Destiny-Life’s invisible shaper 2 Karma logically explained, Kolkata youth camp || Chaitanya Charan

Let us move to the next one now. Today we will be talking about destiny. So, let us talk about destiny and the same framework we will use.

Chaitanya C is the concept. But before I go into the concept, broadly speaking, any person's life story could be analysed in terms of four broad factors that any person, see, if you want to see, okay, this person has become an IAS officer, this person has become a politician, this person has become an alcoholic. So, we may say different people have gone different directions.

So, basically, the idea is, karma is the idea that choices have consequences. That is the basic principle. But our life story is not just choices and consequences, it is that our choices are made in particular conditions.

Suppose somebody had a promising opportunity to go into IIT or go abroad to study, and they decided that their family, somebody in the family is sick, and they said, I want to take care of that family member. And or they have a big debt and they have to urgently take up a job. And that's why they cannot pursue that career option, pursue that higher education.

Then, okay, you can say that was a choice, you missed that opportunity. But then the choices we make are constrained by certain conditions. And we all have to operate within those conditions.

So nowadays, there's an increasing trend that say, Americans, Indians who go to America, they want to come back to India and settle. So, for many reasons, the social connections are much better in India. The West is quite a lonely place.

And financially also India has become better. But then, every place has its advantages and disadvantages. From a spiritual perspective, India is better.

From a material perspective, logistics take a lot of time, things don't work out, there's corruption. So, for example, somebody wants to do research. In the West, there is a much more egalitarian culture.

So, in India, there is a lot of hierarchy. So, there's a lot of bureaucracy and people can't move forward. So, there are conditions, every situation that is there, it brings certain conditions for us.

So, the choices are not made in isolation. They are made under some conditions. And you could say conditions come from above and the choices are also made with some conditionings.

That from inside us, we all have certain conditionings and those conditionings will determine how we function in life. Sometimes because of those conditionings, we may not be able to do some things. So, some people, conditionings can refer to many different things.

It doesn't necessarily have to mean something bad. Like somebody may be a very talented person, but they may be very temperamental. They are very moody.

One day, they play like a genius and the other day, they play in such a way that people want to throw them out of the court. Isn't it? So, that's a conditioning. Now, some people are more introvert, some people are more extrovert.

That is also a conditioning. I'm not using the word conditioning in a negative sense. It's just that we have certain internals within us, which push us to act in particular ways.

So, if we want to understand the full picture of a person's life story, these four factors need to be considered. In fact, anybody's life story, we could analyse with these four factors. What were the choices they made? What are the consequences they got for the choices? And what are the conditions in which they made the choices? And what were the conditionings they had within which way they made the choices? I am writing a book on the Mahabharata.

I am using this framework for analysing the various characters in the Mahabharata. We'll do that a little bit right now also. But broadly speaking, why am I discussing this right now? See, till now, we talked about, in the first session, we talked about karma.

Our actions matter. Therefore, try to make good choices and that will lead to good results. Even if the good results don't come immediately, it may take some time, but the results will come.

So, choices will lead to consequences, therefore make good choices. However, we don't make choices in isolation. So, the choices are made under certain conditions and certain conditionings and those are determined by daiva.

So, daiva or destiny determines the conditions that we face in our external world and it also determines the conditionings that we carry in our inner world. So, now, in today's session, I will be focussing primarily on the externals, the conditions. Tomorrow morning, I will talk about free will.

I mentioned, of course, something about free will and choices will be talked about today also. But the focus on how much daiva affects our conditionings, that we will discuss tomorrow morning. Today, how daiva puts us under certain conditions, destiny puts.

And then, under those conditions, we have to make some choice. So, somebody might be a very talented player. Say, suppose somebody is a very talented cricket player in America.

Then, in America, not much cricket is played. When I started going to America in 2014-2015, for the first time I went. So, I often give contemporary examples from sports and other things.

So, one of the American programme organisers, he told me, don't use any cricket examples. I asked him, why is that? He said, for Americans, cricket is an insect. It's not a game.

They don't even know about cricket as a game much. Now, they know because Indians are, the diaspora has become influential there to some extent. But the idea is, somebody is a cricket player in America, they may not have much growth prospects there.

On the other hand, somebody is a baseball player in India. Okay, you're talented in baseball, but what are you going to do over here? So, we all have certain conditions under which we operate. Now, can we change those conditions? We will discuss that.

But broadly, the conditions shape our choices. So, let's try to understand daiva from that perspective. So, essentially, what is destiny? Let's start with, like we did for karma, what do you think is destiny? I've already given some idea.

But when we use the word destiny, what does it mean? Collection of all choices. Choices or the consequences of choices. Okay.

Collection of, let's put it past. Collection of past actions. Okay, that's true.

Anything else? Yes. Okay. So, we could broadly say the uncontrollable.

So, uncontrollable things for us. So, if I'm giving a class, then the kind of what I speak is in my control. What kind of questions people ask is all in my control.

So, sometimes, I was in New Zealand and there they say that in public programmes, they generally don't encourage any question answer sessions. Two reasons. Most Kiwis, they are laid back.

They don't ask questions. And there are some people who are very provocative. They are the people who ask questions and they ask extremely delicate, sensitive, provocative, inflammatory kind of questions.

And so, now, you could say that sometimes you get into trouble, not because of what you did, but sometimes you just put in a situation like that. So, what is uncontrollable for us, we can say that is destiny. Okay.

So, anything else? Sorry? Unpredictable. Destiny is uncontrollable means also unpredictable. That is true.

Yes, please. Something already fixed. Okay.

Yeah. Destiny is fixed. So, it's a little uncomfortable to idea that something is already fixed for us.

But we look at it. What is fixed? What is not fixed? Yeah. Baggage of karmic reactions.

So, how is this different from collection of past actions? Something similar? Okay. So, baggage of karmic actions. So, whatever we have done, the actions that's stored over there.

Correct. Okay. I think most of you got the broad points.

So, destiny, I'll talk about it in two different ways. One is that destiny is past karma. But it is not just past karma.

It is past unprocessed karma. Unprocessed means what? We have processed food and unprocessed food. That is not the processing we are talking about over here.

So, unprocessed is not pure over here. Unprocessed basically means that, see, we did some action, but we didn't get a result for that action. Like I said that, I may do some action, that may be a result for the previous action.

But sometimes I may do an action and the result may not come immediately. So, the result gets stored. So, we may do certain actions in the previous life and we may get the result also in the previous life.

But certain actions we may do in a previous life and we may not get the result at that time. So, destiny is basically past unprocessed karma. So, now, if you look at it from this perspective, I look at it from one more perspective, but we will come to that later.

So, when we enter into life, we could say this is life, birth and death. Now, we have had lives before, we will have life after. But right now, when we enter into this life, we could say there is a cloud of karma that hovers above us.

This karma cloud is called destiny. And from that karma cloud, things are showered down upon us. So, now we get a major instalment of karma in terms of major impact of destiny happens at birth for us.

And for everyone, birth is both positive and negative. So, we were born in a particular family, we were born in a particular country, born at a particular economic level, we have particular genes. So, destiny, we get a major instalment from our past at the time of birth.

And that shapes a lot of things in our life. Say Indians who were born in America, that means the parents went to America, settled over there and the children were born over there. So, now, these Indians often find themselves in a very peculiar position.

Because they are growing up in America, they want to be Americans. But they can't be Americans because they have brown skin. So, typically, many American parents say our children are like coconuts.

Coconuts means what? Brown from outside, white from inside. So, they are culturally, they are American, they have grown up there, they have got educated over there. But their complexion is Indian.

They want to be American, but they just can't be. There is a certain constraint that comes. You could say that was it positive, negative? Well, it depends.

But that is there. So, a major set of things for us is shaped at birth. Now, in America, maybe people have relatively more prosperity, more convenience, more comfort.

That is a positive. But a negative is that there is a lot of social disruption, social alienation. So, typically in a school in India, if two kids meet, they'll ask, okay, where do your parents stay or where is your home? They ask, where do your parents stay? Typically, a kid in American school asks another kid, with which parent do you stay? It's tragic, actually.

It's not a laughing matter. Most kids, they live in broken families and it is very difficult for those kids to grow up. So, there is a positive, but there is also negative.

In India, we may say that, okay, when we were born over here, the competition is sometimes brutal. In America, since I started going to America, I never met a single American till now who has said, I am jobless. They just use a very casual phrase, say, I am between jobs.

So, like you are travelling between cities, okay, I am in this city, I will go to that city. So, there, they have not lived under the shadow of economic anxiety too much. So, poverty in America is very different from poverty in India.

In America, poverty means, oh, I am so poor, I am living in my car. And in India, if you have a car, how are you poor? So, the idea is that people, they don't have much financial anxiety. In India, you may say there is a lot of brutal competition over here, a lot of financial anxiety is there.

Now, America is also having financial anxiety. But the point I am making is that it's much more in India, the competition is much more, the financial anxiety is much more. But then, to a large extent, what sociologists call the social capital, we will put aside spirituality, there are relationships, there are families, there are extended families, and there is a lot of stability that comes from that.

So, every place has its positives and negatives. I am not bringing spirituality over here, even from material perspective. So, we, where we are born, in which family we are born, that determines one major instalment of destiny that comes upon us.

Now, after that, throughout our life, destiny may intermittently come upon us. And some of those, some of those may be positive, some of those may be negative. That means, sometimes we get a lucky break, and sometimes we break.

Sometimes bad things happen to us. So, I was in California, no, I was in Florida, in America. And one young man came to me after programme and he asked me, have you heard of the Midas touch? Have any of you heard this word, Midas touch? Anyone? Yes.

It's from a Greco-Roman mythology. There was this prince, king, whatever he would touch, it would turn into gold. So, he asked me, have you heard of the Midas touch? I said, yes.

He says, I think I have got the reverse Midas touch. He said, whatever I touch, it is gold before I touch it, and after I touch it, it turns into ashes. Whatever project I get involved in seems to destroy it.

Whatever relationship I get into, it just gets destroyed. Wherever I go, I just seem to leave a trail of doom and devastation over there. He says, what is going on in my life? Am I jinxed? So, he says, do I really have the reverse Midas touch? I told him, don't be so proud.

I said that you all go through phases in life and sometimes when we are going through a negative karma phase, that whatever we do doesn't work, whatever we do, it was working before it stops working also. So, sometimes it happens like that. So, destiny basically is this, we are thrust into certain conditions.

Now, I talk about, one aspect of destiny is, we talk about uncontrollables. The uncontrollables means what? That sometimes certain situations come upon us and those situations may be highly negative or highly positive. And there is very little that we can do about them.

It just happens. We might be going in a plane and the plane is hijacked. Now, could anyone have predicted that? It's not in our control.

So, there are things which are just beyond our control and they happen to us. And then we are put in certain situations that affect us substantially. Those situations constrain, constrain means limit our choices.

So, if somebody is born in India, one way that they are born into an Indian family, they will have brown skin. That is something which they cannot change. They are constrained in a particular way.

So, we all are put in certain conditions by destiny. So, that is one way of understanding it. Now, having said this, then the big question comes up, is destiny fixed or changeable? So now, before we go into that question, the further first question would be, is there something called destiny? Now, if we look at it from a very broad perspective, is there something called uncontrollable in our life? Of course, it is there, isn't it? So, in that sense, if that uncontrollable, we give it the name destiny, then every tradition has something like that.

In the Islamic tradition, they may call it Kismet. In the Greco-Roman tradition, they had another word for it. In Japan, they have another word for it.

In English, they generally call it, if it has negative connotation, they call it fate, fate and fortune. So, every tradition has some kind of word for destiny. The idea that something is uncontrollable.

So, if we use it in the sense of uncontrollable, then we could say it's universal, it's undeniable, that everybody has something uncontrollable in their life. Now, the other is, destiny means something which is inevitable. So, how many of you think there's a difference between the uncontrollable and the inevitable? Uncontrollable and inevitable.

How many of you think there's a difference? Okay. How many of you think there is no difference? Okay. The remaining think that the difference does not make any difference? Okay.

Now, the words can seem very similar. That's why I understand your hesitation. Uncontrollable and inevitable.

So, for example, we could say that if we are driving on a road and there's a drunk driver on the opposite side and we are driving safely following the rules, but the drunk driver comes and hits us. So, we could say that was uncontrollable. Now, it was uncontrollable means that it is beyond our control.

But does that mean it's inevitable? Sometimes destiny is used in the sense that it was meant to happen. So, now, is destiny inevitable? So, uncontrollable, we can say, yes, nobody can deny that everybody has uncontrollables in their life. But is the uncontrollable completely unchangeable or is something about it, can something about it be changed? That's the question.

So, let's try to understand whether it is inevitable. So, we will talk more about this when we, in the last session, I will talk about bhakti. But right now, let's consider from a practical perspective.

Say, if somebody is born in a poor family, is that uncontrollable for them? It's uncontrollable. So, or somebody is born in a well-to-do family, but because their family business goes bust, it goes, they become bankrupt. And now they, from a state of financial comfort, they have enormous financial hardship.

Is that uncontrollable? You could say, you know, that person is still a child or a teenager, they are not involved in the business. Maybe their parents or whoever handling the business, they made certain decisions. We could think that, okay, they could have changed the decisions, they could have invested more wisely or whatever.

But from the child's or teenager's perspective, that's uncontrollable. So, now, generally, you might think the uncontrollable and the inevitable are the same thing. That is uncontrollable is inevitable.

Yes and no. What is the difference over here? Largely, by destiny, what is going to happen to us, certain events will come in our life, no matter what we do about it. We may try in many ways to avoid them, but some things will happen.

So, in that sense, we can say the uncontrollable is inevitable. However, there is the event and there is the experience of the event or there is the impact of the event. What happens to us and how we experience it? And these two are non-equal.

What happens to us and how we experience it? Let us explain from some simple perspectives now. Suppose that in somebody's destiny, it is there that they are going to be betrayed. Betrayed means maybe they go into a business partnership with someone and their business partner cheats them or they get into a romantic relationship and their partner cheats on them, whatever.

So, they are going to be betrayed. Now, this can be devastating. It can be extremely painful.

In the Ramayana, when Lakshman is chastising Sugriva, he says ingratitude is the worst of sins. Now, we say there are so many greater sins than ingratitude. There is murder, there is rape, there is child abuse, so many things we can think of are worse than ingratitude.

But the context he is talking about is that when we do something for someone, and that person just completely neglects us, then that can make us lose faith, not just in that person, it can make us lose faith in humanity itself. And that is a very dark place to be in. If we start thinking everybody is a bad person, nobody is trustworthy, we will become very lonely.

So, in that sense, one act of betrayal by one person can scar the other person for life. So, it can be devastating. Now, we could say by destiny, some person was supposed to be betrayed.

Now, that person, let us put it this way, is considered that this is their life journey, is considered to play. And in their life, betrayal is going to come upon them. Now, both of them are going to be hurt by betrayal.

Now, say one person is a good person, other person is not so good person. That means, say the first person is good in this and that, let us take in the relationship itself. That person is kind, that person is helpful, person is service orientated, is gentle.

And the other person is cold, is manipulative, is exploitative, has a use and throw attitude towards people. Now, both of them are going to be, say, by destiny, they are going to suffer a betrayal. So, now, for whom will the betrayal hurt more? Sorry? The good person, isn't it? That, you know, I was such a good person.

I was so kind and helpful and gentle and still I was betrayed. And that person may think, what is the use of being good? Now, in the case of the bad person, will the bad person feel hurt? They will also feel hurt. They will not feel hurt that that person betrayed me.

That person says, I should have betrayed him before he betrayed me. Isn't it? So, the idea would be that both of them will feel hurt. You can say the good person may feel hurt more.

But you can look at it from another perspective. When that person is betrayed, if that person has been good, been kind, helpful, polite, then others will come to help at that time. Isn't it? On the other hand, if the person has been mean and cold and exploitative and manipulative, when that person is betrayed, nobody will come to help at that time.

So, we could say that our present actions, now the betrayal is going to happen in one sense independent of the present actions. In that sense, the betrayal was inevitable. Let us go with that idea right now.

But at the same time, because of our good behaviour, the impact of the betrayal may be lesser and other people come to help us at that time. So, in that sense, how much of destiny is fixed? That is difficult to say. In terms of the event, it is fixed.

In terms of how we experience the event, how much pain we go through because of the event subjectively as well as objectively. Subjectively means how much we feel shocked and shattered by that and subjectively means how much resources do we have to deal with that situation. That is variable.

So, now I have already transited from the concept to insight, but let us look at it a little bit more. So, let us consider a four quadrant diagram where we have our present karma and we have our past karma as the two axis. X axis, present karma can be positive or negative.

Y axis, the past karma can be positive or negative. And in that way, we can have four quadrants starting from the right bottom going to the right top. We go clockwise.

So, we could have four situations, the present karma is positive, past karma is negative. Both karmas are negative. Present karma is negative, past karma is positive and both are positive.

So, now, if you want to understand this in terms of mathematics, then what is going to happen is if my present karma is positive and my past karma is positive, then what will happen is I will get whatever I do, the results will come out more than what I said. So, you could say in this zone, we will be super effective. This is where that I used the term earlier, the Midas touch, whatever you do turns into gold.

Like some people are startup geniuses, they buy a company and just turn it around and they make it a booming company and they sell it and they start another company, they do that, it's the same thing. So, whatever they are doing, it seems to work. This is a phase where we are super effective.

Now, if present karma is positive and past karma is negative, then what might happen is our present karma is 50, past karma is minus 50. So, what may happen is we are doing a lot, but we don't seem to be getting any result. Now, if both are negative, what's going to happen? So, here what is going to happen? If present karma is positive and past karma is negative, we will be, you could say, under effective.

We are trying to do things, but things are not working out. Now, if the past karma is negative and present karma is negative, then what is going to happen? Nothing is going to work, isn't it? That is, we are in a bad situation and we are doing bad things. So, we could say in this situation, a person is doomed.

They are in a dark direction. Now, on the other hand, if the past karma is positive, the present karma is negative. Now, here the person may become destructive.

Why? Because that person will think that I can get away with doing bad things. There is no result coming upon. Now, you can just play around with this and say that person what he is doing is minus 50, but their past karma is 500.

Then they are doing bad things, but they are still getting good results. On the other hand, now, if you could play it over here, that person is doing bad karma, doing good karma, but the past karma is coming in. So, for all of us, if we consider these four quadrants now, 1, 2, 3, 4, which is the best quadrant to be situated in? You already mentioned that.

4th. Now, which is the worst quadrant to be situated in? 2nd. Yes.

So, which is the worst quadrant to be situated in? Whichever quadrant we are in feels worst. Isn't it? Even if we are in 1, I am working so hard, why are things not working out? It will feel terrible. So, we could say none of these are pleasant quadrants to be.

And subjectively speaking, whichever quadrant we are in, it feels terrible. It may feel the worst situation to be. But more objectively speaking, which is the worst? 3rd would be the worst.

Because why? We are doing bad things and because we are not getting any bad results, we will continue doing the bad things. And we think that, oh, if I am just clever enough to get away with these problems, to get away by doing bad things, let me continue doing the bad things. So, that way, it's a very difficult or dangerous situation to live.

Now, somebody wants to do bad things, but they have bad karma from the past. So, not much they will be able to do. So, they will not be able to do anything substantially.

They just get themselves into more and more trouble. So, let's try to take some examples. Now, when you say these four quadrants, it's not that a person is lifelong situated in one of these quadrants.

We also keep changing. Our own present actions, sometimes we may do good things, sometimes we may do bad things. Similarly, sometimes in terms of phases of karma, we may go through good phases, we may go through bad phases.

So, if you consider the lives of the Pandavas, when they were young, they lost their father. They lost their father and the sages told them, they told Kunti, you are a single mother now, this forest is no place for you without your husband, your children are still small, there are many dangerous animals in the forest, better you go back to the kingdom. The sages escorted her to the kingdom.

Little did they know that in the kingdom, in the palaces, there were animals more dangerous than the forest animals. There was Duryodhana who was vicious, who was wicked and there was Dhritarashtra who was weak. So, we could say in this phase, when the Pandavas lost their father and were persecuted by their cousin, they were in which quadrant? In the Pandavas persecuted.

Yes, first quadrant. So, when you say the Pandavas are persecuted, they were in the first quadrant. Now, the Pandavas performed the Rajasuya Yajna, the Pandavas made Khandav forest into Indraprastha, they performed the Rajasuya Yajna, they had a glorious celebration.

So, Yudhishthira became the emperor of the world. That means they were in which quadrant at that time? Fourth quadrant. Yes, the Pandavas were prosperous.

Now, after that the Pandavas were exiled. That means they were in which quadrant again? They again went into the first quadrant. And then finally, the Pandavas defeated the Kauravas and then they got the kingdom back.

Then they came back into the fourth quadrant. So, basically, even the good people. So, why do bad things happen to good people? It is because they are in a particular karma phase.

So, past karma phase is negative. And sometimes we might just be thrown out. Apparently, because of no fault of ours.

Now, I will talk a little bit more about how karma works. But you can consider that when Bhima was given the poison cake, was there any mistake from his side? He had no idea that Duryodhana was a vicious person, that he could do something like this. That was terrible.

So, he was aghast because of that. So, we could say there is practically no fault of his. When the Pandavas were burnt, were attempted to be burnt in the Karnavarth, was there any fault of theirs? Well, again, you could say they could have suspected it and they were aware of it.

They made some precautions against it. They prepared themselves. But again, they did not themselves make any mistake.

So, now, when the Pandavas were exiled to the forest, when Draupadi was robbed, at that time, was it their fault? Well, you could say, maybe it was partially their fault. Yudhishthira gambled. If Yudhishthira had not gambled, then all this would not have happened.

So, this is where I told earlier the difference between uncontrollable and inevitable. So, was this, was Yudhishthira's gambling inevitable? Was Duryodhana deciding to reject Krishna's peace proposal and fight the war? Was it inevitable? So, this is where how much destiny affects our conditionings. How much destiny affects what we think inside us and how we desire and how we decide.

That is what we will talk about in tomorrow's session. But broadly speaking, if you consider, we desire, we deliberate. Deliberate, desire means it is at the level of the mind.

Deliberate means the intelligence comes in and then we decide. So, desire, deliberate, decide. Now, this can go in opposite directions, can go in unwanted direction, can go in a positive direction also.

So, how much is destiny involved in this? So, is it that our actions cause destiny to happen? So, if somebody wanted to go for a party and told them don't go for that party and they go for that party and their car meets with an accident when they are going there and they die or they get severely injured. See, I told you didn't go for that party, still you went. So, now was it that they went to that party and then they met with an accident and they suffered or was it that it is going to happen anyway? They had not gone to a party, they went to the party and a car crashed them, into them when they are going along.

Could it be that they were going to be at home and a car would crash into their home and injure them? We can say anything is possible. So, this is where destiny becomes a little complex. So, I talked about one thing that destiny, how much it impacts us, that can depend on how we act right now.

I may be betrayed, but if I have been a good person, others will come and help me. That is one aspect of how destiny is not exactly fixed. We can change the impact of destiny.

Okay, there is one more aspect with which I will conclude the insight part and then we will lastly move to the takeaway. See, say in our life journey, there are two possibilities. Say there are four terrible things that are going to happen to us.

Maybe we are going to get some terrible disease. We are going to get into debt. Maybe we invest money and lose it somewhere and we get a lot of debt.

Maybe there is going to be a death of a loved one in our family. And maybe there is going to be betrayal. So, assume these things are distinct.

Each of these can be very, very difficult to deal with. But now, let us consider another scenario where a person is going through life and all four of these hit the person at the same time. You know, this could be unbearable, isn't it? If all four of them, the disease, debt, betrayal, debt, they lose a loved one, somebody else betrays them, they get some terrible disease, at the same time they lose their money.

This could be unbearable. So now, if by our actions, we can cause this to be distributed rather than concentrated, that can make it more bearable for us. The problem is still going to come upon us, but it is all problems coming at the same time versus those problems coming over a period of time distributed.

So, our choices do matter. Like suppose, somebody neglects their health. At the same time, they spend a lot of money.

At the same time, they alienate people around them. At the same time, they neglect some person who is close to them. And then all four hit them.

The person whom they neglect, they pass away. The person whom they alienated, that person betrays them. They have been fooling around with money and they suddenly end up in debt.

And they have been fooling around with dangerous forms of enjoyment and they get some terrible disease. Now, our present actions may determine when our past actions hit us. So, destiny in terms of the karma baggage that we have, that is fixed.

But when that karma baggage hits us, that we can determine that by our actions. So, and you can see that it is not very difficult to understand. Say, suppose somebody has inherited a lot of debt and there are four big debtors.

Now, if this person is living responsibly, they say, okay, this is how I am, this is the job I am doing, this much I am earning, this much I need to save, use for my family. With this, I will repay your debt. And the person is honest, upstanding, hardworking.

And some debtors may say, okay, we need our money back, but we do not want to create more trouble than we did. Then okay, you can repay it in 5 years, 10 years. But suppose this person is mean and manipulative and this person tries to fool others and then all the debtors come, we want the money now.

Then this person would be in far greater trouble. Isn't it? So, our present actions do matter. Our present actions make a difference.

That is why the whole idea of destiny is not meant to sentence us to passivity. Oh, this is destiny, so you can do nothing about it. Just shut up and accept it.

No, we have to use our intelligence to make the best choice we can in the condition that we are in. So, going back to this particular diagram now, if we consider when the Kauravas, when Duryodhana was in the kingdom and the Pandavas were not in the kingdom. So, Duryodhana was living in royal prosperity.

He was in royal luxury and he was expected that he will be the king. So, at that time, Duryodhana was in which quadrant? Yes. So, we could say Duryodhana before the Pandavas, before the Pandavas arrival.

Now, once the Pandavas came, Duryodhana started scheming against them, trying to poison, trying to burn, trying to dishonour, trying to defraud. Now, ironically, what happened, each of the things that Duryodhana did, initially they seemed to succeed, but eventually they backfired. The Pandavas emerged stronger.

He poisoned Bhima and Bhima came out having become much stronger. He tried to burn the Pandavas. The Pandavas had to live in exile, but then they married Draupadi and allied with Draupadi, they became stronger.

So, his plans did not work. So, when Duryodhana was scheming against the Pandavas, he was in which quadrant? Because this was to some extent fourth, third and fourth. Duryodhana's, let's put it this way, like Duryodhana's schemes.

So, while they were working, we could say he was in quadrant, he was in quadrant three. And when they started backfiring, he went into quadrant four. So, the idea is that for us, whether we will be in the upper half of the quadrant or the bottom half, the upper half of the four quadrants or the lower half of the four quadrants, that is not in our control.

Sometimes, despite our good actions, we may be thrust into bad phases by our past karma. But what we can do is, we can choose whether we will be in the right half or the left half. So, ideally, what we try to do is, we try to make sure that our present karma is positive, whether our past karma is negative or not, or positive.

And we try to make sure that we do not do our present karma in a negative way. So, if we act in this way, even if we are going through a dark present, we are creating the best foundation for a brighter future. It may not come out immediately.

But the idea is, do your present karma well. And doing our present karma rightly is called as dharma. So, what dharma is and how dharma works, that we will discuss more in tomorrow's session, because dharma also talks about how much is our free will and how we can act according to our free will, how much our conditionings shape our actions.

So, I will summarise what I discussed today. Broadly speaking, we discussed the concept of destiny. So, in the concept, we discussed destiny is what? Destiny is our past unprocessed karma.

That means the karma which we did and the results did not come for that. So, our past unprocessed karma that exists like a cloud above us. And from that cloud, we get some instalments, major instalment at birth and in between birth, it could be negative and positive both.

Sometimes some of the things come negative, some of them come positive. So, now, in that way, all of us have destiny. So, if we consider destiny as unavoidable or rather uncontrollable, then that is something which nobody can deny.

It is very much there. Everybody has uncontrollables in their life. Now, destiny as inevitable is what is destined meant to happen.

That is what we discussed. We have certain past karma and that past karma is going to bring certain results in our life. So, now, can we control them? Can we change them? Just for the insight, we discussed that two things what we can change is the past karma that is going to come by destiny.

We can change its effect and the effect can be changed based on, like I discussed, if somebody is going to be betrayed, but they don't, they are good people, then others will help them and we can change its timing. These are changeable for us in that sense. We may be able to minimise the effect of destiny for us.

We cannot change what is there in the karma bank, negative, positive, but we can change how it impacts us. And then the takeaway was related to the insight itself. We talked about these four quadrants, our present karma being positive or negative, our past karma being positive or negative.

So, we discussed that how it is best to be situated in the right half and not in the left half. We cannot control whether we will be in the first upper side or the lower side. That is not in our control.

But whether we are in our whether our present karma is positive or not, that is something we can control and that way we can create a brighter future even if there is a difficult situation for us. So, we discussed how the Pandavas during their life, they were sometimes up and sometimes down here. And the Kauravas, they were also sometimes up and sometimes down.

But the Kauravas did not do good, make good actions. That is why eventually they were doomed. Thank you very much.

Hare Krishna. So, is it sufficiently confusing? Sufficiently confusing means I talked about education means that we show the simplicity in the complex and the complexity in the simple. So, karma is not as simple as we think.

But it is somewhat understandable. Any questions or comments? So, how to understand which kind of karma when it gets repeated, like when we get it, how we get it? See, the point of karma, like I mentioned, it is more of encouragement than judgement. Overall, the point of karma is not to have a constant flashback system.

So, is karma meant for justice? Yes, it is meant for justice. But it is meant for something much, much more than justice. If we consider it simply to be a legal system, you know, you did something and so you have to suffer for that.

But then that obvious question comes up that what did I do? Why am I not told what I did? How can I learn if I don't even know what I did was wrong? So, all those questions come up. That's why framing karma primarily as a justice system, it is not very logically sustainable. So, the idea is that there is the principle of accountability, that we are accountable for our actions.

But beyond that, the point of karma is that we learn to make good choices now. It's not that we have to go through flashbacks of what bad choice we did when and how that bad choice led to a particular result now. Because as I said that it's not necessary that when we get into a particular situation, we exactly had done something similar to that person.

No, it would be, nobody suggests to Draupadi that she was like Dushasan in the previous life and she did something like that to somebody. No. So, it's not at all like that.

Now, there are some cases where karma may work in that way. Say that if you kill a cow, then you will become a cow and you will be killed. Now, Bhaktivinoda Thakur says that these examples are more indicative than descriptive, that they indicate the principle of karma.

Does it mean that every single cow who is killed has to become a human being and every single human being who has eaten cow flesh has to become a cow? Not necessary. The point is accountability. How accountability comes, that can vary according to time, place, circumstances.

That's why the whole focus of karma is forward looking, not backward looking. It's forward looking means, this is the situation I'm facing in my life. How can I make the best of this situation? Backward looking is, oh, you know, what did I do? Because of this, this happened and because of that, that happened, because of that, that happened.

That's a very difficult direction to go. And in general, because it's an important question, I was trying to talk about this in the bhakti part, but I'll mention it now. See, whenever there is a disease, if there is disease and there is suffering, we want to know the cause of the disease and we want to know the cure of the disease.

So now, if you consider among these four quadrants, the worst would be, you neither know the cause nor know the cure. Know or don't. Know the cure or don't know the cure.

Now, best is that we know the cause and we know the cure. But in many diseases, in modern medicine, they are called as idiopathic diseases. Idiopathic means basically, they tell the doctors you are idiots.

No, nothing to do with idiopathic, idiot. Basically, you know, we just don't know the cause. For example, for many cancers, what exactly is the cause? People say, oh, you are expected this pollution and that thing and so many other people are exposed to that also.

So now, in this situation, where we don't know the cause, but we know the cure. Now that this has happened, to do this surgery, do this chemotherapy or take this medicine or whatever. And cancer is becoming curable increasingly.

Not all forms of cancer, but many cancers are curable. So, the broad Vedic understanding is that in terms of the specifics, the cause of suffering, specific causes, suffering is idiopathic. That idiopathic means that we can't know for sure exactly what is the cause.

So, in the Bhagavatam first canto, when Parikshit and Dharma, who comes in the form of bull, they have a discussion. At that time, Parikshit asks Dharma, what is the cause of your suffering? And he says, vākya-bheda-vimohita. Since different philosophers have different ideals about the cause of suffering and ultimately it's impossible to know.

So, that's why the whole focus of karma is, the understanding karma, the point of understanding karma is the focus of karma philosophy. It is forward looking. It is not backward.

Now, when you say it is not backward, doesn't mean the backward is not important. Forward means focus on what is the cure. Backward is to try to understand the cause.

Now, we try to understand the cause, but sometimes we accept that we just don't know the cause. Not that there is no cause. Say, if we are having a class on Zoom or we are making a phone call and the internet connection goes off for some time.

Now, is there a cause why the internet connection went off at that point? Well, yeah, there might be, maybe there's a storm over there, maybe the people who are managing the internet, the company had some outage, whatever. But from our perspective, okay, live with it now. Try to make another call, reschedule the call, try to call through some other server or network provider or whatever.

So, from a practical perspective, this is how we deal with much suffering also. We are forward looking. Okay, this is there now, how can I deal with it? So, the point of karma is to focus on what is forward.

Now that this has happened, let's move ahead. So, but in a practical situation, within a one lifetime, so one does something bad and he gets some condition that has to be found. So, then it becomes really easy for him to look back, okay, this is what I've done and now I can make good choices.

But when it's about past life or something, so it becomes difficult to relate with it. So, yeah, that is true. But if you look in scripture also, that there's no description of what the Pandavas did previously, what Parikshit had done because of which he got cursed.

Now we can say Parikshit is making a mistake. That was like, you could say, it was like a mistake worth five, minus five. And being cursed to die in seven days is like minus five million.

Such a tiny mistake and such a huge, huge punishment for that. But it doesn't go in that direction. So, generally speaking, the idea is once a life is over, the particularities of those choices are done and we are over with that.

The next life is for us to make a fresh start. Now, when we make a fresh start, we will make that within the constraints of certain circumstances. And whatever circumstances we are put in, we try to make the best choices within those circumstances.

That is the idea of Dharma. And Dharma is a technical concept. It's not just simply religion or duty.

Maybe today in the evening before we start question and answer, I'll talk about Dharma. But yes, so it is not that we have to agonise over what exactly I did wrong in the past and how I can learn from it. But now, this is where I am.

Let me move ahead from here. In psychotherapy also, there is Sigmund Freud was the pioneer of this idea that we all have traumas from our childhood. And because he had this idea, we are repressed sexual desires as well as traumas.

And as long as those are there, we cannot really move ahead in life. So, we have to deal with those. Now, yes, there is some truth to that, but there are other therapists also who say that, you know, whatever is in the past, how much will you keep going in the past? When Prabhupada asked about it that we have had shocks in the past, Prabhupada said, you will have shocks in the future.

Isn't it? Life is shocking in one sense. Life is filled with shocks. So, now, sometimes some past choices, they impact us very severely in this life.

So, we may have to, not in this life, some past choices impact us very badly now. Then we may go backward to try to figure out what exactly happened. But in general, this is the situation where you talk about justice.

See, there is justice and there is just is. Life sometimes just is. And we can never have absolute justice in life.

What do you mean absolute justice? Say, for example, there are two players and there are two fast bowlers. And one fast bowler is six and a half feet tall, the other is, say, five feet tall. Now, that six and a half feet will give a huge advantage to that bowler.

Now, you can say this is unfair. I want to have justice. What are you going to do, cut off the legs of the other person? No, that just is.

So, we have to, to some extent, accept that life, in many things in life, it just is that way. And we work within the constraints of the situation to make the best choices. So, yeah, you can pass the mic whoever has the mic.

So, can you please explain this concept of destiny and karma subject with your own life example from the childhood leg incident to become a wonderful preacher? Well, I do not know about a wonderful preacher, a struggling preacher, but okay, I will put it in a different way. I was going to talk about destiny about this in tomorrow's session. But let me talk about from practical perspective about what is changeable, what is not changeable.

I have a maternal uncle in America. And he was one of the first people who went to America. He went to the late 1970s itself.

So, when I got this polio, when he came to know about it, he was so angry, he called my father. And he said, sue the clinic over there. Now, my father is one of the most peaceful persons I know in life.

His favourite verse from the Bhagavad Gita is sthita pragya, like a very stoic. So, he said the Indian legal system is such that if we try to sue, the problem will become old before the court case comes here for hearing also. Now, he has already got the polio.

Let us work on dealing with it the best way they can. My parents took a lot of therapies, tried a lot of treatments. But in one sense, they accepted that this cannot be changed.

So, now, when I was in America, I met one devotee. He is also a disciple of Radhanath Maharaj. And he was telling me his story that when his wife was pregnant, this was in America and Florida.

So, there's some kind of complications that she was taken to the clinic, not a serious complication, not an emergency, but a minor complication, she was taken to the hospital. And then, during the process of delivery and subsequently, there is some negligence because of which the baby's head was put to too much pressure and whatever. So, the baby was born with cerebral palsy and a host of other problems, quite painful.

So, then he wrote to the spiritual master and asked him, Maharaj, should I consider that what has happened to me? Is my past karma and should I accept it or should I sue the doctor? So, Maharaj replied to him saying that, what has happened, you have to accept that. But more importantly, you have to accept the responsibility of taking care of your daughter. That is your dharma.

And if you can get any assistance in doing that dharma, then you should seek that assistance. So, he sued the hospital and because it was a clear case of medical negligence, the hospital settled out of court. And he has got a fairly stable financial arrangement so that she will be taken care of, medically speaking, for as long as she lives.

So, now this does not undo the fact that she is severely physically and mentally damaged. But the fact is that when certain things happen to us, it is not that everything about it is inevitable. So, we can mitigate certain things.

So, now, in one sense, say, like I talked about, our choices happen under some conditions. So, Indian legal system is also changing now to some extent. Still, there is a huge overload of cases and other things.

But in particular conditions, we have the option to make some choices. In particular conditions, we may not have those options. So, we make the best choice in the condition that we are in.

So, for me, when I got the polio, I would say that physically speaking, I had no, there is not much cure for polio. Although I have some mobility, I have. But intellectually, I tried to develop.

I was always interested in the power of knowledge. I felt that knowledge can, education can open doors for others and for myself. So, I used to help other students who were not so good at studies.

When I was in college, I joined a social welfare organisation, and I was a part of the educational wing, where I focused on trying to help kids from slums, from underprivileged areas, to do their studies better. So, I think because of that, because of the physical disability, as well as whatever intellectual gift I had, I developed a lot of appreciation for the value of knowledge. And I was sharing that kind of knowledge.

It was satisfying. But what I noticed is that these kids, as well as their parents, they are from dysfunctional families, there is alcoholism in the family. And it was, if you consider life's journey, we all want breaks in our lives.

So, the doors are opened so that we can go into a bigger and better life. We want doors to be opened. And that is important, the doors to be opened.

But in the journey of life, there are trap doors. Trap doors is, you can fall into them. And these trap doors need to be closed.

The trap doors could be our own addictive desires. Trap doors could be our own self-sabotaging emotions, our own constant self-doubt and negativity. So, I felt that through material education, these doors are being opened, but it is through spirituality that the trap doors can be closed.

And so that is how I felt inspired from, so basically, when the social service was trying to do that, I felt that unless these trap doors are closed, I might be able to help the students do well in their exams. But if they succumb to bad habits, then how much are they going to be helpful? So, I felt that trying to close those trap doors is very important. And it is spiritual knowledge that helps us, spiritual growth that helps us to close the trap doors inside us.

So, I think that whole point of karma and destiny, by destiny we are limited in some ways, by destiny we are gifted in some ways. So, we then look at our gifts and then we see how we can try to use those gifts in a bad mood of service to Krishna. Thank you.

Any other questions? Yes, go ahead. So, what I am saying is that, whether the unprocessed karma will come in a distributed way or a concentrated way? What the point I was making is, we don't know that. But our choices can make a difference.

That if we are making good choices now, if we are making good choices now, then at the same time, when we are betrayed by someone, that's not the time when we will be abandoned by everyone else. Betrayed means somebody hurts us. Abandoned means nobody else comes to help us.

So, betrayal is far worse than abandonment. But if we are betrayed by our present karma, because our present karma is good, people don't abandon us, people support us at that time. That will be good.

So, in that sense, our present karma can determine whether our past karma comes to us in a concentrated way or a distributed way. So, that's how our present karma can affect the manifesting of our past karma. Let's keep that for the bhakti part, fourth session.

See, karma has a rational aspect and karma has a mystical aspect. So, right now, we are going to focus on the rational aspect. Only in the fourth session, we'll talk about the mystical aspect.

Mystical aspect is Krishna's intervention. I'll send the slides to the organisers and then you can get from there. Yes, there are similar talks, not exactly this talk, but there are similar talks.

I have my website, the spiritualscientist.com. There are many talks on destiny and karma over there. This will also come on my channel. I have two channels.

One is Chaitanya Charan, which is my main channel. The second is a channel called the Spiritual Scientist CCD. This will mostly come on one of those channels in the next few days.

Okay, there are two ways of looking at this. So, if something bad has happened to someone and then they, because of that, they blame God and they become atheistic. So, how to help them in that situation? I was in America, I was in university.

One boy came to me and he started a discussion after the class. He said, I am an atheist. And I said, okay, but then what turned you towards atheism? So, he said, when I was around five, both my parents were killed in a car accident.

They were quite religious people. We used to go to church regularly. Why did God let this happen to me? From that time, I stopped believing in God.

So, I said that a God who does these things, because God is unfair, is cruel. So, then I was in a fairly good university. So, I asked him, what happened to you after your parents passed away? He said, I had no relatives who could take me in.

So, I went from foster home to foster home. And then he said, then I went to an orphanage. He said, then when I was around 13, a very good family adopted me.

They are not religious people, they are good people. And they encouraged me. And that's how I got into this university now.

So, I told him that, okay, how old were you when you said you were 13? He said, yes. So, what is the probability of a 13-year-old child getting adopted? Generally, when parents want to adopt, they want to adopt generally a small child so that they can give good impressions to the child, teach the child good habits. They can also have the joy of raising the child.

Once a person becomes a teen, nobody wants to adopt them. So, he said, yeah, it's very rare. I was very lucky.

So, I said, wait a minute. Earlier, you said that God was unfair to you that He took away your parents. Aren't you being unfair to God? He said, what do you mean? He said, when something bad happened to you, you lost your parents, you said, why did God do that? But when something good happened to you, you got placed in an excellent foster home, a family who adopted you from orphanages and it was a very rare chance thing to happen.

At that time you are saying, it's good luck. So, either you attribute both to luck or you attribute both to God. Isn't it? Like when bad things happen, God is responsible.

When good things happen, I am lucky. It doesn't work like that. So, my point is that this is not being facetious.

But in general, when somebody is going through distress in their life, at that time, it's best not to first get into the cause. It's best to, like I said, focus on the cure. Try to be of help to that person at that time.

That if they feel that a person who is godly, a person who is clearly affiliated to God in some way, is so kind and helpful and gentle, that will increase their openness to God or their faith in God much, much more than any philosophical argument at that particular point. So, our concern should not be at that time to try to prove to them that God is not responsible. That is not the focus.

See, we should have a service attitude, not a defensive attitude. Defensive attitude is, how dare you challenge my faith? How dare you say that God is not good? Service attitude is, this person is hurting right now. How can I help this person in this particular way? In Mumbai, we have a Bhaktivedanta Hospital where we have a, it's a hospital run by devotees and we have a whole spiritual care department.

And the devotees from that department, they offer emotional and spiritual support to the patients. And just they being there to talk, to be kind, to be helpful, that makes lots of people become very favourable. That is a place where there are lot of Muslims also staying in that area.

But the Muslims are also very favourable to the hospital and to the devotees. So, we don't need to make every issue into there is God and there is the explanation of God's actions. Or explanation of life, what is happening.

And there is the experience. So, for many people, it is the explanation that is, the experience that is more important. It's a greater than sign, whatever it looks like.

So, that, you know, if they experience kindness, if they experience a service attitude, helpfulness, that will soften their heart. And whatever is the cause, even if they blame God, God is not so insecure that you blame me, I'll punish you for that. People are hurt at that time.

And when they are hurting, they will lash out at that particular time. So, we don't have to focus on telling them that God is good and God will help you. The point is that we be there to help them in whatever way we can.

And gradually they may open themselves. So, I don't think when a person is in great distress, that's the time. Now, after they have gone through the distress and they have calmed down a little bit, then after that they may become philosophical.

And then we can have philosophical discussion. But immediately when they are in distress, that's the time when they are very emotional. And that's the time when they need solace.

When Abhimanyu was killed, Arjuna was shattered at that time. Arjuna blamed himself. He said, I went in pursuit of my own glory.

I went and fought with Susharman and I was not there. My son would have called out for me and I was not there at that time. Then he blamed Bhima and Duryodhana, Bhima and Yudhishthira.

He said, are all your weapons just ornaments? Could not one of you protect my son? Then he turned to Krishna and he said, Krishna, surely you must have known what was happening. Why didn't you tell me? So, Arjuna did not tell. Arjuna broke down.

He was in tears. At that time, Krishna did not lash out at Arjuna. Just 13 days ago, I spoke the Bhagavad Gita.

And in the Bhagavad Gita, I said, A sober person is not bewildered by death. He says, have you already forgotten the Bhagavad Gita? Can't you apply the Bhagavad Gita? Maybe I should have found out some other person to speak the Bhagavad Gita to. I made a mistake by speaking the Gita to you.

No, Arjuna and Krishna did not do that. What did Krishna do? Krishna took a very pragmatic approach. Krishna said, Arjuna, in this world, adversity befalls everyone.

The good people and the bad people, the wise people and the unwise people. What differentiates the two is what they do in response. The unwise people, when bad things happen, they often act in ways that makes things worse.

The wise people act in ways that makes things better. So, Arjuna, just as you are hurting because of the death of Abhimanyu, so are Yudhishtira and Bhima hurting. Just look at their faces.

Please don't speak words that will increase their pain. So, that is when Arjuna shifted his focus. Arjuna, so basically what did Arjuna do? The death of Abhimanyu had happened.

That is something which he cannot do anything about. But then, now he could say, he could blame himself for the death. I was not there.

He could blame his brothers. He could blame Krishna. But he took action at a particular level.

What was that? He said that the Pandavas had made a good plan that the Chakravyuh was there and Abhimanyu would make the Chakravyuh and many Pandavas would follow inside and they would destroy the Chakravyuh from there. But it was Jaidrath who foiled that plan. Jaidrath knew what he was doing.

Jaidrath did not have the courage or the power to stop Abhimanyu. So, after Abhimanyu went in, then he stopped the Pandavas from going in. So, it was his moment of glory, but it was a very calculatedly chosen mean moment, mean thing to do.

So, he decided that I will punish him. And he took action at that particular level. So, we have to see when something bad happens, what level is actionable for us.

And we act at that level. So, for them, at that particular point, when somebody is grieving, trying to talk about God and trying to get God off the hook is not… Okay, now this has happened. What is the actionable level at which you can function? So, we all have to find some way of finding meaning in life and moving ahead.

Okay. Any other questions? Where is the mic? Okay, where? Yeah, please. Something similar, students nowadays commit suicide.

Is it like, can we say, they are not actually committing suicide this time, but they are committing because of the circumstances that have compelled them to do so? Can we say it is like karma, it is coming before or something like that? Can we discuss this tomorrow after we talk about how karma shapes are conditionings, destiny shapes are conditionings, because that's an important question and it requires a very careful treatment. So, we'll talk about it tomorrow. If I don't answer the question in the class itself, then we'll talk about it.

We'll ask it separately again. Very important. Yeah.

So, the question, whenever good or bad is happening to us, it is ultimately because of our past and present karma. If yes, then if I am doing good to others, I am just giving his good destiny now. Okay.

So, if we do good to someone, then are we just giving their good destiny? Possible. But we are getting good karma for that. So, karma is, when I said the whole focus of karma is forward looking.

Forward looking means the whole knowledge of karma should inspire us to do our dharma. Dharma is, try to act in a right and responsible way. So, yes, if somebody is struggling in some area and we help them at that time, then it could be that it's their destiny that they are to be helped at that time.

And if we don't help, somebody would help. But doesn't matter. If we help, we will be doing something positive by that.

So, Krishna says that to Arjuna that the enemies are going to be killed. He says that, So, he says that whether you fight or not, they are going to be killed. That if you do not fight, then what is going to happen is, they will still be killed, but you won't get the credit.

But if you fight, you will get the credit. So, even if we are giving them their destiny, that should not mean that we don't do it or that our doing it is not valuable. That we take the responsibility to do it shows a good choice on our part and that is laudable.

Okay, yes. See, that is only one way of looking at things. It's not the only way of looking at things.

When Draupadi was dishonoured by Dushasan, did she think, oh, he is an instrument of my own past karma, so let me just suffer. When Sita was abducted by Ravan, did Ram say, okay, Ravan is simply an instrument of Sita's past karma. Let him keep her.

No. So, we have to focus on dharma, not on karma. Now, there are many places where, again this question I will address in more detail tomorrow, but all of us in the course of life, when overall we have a decent relationship, not a great relationship, but not a horrible relationship, in the course of our life, we will all do things which will hurt each other.

We are all finite beings, we are all fallible beings. So, what Krishna says in Bhagavad Gita 12.15 is, यस्मान नो दुज़ते लोको लोकान नो दुज़ते चाया So, what happens by the nature of any relationship is that I will disturb you and you will disturb me. And together, we create a disturbed world.

So, now, we may want the best for each other. Now, parents want the best for the children, but sometimes parents may over-discipline the child. The child cares for the parents, but the child may rebel and may do terrible things which hurt the parents.

So, overall the idea is, in general, in our normal course of interactions, if we tolerate, that means, we don't blame the other person, we don't try to get even with the other person. You did this to me, so I'll do this to you. Then, basically, we can get closure and we can move ahead in life.

So, when Krishna says, don't disturb others, don't be disturbed by others, what it means is, this is, don't disturb others and don't be disturbed by others. यस्मान नो दुज़ते लोको लोकान नो दुज़ते चाया So, don't be disturbed by others means, as if somebody hurts you. See that this is the nature of the world.

See that this is because of your own past karma. And don't take it to serious, don't disturb others. That means, don't do something to hurt them back.

Try to understand that person and try to bring the relationship to a better place. So, now, this kind of tolerance will help all of us to move towards a better place in life. However, there are limits to it.

Limits in the sense that, that person is repeatedly and deliberately hurting us. Then we may have to decide that we have to take some other action over here. This is more for like small wrongs within a family or within a friendship.

It is not for like cruel things or crimes or atrocities. So, now, regarding your specific point about, is Krishna using them as an instrument? Well, maybe, maybe not. Are they becoming instruments for our destiny? Yes.

But when they are doing something to hurt us, it is not that they are thinking that, okay, they are just being dispassionate surrendered instruments of some destiny. They are deliberately angry and they wanted to hurt us. Isn't it? So, to the extent an action is done because we desire to do it, to that extent, it becomes our karma.

Like, to the extent we don't do it because we desire to do it, but because it's a duty. Say, if a person is tried properly by the legal system and then they are sentenced to death, the executioner goes and executes them. That will not be considered murder.

Because the executioner has nothing against that person. On the other hand, if a person is angry with another person, the person goes and kills that person. That will be murder.

So, now, from our side, we can say this person is an instrument of my karma, but that person is not seeing like that. And that's why they will be held responsible. Yes, please.

Where is the mic? Okay, yeah. So, how the manifestation of the past karma are related to our current actions? How the manifestation of the past karma and the current actions are related? Like somebody said that we have to endure to manifest our past karma. Without enduring the past karma, we also have to manifest it in the absence.

Correct, yeah. Okay. Mahabharata says that even if the king is the lion of the jungle, it's not that a deer is going to come into its mouth.

It has to chase. It has to be competent. So, in general, most of the times, whenever some phala comes, that phala is a result of karma and daiva.

That means karma is the present action that we did. And daiva is their past destiny, their fortune. Now, how much it might be? Now, it could be 95% karma and 5 daiva.

It could be 95% daiva and 5 karma. It could be 50-50 both. It could be a wide range.

Now, if a person has been successful for a decent amount of time, not just like a flash in the pan, person has been successful for 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, then it is not generally because of entirely that daiva. Because if that person is not doing good actions right now, then they will not succeed for a very long time. Like in tennis, sometimes what happens, some player with a mediocre talent, that person goes and maybe wins the Wimbledon.

This happens especially in women's tennis. In men's there is much more competition and a lot of top players are there. But women's tennis right now at least is a little unstable.

So, the player who might be unseeded, that player may go and win the whole tournament. How does that happen? All the top seeds that are there, they are eliminated by other players. And then she has a very straight path.

Now, it could be that she is a very talented player and she wins future matches also, future tournaments also. But after that, otherwise, that's one flash in the pan and she can't win anything afterwards. So, then that particular win, you could say that was destiny.

But if somebody is repeatedly winning tournaments, then you cannot say it's destiny. They also worked hard. Because in general, the world is a tough place.

And if a person does not have competence, they can't last at the top for long. Now, you could say somebody might just born wealthy and they stay wealthy. That's a different thing.

We're talking here about somebody doing something and achieving something as a result of that. So, our karma is important. That in general, past, when you say daiva comes, daiva comes in the form of certain seeds.

And those seeds have to be developed by us, have to be nurtured by us. If we don't do that, we won't get the results. So, our present karma does matter.

It is important. So, now, is it possible that somebody might have the destiny, but they do not get the results? Well, yes, it happens all the time. If we consider there is talent.

Now, talent could be in any field. Talent could be in cricket. Talent could be in math.

Talent could be in computers. Now, does talent itself lead to achievement? Now, talent, ideally speaking, should lead to achievement. But there is something more that is required.

Talent plus commitment. So, Krishna talks about this, that in adhishtanam tatha karta karanam chyaputak vidha vidha chyaputak cheshta daivam chaivatra panchamam So, karanam is the senses. We have certain talents.

Somebody may have a great singing voice. Somebody may have a great hand-to-eye coordination, that they can hit shots like anything. So, great batters.

But then, they also need commitment. They need commitment, that is cheshta. Cheshta is the endeavour that they put in.

So, generally, we all have probably seen or heard of people who are wasted talents. That means that they had a lot of talent, but maybe they are too temperamental, they got into some bad habits or whatever, and they just didn't succeed. So, we could say, by destiny, they had the talent.

And they could have got to the achievement, but they didn't do the present karma. Daiva was there, but the karma was not there. If you see in the history of Indian cricket, when Sachin Tendulkar came in the limelight, there was one more player from Mumbai, who was also very sensational.

He was Vinod Kamble. And both of them had done some enormous record-breaking partnerships when playing for Mumbai. And both of them burst on the international stage more at the same time.

But then Kamble's fame and wealth went to his head, and he became a bit arrogant, he got into alcoholism, and then he just lost the plot completely. And I think a few months ago, it was in the news that he's now on the verge of poverty, and he was appealing to the BCCI to provide some pension or something for him. So, now, this is not to criticise him as a person, but my point is that he was extraordinarily talented, but for whatever reason, he didn't have the commitment.

So, that means destiny may give us the talent, that's why, like somebody may get seeds, but they have to make the seeds into the harvest. So, sometimes karma may just, so that's why I would differentiate between achievement is not the same as fortune. So, fortune may come without any endeavour by someone.

Fortune means what? Like, you know, somebody is not really a very good player, but all the players at a particular time get injured, and this person becomes selected as an international player. They get to play one or two matches, they do something, but after that they are dropped and they go away, because they just didn't have the talent. So, fortune might come by destiny, but achievement generally does not come by destiny.

Achievement requires some talent which comes by destiny. Arjuna had phenomenal talent in archery, but Arjuna was also committed. Arjuna was the best archer, not just because he had the greatest talent, but because he worked harder than the other students.

You know, one of the reasons his name is Gudakesh is that he, what he would learn during the day time from his teacher, he would practise all night, particularly not sleep at all. That's how he became such a great archer. Okay? Yes, there's a mic over there.

So, sometimes we take decisions when we are under our parents, here, like, in college. So, when that time we take any kind of decision, so, is that because of our parents' karma, or does it have anything to do with our own karma? And in future, wherever we are heading, the destination which we are there, so, is it because of our parents' karma, or it was supposed to be this time? Can you repeat the first part? So, let's say, when we are growing up, we are under our parents. So, whatever we learn, we learn from them.

And because of them, let's say, some habits have been built. Yeah, it's a good question. I got your question.

So, now, how much is our future a result of parenting, and how much is it a result of our own karma? It's difficult to say. I was trying to discuss this again tomorrow, but I'll just mention it briefly. See, when we, our choices, they are shaped by many factors.

One of it is our vritti, our inclination. That is, we all have certain tendencies from our past. Like some people are introverts, some people are extroverts, some people are artistic.

That's past, yeah. That's past. We just get it, those tendencies from our past karma.

So, that is our past. It's also shaped by our upbringing. So, you know, if we had parents who taught us responsibility and hard work and kindness and truthfulness, whatever.

Or we had parents who did not teach us. The upbringing affects our choices. Beyond that, there is our association.

Now, as I said, association is something which we partly choose, we partly don't choose. I would say, with the first and second, we have much lesser choice. The third, we have much more choice.

And the fourth is our deliberation. Deliberation is how we think and analyse. Sometimes, you know, if only I had thought for a few minutes before I spoke that, this thing wouldn't have escalated so much.

So, broadly, many factors contribute to particular actions. So, are Duryodhana's actions, Duryodhana's responsibility or Dhritarashtra's responsibility? I would say it's a combined. Could Dhritarashtra have stopped him? Possibly.

Could Duryodhana himself have taken good advice? Duryodhana had the association of Bhishma and Vidura. But he chose, he preferred the association of Shakuni. So, can the children, can the parents be held responsible for the children's actions? Well, up to a particular age.

If a child commits a mistake, the parents are summoned. You should be taking care of that. But as an adult, a 30-year-old person commits a crime, the parents won't be held responsible that time.

So, I would say the other way also applies that our upbringing may shape our choices in our childhood, in our teenage, in our young adult age. But as we grow older, we are meant to become our own person. And each of these do push us in particular directions.

But we have free will and we can choose to counter-push. So, in many ways, tomorrow what I am going to discuss is that by the free will, you know, I can choose. So, I put it this way that I can choose to make this 70% of my decision-making basis.

Or I can choose to blame my parents and I can make this 90%. You know, my parents treated me like this and that's why I am like that. So, there are many factors which will push us in different directions.

But which factor we dwell on? So, for example, we study Shastra. Then what happens is, by studying Shastra, by chanting Hare Krishna, we will talk about Bhakti separately. But essentially, that improves our association externally and also improves our deliberation internally.

We think carefully, our intelligence increases, our tendencies, we will get purified. We tend to make better choices. So, it's for us, these are all prompts inside us.

But which prompt we pay attention to? That's up to us. Thank you. Yes, please.

Where is the mic? Hare Krishna. My question is about karma. When we put our hand on fire, that burns immediately.

So, why does karma always get deleted? I mean, the karma is like a government office that always gets postponed to the next work. When something is like, my life is like a kiss painting for the next five years. Life is the most honest to everyone, so it should be honest to everyone.

What is karma that should deliver immediately whatever we do in this life? Why do we have to suffer for millions of years for the past life? Okay. See, I'll start by making one important point. That ultimately, the problem of suffering in this world has no good explanation.

Karma is not a satisfactory explanation. If you pointed out about, why don't we know the past actions? That you are pointing out, why don't we get the results immediately? So, karma is, is it a satisfactory explanation? I will say no. What I will say is that it is the least unsatisfactory explanation.

That ultimately, each one of us has to go through life. Life is what it is and we have to deal with life as it is. So, the choice we have is that what world view will help me to face life as I am going to go through it.

So, is that world view going to answer all the questions about the world that I have? Are all the answers going to be satisfactory? No, no world view will do that. There are many questions that will be answered. So, but the nature of the world is that it is very complicated.

Even when Bhishma is speaking with Yudhishthir in the final days, when they meet Bhishma in the arrow bed, at that time Bhishma says that ultimately that even the devatas, sorry even the sages try to understand the Lord's plan and they can't. So, the point of understanding karma is not to try to explain that karma is a foolproof explanation for every single wrong that is there in the world. As I said, the scriptures themselves do not take that approach.

Gahana karma no vatipusana says. This is difficult to understand. So, my point is very simple over here that we are in a particular situation in life.

And ultimately there are not that many world view options for us. See, what are the broad world view options for us? That say if I am here and something bad has happened to me. So, what are the options for me to consider? That this bad has happened to me because of the world.

The world is a bad place. This happened to me because God is a bad place. It is because I have done something bad.

Ultimately there are only three options for us. So, now if the world is a bad place, we are doomed. If God is a bad person, we are doomed.

Isn't it? So, both these world views are world views that will only increase the darkness in our life. Now, if I have done something because of which I am getting the situation right now in my life, then I have the power to make better choices and by making better choices I can create a brighter future. So, in that sense, this is the best among the world views that are available for us.

Is there any other? I have studied quite a few philosophies trying to understand the problem of evil specifically. The problem of evil is what western theology talks about as why does bad happen in a world that is governed by a good God. So, there are very very few answers actually.

And so, now is it that every single suffering that we can go through is explainable to its fullest degree based on our own past karma? Maybe, maybe not. But the point is that to the extent it is explainable by our actions, to that extent we can make a difference. But if we start thinking that either God is unfair or the world is cruel, then what are we going to do at the end of it all? There is nothing we can do.

That's why it's best. So, this is, I would say, a broader picture of the answer. Now, having said that, let's come to a specific question that when we face difficulties in life, why don't the results come immediately? Is it like the Indian government? It's a good example.

I would say, karma is subtle. Subtle means what? That actions, when they give results, sometimes we compare it to Newton's third law of motion. Every action has an equal opposite reaction.

That is true, but this is, karma is also in terms of experience, intent, consciousness. So, when somebody is in an action, what is an equal and opposite reaction? So, how do we determine that? Sometimes it may seem that it's not an equal and opposite reaction. Like somebody eats beef, for example, some places in scripture, they said that as many hair as there are on the body that come, that many times that person will suffer the fate that their person is subjected to cow dung.

Now, is that a literal statement? Is that a statement meant to create the sense of gravity in our mind? It's a question that could be deliberated. But my point is that equal and opposite, this because it's in the domain of consciousness, it's subjective. It's not very clear cut.

So, the point is that when a particular result comes upon us, that may require a particular circumstance for us to be. Say, if we have betrayed someone and that person trusted us a lot, maybe we were the most important person in that person's life and we betrayed that person. Now, suppose we had a dozen casual relationships and we didn't really feel bad also about betraying that person.

But we could have destroyed that person's world. Now, for us to get the karmic reaction for that, it may be necessary that we come to a place in our life where some other person becomes our whole world and then that person betrays us. Now, that person may not be there right now in our life.

So, the reaction for that karma could come distributed with 10 other people, small people betraying us in different ways. But it may have to come in different ways. So, if you see in a normal justice system also, is it that we punish people in the same way? If somebody had stabbed someone to death, will the government say, we'll stab you to death? No, the government doesn't do that, isn't it? That is justice system.

So, justice has to be, even if you think of karma as justice or it's meant to teach us accountability, that requires time and circumstance for us to be able to experience the kind of pain that we may have caused the other person. And that's why not all reactions to karma can come immediately. And one more point is that there is good karma and there is bad karma.

And the point of good karma is to buffer us from bad karma. That is the point of good karma. Just like if two kids do something criminal, maybe they do shoplifting.

Now, one kid, their parents are very influential, maybe the parent is a big officer in a company or the government. The other person, other kid doesn't have such an influential parent. Maybe the first kid gets away with just a slap on the hand.

The other kid has to do some hundred hours of community service. That's different. Is that a good difference? No.

But the point is that if that parent, will the parents not want to do that? The parents will want to do that. So, good karma does create a buffer so that the impact of bad karma doesn't hit us. And that's why if we have good karma, we will be able to get away with certain things.

And that's the whole point of the principle of karma that if a person wants to make particular choices and that person wants to deny the reality that their choices have consequences, that sometimes we can't see and sometimes we don't want to see. So, if we don't want to see, then the nature creates arrangement so that we don't have to see. So, if somebody doesn't want to accept the principle of karma, then they can create means by which they think, I can get away from the consequences of my actions.

And they will get away for some time. But then they will be hit harder by that. So, it's like suppose somebody jumps from a four-story building, it's a slight injury.

Somebody jumps from a ten-story building, there will be a much bigger injury. Somebody jumps from a helicopter, now even their bones will be scattered all over. But in the range when they are in the flight, they will think, oh, I am enjoying the wind, I am enjoying the scenery.

They don't look down, they will enjoy the scenery. So, the higher they go, the longer it will come for them to come to the ground. So, by our past karma, past good karma, we will be shielded from our past bad karma.

And that's why those results may not come. So, two reasons. So, three things I said basically.

First is that karma is not an exhaustive explanation for everything in this world. There is no such exhaustive explanation. Second is that sometimes some results of our bad karma may require us to be put in a particular situation.

And that situation may require time for us to come. And third is that sometimes some past good karma may shield us from the results of past, from our own bad karma. And that's why we may not get results immediately.

Okay, so, yeah. We will take two questions and then we will stop. My question is like, sometimes we hear verses like, All bhakti related questions for the fourth session.

All bhakti related questions for the fourth session. Not rightly. When we are performing our material duties, like job.

Okay. So, it sometimes seems like it is all destined. It cannot be changed much.

Here it is more or less destined. What should be our attitude? We may tend to go to irresponsibility first. Anywhere it is going to come, what is going to come.

Or we may become attached. So, what is the right attitude in doing our material duties? Okay, so, I will answer this question now. And we will elaborate on this in the evening session.

This is the last question because it will take some time to answer this. See, in the Gita, Dukkha is talked about in three different ways. One is, for example, 2.14. That Dukkha is inevitable.

It is like, That distress just comes in its own way. Sometimes it's heat, sometimes it's cold, you cannot do anything about it. You should tolerate the distress.

Accept it. Then Krishna also talks about, He talks about that distress comes by our own bad choices. That when we indulge in sense pleasure, we get distress.

And what does it say? Wise people do not indulge in that. So, if somebody smokes a lot and gets lung cancer, was that because of past karma or present karma? Well, maybe there is some past karma element, but present karma element is also there substantially. So, not all distress comes from our past.

So, what does Krishna say? That for the distress that is inevitable, you know, accept it, tolerate it, live with it. For the distress that is avoidable, counter it. Counter it.

Don't indulge in those things that will lead to that distress further. And third thing Krishna talks about is, There is some distress that is strengthening. That which tastes like poison in the beginning will taste like nectar in the end.

So, Krishna says, drink that poison so that you will get to the nectar. It will be painful, but drink it. So, for example, if we go to a new country or a new place where everybody speaks a different language.

Now, learning that language might be like poison in the beginning. It takes a lot of effort. But once we learn it, so much communication might become easier.

So, it's poison in the beginning, nectar in the end. Is it pain? It is pain. But it is good pain.

So, train yourself for it. Be ready for it. Train yourself to accept the pain knowing that it is going to come later.

It is going to lead to a better place. So, not all dukkha is the same. And similarly, you can say not all sukha is the same.

So, earlier it is differentiated between fortune and achievement. Somebody might win a lottery. That is fortune.

But will somebody just by destiny become the best student in the class? Will they become the best employee? Well, maybe unlikely. Actually, they have to do something. They have to work hard.

If they don't go through the poison, they won't get to the nectar. So, there are different kinds of distress and corresponding different kinds of happiness. And we have to have different approaches towards them.

So, I am writing a whole book on this particular topic. It's called Gita Wisdom for Hard Times, How to Act. So, accept the distress that is inevitable.

Counter the distress that is avoidable. And train yourself for the distress that is strengthening. And that's why understanding which distress is coming from where is very important.

So now, this doesn't specifically answer your question. Let's say, if in our workplace, how much should we work? So, everybody will find something incompatible in their workplace. There is no workplace like a dream workplace.

There will always be problems. Maybe we like the job, but we don't like the people. We like the job and we like the people, but we don't like the pay.

So, something or the other will always be dissatisfied. So, to some extent, wherever we go, we will have to tolerate. Now, with respect to work, is some of the distress avoidable? Say, if we don't do even baseline level of work and we get fired.

Or, we keep neglecting what we are expected to do right then. Even if we don't get fired, we get sidelined for growth and 10 years down the line. All our equals have risen to higher positions and we are stuck at the same place.

And we feel miserable because of that. There are problems in our workplace which should be avoidable. And there are problems that could be strengthening.

So, now AI is coming, there is a great fear that AI will take away all the jobs. Well, that is possible, but generally the history of technology is, technology does not take away jobs per se. What technology does is, technology takes away the jobs of people who don't learn to work with that technology.

So, now problem in engineering is becoming a whole field in itself. How to work with AI? So, now, should we say, okay, what I just tried is going to happen and not learn AI, not learn how to work with AI, that's what our field is requiring? No, that's strengthening. So, we have to carefully evaluate using our buddhi.

Krishna says, intelligence in the mode of goodness is what is required for decision making. So, pravattim cha nivrittim cha karyakarye bhaya bhaye, bandham moksham cha yavetti buddhi sapartha sattviki. So, what is sattvic intelligence? Krishna says that, pravattim cha nivrittim cha, what do I have inspiration to do, what do I not have inspiration to do? Consider that as one factor.

Karyakarye, what is my responsibility and what is not my responsibility? Bhaya bhaye, what is it, where is, am I being driven by fear to do something or am I being driven by recklessness to do something? And bandham moksham cha yavetti, will doing this actually entangle me more or will doing this lead me to a freer place in the future? So, for example, if somebody decides, just consider this as the last part over here, that if somebody says, okay, I got this opportunity for getting a promotion and that means that I can earn more money, I can rise faster in my career. Now, is that leading to bandham or moksham? Is it going to lead to more entanglement or is it going to give me financial freedom in the future? It could be both. Maybe it's going to lead to more entanglement for the next 5 or 10 years.

But maybe after that I can retire, I can take a less demanding job, I can become a consultant. So, each of us has to take responsibility for our decisions. So, not everything is destined, but not everything is in our hands also.

So, careful deliberation is required for this. So, thank you very much.