Karma-Life s universal logic 1 Karma logically explained Kolkata youth camp Chaitanya Charan

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna.
I am grateful to be here with all of you today. Am I audible to everyone? Yes. Thank you.
Yesterday, I was in Wellington. So, Wellington, they call it as windy Wellington. And it is a super windy place.
So, from there, I guess here it is quite hot as compared to Wellington. But ultimately, whether you go in India, America, New Zealand, it is hot because the mind is hot. Wherever we go, our mind tends to get agitated.
And that is the real challenge in life. So, I am grateful to be here with all of you. It is wonderful to see so many of you here.
And I will be writing and drawing over here. Our broad topic is karma today. But I would like to give an overview of what we are going to do.
We have four sessions. And I will try to explain what we are planning to do in these four sessions, like an overall map of the discussion. And then we will, of course, these are not going to be watertight discussions in the sense that some of the concepts from the future sessions will also come here.
See, broadly, if we consider the first session, which we will discuss in two days, does life make sense? That is the broad topic we will discuss. And within that, we will discuss how karma is the best way we have among the various worldviews possible to make sense of life. Then after that, so one way to depict this diagrammatically, say we are going through life and we have to face life.
See, whatever be our philosophy, ultimately, we all have to deal with life. We all have to live. So, there are things which we want to make sense of life.
But when we make sense of life, how do we look at things which are uncontrollables for us? So, are the uncontrollables, broadly, we will be discussing, is life arbitrary or is there some order to life? Is there some rationality to life? So, with respect to, I am trying to go through life right now. And in life, sometimes things just happen to me. We might meet with an accident, we might get a cancer diagnosis, suddenly there is a global recession and we lose our job or there is artificial intelligence.
Now, artificial intelligence is a problem, but the real big problem is artificial intelligence and natural stupidity. When both come together, it can be deadly. So, there are things beyond our control that happen.
So, that uncontrollable that happens to us, that is what we will be discussing in the second session, that is daiva, that is destiny. So, now karma and destiny are related, but broadly, we will talk about the uncontrollable in the second part. In the third session, I will be talking about the controllable.
What is controllable for us? And there we will talk about free will. And then, so, if karma is for real, if destiny is for real, then do we have free will? Or if we have free will, how free is our free will? So, how much is, do the uncontrollables, do they affect only our externals or can they affect our internals also? Say, if I get angry with you and I slap you on the face. Why did you slap me? No, that’s my conditioning.
Can I say that? Can we say that because of my past conditioning, I was impelled to do something? Now, in modern society, this is coming up as the plea of mental insanity or lack of sanity. So, I was just in New Zealand and there was this what they call as a, they call it the suitcase murders. Suitcase murders means basically what happened is that there was a woman from Korea, South Korea, she had immigrated over there and she had two children and they used to go to school and the family was quite normal.
And the husband got cancer and he died. And she became very depressed because of that. And her depression, what she did, she somehow, the exact details are not known, but what she did was, she had two children, one boy and one girl, she killed both of them.
And she stuffed both of them into a suitcase and she placed the suitcase in a storehouse, in a warehouse and she left the country. And many years later, in the West, what happens, people keep their stuff in big, big storehouses and nobody even notices it. Many years later, they found there was a terrible smell over there.
And then they found that these two babies were there and then they did genetic testing and found out. Now, this woman, she is claiming that, no, because of her, at least her lawyer is claiming that, no, she was so depressed and she felt she would not even take care of her children and she thought she will commit suicide. If she commits suicide, her children will become orphans.
And that’s why she said better kill them. So, she was not sane at that time. Now, of course, this is an extreme case and not that such things happen regularly.
But my point is, to what extent can we hold either our conditions or our conditionings? Conditions are external and conditionings are internal. To what extent are they responsible for our actions? Duryodhana said the same thing. He said, this is my nature and I am simply acting according to my nature.
You have to blame anyone, blame the creator who gave me this nature. So, we will discuss how much do we have free will. And then last we will be talking about is the Supreme.
So, what role does Krishna play in all this and how can we understand that role? And by understanding that role, what does it mean for us? How can it change our life positively? So, this is the broad way we are going to discuss. So, first is, if we are here in the world, let’s put it this way, if this is the material world, so is the world acting according to karma, system of karma? Then is there daiva? And within that daiva, do we have free will? And then above this, unfortunately I don’t have space, Krishna should be much bigger, but assume this is Krishna. So, what is the relationship of Krishna with destiny? How does Krishna interact with karma, with free will? What does bhakti do? That’s what we will be discussing.
So, I’ll be drawing extensively from the Mahabharata primarily. I’ll also draw from the Bhagavatam and the Ramayana to discuss some incidents, to illustrate some principles. So, let’s begin with the point of karma.
So, now, before I start, you’ll have to ask, what does the word karma mean to you? Any thoughts? What does karma mean? It’s not a trick question, it’s a straightforward question. Karma can mean reactions of our actions. Yes.
Anything else? Yes, actions themselves. So, we all have to do our karma. So, for example, if we consider Krishna in 3.8, for example, says that, he is talking about karma as the actions that we do.
When the Brahma Samhita says, the karma will be burnt, that is referring to karma as reactions. Now, anything else? Sorry. Yes, sorry.
I mean, thoughts. Thoughts. Okay, so you’re saying that even thoughts are karma.
So, it’s not just actions, but also thoughts are also karma. Okay, that’s a bit scary. We’ll discuss to what extent thoughts are karma as we move forward.
But okay. Anything else? So, we also talk about the law of karma, isn’t it? So, the connection between action and reaction, the principle by which action and reaction are connected, that is also called as karma. Now, thoughts, we’ll discuss this broadly.
Now, there’s one more meaning, the word karma also has a positive meaning. We should do good karma, we shouldn’t do bad karma. So, karma is that it refers to good action, not just action, but say action according to dharma.
Good action, so we have su-karma, vikarma and akarma. So, su-karma is simply referred to as karma. So, broadly, we could use an acronym ARKS for this.
So, it can refer to action, it can refer to reaction, it can refer to the connection between action and reaction, and it can refer to the selection of action. So, karma is meant to help us select our action properly. So, how should I act and how should I not act? Ultimately, this karma is also about acting properly.
So, here sometimes the word karma is used instead of, it could also be used as dharma. We all have to do our dharma and dharma means good action, pious action, virtuous action. So, broadly, the word karma has many different meanings.
So, these four broad meanings are there. In one sense, today we are going to just focus more on the action part, but we will touch on the various meanings. Now, generally, whenever we have education, it has two distinct aspects to it.
Now, one action, one aspect of education is that what is complex, we make it simple. That, oh, you know, these are also complex, you break it down and analyse it. A good educator is one who is able to present complex things in a simple way.
So, education is about making complex things simple. But there is another aspect of education. Education is also to see how what we think is simple is not so simple.
So, to show the complexity within what we think of as simple. That is also a part of education. We say this is right and this is wrong.
Okay, yeah, if you kill someone, that’s bad. That’s wrong. That’s murder.
But if you are killing someone, when there is, that person has come to attack you, self-defence. If you are killing because that person is attacking your country, then you become a hero. So, there are so many different things to consider.
So, sometimes we have education as to have both ways, that to see the simplicity within the complexity and to see the complexity within the simplicity. So, we will be going on both journeys here. But let’s start with the first the idea of karma today.
And we will have time for question answers in two sessions in the evening separately. But at the end of the session also, we may have some time for questions. And you can note your questions down.
I’ll try to take broadly a framework for all the three class, all the four classes. So, chit is, chit means to be conscious. So, we try to become conscious of a concept, we become expand our consciousness using that concept.
So, first, let’s try to understand the concept itself. Then we’ll try to gain insight. Insight means not just we understand the concept, but how that concept helps us to make sense of life.
If I accept the concept, how does it change my sight? How does it help me to make a better sense of life? And then lastly, will be a takeaway. Now, in some sessions, I’ll focus more on the concept, some say more on the insights, some more on the takeaway. But broadly, this is the journey we will be taking.
So, this is a roadmap for how we’re going to discuss in the four sessions. So, right now, we already started a discussion on the concept of karma. So, at a basic level, karma means that action leads to result.
And we could say that in that sense, karma is, it’s logical and it’s universal. What do I mean by universal and logical? See, everybody at one level accepts the principle of action-reaction correlation. That even if somebody is an atheist, I’ll use atheist as a broad word for non-spiritual philosophies.
Now, there are many different philosophies within that and we’ll come to that later. But broadly, even somebody who does not believe in karma, that person also, if there’s an atheistic parent, that person is also, when they’re going to raise their children, are they going to say, ultimately, everything is chaotic. Whether you eat 20 chocolates or you eat zero chocolates, there’s going to be no problem.
Everything is chaotic. Whether you clean your room or don’t clean your room, whether you brush your teeth or you don’t brush your teeth. Nobody lives like that, isn’t it? So, when you say logical, universal means that it’s implicit in our actions, in the way we deal with each other, the way we parent, the way we talk with each other, the way we conduct ourselves.
It is implicit in the training that we give to others. It is implicit in our justice system that we are responsible for our actions and that’s why we should be held responsible. If somebody has done something wrong, if there were no cause-effect connection, then there would be no idea of justice also.
So, if we take karma simply as action leads to result and we are responsible for the actions that we do and accordingly, we should get the results. So, we consider this as natural and we also consider it to be logical. So, what do I mean by natural? If I put my hand near fire, my hand feels hot.
If I put my hand in fire, my hand gets burnt. So, the idea, if I say karma is logical, that action will have some result. That is something which we all accept and we could say this is also to much extent the basis of science.
Now, science may not use the term karma but the idea in science, they may not use the word action and result because action often conveys the idea of a conscious agent. It uses the cause and effect. So, science may use those terms but all the laws of nature that science is talking about, whether it is physics, gravity, motion, thermodynamics, all of them are based on the idea that the universe behaves in predictable ways and action leads to result.
So, is this behaving in a predictable way now? So, the idea is that at one level, none of us could function without having some understanding and implicit acceptance of the principle of causality that action leads to result. So, that is how we all function in life. So, that’s how we train others, that’s how we build relationships, that’s how we build governments, that’s how we explore the universe.
The universe is completely arbitrary and what is the point of exploring it also? What is the point of exploring it because what would happen is, okay, I find something over here that works here but it doesn’t work anywhere else. So, these laws don’t work. So, we wouldn’t have it.
So, in that sense, karma is universal. So, what is the karma happening now? Something has gone off? If we can just directly project it also, if you don’t want to use zoom. Okay.
Anyway, I will speak without it till now, till that point. So, now having said this, there are problems with it of course. So, we can say at one level, it’s logical, it’s universal.
But then the problem is that there are many places where we see that things don’t seem to work better. That’s what leads to the common question, why do bad things happen to good people? So, I was once in America, I was giving a talk and one boy said, okay, I’m an atheist and he said, why do bad things happen to good people? So, I told him, okay, why should bad things not happen to good people? He said, what do you mean? Good things should happen to good people, bad things should happen to bad people. He said, who said so? You yourself, you said you are an atheist.
When you say there is atheism, there is no ordering principle in the universe. So, if you consider nature, okay, if we consider nature, nature is basically we could say in some ways it’s amoral, it’s not immoral. So, there’s moral, immoral and amoral.
Means morality is not involved in it. When a tiger chases a deer, is it that the, oh, the deer is a good guy, so, the tiger should not chase the deer or the tiger is a good guy, so, the deer should stop running and let itself be caught and eaten. And no, it is whoever runs faster, they survive, the other person dies.
So, the idea is that nature is in one sense amoral. If we go according to the idea of atheism, then this question itself should not be there at all. Because what is in nature, if you consider from the perspective of atheism or non-theism, let’s put it that way, nature operates by survival of the fittest.
The law of the jungle is might is right. So, if good people are strong, they will win. If bad people are strong, they will win.
So, it’s not that goodness will lead to good results. So, we could say, why should you even assume that good things should happen to good people? If nature is true, nature is based on, nature acts based not on morality, but on strength. Nature works based on might is right.
Now, you could go further and say that the tiger who is able to run faster and catch a deer, the tiger must have done some good karma in the previous life. And the deer who is able to get away, the deer has done some karma in the past life. But then that is, we are going into hypotheticals now, at least from a purely rational perspective.
So, when we ask this question itself, why do bad things happen to good people, the question itself has some assumption that there is some order in the universe. And if we reject the idea of God or some ordering principle, then that question itself becomes invalid. In logic, whenever you make an argument, the argument has to have some premise, a starting point.
If the starting point itself is false, then what happens, the whole argument collapses. So, now the question comes up that everyone accepts the idea that action leads to results. But then everybody also has to accept the idea that there are times when normally we could say that my action leads to a result which is corresponding.
We all have this experience, if I do an action worth 100, I get a result worth 100. That is what, as I said, logical and universal. By universal, I did not mean it happens every single time, but that is how we function in that sense.
So, this is what we see. But then the question comes up, sometimes we may do work worth 100 and we may get a result worth 10. This itself is very provocative.
Why did this happen? Now, what could be even more provocative is, we do work worth 100 and we get a result worth minus 1000. We do good. What is that saying in English? No good deed ever goes unpunished.
That way, somebody tries to do good and their very good actions seem to get them into trouble. So, sometimes it happens like that also, unfortunately. So, then this raises a big question about the law of karma.
Does it really work? So, normally, how do we human beings function when we use the word logic? See, whenever we talk about cause-effect, that is what we are discussing right now. The cause-effect connection is what we are discussing. So, within the cause-effect connection, when we talk about, there is implicit.
Implicit means without even talking about it, it is included. There is an implicit that is a frame of reference. Frame of reference means that there is some context in which we are talking about it.
Say, for example, now, if I am talking with someone and say, I am being very polite towards you and you are being very cold and standoffish. Now, if somebody observes, they say, why is this person being so cold and standoffish? So, from that small interaction, it may appear that I am a good person and you are a bad person. But it could be that before this, 10 times earlier, I was not just cold, I was cruel to you.
And when I was cruel to you, now you are looking at me, you are talking with me and you are just wondering, is this person really changed or is this person just putting on a show? Isn’t it? So, frame of reference means that when I talk about action and result. So, one frame of reference is this action leads to this result. But sometimes, say, if you know that 10 times in the past I have been cruel to you, to go to this person, then you will say, okay, it makes sense, this person is being a little cold, is a little suspicious, is suddenly become a good person and is putting on an act.
So, what it means is that when sometimes things do not make sense to us, we expand our frame of reference. That it could mean that when I am getting a particular result r, that r could be a result of not just a, there could be, this could be a3, there could be a2, there could be a1. And now when I am getting the result, it is a result of all three of the previous actions.
Maybe it could be even more also. So, we understand that sometimes the frame of reference may not be as we think it to be. So, generally, this is how we all function.
We expand the frame of reference whenever things do not make sense within a particular frame of reference. So, for example, if I am speaking right now, and if I am speaking, suddenly the volume goes off. Now, if the volume goes off, then it is normally how would we start? I will start with the immediate point.
Okay, maybe accidentally did I switch off this mic or something like that? Or if that has not happened, did the power supply go off over there somehow? Or is it that the organisers got tired of my class, so they turned off the sound system? So, if we escalate, so now it is also possible that if the sound is not going through, I have turned, I have turned down. Maybe I got some paralytic attack, and I am moving back and forth but no sound is coming out. But if the sound when I am speaking and sound is not coming out, should I first jump to the idea maybe I got a paralytic attack on my throat? No, that would be crazy.
You do not have to jump there all the time. But is it a possible thing? It may be possible, isn’t it? So, the idea is that generally when if this is a particular A and R, let us put A and R as a correlation here. Now, we will start with the immediate context.
And if things do not make sense in the immediate context, then we start expanding the frame of reference. We can keep expanding the frame of reference further and further. So, generally, when we function, we try to find a frame of reference in which things make sense.
So, if we have bought a car and we are driving a car and the car has stopped working. It could be because the car is a defective piece. It could be because we have mishandled the car.
It could be because maybe somebody tampered with the car. There could be many different reasons. But generally, the way we move forward is that we start with immediate reference points, immediate frame of reference and we start moving towards bigger and bigger frame of references to try to make sense of things.
So, essentially, this is the way we make sense of life all the time. Now, bigger frames of reference could be in many different directions. So, karma offers us a similar bigger frame of reference.
Bigger frame of reference means that yes, actions do lead to results, but it may be that it may not be my present actions alone. So, what karma says is, yes, the action-reaction principle is true. But there are past actions which could contribute to present results.
So, I gave one example that there could be multiple previous actions which contribute to one result. Now, suppose somebody is a very, in a particular country, somebody is a very brutal ruler and they do lots of atrocious things and then they get away with it because they have a lot of power. But if they keep doing it, they keep doing it, you know, they anger one group of people, they anger another group of people, they anger a third group of people and then finally, the whole country rebels against them.
And then that person just not removed from power, that person might be just ruthlessly slaughtered and killed and their family might also be killed. Now, this is not necessarily exactly the law of karma. But my point is that A1, A2, A3, A4, A5, all these could be acts of atrocity.
They did not lead to any result. But finally, when the result came, it was not just one action. It is many actions that contributed to the final result.
So, Krishna says one feature of karma is that gahana karmanogati. So, if we look at karma, it is causal. Causal means it involves cause-effect connection.
But another very important principle about karma which may be overlooked is that it is cumulative. Cumulative means that many actions may contribute to one result. And conversely, some actions may be so vicious that one action, this A could lead to R1, R2, R3, R4.
Sometimes one action may have something like a chain reaction as we say. So, suppose somebody commits a crime. And after that crime, it goes on their permanent record.
If it goes on their permanent record, then wherever they go to apply for a job, they just go and get a job. So, many times if teenagers or someone committed a crime, then the general government policy is that you cover, they say seal the records. But nobody can know that the person has committed the crime.
So, that way the person can make a fresh start in their life. But sometimes somebody has committed so many crimes or such serious crime that the records are unsealed. And then what happens is that person is just that one action can have multiple results.
So, the idea is karma is causal, but it is cumulative. And because it is cumulative, that is where things start becoming messy. Things start becoming more difficult to understand for us.
So, with this understanding, let us move to the insight part now. The insight part is what? That means how does the concept help us to make sense of our life, make sense of the way we function in our daily life? So, basically, everyone feels that life is unfair to them. Everyone feels this that, oh, I have done so much work and nobody recognises the work that I am doing.
People are not valuing me for all that I am doing. Everybody feels it at some time or the other. Now, when this feeling of unfairness comes.
So, basically, what is unfair means? Again, it is something like I did this much action and what I got was a tiny result. This feels unfair. So, broadly, when we find that life feels unfair, how do we make sense of life? So, life feels unfair, that is just universal.
Everybody feels it that way, sooner or later. We may feel that I worked very hard and I achieved this and then, but still I am not being recognised, I am not being appreciated or I worked hard, but still I could not achieve this. So, I was just in Australia and New Zealand.
Now, in Australia, there are, it is not just Australia, I do not want to bad-mouth Australia, but everywhere it is there that whenever international students want to come for education. Now, there are some very reputed universities. There are other universities which are basically scam universities.
So, people come to those universities and if you go to the university, there is no uni and there is no varsity. There is nothing over there really. It is basically, it is just a name by which people say that I have registered in this university and they try to hunt for a job and they try to do this and they try to get that and somehow they can do a job in parallel, they learn some skills and once they learn some skills, then they emigrate to that country.
So, generally, the most intelligent students, they go to America. Now, they are not going so much because of the current government there. But many of the other students, they want to go to some other country.
So, when they go to other countries like Australia, many Indians, many Indians have become chefs and many Indians have become, they have gone into accounts, they go there for getting one degree, but eventually they look what is the need in that particular country and they take that kind of job and that’s how they migrate. Now, this is a well-known system that the degree is just a way to get into that country. Eventually, you get some other job and you migrate.
America, Australia, it is happening now that, it’s not just in Australia, it’s almost in most of the Western world, it’s happening that there is a big concern about depopulation. In India, the concern was about population explosion. But there is a, there is what is called a depopulation.
Elon Musk also talked about it, he created a controversy, the depopulation bomb. That in the Western world, people are not reproducing enough. So, it’s like if you go to any of the major cities in America, whether New York or LA or San Francisco, Chicago, if you go to the parks, generally parents take their children to play in the park.
You will see more dogs and cats than children in the parks. So, among the white Caucasian population, they have, in that population, they have more pets than they have children. In fact, there was a, I was in California and one Western couple had come for one of my programmes.
So, I was talking with them after the programme and I asked them, what do they do? And the wife said that, I am a stay-at-home dog mom. Now, the idea is, the whole social pressure and cultural pressure is that, if somebody doesn’t work, oh, you don’t do anything, you stay at your home, that’s looked down upon a little bit. It shouldn’t be looked down upon, taking care of our children is the most important thing.
But it is looked down upon. But if you are a human mom, that’s an ordinary thing. If you are a dog mom, that is a proud thing.
You are a stay-at-home dog mom. So, taking care of a dog, everybody has the need to nurture. We all feel that my existence should matter to someone else.
And having a baby, if you don’t have a baby, then people get a pet which they treat like a baby. So, the idea is, so that’s why I was talking about this in Australia as well as many other Western countries, there is a big crisis that because people not having children, there are people who are becoming older and there is no one to take care of them. So, many Indians who are going there are going into nursing over there.
So, in nursing, actually, nursing is much shorter than getting a medical degree. But in many ways, nursing is a more stable job than medicine. Because people may or may not fall sick frequently, but people are surely going to get old and they will need care.
So, why was I talking about this is that this was a whole thing, it was a scam that you go for a particular degree, but you get a job in some other field and continue on. Now, when I was in Australia, there was a big protest against immigration. And somehow, they targeted Indians the most.
Too many Indians are coming there to our country. Now, Indians are actually law-abiding, tax-paying, responsible citizens. But the problem is, if the citizens are bad, it’s a problem.
Because, you know, they don’t do jobs, they don’t pay taxes, then they become a burden on the country. But what happens, often Indians are the opposite problem. They all take care of their families, they follow the law, they pay the taxes, then they take all the best jobs.
And the local Aussie people don’t have the best jobs. That’s why Trump has also increased the price for H1B and all these things. So, Indians were till previously called the model minority.
We go to any other country, we are minority over there. But the model minority is that if citizens or immigrants from any country were like Indians, then they would add value to the country. But the point is that there are these young students who have gone there and suddenly this whole scam, the colleges are being shut down.
Now, they paid for the colleges and they knew that the degree that they are going to get is of no value. But while they are in that college, they would learn some other skill, some nursing or this or that and that’s how they get country. And now they are stuck in no man’s land.
So, what happens is sometimes life is unfair. This is how things were working, suddenly they stop working. So, the point is life can be unfair.
It will be unfair to everyone in some way or the other. So, when life turns out to be unfair, how do we look at life’s unfairness? So, you might have guessed this by now. But what I’m trying to do over here is, see when we explain spiritual concepts, we could explain them in two ways.
One is based on scripture and the second is based on logic. So, now generally when we explain based on scripture, it requires that the person accept the authority of scripture. If they don’t accept the authority of scripture, okay, it is your belief, your tradition, your text belief, I don’t accept it.
So, there are places, especially when Prabhupada was talking with the devotee scientists who were trying to do scientific outreach, he said, forget scripture, let’s discuss based on logic. So, what we are trying to do is, now we are trying to understand karma simply based on logic. So, start with the world as we experience it.
So, when we work with logic, I call this as the minimal assumption approach. Somebody doesn’t have to accept that what the Bhagavata says is true. Somebody doesn’t have to accept what the Bhagavatam says is true.
Start with our lived experience of life and then see how we can make sense of life from there. So, broadly speaking, when we see life’s unfairness, we could go in two ways. One is that life itself is arbitrary.
So, life itself is arbitrary, the world is like a big cosmic lottery and some people win and some people lose. Now, in a lottery, who wins and who loses? It is just random. So, it’s arbitrary, it’s random.
Now, this is one way we can go. We could say broadly, this is the atheistic way. If there is no overarching divinity, then the idea is whatever happens is just arbitrary and there is no sense to life.
The other way we could go is that there is, if we accept theism, we could say that God is arbitrary. Now, of course, we will not use the word arbitrary for God. Those who believe in God will be much more respectful.
So, for Christians, we use the word unknowable. God’s will is unknowable. Now, we may use the word unknowable.
It’s inconceivable. So, we could go one of these two ways. And when bad things happen, how do we make sense of them when life seems to be unfair? So, the idea is that either there is no order in the universe and everything is chaotic or God acts arbitrarily.
Now, you will see that neither of these really make sense. Because we do see that there is some order in the universe. Say, if somebody eats a dozen ice creams on a cold night and then the next morning they get some terrible pain.
Their sore is gone. Their throat is gone. Their throat has become terribly sore.
Now, you can say that there is some reason for it, isn’t it? Is the reason past karma? Well, yes, but it’s not past life’s karma. It’s past night’s karma. So, the idea is that in general, there are significant areas where we do work with the idea that cause-effect connection is there.
Like I talked about it in science, in law, in our training. So, then what happens is if you say things are arbitrary, what it means is that there is, let’s explore this option now, one, two, and then we’ll come to three, what is in between. But if we consider one, what it means is there is an illusion of order and under the illusion of order, there is a reality of chaos.
So, the idea is that it’s like we are in an ocean of chaos, ocean of meaninglessness, where nothing makes sense and within that, there are some small tiny islands. These islands are of order. So, for example, actually everything is arbitrary, but when you throw an object down, depends on how much force you throw it down, accordingly, you can predict how much force it will hit the ground, by what time it will hit the ground.
So, if everything were chaotic, then why would there be order in some aspects of the universe? Is this making sense to you? That if everything is, if the universe is ultimately arbitrary, then why are there pockets of order in the universe? So, it doesn’t make overall sense and nobody can live like this, actually. This is the doctrine of eventually of hopelessness. If, yes, I’ll work hard, I’ll try to do my best, but eventually anything can go wrong and everything that I work for can be destroyed.
Then why work hard? Why try to do anything at all? So, both from a, in this, philosophical and practical, both ways, there is a problem. The negative here is, philosophically, why any order? If there were no ordering principle at all and the whole universe is chaotic, then why did this, where did these pockets of order come from? Why did they come? Why is there any order at all? The universe is arbitrary, why is it not completely arbitrary? And in the practical perspective, the problem is that why try to do anything responsible? Because at any moment, life is ultimately arbitrary and its arbitrariness will only hit us. So, why take care of your health? Anytime when you fall sick, you might die.
Don’t do anything at all. Why try to be a good person? Even if you are a good person, still people will be mean, people will exploit you. It just becomes a whole doctrine of hopelessness.
So, it’s like, if we consider a game like cricket match. So, now, if we assume in a cricket match, okay, you know, if you hit the ball defensively, you can get one run and the scoreboard will increase by one. If you hit the ball and go across the boundary, it will increase by four.
If the ball flies over the boundary, the score will increase by six. There is order. But then you are very industriously scoring and your score has come to 200 and after an hour you come back and you say score has become 20.
What happened? It’s that if the scoreboard is going to change arbitrarily, then why try to do something in an orderly way, isn’t it? So, yeah, we see sometimes the scoreboard does change in an orderly way also. But if it’s sometimes orderly, sometimes arbitrary, then how do we function in life, isn’t it? So, that’s one way of living. So, within atheism, there are various philosophies.
There is one philosophy called absurdism. It’s actually a serious philosophy. I think Alberto Camo came up with it.
And his idea was that life is meaningless. Existence is suffering. Therefore, the only philosophical question worth asking is whether to commit suicide today or tomorrow.
It’s such a dark and gloomy life, gloomy way of looking at it. He wrote several books of philosophy. His point was, okay, your life is ultimately chaotic, but try to make the best of it.
You know why? Eventually, he went insane. You cannot live with such a world. So, we cannot live like this.
The other is that if you consider theism, then what? It leads to the same thing that God is sometimes orderly and God is sometimes arbitrary. So, God’s will is unknowable. Now, from the perspective of our lived experience, what will we see is that if we do good, sometimes good does happen.
And we may say, oh, this is the blessing of God. But then suddenly something bad happens. We do good and still something bad happens.
The Pandavas, they trained themselves in martial skills. Archula learned archery, Bheema learned mace fighting and they were preparing. They were preparing for life’s battles.
They were warriors and they knew their job was to fight. But what they found that their Gurukul didn’t prepare them for life. In the sense that they prepared for a fight of arms at the Gurukul.
But it’s like just as you start getting a hang of the game, the rules of the game change. Duryodhana didn’t fight fair. Duryodhana didn’t call them to a test of arms.
Duryodhana tried to poison Bheema. Duryodhana tried to burn the Pandavas alive. So, for them, terrible things happened in life.
And then you may say, okay, you do good, there is a good result of that. So, Arjuna by his archery, he was able to win the hand of Draupadi. And he had practised archery, he had talent, he developed it.
And he was able to get the hand of Draupadi by that. And that was a big success for them. They allied with the Kuru kingdom, not the Kuru, the Panchala kingdom.
And then after that, they got the Indraprastha, they got the Khandav, which they converted into Indraprastha by their hard work and Krishna’s mercy. So, actions do lead to results. If we do good, we do get good results.
But at the same time, after they worked extremely hard and got Khandavprastha, there is a gambling match and they lost everything. So, do we assume that, because this is how life seems to be sometimes orderly and sometimes disorderly. So, then do we assume that God is sometimes orderly and sometimes disorderly? That means, you know, I saw a cartoon, a devotee in America was showing it to me.
In America, atheism is quite aggressive in some parts of the world. See, from our perspective, we think of America as Hollywood and materialistic. But actually, in the Western world, America is the most religious country.
As compared to UK or France or Australia or New Zealand, America is quite religious. There is a whole southern and mid-belt of America called the Bible Belt. So, when Trump’s earlier attempt was made to assassinate him, he survived.
So, many Christians took it as, you know, God saved Trump. And the Christian evangelicals, they supported him. So, America is quite an aggressively Christian country in some parts.
And there is an aggressive, aggressive atheism also is over there. In terms of atheism, France is the world’s most atheistic country. There is a French revolution that happened in 1789.
That is the time when they systematically killed all the kings and they killed all the priests. Basically, they felt that the priests and the kings are hand in glove. So, among all the countries, France is the most atheistic.
But anyway, so in America, this is the idea which is taken from France. So, it’s like some days, we are trying to do things and nothing are working out. We try to fix a relationship and that person seems to get more angrier.
We try to go for an appointment, our car breaks down. So, why is this happening? I saw this atheist gag against Christianity. Gag is like a joke.
He says, you know, why are things going wrong in your life? God is in a bad mood today. And so, the idea is God is a moody person. And God is a moody person and sometimes things God does in an orderly way and sometimes in a disorderly way.
Now, if you consider, if God is sometimes like this, why should we worship such a God? So, for many people, if these two are the only options, it’s like, what is the second option? We go back to the cricket metaphor. The scoreboard doesn’t go arbitrarily, there is a scorekeeper over there. But if the scorekeeper is in a good mood, you hit a boundary, the scorekeeper will be at 4 over there.
But if the scorekeeper is in a bad mood, is angry with you, you hit a 4, the scorekeeper will be at minus 40 over there. Now, you know, actually, if we had to worship such a God, it would be extremely difficult. So, if the only option is between an arbitrary world and arbitrary God, many people will turn towards an arbitrary world, arbitrary nature basically.
So now, what is the problem with theism? I am talking mostly Christian or Abrahamic theism. The problem that comes over here is that I said that when things don’t make sense, we can expand the frame of reference. We can expand the frame of reference.
But in the Abrahamic religions, because they do not accept reincarnation, there is not much scope for them to expand the frame of reference. So, if a baby is born deformed or if a small child is viciously hurt, then there is no explanation. Why would God do something like that? There is no explanation.
In the Bible, the question comes up that there is a boy who was born blind. And then Jesus’ disciples ask him, was it because this boy had done something bad or his parents had done something bad? So, Jesus says neither. And this boy was born blind so that the wonderful work of God could be seen through him.
And Jesus goes to that boy and touches him on the head and he gets eyes back. And it is the wonderful work of God. Well, that only happens to very few people.
What about everyone else? So, the idea is that in between these two, the Abrahamic theism is it is without reincarnation. So, karma, the idea of that actions have results. Karma cannot make sense.
Karma has to go with reincarnation. So, reincarnation, what it does is, it allows us to expand the frame of reference beyond a particular point. That our actions, when I said A1 plus A2 plus A3 plus A4 leads to R, that A1 plus A2 plus A3 can go to previous lives also.
And the R may come in the next life also. So, the whole principle of karma enables us to expand the frame of reference. And this way, when we say that life is orderly and life is disorderly, I will make two last points and then we will conclude.
We will have some questions if you have a couple of minutes for that, few minutes for that. So, what this means is that once we bring karma and reincarnation together, that actions have results, but the frame of reference, if this is my lifetime, the frame of reference is not just this lifetime. I have a previous life and I have future life, the frame of reference becomes that much bigger.
And that way, we all can make better sense of what happens in our life. So, when I get some results, so for example, here, if I am here in my life, and suddenly I get a result worth minus 100. Now, I may have done something worth 10 positive, maybe 10 positive, 10 positive.
I have done good things. Although I have been doing good things all the time, but I am getting negative results. What is happening over here is, there is minus 130 coming from the past.
And all of it combines together and then that is how we get this particular result. So, now we may say, yeah, this is just a theory. Yeah, we can say it is just a theory.
But let us look at it from a slightly alternative perspective. Like I said, we all have this experience of we do 100 and we get a result of 10. We feel this is terribly unfair.
But we all have probably the other experience, we do work worth 10 and we get the result worth 100. Sometimes we work for a project, we play the major role in the project. And when the project becomes successful, somebody else comes and steals the credit.
We feel very frustrated by that. But sometimes it may happen the other way. We join a project when it is in the final stages.
And we do a little work in the project. The project becomes spectacularly successful. And we are celebrated as a part of the winning team.
So, when India had previously won the World Cup, there was one player who did not play a single match. And yet his picture was there in all the World Cup winning team pictures. Without playing at all, all that he did was carry drinks for the other players.
So, sometimes in life, we do get better than what we deserve also. We do sometimes, we may call this as lucky breaks. These are lucky breaks and these are just breaks.
So, we feel broken by this. Life works both ways. So, from the karma perspective, what is happening? Sometimes from the past, minus 90 is coming.
Sometimes from the past, plus 90 is coming. And that way, life is unfair. But in the big picture, life is unfair.
But in the big picture, it is fairly unfair. Fairly unfair means in some areas, we get worse than what we deserve. In some areas, we get better than what we deserve.
What we deserve means from this life’s perspective. So, our past karma is always a mixed bag. And that way, what happens? There is a logical element to karma and it helps us to make sense of life’s unfairness without going to either extreme, saying that there is only an illusion of order and there is actually no order.
Or it is just God is doing everything. Sometimes God is in a good mood, sometimes God is in a bad mood. No, it is neither.
So, when life seems to make sense, that means the frame of reference is small. I did this action, I got this result. When life does not seem to make sense, that means there is a bigger frame of reference over there.
Because bigger frame of reference means that no matter what happens, the things seem to work out for some people. So, one way to understand this particular principle would be, take the example of money. Some people may spend a lot of money, but if they have inherited a lot of money, then no matter how much they spend, they still seem to have a lot of money.
They are spending arbitrarily, but still nothing seems to be happening to them. This will take us to the concept of destiny, which we will talk about in the next session. But the point is that their actions will catch up with them.
Now, instead of inheriting property, somebody may inherit debts. What happens? This person has passed away or whatever, and then 100 people come claiming, oh, you have paid this money, he has taken this money, this money. What happened? Where did these people come from? So, the idea is that from us, we inherit both.
From the past, we inherit property and we also inherit debts. So, karma is a mixed bag for all of us. Now, that does not mean it is equally mixed for everyone.
But when life makes sense, that means it is a small frame of reference. When life does not make sense, it is a bigger frame of reference. So, many of you know that I need crutches for walking.
When I was about one, my mother, I was staying in a small town in Maharashtra, my mother took me to a nearby clinic to get the polio vaccine. And when she took me there, because it was a small town, the power supply would sometimes go off. And the previous night, the power supply there had gone off.
And because of that, the fridge in which they had kept the vaccines, that fridge had got heated up. And neither the attendant nor the physician noticed that. Because the fridge had got heated up, the germs of the vaccine had multiplied.
And when that vaccine was given to me, instead of preventing polio, it ended up causing polio. So, I was told that I was just learning to walk and I fell down, I could never walk normally thereafter. Now, I do not remember any of this, but my first memory of this was about two and a half, I was about two and a half or three, and a distant relative had come to our home.
And she was consoling my mother, saying, so sad your son got polio. And I remember my mother’s voice, very calm, clear, confident. She said, whatever he lacks physically, God will provide him intellectually.
So, now I do not know why she said that, whether it was an observation, she saw some intellectual ability in me, it was her hope, it was her prayer, it was a blessing, but somehow that stayed with me. Not the God part that came later, the intellectually part. And I did notice that I could not play athletic game like other kids could play, but I had some intellectual ability.
I could read and grasp things quickly, I could remember things well, I could articulate things logically. So, overall, in one area, so there was one boy in the neighbourhood who was very good at athletics. And he was very good at athletics and because I was like zero at athletics, so he would mock me, he would make fun of me, he would use words like cripple and other things.
Now, I do not feel hurt so much, I just feel irritated by it. Then one day his mother, one day my mother told me that his mother has approached him and she told that he is struggling in school in Maths and she wanted me to help him in Maths. And as my mother was completely, I vigorously shook my head, no.
My mother said, no, no, no, they are our neighbours and he is your friend. I shook my head even more vigorously, he is not my friend. So, then my mother insisted, no, you should help him.
So, then I relented and then when I was trying to help him in Maths, he was trying to understand, it was basic arithmetic, probably six or seven at that time and he just could not get it. As I was trying to explain, I realised probably his height was more than his IQ at that time. I do not want to sound sarcastic over here, but he just could not get it and a part of me wanted to laugh at him, make fun of him just as he had been making fun of me.
But then something stopped me and I thought that if he is making fun of me for my physical limitation and I make fun of him for his intellectual limitation, then what is really the difference between us? Am I not just doing the same thing that he is doing? So, that life, when we start off in life, we all have some limitations, which may seem unfair. Like some students, like all of you are in good colleges, you have much better IQ than most of most other students in India. Now, of course, you have had to work hard to use the IQ also, but we have some assets, we have some liabilities.
So, life is a mixed bag. And karma helps us to make sense of life. Is life unfair? Yes.
Life is unfair, but not illogical. Life is unfair, but not illogical, not arbitrary. Now, you could go further and say life is not unfair also, because the big picture is unfair.
What we are getting from a previous life, that is what is coming to us. But let us talk it from our own experience perspective. We can accept the unfairness of life without having to believe that life is completely arbitrary, life is chaotic.
And that is the key takeaway I will conclude with this class in CIT. See, quite often, karma is seen as a system of justice, it is talked about as a philosophy of judgement. Now, you have done something and you have to suffer for it.
But this is very rarely the way in which karma is talked about in scripture. Karma is primarily for encouragement. Not for judgement.
What does encouragement mean? It is not that you did something in the past, so you have to suffer now, shut up, don’t ask any questions, just shut up and suffer. That is not the mood of karma. Nobody tells Draupadi when she is dishonoured, you must have done some terrible karma because of your suffering now, just continue suffering.
No, it is not about judgement. Encouragement means that our actions matter, even if they don’t seem to matter. Sometimes we may be good to a person and that person may still be bad to us.
You start thinking what is the use of being good? Somebody may say, I have always eaten healthy, I have always exercised, I didn’t have any bad habits and still I got cancer. Your life cheated me. What is the use of living a good life? That is one way of looking at it.
Another way of looking at it is that because you have eaten healthy, because you have lived healthy, you have a better chance of beating this cancer. So, our good actions, our actions matter, even when they don’t seem to matter. Even when they don’t seem to matter.
So, how exactly our actions matter? That means that right now, I have done good worth 100 and all that I am getting a worth result is worth 10 only. So, what is the use of doing good? But the past is not infinite. If the past is say, minus 110.
Now, once this will become 500, what will happen? If I have done 100, I am getting minus 10. If it becomes 500, it will become 390. So, our actions matter, even if they don’t seem to matter.
It may be that I try to be good to people, but people are mean to me. It happens with one person, it happens with second person, it happens with third person. I should also be mean to everyone.
No, not necessarily. We should be naive and when we talk about dharma in our future sessions, we will talk about how to deal with difficulties. But broadly, the idea is that don’t give up hope.
Don’t give up hope that our actions matter, that we can create a better future. Karma is, the essence of karma is encouragement. When Krishna and Arjuna are discussing in the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna is God.
Krishna says, I am omniscient. And yet, Krishna does not give Arjuna any flashback saying that, oh, Arjuna, you were so and so in this life and Bhishma, you were so and so in that life and Duryodhana was so and so in that life and all of you have done this, this, because of which now you have to fight. They don’t do that.
What happens is Krishna says, this is the situation. Make the best of the situation. We will talk about how the Gita expands Arjuna’s frame of reference about how to, what to do in that particular situation.
But at this point, when we face life’s unfairness, understanding the principle of karma can help us to make sense of that unfairness. But that does not mean we have to accept the unfairness permanently. That we’ll discuss in a future session.
But the takeaway is, be encouraged. Even when bad things seem to be happening to us, even when we are doing good and nothing good seems to be resulting, that does not mean that life is just, our life is jinxed and we are ruined because of something beyond our control. It’s not like that.
Our actions matter. And if they don’t seem to matter right now, that just means we are going through a bad phase of karma. But that bad phase will end.
It’s like somebody has got a debt and you are putting somebody’s loan taken. In America, there is college loans. Students take loans so that they can get degrees.
And when they get a job, then what happens is, whatever gets paid for the job, from the employer side itself, the government takes the money. So like you are working, but your bank balance is not increasing only. So what is the use of working? No, you are working, money is coming, but because of some loans that money seems to be disappearing.
But the fact that you are working and earning, that is not going waste. It’s just that for some time the results may not come. It can also happen later on that we are doing work and at a particular time, we were supposed to inherit some money and we get it when we are 21 or we are 30.
And we put in, we work to get say $5,000 and we find our bank balance is $50,000. Hey, what happened? That way also life will treat us that way also. So our actions matter even when they don’t seem to matter.
The fala is cumulative. That’s why we cannot be sure whether the fala will come or not. But our karma will always make a positive difference if we are making positive choices.
So I’ll summarise what we discussed today. We discussed the concept of karma. What is the acronym? C was what? Concept.
So I discussed how the idea of karma, if you consider karma is universal first of all. It’s universal in the sense that it’s how we train children. It’s how we have relationships.
We accept people to be responsible in the relationship. It’s how we have justice systems. It’s how we have science.
That it is that action leads to result. That is a universal way we work. So we discussed the word karma itself.
I discussed four meanings of the word are action, reaction, combination and selection. But then when karma doesn’t seem to work, so when it doesn’t work, so what do we do? We expand the frame of reference. So expand the frame of reference means that if I am being kind to someone and that person is being rude to me, that doesn’t mean that that person is a fool.
Sometimes we have to explain the action. We can’t explain the immediate frame of reference. That person may be cruel, that cold because I was cold to that person before.
So expand the frame of reference. Then I talked about the insight. Now we may try to expand the frame of reference, but there’s a limit to that.
So life, we all will experience life’s unfairness. So life’s unfairness is where say we do action worth 100 and we get result worth 10. So how do we understand it? So we discussed two extremes.
One is the idea that everything is arbitrary. So there is an arbitrary reality and there is only an illusion of order, arbitrary reality ultimately. So we discussed this is philosophically and practically there is a problem.
Philosophically, why is there any order at all? Practically, what is the point of trying to be orderly? Anytime things can become impractical. And there is theism where God is arbitrary. This is Abrahamic religions.
So the problem with this is that such a God becomes unappealing, unattractive. Because of a bad mood, God is going to punish me. Then God becomes like a tyrant or dictator.
Who would want to love such a God? So the idea is that we have a bigger frame of reference, bigger picture comes through when karma is combined with reincarnation. That we all from our past life, we inherit a mixed karma bag. We inherit some, what all do we inherit? We inherit some property, we inherit some liability.
We inherit some debt also. The key point of takeaway is that karma is meant for encouragement, not judgement. So when we talk about destiny in the next session, judgement is one part of it, but that is not the key part of it.
The key part is encouragement. That our actions matter even when they don’t seem to matter. And that’s why even if life is unfair right now, it’s not going to be like that all the time.
Just keep moving forward and we will come to a better phase in our life. Thank you very much. Hare Krishna.
Shall we have questions later? It is already over time. One question anyone has? Yes, please. Three questions, but we will take one right now.
We will have time in the evening. My question was that you told that there are many actions which pertain to different reasons, like an example of ice cream. And there may be cause of different karmas and to that reason.
My question was, is that the fructifying of that karma is arbitrary or there is some order in that? Which karma will fructify where? Which previous life’s karma or this life’s karma is acting upon us? And the direct answer to that question is that no matter how much we expand our frame of reference, will there be always some arbitrary aspect or orderly aspect? Okay. So both these questions I think we cannot answer without going to the next session. So because without understanding, we won’t be able to answer it.
But yes, overall, it’s never that we will get a conclusive understanding. Like I said, even when Krishna was with Arjuna, it was not that Arjuna made Krishna omniscient, that Krishna did not tell why did this happen. So we are finite beings and there will always be something unknowable for us, which may seem arbitrary to us.
But is there an element of arbitrariness in the universe itself? Inherently? Maya, Adhyakshina, Prakriti, Suhya, Tasa, Characharam. So it works under divine supervision. So in that sense, we could say that ultimately there is no arbitrariness.
But then we don’t have the ultimate picture. So we need to prepare for sometimes life being unfair. And that is where understanding the concept of destiny helps us to face life’s slingshots, as Shakespeare said.
Life just hits us, we’re just walking along normally in life and somebody shoots an arrow at us. We didn’t do anything to anyone, why does arrow come upon me? So unfair slingshots come upon us. The concept of destiny will help us to understand it better.
But yes, from our perspective, we will never have a complete certainty about the non-arbitrariness of the universe. Because we never become omniscient. Does that answer your question? That is briefly? So we will continue 11 o’clock or 11.30? 11 o’clock.
So 11 o’clock we will resume again. And that time we will have some time for question and answer also. If you have any urgent questions, we can start with questions.
But that’s the time I’ll be talking about Daiva. So this was largely a much more analytical class today. But once you start understanding Daiva, we’ll look for more stories from scriptures to understand it, stories from different people’s lives also.
So we’ll look at it in the afternoon session. Thank you very much.