What is Karma?
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Most of us would have heard the word karma. Each of us has some understanding of what it is, based on what we have read in books or heard from others. Karma needs to be understood clearly because it is the basis of the cycle of life and death. It is the basis of blissful living.
Karma is a collection of unfulfilled experiences that stay in us and which constantly pull us to fulfill them. These unfulfilled experiences reside in us because we did not do certain actions with intensity and depth. Those actions leave behind unfulfilled experiences in us. Anything that we do and experience intensely and deeply will always leave our system. It will liberate us. However, any experience that we did not go through completely, through which we did not have complete fulfillment, that did not get our full energy, attention and awareness, remains inside us as karma.
There is a very beautiful verse in the Upanishad (Vedic verses):
Om poornam adam poornam idam
Poornaat poornam udachyate
Poornasya poornam aadaaya
Poornam eva vasishyate
Om shanti shanti shantihi
From the Whole came the Whole. If you remove the Whole from the Whole, the Whole only remains.
It means that our basic nature is Wholeness or fulfillment. We always seek fulfillment in anything that we do. Even though we carry some karma, basically we are complete fulfillment, Wholeness. So any karma that has not been fulfilled, cannot rest inside us for too long. It will try its best to fulfill itself. It will drive us again and again to go through the same activity so that it can be fulfilled. Any desire, any experience, which has not become complete in our system, will remain as karma and push us again and again to make us go through the same experience until it is fulfilled.
In life, we continuously take decisions. These decisions are not only for the major events in our life; even the words that we talk continuously, the thoughts that we harbour continuously are our own decisions. All our thoughts, words and actions collectively contribute towards our karmic baggage because none of them give rise to fulfillment in us. And when they do not give rise to fulfillment, they become karmic baggage that pushes us to somehow fulfill them. We think, speak and do things without clarity, without fulfillment, with deep ignorance. When we do this, our inherent nature which is fulfillment, starts suffering. Therefore our own thoughts, words and deeds become our karma and drive us to reach fulfillment in some way.
Understand clearly, you are here, now listening to my discourse because of all your past decisions. You decided to pay attention to the advertisement flyer that you saw. You decided to get more information. You decided to get into your car and drive. You decided to stop your car here. You decided to come in and sit. You decided to continue to sit. The totality of all these decisions contributes to your sitting here. The totality of all these past decisions is your present moment. Now, applying the same logic, the totality of your present decisions will be your future.
This is the whole karma theory: the totality of all your past is the present, and the totality of your present is your future.