How can we know what karma we have done in the past?
Answer Podcast
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Happy to be of service.
How do we know what past karma we have done, which will reflect in our present? Every life that we have, it is an opportunity for a fresh beginning. And that is why by nature’s arrangement, we are usually not burdened with the remembrance of our past karma. Actually speaking, you know, if at every moment we started having a flashback of everything connected with that moment, it should not be able to function at all.
So, right now I’m speaking. Now when I’m speaking, I’m using the English language and following the rules of grammar. I’m using my knowledge of vocabulary.
Now, there was some time, maybe 40 years ago, when I, 35-40 years ago, whatever, when I learned the alphabets, when I learned the rules of grammar, when I learned my vocabulary. Now, if while speaking, I started remembering all that, my brain would get overloaded and I would not be able to do anything. So, we are given the memory that is necessary for us to function right now.
The very fact that I’m speaking means that I have learned all this. But that learning is at the background. It’s somewhere there and that learning is guiding me.
But that learning is not what I remember right now. It is the effect of that learning that I use. So, similarly, when we function in this world, say, if I slip and fall.
Now, when I slip and fell, why did I fall? Was it because there was some water spill and I just was careless? Or was that water spill because it was a reaction to some karma which I had done in the past? What was that karma? Was it this karma or that karma? Or, you know, was it that some person wanted me to fall and just put the water over there directly at that time? You know, if for every action we start thinking of all these things, we would just not be able to function. We would just live in a… our mind would be caught in a perpetual flashback mode. We are just thinking about the past, thinking about the past, thinking about the past.
We would not be able to function. So, the important thing for us while living, the whole purpose of understanding the principle of karma is not post-mortem. It is prognosis.
See, post-mortem, when a patient has already died, then we do the post-mortem to find out why they died. But if the patient is living, the doctor doesn’t do a post-mortem. Doctor does a… Doctor does a prognosis.
Prognosis means, okay, this is your condition. If you do this, this will happen. If you do this, this will happen.
Now you’ve got diabetes. If you still keep eating sugar and sweet substances, this will happen. If you avoid this, this will happen.
So, for us, the principle of karma, we understand it primarily to understand what choices we should take now. It is not for analyzing what I have done in the past. That kind of analysis, it will just get us caught in a perpetual flashback mode.
So, for us, it’s not to bother whether we have done past karma, past good karma or bad karma. Our focus should be on making wise choices right now. And if we’re taking shelter of Krishna, and whatever past karmic implications might have been there, we will get the intelligence, get the strength to pass through them.
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