Karma

“ Mind your own Karma; a load of Karma is there in you to work out. Your nation may put you upon a pedestal, your society may cheer you up to the skies, and fools may praise you: but He sleeps not, and retribution will be sure to follow, here or hereafter. ”

“ Karma, indeed, is the concern of the personal man, of his bondage or freedom. It is the succession of the forces which built up the personal man, reproducing themselves in one personality after another.
Now let us take an imaginary case, to see how these forces may work out. Let us think of a man, with murderous intent in his heart, striking with a dagger at his enemy. He makes a red wound in his victim’s breast; at the same instant he paints, in his own mind, a picture of that wound: a picture dynamic with all the fierce will-power he has put into his murderous blow. ”

“ Remember that the sin and shame of the world are your sin and shame; for you are a part of it; your Karma is inextricably interwoven with the great Karma. And before you can attain knowledge you must have passed through all places, foul and clean alike. Therefore, remember that the soiled garment you shrink from touching may have been yours yesterday, may be yours tomorrow. And if you turn with horror from it, when it is flung upon your shoulders, it will cling the more closely to you. The self-righteous man makes for himself a bed of mire. ”

“ But as we often see a deformed human being—continuing the instance merely for the purpose of illustration—having a happy disposition, an excellent intellect, sound judgment, and every good moral quality, this very instance leads us to the conclusion that karma must be of several different kinds in every individual case, and also evidently operates in more than one department of our being, with the possibility of being pleasant in effect for one portion of our nature and unpleasant for another. ”

“ Everything that I do or think or feel, every part of my conduct or behaviour, my every movement -- all is caused and therefore not free. This regulation of our life and mind -- that is the law of Karma. ”

“ Saltus smiled.
"No, little Puss. You are the instrument of karma. Keep on chiseling. You believe in me, and if you think there is something worth while, awaiting release—do not falter. Only the one who sees it can set it free." ”

“ Karma then, if you will, is Immanent Justice; only, it is no longer an inconstant goddess, inconsistent, incoherent, impotent, erratic, capricious, inexact, forgetful, timid, inattentive, sluggish, evasive, intangible and bounded by the tomb, but a god, vast and inevitable as Destiny, a god who fills up each outlet, each horizon, each crevice of every existence and who is omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, infallible, impassible and incorruptible. He is in us, as we are in him. He is ourselves. ”

“ The Brahman sage, however, insisted on the existence of the ego, saying: "The ego is the doer of our deeds. How can there be karma without a self as its performer? Do we not see around us the effects of karma? What makes men different in character, station, possessions, and fate? It is their karma, and karma includes merit and demerit. The transmigration of the soul is subject to its karma. We inherit from former existences the evil effects of our evil deeds and the good effects of our good deeds. ”

“ Why could we suffer ourselves for the sake of others and lighten even to the smallest degree the burden of evil karma under which weak, ignorant ones are groaning, though they have nobody else to blame for their own wretchedness? ”

“ Under the operation of the Law of Karma every man is master of his own destiny—he rewards himself—he punishes himself—he builds, tears down and develops his character, always, however, under the brooding influence of the Absolute which is Love Infinite and which is constantly exerting the upward spiritual urge, which is drawing the soul toward its ultimate haven of rest. ”

“ Those who believe in Karma have to believe in destiny, which, from birth to death, every man is weaving, thread by thread, around himself, as a spider his web; and this destiny is guided either by the heavenly voice of the invisible prototype outside of us, or by our more intimate astral or inner man, who is but too often the evil genius of the embodied entity called man. ”

“ Therefore abandon all thought of self. But since there are deeds and since deeds continue, be careful with your deeds. 31
"All beings have karma as their portion: they are heirs of their karma; they are sprung from their karma; their karma is their kinsman; their karma is their refuge; karma allots beings to meanness or to greatness. 32
"Assailed by death in life's last throes On quitting all thy joys and woes What is thine own, thy recompense? What stays with thee when passing hence? What like a shadow follows thee And will Beyond thine heirloom be? ”

“ Every karma that the sage has previously earned has its predestined limits within which it must take effect and be purged away. But when by contemplation and the strict adherence to the five great vows, no new karma is generated, and when all the karmas are exhausted the worldly existence of the person rapidly draws towards its end. Thus in the last stage of contemplation, all karma being annihilated, and all activities having ceased, the soul leaves the body and goes up to the top of the universe, where the liberated souls stay for ever. ”

“ If I am rewarded with fortune, honour, etc., this is the outcome of my past deeds which by reason of causation affect my present life. When the force of karma is exhausted, the result I am enjoying now will disappear; what is then the use of being joyful over it? Gain or loss, let us accept karma as it brings us the one or the other, the spirit itself knows neither increase nor decrease. The wind of gladness does not move it as it is silently in harmony with the Path. ”

“ I am aware that there are books which lay down with great precision the exact type of karma which follows upon certain action — as, for example, that if a man is rude to his father in one incarnation he will be born lame of the right leg in the next, whereas if it is with his mother that he has a difference of opinion it will be the left leg which is affected, and so on. But in the many lines of lives which we have examined in order to study the working of karma we have found no such rigidity. ”

“ The spiritual nature of man is never affected or operated upon by karma.
One species of karma may act on the three specified planes of our nature at the same time to the same degree, or there may be a mixture of the causes, some on one plane and some on another. Take a deformed person who has a fine mind and a deficiency in his soul nature. Here punitive or unpleasant karma is operating on his body while in his mental and intellectual nature good karma is being experienced, but psychically the karma, or cause, being of an indifferent sort the result is indifferent. ”

“ But karma is only a name for man's own past, and man as spirit has control over it.
Who drives me forward like fate ? The myself striding on my back. l
The drive of doom is only the influence of man's own past. Man is mightier than his karma. ”

“ Parinâmanâ is vicarious sacrifice, self-renunciation, the transference of merit, the promotion of universal goodness, the annihilation of me and thee, the recognition of the oneness of all things, and the complete satisfaction of our inmost religious yearnings.
The doctrine of karma is terrible, the doctrine of parinâmanâ is humane: karma is the law of nature, inflexible and irreconcilable; parinâmanâ is the heart of a religious being, filled with tears: the one is rigidly masculine and knows no mercy whatever ”

“ It is the receptacle of karma which is the curse of our former existences; it is the dwelling-place of sin and diseases and its organs constantly discharge disgusting secretions. Its end is death and its goal the charnel house. ”

“ It is quite certain that nothing can happen to a man which is not in the great mass of his karma, but unquestionably something may happen which was not originally included in his destiny for this life. ”

“ Many authorities hold that the original idea of Karma was that of a great natural law operating along exact lines, as do the laws of mathematics and chemistry, bringing forth the exact effect from every cause, and being, above all, questions of good or evil, reward or punishment, morality or immorality, etc., and acting as a great natural force above all such questions of human conduct. To those who still adhere to this conception, Karma is like the Law of Gravitation, which operates without regard to persons, morals or questions of good and evil, just as does any other great natural law. ”

“ For those who believe in Karma it is quite just, because this man in a previous life must have done such acts as deserve punishment now. And, similarly, the wicked man who is free from suffering, happy and prosperous, is so because in a previous existence he had been badly treated by his fellows or had experienced much suffering. And the perfect justice of Karma is well illustrated in his case because, although now favored by fortune, he, being wicked, is generating causes which, when he shall be reborn, will operate then to punish him for his evil-doing now. ”

“ Some of our friends do not realize that there may be such a thing as the commencement of an entirely new piece of karma. When an injury is done by A to B, they always fall back on the theory that at some previous time B must have injured A, and is now imply reaping what he has sown. ”

“ Now the good people who make such suggestions are really, however unconsciously to themselves, exhibiting the most colossal conceit, for their position implies two astounding assumptions; first, that they know exactly what another man’s karma has been, and how long it has decreed that his sufferings shall last ”

“ I perceive the truth of karma, but see no ātman whom your doctrine makes the doer of your deeds. There is rebirth without the transmigration of a self. For this ātman, this self, this ego in the 'I say' and in the 'I will' is an illusion. If this self were a reality, how could there be an escape from selfhood? The terror of hell would be infinite, and no release could be granted. The evils of existence would not be due to our ignorance and wrong-doing, but would constitute the very nature of our being. ”

“ It is therefore necessary in order to understand the nature of Karma and its relation to the individual to consider action in all its aspects. Every act proceeds from the mind. Beyond the mind there is no action and therefore no Karma. ”

“ So with all our feelings and action — our tears and our smiles, our joys and our griefs, our weeping and our laughter, our curses and our blessings, our praises and our blames — every one of these we may find, if we calmly study our own selves, to have been brought out from within ourselves by so many blows. The result is what we are. All these blows taken together are called Karma — work, action. ”

“ But if you ask me to define its effects and tell you what these are in our belief, I may say that the experience of thousands of ages has shown us that they are absolute and unerring equity, wisdom, and intelligence. For Karma in its effects, is an unfailing redresser of human injustice, and of all the failures of nature; a stern adjuster of wrongs; a retributive law which rewards and punishes with equal impartiality. It is, in the strictest sense, “no respecter of persons,” though, on the other hand, it can neither be propitiated, nor turned aside by prayer. ”

“ For the only decree of Karma—an eternal and immutable decree—is absolute Harmony in the world of matter as it is in the world of Spirit. It is not, therefore, Karma that rewards or punishes, but it is we who reward or punish ourselves, according to whether we work with, through, and along with nature, abiding by the laws on which that Harmony depends, or—break them. ”

“ We are not as yet dealing with a separated individuality, and therefore there is for that particular animal no past in which individual karma in the ordinary sense of the word can have been generated — nothing either to merit or to receive a reward. ”

“ This elemental goes on discharging itself until it is quite empty; and then, like the other, it fades into nothingness, or more correctly is disintegrated and returns to the matter of the plane. The man can modify its action by the new karma which he is constantly making, by the new causes which he is perpetually setting up. ”

“ It can never be too strongly emphasized that the law of karma is not the vindictive vengeance of some angry deity, but simply an effect naturally and inevitably following upon its cause in obedience to the action of universal law. ”

“ But if after dropping away the man begins venomously to attack her and to circulate scandalous falsehoods against her, as so many have done, he is committing a very grave sin, and the karma of his action is exceedingly heavy. Vindictiveness and lying are always wicked; but when a man directs them against one from whose hands he has received the cup of life, they become a crime the effects of which are appalling.
The fact that a man has a large amount of bad karma behind him makes anything like occult advancement impossible for him until it is worked off. ”

“ There are, however, certain kinds of action which bring unusually horrible karma as their results. For example, the karma of cruelty of any kind, whether to men or to animals, is always especially awful in character; it often brings with it chronic physical ailments, accompanied by most acute sufferings, and often also it produces insanity — this last more especially when the cruelty is of a refined and intentional character. ”

“ We should indeed be careful about our attitude towards any Great One who may come, for He, being far in advance of us, is likely to be misunderstood — to be different from what we have expected, and therefore not to be appreciated. One reason why the Great Ones do not more often come amongst men is that the karma of misjudging and ill-using Them is dreadful, and the fools among mankind are sure to incur it. ”