Is karma always bound to happen – what makes it happen?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Right.
Is karma something that is bound to happen? That means, whatever we do, is it always going to happen? And if it is, then what is it that is making this happen? Answer, here when we, when the word karma is being used, it is being used in the sense of daiva or destiny or we could say karma here means the reactions to our actions and the sum total of the reactions to our actions, the balance of that, that is called as daiva or destiny. Now, is destiny something that is sure to happen? Yes. Now, the destiny is largely in terms of the suffering and the pleasure that we are going to get in the world.
That is more or less fixed. So, So, in the Srimad Bhagavatam, the first canto in the fifth chapter, it is stated that, that by the forward movement of time, everybody will get sukha and dukha. And therefore, one should aspire for something that will not come, that will, will, should, that which will be, which will take us beyond this material world, that which will not come by automatically, by destiny, but something which we can strive for.
So, this means that there are certain things which are going to happen in our life, but there are certain things which are changeable also. So, now, to a broad extent, our daiva, when we try to understand what it is, we can compare it to a weather forecast. A weather forecast tells us that this kind of weather is going to be there.
Say, if it is forecast that it is going to rain. Now, that does not necessarily mean that we have to become drenched in the rains. No, we can stay clean.
We can stay, we may choose to not go out and we will be dry. We may choose to go with some raincoat or some umbrella and then again we may not get dry. But if we still go out just like that without any of this, then we will get wet.
So, destiny determines what happens to us. It doesn’t determine what our response to it is. Now, can, what, what is going to be happen, destiny be changed? Yes, sometimes the specific form of things can be changed, but the principle will not be changed.
So, for example, say, if we are going to have some, some physical or mental trouble, some atmic clash. Now, now we were supposed to say be in physical pain or physical inconvenience and say it is extremely hot and we are meant to sweat. But then we are, we work very hard or whatever we do and we get a high paying job in a AC office and we are sitting in the AC office and then we get so much tension that we sweat not because of heat, but because of stress, because of anxiety, because we get a panic attack or something like that.
So, again, we get the same similar suffering that we’re getting, but in a different form. So, it’s not that everything that our whole life is definitely not scripted. We do have free will to choose our responses to situations, to choose our actions.
What happens may be, what happens is fixed and some of the things that happen to us are fixed by destiny, but by our responses, we can minimize or maximize the consequences of what happens to us. And that capacity to use our free will properly, wisely, that is increased when we cultivate spiritual wisdom, when we practice devotion and thereby understand better what is happening and understand better how we can make wise choices. Now, who or what is it that is making destiny happen? In the Mahabharata, Krishna, God is called as the lord of destiny.
So, destiny… maya adhyakshena prakriti suyate saccharacharam hetu nānena kaunteya jagad viparivartate So, Krishna says that maya adhyakshena prakriti, that under my supervision material nature works. So, Krishna, so destiny is arranged by Krishna’s will. But Krishna is transcendental and it is not when something happens to us bad, we shouldn’t think that Krishna is personally making that bad thing happen to us.
It is more or less Krishna doesn’t have anything against us per se. Just like say there is a judge in a court, the judge may give some penalty to some criminal and the judge may give some compensation to some other person, some plaintiff. Now, why does that happen? Because the judge is… it’s not the judge is partial.
It’s not the judge has a vendetta against some person. No, it’s just a judge simply giving what is appropriate according to the actions that they have done. So, when certain things happen to us, it is a reaction to our own past deeds.
So, destiny is not determined by some unknown malevolent power or anything. It is not determined by some unknown malevolent power. Rather destiny is a result of accumulative accumulation of our own past karma and that reaction comes under the supervision of Krishna.
And to the extent we absorb ourselves in devotion to Krishna, to that extent we can tolerate and transcend what reactions come upon us. To that extent, we can make wise choices by which we can minimize those reactions. And to that extent, by the practice of bhakti, Krishna can even minimize those reactions.
Thank you.