated that post with being in Arjun mode. I thought it fitted Bhim mode more than Arjun mode. No one's blaming you sweets😆

Ok ! 😆 Bhim may have been short tempered but for most part , didnt come across as arrogant . Arjun on the other hand comes across as insecure at times inspite of all his prowess . His need to be judged the best archer may have had something to do with it.