08.31.04
Todays notes on Karma
From what I read, there are four types of karma.
* Samchita Karma: The accumulated total of all your actions. This includes everything from all your previous lives. The thoughts and actions from previous lives form your inclinations, abilities, and persona.
* Prarabadha Karma: The portion of Samchita karma being worked on in the current life. This is the “setup” of your current life. This includes your birth, death (so to speak, not fixed in stone), family, events in your life. This cosmic status provides the setup of your current life.
* Agami Karma: Conscious actions in your current life that are added to your samchita karma and and used in future lives.
* Kriyaman Karma: Instant Karma. Actions in this life that are resolved in this life.
I have seen the last two lumped together, and/or only one of the two being used. I think its important to keep that distinction.
It is important to realize that Karma is a statement of free will. It says you have the ability to choose your future. It tells us that the we plant the seeds of the future in out actions. Whatever they may be, we will reap the results of them. No one is perfect, so we all have lessons to learn. Karma teaches by experience. It doesnt work by merely doing a good action. It requires a conscious effort on our part to be mindful of our intent. For example, giving money to beggers merely so they will leave you alone may not generate positive karma. In otherwords, the Machieavellian view of “The end justifies the means” is not a complete guiding principle. Something I read that really stuck me is: We forget about karma to see if we have learned. History repeats itself. I think it takes great ability to be able to remember the lessons of yesterday. I remember reading a study that stated the ability to forget was a evolutionary trait. Otherwise we would never be able to forget any bad or traumatic experience in our past. By the same mechanisms, we forget all the good lessons too. My friend Mim had this quote on her exam: “Education is what is left after we have forgotten everything we have learned”. An interesting aspect to this is that time, and its progression, tests us to see if we remember the lesson, and also if we can connect the action to the effect. And lessons always come in different forms. There are so many facets to life. To truly understand, we have to be able to apply abstract concepts from one realm to another.
There is truth in simplicity. Complexity is simply the interweaving of simplicity.
Articles:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma
http://www.spiritual.com.au/articles/reincarnation/karma_emogensen.htm
http://www.prodigyweb.net.mx/santhigi/karma/types.htm