Law of karma

“ The law of karma which forces us all to enter the world, being ceaseless in its operation and also universal in scope, acts also on the being in devachan, for only by the force or operation of Karma are we taken out of devachan. ”

“ This view holds that the present condition of each soul is due to its own progress, development, advancement, unfoldment, or the lack of the same—the soul being its own Fate and Destiny—the enforcer of the Law upon itself, under the Law of Karma. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And when we are able to do this, we shall be able to regard the painful experiences of our present day as the inevitable outcome of causes away back in our past, but which will work surely toward increased knowledge, wisdom and attainment, if we will but see the Good underlying the working of the Law. When we fall in with the working of the Law of Karma we recognize its pain not as an injustice or punishment, but as the beneficent operation of a Law which, although apparently working Evil, has for its end and aim Ultimate Good. ”

“ The innocent often appear to [14] suffer with and for the guilty, but if you understood the law of Karma you would know that all the evil that befalls us is really the result of some wrongdoing of our own in a previous incarnation. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ There are certain mechanical features in the law of karma which can be skillfully adjusted by the fingers of wisdom.
"All human ills arise from some transgression of universal law. The scriptures point out that man must satisfy the laws of nature, while not discrediting the divine omnipotence. ”

“ And, so, it follows that what each one of us is in this life depends upon is what we have been and how we have acted in our past lives.
Throughout the operations of the Law of Karma the manifestation of Perfect Justice is apparent. We are not punished for our sins, as the current beliefs have it, but instead we are punished by our sins. We are not rewarded for our good acts, but we received our reward through and by characteristics, qualities, affinities, etc., acquired by reason of our having performed these good acts in previous lives. We are our own judges and executioners. ”

“ If there were no retribution at all this would be a good objection, but as Nature has also a Nemesis for every evil doer, and as each, under the law of Karma—which is that of cause and effect and perfect justice—must receive the exact consequences himself in every life for what good or bad deeds and thoughts he did and had in other lives, the basis for moral conduct is secure. ”

“ But there is still another view of Karma held by some Western thinkers, who received it from the Greek mystics and occultists, who in turn are thought to have received it from ancient Egypt. These people hold that the Law of Karma has naught to do with Man's theories of ethics, or religious dogmas or creeds, but has as the basis of its operations only Universal and Cosmic Principles of Action, applicable to the atom as well as Man—to the beings above Man as well. ”

“ 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. ”

“ KARMA 1 STRIPPED of its innumerable and inextricable oriental complications, which may possibly correspond with realities but which cannot be verified, Karma, the infallible Law of Retribution, is, when all is said, what we, speaking more vaguely and without believing in it unduly, call Immanent Justice. Our Immanent Justice is a somewhat idle shadow. True, it often manifests itself after monstrous actions, great vices, sins or iniquities ”

“ Nothing could be more wildly absurd than the idea that anything we can do can prevent the working out of karma. For example, if a child is born under circumstances which lead to its being cruelly treated, no doubt such treatment is in accordance with its previous karma ”

“ The general impression that one is reaping "good or bad karma" according as his life is one of pleasure or of pain, is not the solution of the problem of karma, and has no relation to the law of karmic action. ”

“ The subsequent effectiveness of guilt and of merit, commonly called adṛishṭa or “the unseen,” but often also simply karma, “deed or work,” is believed to regulate not only the life of the individual, but the origin and development of everything in the world; for whatever takes place cannot but affect some creature, and must therefore, by the law of retribution, be due to some previous act of that creature. ”

“ Mahâyâna Buddhism can thus be said to have a singularly softening effect on the conception of karma. Karma cannot be denied, it is the law; but the human heart is tender and loving. It cannot remain calm and unconcerned at the sight of suffering, however this might have been brought about. It knows that all things ultimately come from the same source. When others suffer I suffer too; why then should not self-renunciation somehow moderate the austerity of karma? This is the position taken by the Mahâyâna Buddhists in regard to the doctrine of karma. ”

“ I fully recognize how small and general such knowledge is, and I realize that many cases are constantly occurring in which the details of the method in which the karma works itself out are entirely beyond our ken; but you may see enough to show you that what we have been taught as to the inevitability and the absolute justice of the great law is one of the fundamental truths of nature. Secure in that certainty, you can afford to wait for the more detailed comprehension until you gain those higher faculties which alone will give the power to see the working of the system as a whole. ”

“ While old karma must work out and cannot be stopped, it is wise for the man to so think and act now under present circumstances, no matter what they are, that he shall produce no bad or prejudicial causes for the next rebirth or for later years in this life. Rebellion is useless, for the law works on whether we weep or rejoice. The great French engineer, de Lesseps, is a good example of this class of karma. ”

“ Resist not evil, and render good for evil, are Buddhist precepts, and were first preached in view of the implacability of Karmic law. For man to take the law into his own hands is anyhow a sacrilegious presumption. Human Law may use restrictive not punitive measures; but a man who, believing in Karma, still revenges himself and refuses to forgive every injury, thereby rendering good for evil, is a criminal and only hurts himself. ”

“ Some of the extremists have gone so far as to hesitate at relieving poverty, physical pain and suffering in others, lest by so doing they might possibly be "interfering with Karma"—as if any great Law could be "interfered with." While we, generally, have refrained from insisting upon our personal preference of interpretation in this work, we cannot refrain from so doing in this instance. ”

“ Suffice it to say, that what has been stated is all that ordinarily takes place at the death of a man, but there are certain kinds of karma which may present exceptions to the general law. Suppose, for instance, a man has devoted all his life to the evocation of elementals. ”

“ It is equally necessary that the manifestations of this law in the operations of Karma should be clearly apprehended.
Karma, broadly speaking may be said to be the continuance of the nature of the act, and each act contains within itself the past and future. Every defect which can be realized from an act must be implicit in the act itself or it could never come into existence. Effect is but the nature of the act and cannot exist distinct from its cause. ”

“ It is his karma in a given incarnation to have as the result of his actions in past lives a certain amount of physical suffering, and if a scarlet-fever germ happens to be at hand when he is in a sensitive condition, it may be permitted to fasten upon him, and part of that debt of suffering may be discharged in that way. ”

“ Man is a slave of nature, and slave eternally he has got to remain. We call it Karma. Karma means law, and it applies everywhere. Everything is bound by Karma. ”

“ Our philosophy has a doctrine of punishment as stern as that of the most rigid Calvinist, only far more philosophical and consistent with absolute justice. No deed, not even a sinful thought, will go unpunished; the latter more severely even than the former, as a thought is far more potential in creating evil results than even a deed. [39] We believe in an unerring law of Retribution, called Karma, which asserts itself in a natural concatenation of causes and their unavoidable results. ”

“ Even the human idea of Justice revolts at this kind of "punishment," and, in fact, the highest human justice and human law eliminates the idea of "punishment" altogether, so far as reprisal or revenge is concerned, the penalty being regarded merely as a deterrent of others, and a warning to the criminal against further infractions of the law, and as a reformatory agent—this at least is the theory of Human Law—no matter how imperfectly it works out in practice—and we cannot think of Divine Law being less just and equitable, less merciful and loving. ”

“ The force of a certain set of bodily, mental, and psychical faculties with their tendencies may wholly inhibit the operation on us of causes with which we are connected, because the whole nature of each person is used in the carrying out of this law. Hence the weak and mediocre furnish a weak focus for karma, and in them the general result of a lifetime is limited, although they may feel it all to be very heavy. But that person who has a wide and deep-reaching character and much force will feel the operation of a greater quantity of karma than the weaker person. ”

“ A man who murders another may conceivably sometimes himself be murdered in turn in another incarnation; but he can cancel the karma much more satisfactorily if he happens to have an opportunity in that next incarnation of saving the life of his former victim at the cost of his own. ”

“ But man, by making himself, even ignorantly, the instrument of Karma, acts against the universal [93] law, and is preparing for himself that future suffering which results from every attack made on the harmony of the whole. ”

“ What one really means is that he does not want any more of Earth—life similar to that which he has been undergoing. But if he thought that he could have certain things—riches, position, fame, beauty, influence, and the rest of it, he would be perfectly willing to "come back." Or else he might be so bound by links of Karma, acting by reason of Love or Hate, Attachment or Repulsion, or by duties unperformed, or moral debts unpaid, that he might be brought back to work out the old problems until he had solved them. ”

“ There would also be the karma on the physical plane of all the unjust or unkind acts which the man's selfishness might lead him to commit; but the worst penalty that those could bring upon him would be trivial and evanescent beside the effect upon his own mental condition. It is possible that one result might be that he would be drawn by affinity into the society of selfish people, and so through suffering from this vice in others he would learn how heinous it is in himself. ”

“ Perhaps the man has lived but one or two years of reasonable understanding—or full three-score and ten—and has violated certain moral, ethical or even religious laws, perhaps only to the extent of refusing to believe something that his reason absolutely refused to accept—for this he is doomed to an everlasting sojourn in a place of pain, misery or punishment, or a state equivalent thereto. ”

“ But we have thrust on us no such cheerless exposition. We are shown that Reincarnations are the law for man, because they are the conditions of his progress, which is also a law, but he may mould [Pg 167] them and better them and lessen them. ”

“ And such thinkers feel that the way to live according to the Higher Light, and without fear of a Malevolent Karma, is to feel one's relationship with the Universal Good, and then to "Live One Day at a time—Doing the Best you Know How—and Be Kind"—knowing that in the All-Good you live and move and have your being, and that outside of that All-Good you cannot stray, for there is no outside—knowing that THAT which brought you Here will be with you There—that Death is but a phase [Pg 249] of Life—and above all that THERE IS NOTHING TO BE AFRAID OF—and that ALL IS WELL with God; with the Universe ”