The Karmic Cycle Can Be Broken🔗

If we are able to truly manage our mind with the understanding that it is our mind that connects thoughts to form shafts of pain and pleasure and if we stay unclutched, we can stay in what Buddha calls mindfulness. We can stay in awareness and in the present moment. It is our thought process that constantly takes us from past to future and back again and does not allow us to rest in the present moment.

Understand this clearly, when we are in the present moment we can stay out of trouble without fear and desire. We can act without fear and desire. You may ask how. How can I be motivated to do something if I do not desire it? There is no need for motivation. Do you think that it is motivation that makes you breathe or digest your food? It is the intelligence of the energy that is within and without us that makes it possible for us to live and grow. We live not because of us but in spite of us.

When we act without attachment, there is no consequence to our actions, there is no karma arising from our actions.

There is a very beautiful verse in the Isa Vasya Upanishad ^*:

From the Whole came the Whole. If you remove the Whole from the Whole, only the Whole remains. By very nature we seek the Wholeness. By very nature we seek fulfillment in anything we do.

Whether it is eating, drinking, jumping, reading, talking, sleeping, or meditating, in any activity that we engage, our being yearns to completely experience the activity and be fully involved in it. Are we fully conscious of every action we engage in? Are we aware every moment of our life?

A small story:

A man was travelling by cab to the airport. The cab driver was driving very fast even

around corners and sharp turns. The passenger was getting terrified with his driving.

Finally, the cab driver seeing the terrified passenger, said, 'Why don't you do what I do when I take turns? Just shut your eyes!'

When you are not completely aware and involved in the action you are engaged in, your being remains unfulfilled in that experience. The unfulfilled experience remains inside you and keeps pulling you to do the action again with intensity to fulfill it. This is karma.

Karma is the collection of unfulfilled experiences that stay in us and constantly pull us to fulfill them.

Anything that we do and experience intensely and deeply will always leave our system. It will liberate us. 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.

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.

We think, speak and do things without clarity, without fulfillment and with deep ignorance. All these thoughts, words and actions collectively contribute towards our karmic baggage because none of them gives rise to fulfillment in us. When they do not give rise to fulfillment our karma pushes us to somehow fulfill them.

Understand clearly that now you are reading this book because of all your past decisions. You decided to pay attention to the book on display. You decided to buy it. You decided to sit down and read this book now. 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 essence of karma theory: the totality of all your past is the present, and the totality of your present is your future.

The totality of all your past is the present. The totality of your present will be your future. The problem is that we make most of our decisions unconsciously. We take thousands of decisions unconsciously. That is the reason why we are not able to connect the cause with the effect.

In any given moment, the future is predestined but conditionally. It will be a certain future according to all the totality of events till that time - this is the predestined future. But it is conditional. There is an important factor that can and will change it – your consciousness, your will.

A small story:

Once, two brothers met a sage who was known to be able to look into the future. The brothers paid their respect to the sage and asked him if he could tell them about their future. The hermit advised them, ‘It may not be good for you to know your future. Besides, your future can change later even if I tell you now.’

The brothers insisted on knowing their future. The sage looked at the elder brother and said, ‘You will become a king in a year.’ Looking at the younger brother, he said, ‘You are destined to die in the hands of a murderer in a year’s time.’ The brothers started walking back home. The elder brother was overjoyed while the younger one was depressed.

Now the elder brother started creating his fantasy world dreaming of becoming a king. The younger brother, who was destined to have less than a year to live, started spending his time in spiritual activities. He used his time to serve everyone and soon came out of his depression.

Eleven months passed. One day, the elder brother invited the younger one to his house. He wanted to look out for land for a grand palace he was planning to build since very soon he would become a king. They were walking on a huge open piece of land when the younger brother stumbled on a half- buried pot. The brothers dug the pot and removed it. It was a huge pot of gold coins.

The elder brother was thrilled and started shouting, ‘This treasure is just for me! It is for me to set up my palace and kingdom!’ Just then, a bandit jumped out from a bush, gave a blow on the elder brother’s head and tried to snatch the pot from him. The younger brother jumped at the bandit to protect his brother. But the bandit attacked him with a dagger he had in his hand. During the struggle the bandit dropped the pot and ran away.

The elder brother was very thankful to his younger brother for saving his life and offered him half the gold coins. The younger brother politely refused saying he was not going to live much longer in any case. The elder brother with his new treasure started living a lavish life, eating, drinking and being merry.

One year passed. There was no sign of any crown in sight. The younger brother was also enjoying good health. They decided to visit the sage again. They met him and asked, ‘How did your predictions go wrong?’ The sage was also surprised and

He looked at the elder brother and said, ‘Your destiny changed because of your irresponsible actions over the past months. The crown that you were to get was reduced to a pot of gold.’

He looked at the younger brother and said, ‘Your spiritual life, trust and surrender to the Divine changed your destiny also. Death in the murderer’s hand was reduced to only being wounded by him.’

Understand, destiny is not something written in stone. It very much depends on how you choose to respond to every situation life presents to you. Your awareness will give you the intelligence and the courage to change the flow of events in your life.