User:Jondel/Karmamishmash

User:Jondel/Karmamishmash The Bhagvad Gita says of karma : Brahman is the indestructible, the supreme; the Self is called the essential nature, and karma is the name of the creative power that causes beings to exist. ( pp 77 verse 3 translated by Eliot Deutsch university press of America, 1968 ) - To the Hindu, karma is the law of the phenomenal cosmos that is part and parcel of living within the dimensions of time and space. All actions, thoughts, vibrations of any sort, are governed by a law that demands perfect rebound. So all jiva-atmas (individual souls) must experience karma if they live and experience the phenomenal universe. To escape the cycle of life, death and rebirth, one must exhaust one's karma and realize one's true Self as the highest truth of Oneness that is Brahman (or for dvaitists(dualists) bliss with the Supreme Godhead). + What is meant here, is an idea that is truly ineffable - no words will suffice to explain it properly - which is why "proper" explanations are not to be found in the works of scholars - as important as their work is. Those in the know recognize the spark of wisdom in others but admit to each other that words are not enough - that the very existence of words forms part of the problem. The best that one who has experienced the Lord ( or God or Brahma as Arjuna has )can do is use faint and poor methaphors and imagery in the hope of "hitting" some nerve in the reader - a nerve of recognition. - In Hinduism, karma is of three kinds: + All humans ( all living beings really, but why start a fight ) are "separated from God" ( please forgive my christian imagery - it is the culture I grew up in ) not by any arbitrary rule or law ( dharma is often expressed as some sort of divine law ) but by the basic desire for distinction. - ====&lt;small&gt;Prarabadha Karma&lt;/small&gt; ==== + We all are so full of ego that we feel a need to be different from and separate from God. Each of us could, at any time, give up this need for ego ( separateness, individuality, personality, physical experience )and directly &quot;translate&quot; to co-mingling, joining, God. The ONLY thing that prevents this full and complete union with God is our desire to be different and separate from &quot;him&quot;. This is, in fact, why some people seem to "just die" without any reason. They may have not had the "right reasons" but they did eventually get to that psychological state where they no longer "held onto" life. - This karma is unchangeable within the scope of one life, since it is the 'setup' for the life in question. It is the karma of one's past lives. After death, the atma leaves the body, as the casting off of old vestments, and carries with it the samskaras (impressions) of the past life of thoughts and actions and events. These samskaras manifest themselves in the unchangeable situation into which one is born and certain key events in one's life. These include one's time of death (seen as governed by an allotment from birth of the total number of one's breaths for that life), one's economic status, one's family (or lack of family), one's body type and look: essentially, the setting of one's birth, the initial base. + One thing that the Bhudda saw ( that is missed by most christians - even the mystics ) was that this desire and the attendant process of eliminating this desire is not a struggle that is &quot;decided&quot;, finally, at death. We can, if we are so &quot;foolish" continue on through "the infinite universe and for all time". Ego is this strong.