TERMS STARTING WITH
Karma: Action. It is of three kinds: Sanchita (all the accumulated actions of all previous births), Prarabdha (the particular portion of such Karma allotted for being worked out in Ilse present life), and Agami (current Karma being freshly performed by the individual). It is the Karma operating through the law of cause and effect binding the Jiva or the individual soul to the wheel of birth and death.
Karmabandha: Bondage caused by Karma.
Karmabandha (Sanskrit) Karmabandha [from karma action, activity + bandha bond, fetter] The bonds of karma or action; the repeated existences of an entity brought about by the karmic bonds of continuation, born of thought, feeling, and action. A being which has no karmabandha has attained freedom from the enthralling chains and attractions of material existence; but such a jivanmukta nevertheless has karma belonging to and suitable to the plane on which it then is. Thus a jivanmukta can rise above karma relative to the lower realms of being; but as long as any entity, however high, endures as an individualized monadic center, it inevitably produces karma of some kind appropriate to its own high sphere of life and activity. For the meaning of karma is action or activity of any kind — spiritual, intellectual, psychological, astral, or physical. We human beings, living in the lower planes, produce karma corresponding to us and our environment; but the gods, because individualized and active beings in their own spheres, produce of necessity karma corresponding with their own lofty state.
Karmabhumi: Land of action; the earth-plane.
Karma Bka' brgyud. (Karma Kagyü). One of four major subsects of the BKA' BRGYUD sect of Tibetan Buddhism. Also known as the Karma kaM tshang, it dates to the first KARMA PA, DUS GSUM MKHYEN PA. Headed by a lineage of incarnate lamas (SPRUL SKU), who each hold the title of Karma pa, the sect held great political power from the late fourteenth through the early seventeenth century, until the ascendancy of the DGE LUGS at the time of the fifth DALAI LAMA. It continues to be strong in exile. The Karma bka' brgyud is known for its equal emphasis on study and practice, and in the realm of practice, on MAHĀMUDRĀ. Because of the black crown worn by the Karma pa, the sect is sometimes mistakenly referred to in the West as the "BLACK HATS." For a detailed history, see KARMA PA.
Karma Bka' brgyud
Karma(Karman, Sanskrit) ::: This is a noun-form coming from the root kri meaning "to do," "to make." Literallykarma means "doing," "making," action. But when used in a philosophical sense, it has a technicalmeaning, and this technical meaning can best be translated into English by the word consequence. Theidea is this: When an entity acts, he acts from within; he acts through an expenditure in greater or lessdegree of his own native energy. This expenditure of energy, this outflowing of energy, as it impactsupon the surrounding milieu, the nature around us, brings forth from the latter perhaps an instantaneousor perhaps a delayed reaction or rebound. Nature, in other words, reacts against the impact; and thecombination of these two -- of energy acting upon nature and nature reacting against the impact of thatenergy -- is what is called karma, being a combination of the two factors. Karma is, in other words,essentially a chain of causation, stretching back into the infinity of the past and therefore necessarilydestined to stretch into the infinity of the future. It is unescapable, because it is in universal nature, whichis infinite and therefore everywhere and timeless; and sooner or later the reaction will inevitably be feltby the entity which aroused it.It is a very old doctrine, known to all religions and philosophies, and since the renascence of scientificstudy in the Occident has become one of the fundamental postulates of modern coordinated knowledge.If you toss a pebble into a pool, it causes ripples in the water, and these ripples spread and finally impactupon the bank surrounding the pool; and, so modern science tells us, the ripples are translated intovibrations, which are carried outward into infinity. But at every step of this natural process there is acorresponding reaction from every one and from all of the myriads of atomic particles affected by thespreading energy.Karma is in no sense of the word fatalism on the one hand, nor what is popularly known as chance, onthe other hand. It is essentially a doctrine of free will, for naturally the entity which initiates a movementor action -- spiritual, mental, psychological, physical, or other -- is responsible thereafter in the shape ofconsequences and effects that flow therefrom, and sooner or later recoil upon the actor or prime mover.Since everything is interlocked and interlinked and interblended with everything else, and no thing andno being can live unto itself alone, other entities are of necessity, in smaller or larger degree, affected bythe causes or motions initiated by any individual entity; but such effects or consequences on entities,other than the prime mover, are only indirectly a morally compelling power, in the true sense of the wordmoral.An example of this is seen in what the theosophist means when he speaks of family karma as contrastedwith one's own individual karma; or national karma, the series of consequences pertaining to the nationof which he is an individual; or again, the racial karma pertaining to the race of which the individual is anintegral member. Karma cannot be said either to punish or to reward in the ordinary meaning of theseterms. Its action is unerringly just, for being a part of nature's own operations, all karmic actionultimately can be traced back to the kosmic heart of harmony which is the same thing as saying pureconsciousness-spirit. The doctrine is extremely comforting to human minds, inasmuch as man may carvehis own destiny and indeed must do so. He can form it or deform it, shape it or misshape it, as he wills;and by acting with nature's own great and underlying energies, he puts himself in unison or harmonytherewith and therefore becomes a co-worker with nature as the gods are.
Karma, Karman: (Skr.) Action, movement, deed, a category e.g. in the Vaisesika (q.v.). In Indian philosophy generally thought of as a metaphysical entity carried by the individual along in samsara (q.v.). As law, karma would be identical with physical causation or causality while working with equal rigor in man's psychic and thought life. As such it is the unmitigated law of retribution working with equal precision in "good" and "evil" deeds and thoughts, thus determining the nature and circumstances of incarnation. Karma is classified into prarabdha (effects determining the unavoidable circumstances of man's life), samcita (effects able to be expiated or neglected, e.g., through jnana), and agami (effects currently generated and determining the future). Jainas (q.v.) enumerate 148 kinds of karma. -- K.F.L.
Karma chags med. (a.k.a. Rā ga a sya) (1613-1678). A KARMA BKA' BRGYUD teacher born near the RI BO CHE monastery in eastern Tibet, an unsuccessful candidate for the position of ninth KARMA PA and founder of the Gnas mdo branch of the Karma kaM tshang tradition, named after the monastery Gnas mdo that he established; at the same time, a founding figure in the lineage of the RNYING MA monastery DPAL YUL, one of the four great Rnying ma monasteries of Khams. A prolific author, he is known for his devotion to AMITĀBHA; his Rnam dag bde chen zhing gi smon lam ("Prayer to Be Reborn in SUKHĀVATI") is recited in all sects. As redactor of the GTER MA (treasure texts) revealed by his student and teacher Mi 'gyur rdo rje, he originated a fusion of BKA' BRGYUD and RNYING MA teachings that spread widely in Khams.
Karma chags med
Karma Chakme. See KARMA CHAGS MED
Karmadhyaksha: Controller or ruler of actions; God; soul.
Karma does not obviate free will or imply fatalism or mechanistic determinism. It is not merely a mechanical or mechanistic chain of linked cause and effect, by which every act is predetermined by some previous act and by no other cause. Man is a divine spark expressing itself through a series of vehicles, forming by means of these vehicles a series of egos, each conscious and operative on its own plane. Through his contract with higher planes, he has the power of bringing new forces into operation, so he is not inexorably bound in a mechanistic sense by his karma. On the other hand, to speak of an absolutely free will is meaningless; the will becomes more and more emancipated from conditions as we penetrate deeper into the recesses of our nature; but it must always be actuated by motive of some kind, and hence, being conditioned by motive, it comes under the operation of the universal law of karma.
Karma gling pa. (Karma Lingpa) (1326-1386). A treasure revealer (GTER STON) of the RNYING MA sect of Tibetan Buddhism. He is best known for unearthing the treasure cycle entitled the Zhi khro dgongs pa rang grol ("Peaceful and Wrathful Deities, the Natural Liberation of Intention") from a mountain peak in his native region of Dwags po (Dakpo). Part of this doctrinal cycle, called the BAR DO THOS GROL CHEN MO ("Great Liberation through Hearing in the Intermediate State"), became widely known in the West as the so-called Tibetan Book of the Dead. See also BAR DO; ANTARĀBHAVA.
Karma gling pa
Karma is only a machinery ; it is not the fundamental cause of terrestrial existence ; it cannot be, for when the soul first entered this existence, it had no Karma.
Karmaja: Born of action or Prarabdha.
Karma kaM tshang. See KARMA PA; KARMA BKA' BRGYUD.
Karma kaM tshang
Karmakanda (Sanskrit) Karmakāṇḍa That part of the Sruti or Vedic writings which relates to ceremonial acts and sacrificial rites; Blavatsky holds them to be unimportant spiritually (BCW 4:366). Also one of the scriptures of the Jains.
Karmakanda: (Skr., see Karma above) That portion of the Veda (q.v.) with which the priests are concerned. -- K.F.L.
Karmakanda: The section of the Vedas dwelling only on the rituals mainly; the Samhitas and the Brahmanas of the Vedas.
Karma Lingpa. See KARMA GLING PA
Karma ::: Madhav: “Each action produces a result and the action of today is often plagued by the reaction of yesterday.” Readings in Savitri, Vol. I.
Karma-marga: Sanskrit for path of action. The term applied in Hindu philosophy to the approach to God and spiritual perfection through selfless and harmonious actions (cf. Karma; karma yoga).
Karma-Nemesis [from Sanskrit karma action, cause and effect + Greek Nemesis goddess of harmony or retribution] The appointed karmic lot or destiny of any entity, latent in the entity’s germinal existence and unfolded progressively in the course of its growth or evolution. The universe as a whole fulfills, in the course of its cyclic evolution, all that is contained in the germ at the dawn of its manifestation; and the individual, who in essence is a spark of the divine life, follows the same inscrutable law of destiny, as do also the worlds and all the beings in and on them.
Karma pa. In Tibetan, a title given to the incarnate lama (SPRUL SKU) identified at birth in each generation as the head of the KARMA BKA' BRGYUD subsect of the BKA' RGYUD sect of Tibetan Buddhism. The term is commonly etymologized as "man of [enlightened] action." In the history of Tibetan Buddhism, the lineage of the Karma pas is considered to be the first to institutionalize its succession of incarnate lamas, a practice later adopted by the other sects. According to tradition, at the time of his death, each Karma pa composes a letter that specifies the date and location of his next incarnation. This letter is given to a close disciple, who then reveals its contents upon the death of the Karma pa, with the information in the letter used to locate the child who has been born as the next Karma pa. Among the most famous and sacred possessions of the Karma pa is a black crown, said to be made from the hair of one hundred thousand dĀKINĪS. The actual crown is said to be invisible to persons lacking sufficient merit. However, during the Ming dynasty, the Yongle emperor (r. 1402-1424) presented the fifth Karma pa with a visible physical replica of the crown. The replica itself is said to have great power; the "black hat ceremony," in which the Karma pa dons the crown, is among the most important in the sect. In the ceremony, the Karma pa holds the hat upon his head; otherwise, it is said, it will fly off into space. It is also said that those who see the crown will be liberated from rebirth. Due to the importance of the crown, the Karma pas are sometimes called the "black crowned" (zhwa nag). In the nineteenth century, a Western misunderstanding of this term led to the identification of a sect of Tibetan Buddhism called the "BLACK HATS," a mistake that persists in some accounts of Tibetan Buddhism. Like the DALAI LAMAs, the Karma pas are considered to be emanations of the BODHISATTVA AVALOKITEsVARA. Also like the Dalai Lamas, the Karma pas have been among the most important and revered religious figures in the history of Tibet; they include many great scholars and yogins. Some have also had political power, at times leading to conflicts, sometimes polemical, and sometimes military, with the DGE LUGS PA. Although the main seat of the Karma pas was MTSHUR PHU Monastery in central Tibet, the Karma pas tended to travel widely. Their importance and influence extended throughout the Tibetan cultural domain, including China. The lineage includes:
Karma Pakshi. (1203-1283). A Tibetan Buddhist master recognized as the second KARMA PA, renowned for his virtuosity in meditation, thaumaturgy, and his activities at the Mongol court. The name "Pakshi" is derived from the Mongolian word for "teacher" or "master," and the second Karma pa is also frequently known by the epithet grub chen, or MAHĀSIDDHA. In his youth, Karma Pakshi was recognized as a child of great intellectual ability and skill in meditation. He conducted his early training under the BKA' BRGYUD teacher Spom brag pa Bsod rnams rdo rje (Pomdrakpa Sonam Dorje, 1170-1249) and spent a great period of his time in meditation retreat near the monastery of MTSHUR PHU in central Tibet. Traveling to eastern Tibet, he founded a monastery at Spungs ri (Pungri) and renovated the Bka' brgyud institution of KARMA DGON established by his predecessor DUS GSUM MKHYEN PA. Karma Pakshi's fame spread throughout the Tibetan border regions to the north and east. In about 1251, the Mongol prince Qubilai (later Khan, r. 1260-1294) sent an invitation to Karma Pakshi, who was residing at Mtshur phu. He arrived at the Mongol court several years later. Karma Pakshi was one of numerous religious figures present at court, including the SA SKYA hierarch 'PHAGS PA BLO GROS RGYAL MTSHAN. Karma Pakshi quickly impressed Qubilai with a display of magical powers, and the Mongol prince requested him to remain permanently at court. The relationship soured, however, when Karma Pakshi refused the offer. On his return to Tibet, he formed a relationship with Qubilai's elder brother and political rival Mongke (1209-1259) and consented to visit Mongke's palace in Liangzhou. He taught the Mongol ruler and his court Buddhist doctrine, especially TANTRA based on the CAKRASAMVARATANTRA. For ten years, Karma Pakshi traveled across China, Mongolia, and Tibet and is also said to have debated with numerous Daoist practitioners. Qubilai assumed the role of high Khan after Mongke's death in 1259. Angered at Karma Pakshi's support of his rival brother, and still smarting from his refusal to remain at court, Qubilai ordered Karma Pakshi's capture and exile. Qubilai eventually relented and allowed the Karma pa to return to Tibet. Upon his return to Mtshur phu, he constructed a massive statue of sĀKYAMUNI called the "ornament of the world" ('dzam gling rgyan). The completed statue, however, was slightly tilted. In a famous account, Karma Pakshi is said to have straightened the statue by first assuming the same tilted posture and then righting himself, simultaneously moving the statue. Among his principal disciples was O rgyan pa Rin chen dpal (Orgyenpa Rinchenpal), who would become the guru of the third Karma pa, RANG 'BYUNG RDO RJE.
Karma Pakshi
Karmapara: Dependent on Karma.
Karma pa
Karmaphala: The fruit of actions; the consequence of a deed in the shape of pain or pleasure.
Karma ::: Refers to a Universal Law that expresses how Consciousness becomes entangled and dualistically expressed the way it is in the moment It is expressing. This is based on the interconnectedness of all archetypes and is intimately tied into the causal nature of reality as it emanates from Non-Duality. See Causality.
Karmasakshi: Witness of actions.
Karmasannyasa Yoga (Sanskrit) Karmasannyāsa-yoga The attaining of at-one-ment with the highest by means of renunciation of action for personal benefit, treated in the fifth chapter of the Bhagavad-Gita. An ascetic who seeks nothing for self and rejects nothing for self, who is free from the influence of the pairs of opposites, is thereby released from the bonds forged by action or karma; but renunciation of action and devotion through action are both means of final emancipation, and of the two, devotion through action or karma yoga is superior to renunciation. Thus it is better for the personal man to act, and if necessary to act strongly, for spiritual things and causes, than to renounce personal action of any kind and thereby sink into fruitless quietism.
Karma (Sanskrit) Karma [from the verbal root kṛ to do, make, denoting action] Action, the causes and consequences of action; that which produces change. One of the primary postulates of every comprehensive system of philosophy, described as a universal law, unceasingly active throughout universal nature and rooted in cosmic harmony, in its operations existing from eternity, inevitable, inherent in the very nature of things. It is action, absolute harmony, the adjuster; it preserves equilibrium by compensating and adjusting all actions, excessive or defective. Hence it is called the law of retribution, implying neither reward nor punishment, based on nature’s own urge of harmonious equilibrium. As such it has been personalized as Nemesis and by many other names, a practice which lends itself to popular imagining of avenging deities, such as God or Gods, Furies, Fates, Destiny, etc. As there are no such things as inanimate beings in the universe, it is not surprising to hear of karmic agents and of scribes or lipika who record karma. Karma must necessarily be transmitted by living beings of one grade or another, because there is no other means possible, and universal nature is but a vast, virtually frontierless being whose entire structure, laws, and operations are the innumerable hierarchies of beings in all-various grades, which thus not only condition nature, but are in fact universal nature itself. By our acts we create living beings which act upon other people and ultimately react upon ourselves. These beings, then, are agents of karma on one plane; on higher planes other orders of beings are such agents.
Karma: Sanskrit for action or deed. In Hinduism and occult philosophy, the dynamic manifestation of mental and physical energy in deeds, speech or thought which inevitably produces a good, evil or indifferent effect, according as the action is good, evil or indifferent, and the effect itself becomes the cause of further effects. Thus karma is the law of physical causation or cause and effect, the unmitigated law of retribution, working with equal precision in good and evil thoughts and deeds, thus determining the nature and circumstances of man’s future incarnation. Thus karma is (1) action-energy, past or present, latent or manifest, actual or potential; (2) a self-operating law of cause and effect and retribution; (3) the entity of the individual or of the universe carried along in the series of the Wheel of Life (samsara ).
Karmasaya: The receptacle or mass of actions; aggregate of works done.
Karmasiddhiprakarana
Karmasiddhiprakarana. (T. Las grub pa'i rab tu byed pa; C. Dasheng chengye lun; J. Daijo jogoron; K. Taesŭng songop non 大乘成業論). In Sanskrit, "Investigation Establishing [the Correct Understanding] of Karman"; an important treatise written c. 360 CE by the Indian scholiast VASUBANDHU, which seeks to explain karmic continuity by resorting to the quintessential YOGĀCĀRA doctrine of the storehouse consciousness (ĀLAYAVIJNĀNA). The Sanskrit recension has not survived, so the text is known only through its translations into Chinese (by VimoksaprajNa and XUANZANG) and Tibetan. Vasubandhu critiques different theories propounded concerning the interconnections between KARMAN (action) and VIPĀKA (fruition) discussed in rival Buddhist schools, including the VAIBHĀsIKA, SAMMITĪYA, and SAUTRĀNTIKA. Through this exhaustive analysis, Vasubandhu concludes that, while everything may be momentary (KsAnIKA), karman and vipāka are connected through the requital of causal associations that are embedded in the storehouse consciousness. This storehouse consciousness is the repository of the seeds (BĪJA) of past actions and serves as a retributory or appropriating consciousness (ĀDĀNAVIJNĀNA), which manifests karmic fruitions based on the wholesome and unwholesome influences arising in the other consciousnesses (VIJNĀNA) to which it is related. The storehouse consciousness is thus the repository for the seeds of all past experiences, as well as the consciousness that "appropriates" a physical body at the moment of rebirth. Vasubandhu's analysis reconciles momentariness (KsAnIKAVĀDA), one of the most radical framings of nonself doctrine (ANĀTMAN), with the imperishability of karman.
Karma (S) the law of the collective actions in someone’s (previous) life and its consequences in the current or future life
Karma ::: The doctrine of reincarnation and Karma tells us that the soul has a past which shaped its present birth and existence; it has a future which our present action is shaping; our past has taken and our future will take the form of recurring terrestrial births and Karma, our own action, is the power which by its continuity and development as a subjective and objective force determines the whole nature and eventuality of these repeated existences.
Karmavada: The doctrine of Karma upholding that each deed, good or bad, is inevitably followed by pleasure or pain as its sure effect.
Karma-vadins (Sanskrit) Karma-vādin-s Karma-preachers; applied to the followers of the Karma-Mima-nsa-Darsana, one name of the Purva-Mima-nsa school founded by Jaimini, which taught a merely critical interpretation of the text of the Veda.
Karma Yoga ::: Aims at the dedication of every human activity to the supreme Will. It begins by the renunciation of all egoistic aim for our works, all pursuit of action for an interested aim or for the sake of a worldly result. By this renunciation it so purifies the mind and the will that we become easily conscious of the great universal Energy as the true doer of all our actions and the Lord of that Energy as their ruler and director with the individual as only a mask, an excuse, an instrument or, more positively, a conscious centre of action and phenomenal relation. The choice and direction of the act is more and more consciously left to this supreme Will and this universal Energy. To That our works as well as the results of our works are finally abandoned. The object is the release of the soul from its bondage to appearances and to the reaction of phenomenal activities. Karmayoga is used, like the other paths, to lead to liberation from phenomenal existence and a departure into the Supreme. But here too the exclusive result is not inevitable. The end of the path may be, equally, a perception of the Divine in all energies, in all happenings, in all activities, and a free and unegoistic participation of the soul in the cosmic action. So followed it will lead to the elevation of all human will and activity to the divine level, its spiritualisation and the justification of the cosmic labour towards freedom, power and perfection in the human being.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 39-40
Karma Yoga (Sanskrit) Karma-yoga [from karma action + yoga union] One of the methods or stages of yoga practice and training, involving attaining at-one-ment or union with the spiritual-divine essence within by means of unselfish action or works.
Karma yoga: The quest of the mystic union with the Divine Spirit through the karma-marga, consecrated action; complete control of one’s personality is sought, in order to subdue its self-conscious, self-centered desires, so as to make one’s actions cosmocentric, in complete harmony with the purposes of the universal One.
Karmayoga: The Yoga of selfless action; performance of one's own duty; indifference to the body and the world; service of humanity.
Karmayogi: One going through the scheduled spiritual discipline of the path of action.
KARMA. ::: Action entailing its consequences.
karma ::: action, work; activity, motion; action in the world based on vijñana and expressing the union of Kr.s.n.a and Kali, the third member of the karma catus.t.aya, often conceived in terms of a fourfold mission (literary, political, social and spiritual) enjoined by a divine command (adesa) while Sri Aurobindo was in jail; the karma catus.t.aya itself; work, an attribute of Aniruddha; the sum of one"s actions, each action being viewed as a link in a chain of cause and effect extending over many lives. karma catus catustaya
karma ::: action, work; the work or function of a man; the power which by its continuity and development as a subjective and objective force determines the nature and eventuality of the soul's repeated existences. ::: karmani [plural]
karma bandha. :::bondage caused by karma
karmabandham prahasyasi ::: thou shalt cast away the bondage of works. [Gita 2.39]
karma ::: Karma Originating in Hindu philosophy, Karma is a concept that is used to explain injustice and retribution. Through karma, a crime committed in this life may be punished in the next. This is because every action, no matter how big or small, has its inescapable consequence. In other words, sooner or later each good deed is repaid by good and each bad deed by bad.
karmacatustaya (Karmachatushtaya) ::: [the catustaya of action]. ::: karmacatustayam [nominative]
karmadāna
karmadāna. (S). See WEINUO.
karmadeha (karmadeha; karma deha) ::: karma-body; a kind of subtle vital-physical atmosphere surrounding the body and containing saṁskaras due to one"s past karma.
karmadeva (karmadeva; karma deva) ::: a god of action; one who has achieved divinity by works.
karmadevata ::: same as karmadeva. karmadevata karmahina karmahina ud udasinata
karmadharaya ::: [in Sanskrit grammar: the appositional compound].
karma jyayo hyakarmanah ::: action is greater than inaction. [Gita 3.8]
karmakama (karmakama; karma-kama; karma kama) ::: the combikarmakama nation of karma and kama1, divine action and divine enjoyment, which together form the "effective half" of the karma catus.t.aya.
karma kanda. :::fruitive activities; activities for sense gratification; activities under vedic injunction, which gradually purify one to understand his true position &
karmakanda ::: the section of (ritual) works [of the Veda], identified with the hymns. [cf. jnanakanda]
karmakula
karmakula. (T. las kyi rigs; C. jiemo bu; J. katsumabu; K. kalma pu 羯磨部). In Sanskrit, "action family"; one of the "five lineages" or "five families" (PANCAKULA) of tantric Buddhism. The five are usually given as the TATHĀGATAKULA, VAJRAKULA, PADMAKULA, RATNAKULA, and KARMAN families (different tantras have different lists). Those in the karmakula become enlightened in the form of the buddha AMOGHASIDDHI. Each of the five families is associated with one of the five aggregates (SKANDHA), five wisdoms (JNĀNA), five afflictions (KLEsA), five elements (MAHĀBHUTA), and five colors. For the karman family, these are the conditioning factors (SAMSKĀRA) skandha, the wisdom of having accomplished what was to be done (KṚTYĀNUstHĀNAJNĀNA), the affliction of envy, the element air, and the color green. See also PANCATATHĀGATA.
karmalipsa ::: the urge to work, an element of Mahasarasvati bhava. karmalipsa karman karmani
karmamarga ::: [the path of works, karmayoga].
karma marg&
karmamudrā
karmamudrā. (T. las kyi phyag rgya). In Sanskrit, "action seal"; a term used to refer to the female consort in the practice of sexual yoga in ANUTTARAYOGATANTRA. In the context of sexual yoga, three types of female consorts or VIDYĀ ("knowledge women") are sometimes enumerated. The first is the JNĀNAMUDRĀ, or "wisdom seal," who is an imagined or visualized partner and is not an actual consort. The second and third types of consorts are both actual consorts. The SAMAYAMUDRĀ, or "pledge seal," is a consort who is fully qualified for the practice of sexual yoga, in the sense that she is of the appropriate age and caste, has practiced the common path, and maintains the tantric pledges (SAMAYA). The third and final type is the karmamudrā, who is also an actual consort but who may not possess the qualifications of a samayamudrā. In some expositions of tantric practice, these three types of "seals" are discussed with reference to MAHĀMUDRĀ, or "great seal," a multivalent term sometimes defined as the union of method (UPĀYA) and wisdom (PRAJNĀ), which does not require a consort.
karman ::: act, action; obligation, occupation; work, labor, activity.
karmanaiva hi samsiddhim asthita janakadayah ::: [it was indeed by works that Janaka and others attained to perfection]. [Gita 3.20]
karmani praviliyante ::: actions disappear. [cf. Gita 4.23]
karmani ::: see under karma
karma ::: n. --> One&
karman. (P. kamma; T. las; C. jiemo; J. katsuma/konma; K. kalma 羯磨). In Sanskrit, "ecclesiastical proceeding"; from the literal meaning of karman as an "act." (To distinguish karman as "action" from "ecclesiastical proceeding," the Chinese uses a translation for the former and a transcription for the latter.) Such proceedings include admission into the order as novices (pravrajyā, see PRAVRAJITA), full ordination of monks and nuns (UPASAMPADĀ), the fortnightly confession ceremony (UPOsADHA) for recitation of the PRĀTIMOKsA precepts, the invitation ceremony (PRAVĀRAnĀ) closing the rain's retreat (VARsĀ), giving cloth for robes (KAtHINA), the adjudication of rules, the administration of punishments to transgressors of the precepts, and the settlement of disputes among the clergy. At such formal proceedings, a motion is made before the congregation of monks that may be approved by silent assent (see JNAPTIDVITĪYĀ KARMAVĀCANĀ [P. Nattidutiyakammavācā]; KARMAVĀCANĀ). In responding to monks who have transgressed the precepts, for example, the VINAYA provides for seven different ecclesiastical proceedings, depending on the kind and severity of the infraction. They are reprimands; expulsion from the clergy; the appointment of an overseeing mentor (see ĀCĀRYA; ANTEVĀSIKA); temporary proscription against contact with the laity; confronting with incriminating evidence a suspect who refuses to confess; confronting an unrepentant transgressor with incriminating evidence; and correcting someone who intransigently holds on to the pernicious view that certain precepts are expendable. Distinguish KARMAN, "action," s.v.; see also SAMGHAKARMAN.
karman. (P. kamma; T. las; C. ye; J. go; K. op 業). In Sanskrit, "action"; in its inflected form "karma," it is now accepted as an English word; a term used to refer to the doctrine of action and its corresponding "ripening" or "fruition" (VIPĀKA), according to which virtuous deeds of body, speech, and mind produce happiness in the future (in this life or subsequent lives), while nonvirtuous deeds lead instead to suffering. In Vedic religion, karman referred especially to ritual actions. The term came to take on wider meanings among the sRAMAnA movements of wandering ascetics, to which Buddhism belonged. The JAINAs, for example, have a theory of karman as a physical substance created through unwholesome actions, which hinder the soul's ability to achieve liberation; in order to free the soul from the bonds created through past actions, the body had to be rigorously cleansed of this karmic substance through moral discipline and asceticism. Although the Buddhists accepted the notion of moral causality, as did the Jainas, they redefined karman instead as mental intention (CETANĀ) or intentional (cetayitvā) acts: the Buddha specifically says, "Action is volition, for after having intended something, one accomplishes action through body, speech, and mind." These actions are of four types: (1) wholesome (KUsALA), which lead to wholesome results (vipāka); (2) unwholesome (AKUsALA), which lead to unwholesome results; (3) mixed, with mixed results that may be partially harmful and partially beneficial; and (4) indeterminate (AVYĀKṚTA), which are actions done after enlightenment, which yield no result in the conditioned realm. The term karman describes both the potential and kinetic energy necessary to sustain a process; and, just as energy is not lost in a physical process, neither is it lost in the process of moral cause and effect. The Buddhists assert that there is a necessary relationship that exists between the action and its fruition, but this need not manifest itself in the present life; rather, when the complex of conditions and the appropriate time for their fruition come together, actions will bear their retributive fruit, even after an interval of hundreds of millions of eons (KALPA). The fruition of action is also received by the mental continuum (CITTASAMTĀNA) of the being who initially performed the action, not by another; thus, in mainstream Buddhism, one can neither receive the fruition of another's karman nor redeem another's actions. The physical universe (BHĀJANALOKA) and all experience within it are also said to be the products of karman, although in a passive, ethically neutral sense (viz., upapattibhava; see BHAVA). The goal of the Buddhist path is to be liberated from the effects of karman and the cycle of rebirth (SAMSĀRA) by destroying attachment to the sense of self (ĀTMAN). The doctrine of karman is meant to counter the errors of antinomianism (that morality is unnecessary to salvation), annihilationism, and materialism. Actions do, in fact, matter, even if there is ultimately no self that is the agent of action. Hence, karman as representing the continuity between action and result must be understood in conjunction with the teaching of discontinuity that is ANĀTMAN: there is indeed a causal chain connecting the initiator of action and the recipient of its result, but it is not the case that the person who performs the action is the same as the person who experiences the result (the wrong view of eternality) or that the agent is different from the experiencer (the wrong view of annihilationism). This connection is likened to milk changing to its different forms of curds, butter, and ghee: the milk and the ghee are neither identical nor different, but they are causally connected. The process that connects karmic cause and effect, as well as the process by which that connection is severed, is detailed in the twelvefold chain of dependent origination (PRATĪTYASAMUTPĀDA). Enlightened beings, such as a buddha or an ARHAT, have destroyed this chain and thus have eradicated all attachment to their past karmic continuums; consequently, after their enlightenment, they can still perform actions, but those will not lead to results that would lead to additional lifetimes in saMsāra. Although the Buddha acknowledges that the connections between karman and its effect may seem so complex as to appear unfathomable (why, for example, does the evil person who harms others live in wealth, while the good Samaritan who helps others lives in poverty?), he is adamant that those connections can be known, and known with perfect precision, through the experience of awakening (BODHI). Indeed, two of the three kinds of knowledge (TRIVIDYĀ; P. tevijja) and one of the superknowledges (ABHIJNĀ) that are by-products of enlightenment involve insight into the validity of the connection between karmic cause and effect for both oneself and for all beings: viz., the ability to remember one's own former lives (PuRVANIVĀSĀNUSMṚTI: P. pubbenivāsānunssati) in all their detail; and the insight into the karmic destinies of all other beings as well (CYUTYUPAPATTIJNĀNA; P. cutupapātānuNāna). Distinguish KARMAN, "ecclesiastical proceeding," s.v.; see also ĀNANTARYAKARMAN; ANINJYAKARMAN; ER BAO; KARMĀVARAnA.
karman
karmanyevadhikaraste ::: thou hast a right to action. [Gita 2.47]
karmapatha. (P. kammapatha; T. las kyi lam; C. yedao; J. godo; K. opto 業道). In Sanskrit, "course of action"; the name given to a standardized list of ten types of wholesome (KUsALA) and unwholesome (AKUsALA) actions (KARMAN), which lead respectively to salutary rebirths (viz., in the realms of humans and divinities) or unsalutary rebirths (APĀYA; DURGATI, viz., in the realms of hungry ghosts, animals, or hell denizens). The respective ten types are further subdivided into three subsets according to whether they pertain to physical actions, speech acts, or mental actions. The ten unwholesome courses of action (akusalakarmapatha) include, under the category of the body: (1) killing (prānātipāta; P. pānātipāta), (2) stealing (adattādāna; P. adinnādāna), and (3) sexual misconduct (KĀMAMITHYĀCĀRA; P. kāmamicchācāra); under the category of speech: (4) lying (mṛsāvāda; P. musāvāda), (5) slander or malicious speech (paisunyavāda; P. pisunavācā), (6) offensive or harsh speech (pārasyavāda; P. pharusavācā), and (7) frivolous prattle (saMbhinnapralāpa; P. samphappalāpa); and under the category of mind: (8) covetousness (ABHIDHYĀ; P. abhijjhā), (9) ill will (VYĀPĀDA), and (10) wrong views (MITHYĀDṚstI; P. micchāditthi). The root causes of the ten unwholesome courses of action are greed (LOBHA), hatred (DVEsA), or delusion (MOHA): for example, killing, ill will, and offensive speech are generally motivated by hatred; sexual misconduct, covetousness, and stealing are generally motivated by desire and greed; wrong views are generally motivated by delusion; and lying, slander, and frivolous prattle are motivated by a combination of all three. For a thought to be classified as an unwholesome mental course of action, it must be particularly extreme-for example, the wish to misappropriate someone else's property, the malicious intention to harm someone, or the adherence to pernicious doctrines. The ten wholesome courses of action (kusalakarmapatha) are the opposite of those given in the preceding list: under the category of body, the avoidance of killing, the avoidance of stealing, and the avoidance of sexual misconduct; under the category of speech, the avoidance of lying, the avoidance of slander, the avoidance of offensive speech, and the avoidance of prattle; under the category of mind, unselfishness, good will, and right views (SAMYAGDṚstI). The list of ten wholesome and ten unwholesome courses of action is frequently found in all strata of Buddhist literature.
karmapatha
karmaphala ::: fruit of works.
karmaphala. ::: the fruit of actions; the consequence of a deed
karma-siddhi asiddhi ::: success and failure in karma. karma-sraddh karma-sraddha
karmasiddhi (karmasiddhi; karma-siddhi; karma siddhi) ::: success of action in the world; perfection of karma in all its parts as laid down by the adesa; fulfilment of the karma catus.t.aya, especially its effective half.
KARMA (Skt, T.B.) means:
karmathian ::: n. --> One of a Mohammedan sect founded in the ninth century by Karmat.
karmavācanā. (P. kammavācā; T. las su bsko ba; C. baijiemo; J. byakukonma; K. paekkalma 白羯磨). In Sanskrit, a "proceeding" or "stating of the matter"; carried out as part of the performance of an ecclesiastical act or sanghakamma (S. SAMGHAKARMAN; see also KARMAN) that involves the recitation of a prescribed ritual text. In the Pāli tradition, not all ecclesiastical acts require the performance of a kammavācanā; those that do not are called P. Nattikamma. Ecclesiastical acts that do require a formal "statement of the matter" may be one of two types. The first is the P. Nattidutiyakammavācā (S. JNAPTIDVITĪYĀ KARMAVĀCANĀ), an ecclesiastical act that requires the performance of a kammavācanā once. This is the dictated procedure that is to be followed during certain formal occasions within the SAMGHA, such as the ordination ceremony, the adjudication of rules, the administration of punishments to transgressors of the precepts, and the settlement of disputes among the clergy. A motion or proposal is made formally one time to the attendees and repeated once to solicit additional comment. If the proposal is read in this manner with no audible objections from the group (silence thus indicates approval), it is passed and considered binding on the participants. The second is the P. Natticatutthakammavācā (S. jNapticaturtha karmavācanā), an ecclesiastical act that requires the performance of a kammavācanā three times. This type involves matters of greater importance or formality and requires three formal questions and an audible response before they are considered decided. There are no sanghakamma in the Pāli tradition that require the recitation of a kammavācā two times.
karmavācanā
karmavira ::: [a hero in action].
KARMA YOGA. ::: It alms at the dedication of every human activity to the supreme Wilt. It begins by the renunciation of all egoistic aim for our works, all pursuit of action for an inter- ested aim or for the sake of a worldly result. By this renuncia- tion it so purifies the mind and the will that we become easily conscious of the great universal Energy as the true doer of all our actions and the Lord of that Energy as their ruler and director with the individual as only a mask, an excuse, an instrument or, more positively, a conscious centre^ of action and phenomenal relation. The choice and direction of the act is more and more consciously left to this supreme Will and this universal Energy. To that our works as well as the results of our works are finally abandoned. The object is the release of the soul from its bondage to appearances and to the reaction of phenomenal activities. Karmayoga is used, like the other paths, to lead to liberation from phenomenal existence and a departure into the Supreme. But here too the exclusive result is not inevitable. The end of the path may be, equally, a perception of the divine in all energies, in all happenings, in all activities, and a free and unegoislic participation of the soul in the cosmic action. So followed it will lead to the elevation of all human will and activity to the divine level, its spiritualisation and the
karma yoga. ::: the yoga of action chosen primarily by those of an outgoing nature; the yoga of selfless devotion of all inner and outer activities as a sacrifice to the Lord; selfless service to God without any intention for gain or reward; one of the four paths of yoga
karmayoga ::: the yoga of (desireless) works; to do the divine works as a means towards the divine birth before it is attained and an expression of it after it is attained.
karmayogena yoginam ::: by the way of works of the yogins. [Gita 3.3]
karma yogi. ::: the one whose actions are not motivated by desire for personal benefit or by any other kind of attachment
TERMS ANYWHERE
4. Truthfulness and unswerving faith in the law of Karma, independent of any power in nature that could interfere: a law whose course is not to be obstructed by any agency, not to be caused to deviate by prayer or propitiatory exoteric ceremonies;
Aanroo, Aanre (Egyptian) Ȧanru, Ȧanre. More fully, Sekhet-Aanre (the fields of the reeds); more often called Aarru or Sekhet-Aarru; also Aanru, Aaru. The first region of the Afterworlds (Amenti) reached by the deceased in the afterdeath state, which he enters as a khu. “The second division of Amenti. The celestial field of Aanroo is encircled by an iron wall. The field is covered with wheat, and the ‘Defunct’ are represented gleaning it, for the ‘Master of Eternity’; some stalks being three, others five, and the highest seven cubits high. Those who reached the last two numbers entered the state of bliss (which is called in Theosophy Devachan); the disembodied spirits whose harvest was but three cubits high went into lower regions (Kamaloka). Wheat was with the Egyptians the symbol of the Law of Retribution or Karma. The cubits had reference to the seven, five and three human ‘principles’ ” (TG 1).
Abortion The destruction of the fetus in the uterus. The issues involved in the act are more vital and far-reaching than is generally suspected. Blavatsky in classifying feticide as unjustifiable murder, says: “yet it is neither from the standpoint of law, nor from any argument drawn from one or another orthodox ism that the warning voice is sent forth against the immoral and dangerous practice, but rather in occult philosophy both physiology and psychology show the disastrous consequence. . . . For, indeed, when even successful and the mother does not die just then, it still shortens her life on earth to prolong it with dreary percentage in Kamaloka, the intermediate sphere between the earth and the region of rest, . . . a necessary halting place in the evolution of the degree of life. The crime committed lies precisely in the wilful and sinful destruction of life, and interference with the operations of nature, hence — with Karma — that of the mother and the would-be future human being. The sin is not regarded by theosophists as one of a religious character, . . . But foeticide is a crime against nature” (BCW 5:107-8).
::: "A cosmic Will and Wisdom observant of the ascending march of the soul"s consciousness and experience as it emerges out of subconscient Matter and climbs to its own luminous divinity fixes the norm and constantly enlarges the lines of the law — or, let us say, since law is a too mechanical conception, — the truth of Karma.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“A cosmic Will and Wisdom observant of the ascending march of the soul’s consciousness and experience as it emerges out of subconscient Matter and climbs to its own luminous divinity fixes the norm and constantly enlarges the lines of the law—or, let us say, since law is a too mechanical conception,—the truth of Karma.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
adesa (adesha; adesh) ::: command; a voice (van.i) heard inwardly as adesa "the command of the Divine Guide of the Yoga"; especially, "the Adesha given in the jail", the inner command received by Sri Aurobindo in Alipur jail giving him a mission to accomplish a certain work, karma, with four principal parts: literary (sahitya), religious (daiva or dharma), political (kr.ti) and social (samaja or kama1) adesasiddhi (adeshasiddhi; adesha-siddhi; adesha siddhi; adeshsidadesasiddhi
Adrasteia (Greek) [from a not + didraskein to run away] That which cannot be escaped; a personification of one aspect of karma; a surname of Nemesis, not a synonym. Nemesis, Adrasteia, and Themis form a trinity: Adrasteia is the causes created by man himself, therefore inescapable; Nemesis personifies reverence for law, i.e., conscience; while Themis represents divine order and harmony, the inherent equilibrium in the cosmic structure. Adrasteia therefore signifies the effects that flow upon one sooner or later as the results of his good or evil doing.
Adrishta (Sanskrit) Adṛṣṭa [from a not + the verbal root dṛṣ to see, learn, perceive with the mind or intuition] Unseen, unforeseen, invisible; an unforeseen danger. In philosophy, that which is beyond the reach or observation of the percipient consciousness. W. Q. Judge defines it as “the merit or demerit attaching to a man’s conduct in a former incarnation, and the corresponding (apparently arbitrary) punishment or reward in the present or a future incarnation” (WG 2). This is clearly seen in the compound term adrishta-phala (unseen fruit), karma not yet come into force. Hence the connotation of fate, luck (sometimes bad luck) that is attached to adrishta. (BCW 5:580 with Kanada as “unseen force”; 4:61 with Nyayas as invisible principle)
Aesir (Icelandic) [from ass the ridgepole supporting a roof] plural ases; feminine asynja, feminine plural asynjor. Creative gods of the Norse Eddas, inhabiting Asgard (gard, yard or estate), where they retire to feast on the “mead” of experience gained in spheres of life. The twelve deities who build their mansions on various “shelves” of our universe are: Odin Allfather, who occurs on every level of life and is inherent in every living thing; his consort, Frigga; Thor, the power of life and electromagnetism, who corresponds to the Tibetan fohat and in one aspect corresponds to Jove; Balder, the sun god; Njord, the Norse Saturn; Tyr, the Norse Mars; Frey, the deity of planet Earth; Freya, of Venus; Hermod (an aspect of Odin), of Mercury. Heimdall, “the whitest Ase,” is the watcher on the rainbow bridge who sounds the gjallarhorn (loud horn) at Ragnarok when a world ends. Brage is poetic inspiration. The most mysterious and lofty ase is Ull, a cold, wintry (unmanifest) world. Paradoxically, “blessed is he who first touches the fire” of that sphere. Forsete is the god of justice who corresponds to the lipikas, agents of karma.
a ::: faith in the success of the work; sraddha in the achievement of karmasiddhi.
agami karma. ::: current karma being freshly performed by the individual; new karma accumulated in the present lifetime, added to the store of sanchita karma and carried forward into future lives; actions good and bad, expected to bear fruit in future births
Agami-karma is the karmic seeds that would be sown were one to pursue one’s life normally, i.e., karma not yet contracted.
Agamin (Sanskrit) Āgāmin [from ā toward + the verbal root gam to come, go] Coming, approaching; when applied to karma, impending, future; when applied to auguries, casual, changeable, as opposed to sthira (fixed).
A gati is the path or sphere of existence entered upon by entities impelled because of past karma. If a person lives a noble and upright life, his gati will be the path or sphere of humanity in its higher aspects. If he deliberately lives an evil, degenerate existence, his course or next sphere of existence will be a rebirth in some degenerate human form or sphere of activity. Similarly with the divinities and all other entities: they find their succeeding spheres of life and action strictly according to karma. For karma is universal; and what one makes himself to be, that in very truth he shall become. The becoming in every instance and sphere of the manifested universe is according to the persisting karmic conditions impelling, and occasionally compelling, an entity into this, that, or some other of the gatis.
Aisa (Greek) Goddess who “gives to all their portion of good and evil, and is therefore karma.” (SD 2:604-5n)
akarma ::: cessation from action.
Akta (Sanskrit) Akta [from the verbal root aj to drive, propel; also from the verbal root añj to smear, bedaub, anoint] Propelling force; also anointed. Linked with both christos (anointed) and Visvakarman (Tvashtri), divine artist and architect in Vedic literature personifying the cosmic formative force or energy of the Logos (SD 2:101&n).
Alaya ::: Also called "Storehouse Consciousness". In Buddhist philosophy this is a primordial state of awareness and potentiality from which all other seeds of causality and karma flow. It has been described as "the last barrier to complete enlightenment" and hence, if we are speaking Kabbalistically, is associated with the path between Kether and the Veils of Negative Existence.
::: "All energies put into activity — thought, speech, feeling, act — go to constitute Karma. These things help to develop the nature in one direction or another, and the nature and its actions and reactions produce their consequences inward and outward: they also act on others and create movements in the general sum of forces which can return upon oneself sooner or later. Thoughts unexpressed can also go out as forces and produce their effects. It is a mistake to think that a thought or will can have effect only when it is expressed in speech or act: the unspoken thought, the unexpressed will are also active energies and can produce their own vibrations, effects or reactions.” Letters on Yoga*
“All energies put into activity—thought, speech, feeling, act—go to constitute Karma. These things help to develop the nature in one direction or another, and the nature and its actions and reactions produce their consequences inward and outward: they also act on others and create movements in the general sum of forces which can return upon oneself sooner or later. Thoughts unexpressed can also go out as forces and produce their effects. It is a mistake to think that a thought or will can have effect only when it is expressed in speech or act: the unspoken thought, the unexpressed will are also active energies and can produce their own vibrations, effects or reactions.” Letters on Yoga
All Indian doctrines orient themselves by the Vedas, accepting or rejecting their authority. In ranging from materialism to acosmism and nihilism, from physiologism to spiritualism, realism to idealism, monism to pluralism, atheism and pantheism, Hindus believe they have exhausted all possible philosophic attitudes (cf. darsana), which they feel supplement rather than exclude each other. A unnersal feature is the fusion of religion, metaphysics, ethics and psychology, due to the universal acceptance of a psycho-physicalism, further exemplified in the typical doctrines of karma and samsara (q.v.). Rigorous logic is nevertheless applied in theology where metaphvsics passes into eschatology (cf., e.g., is) and the generally accepted belief in the cyclic nature of the cosmos oscillating between srsti ("throwing out") and pralaya (dissolution) of the absolute reality (cf. abhasa), and in psychology, where epistemology seeks practical outlets in Yoga (q.v.). With a genius for abstraction, thinkers were and are almost invariably hedonistically motivated by the desire to overcome the evils of existence in the hope of attaining liberation (cf. moksa) and everlasting bliss (cf. ananda, nirvana). -- K.F.L.
Also, the ancient Roman fire god, who has always been identified with the Greek Hephaestos, popularly regarded by the Latins as having his workshops under several volcanic islands, but especially under Mt. Aetna. The isle of Lemnos was always sacred to him. He is represented, as are similar divinities such as the Hindu Visvakarman or Tvashtri, as a fashioner, artificer, or architectural builder of the cosmic structure; and like his counterparts, the smith of the gods and maker of their divine weapons, lord of the constructive arts, master of a thousand handicrafts, etc. Not only was his forge in Olympus supplied with fire, anvils, and all the necessities of a blacksmith, according to the figurative stories of Greek and Latin mythology, but he was attended by automatic handmaidens whom Vulcan himself had fashioned. The deity is prominent in the Homeric poems, where he is represented as the son of Jupiter and Juno.
ama1 (kama; kamah) ::: desire; same as suddha kama, "a divine desire other than the vital craving, a God-desire of which this other and lower phenomenon is an obscure shadow and into which it has to be transfigured"; the seeking for "the joy of God manifest in matter", an attribute of the sūdra and of Aniruddha; short for kamananda; same as samaja, the social part of karma; the divine enjoyment that accompanies a divine action in the world, a member of the karma catus.t.aya; (on page 1281) the lowest svarga 88.KKama
amarthya ::: capacity for action, a quality common to the four aspects of daivi prakr.ti, also called sarvakarmasamarthya: "a rapid and divine capacity for all kinds of action that may be demanded from . 90 the instrument".
amarthyam ::: see sarvakarmasamarthya.
amarthya (sarvakarmasamarthya; sarvakarmasamarthyam) ::: capacity for all action, a quality common to the four aspects of daivi prakr.ti, also called karmasamarthya: "a rapid and divine capacity for all kinds of action that may be demanded from the instrument". sarvakarmas sarvakarmasamarthyam
Amsa, Amsu (Sanskrit) Aṃśa, Aṃśu Fragment, particle, part; name of one of the adityas in the Mahabharata; also of Surya (the sun) whose solar energy was so tremendous that the divine architect Visvakarman cut off an eighth part of his glory. From the luminous fragments (amsa) which fell to earth, Visvakarman made a number of implements for the gods, including Vishnu’s discus and Siva’s trident. In the Bhagavad-Gita (15:7), Krishna emanates an amsa of himself which, becoming a jiva (monad) in the world of living beings, draws to itself manas (mind) and the five senses which originate in prakriti (nature).
Ananke ::: “This truth of Karma has been always recognised in the East in one form or else in another; but to the Buddhists belongs the credit of having given to it the clearest and fullest universal enunciation and the most insistent importance. In the West too the idea has constantly recurred, but in external, in fragmentary glimpses, as the recognition of a pragmatic truth of experience, and mostly as an ordered ethical law or fatality set over against the self-will and strength of man: but it was clouded over by other ideas inconsistent with any reign of law, vague ideas of some superior caprice or of some divine jealousy,—that was a notion of the Greeks,—a blind Fate or inscrutable Necessity, Ananke, or, later, the mysterious ways of an arbitrary, though no doubt an all-wise Providence.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Anna (Sanskrit) Anna [from the verbal root ad to eat, consume] Edible; food or victuals, boiled rice. Also food in a mystical sense: the lowest manifestation or body of Brahman, the supreme spirit, which manifestation is looked upon as “food” by the entities living therein, who thus feed mystically upon the body of their progenitor. Hence the word also occasionally means earth and water. “Beings are generated by food (anna); food is produced by rain; rain comes from sacrifice (yajna), and sacrifice is born of works (karma)” (BG 3:14; cf Taittiriya Upanishad 2:2).
“An Occultist or a philosopher will not speak of the goodness or cruelty of Providence; but, identifying it with Karma-Nemesis, he will teach that nevertheless it guards the good and watches over them in this, as in future lives; and that it punishes the evil-doer — aye, even to his seventh rebirth. So long, in short, as the effect of his having thrown into perturbation even the smallest atom in the Infinite World of harmony, has not been finally readjusted. For the only decree of Karma — an eternal and immutable decree — is absolute Harmony in the world of matter as it is in the world of Spirit. It is not, therefore, Karma that rewards or punishes, but it is we, who reward or punish ourselves according to whether we work with, through and along with nature, abiding by the laws on which that Harmony depends, or — break them.
anvita karma (shamanvita karma) ::: tranquil activity; action imbued with peace (sama).
A parallel thought is the Stoic spermatikoi logoi (seed-reasons or -causes), “which were the fruits or results, the karmas, of former periods of activity. Having attained a certain stage of evolution or development, or quality, or characteristic, or individuality in the preceding manvantara, when the next period of evolution came, they could produce nothing else but that which they were themselves, their own inner natures, as seeds do. The seed can produce nothing but what it itself is, what is in it; and this is the heart and essence of the doctrine of swabhava” (Fund 149).
arabhate karmayogam ::: engages in the yoga of action. [Gita 3.7]
Aryashtangamarga (Sanskrit) Āryāṣṭāṅgamārga [from ārya holy, noble + aṣṭa eight + aṅga limb, division + mārga path, way from the verbal root mṛg to seek, strive to attain, investigate] Holy eight-limbed way; in Buddhism the Noble Eightfold Path enunciated by Gautama Buddha as the fourth of the Four Noble Truths (chattari aryasatyani). Consistent practice of aryashtangamarga leads the disciple ultimately to perfect wisdom, love, and liberation from samsara (the round of repetitive births and deaths). The Eightfold Path is enumerated as: 1) samyagdrishti (right insight); 2) samyaksamkalpa (right resolve); 3) samyagvach (right speech); 4) samyakkarmantra (right action); 5) samyagajiva (right living); 6) samyagvyayama (right exertion); 7) samyaksmriti (right recollection); and 8) samyaksamadhi (right concentration). See also ARIYA ATTHANGIKA MAGGA (for Pali equivalents)
As for Solomon’s 700 wives and 300 concubines, these “are merely the personations of man’s attributes, feelings, passions and his various occult powers: the Kabbalistic numbers 7 and 3 showing it plainly. Solomon himself, moreover, being, simply, the emblem of Sol — the ‘Solar Initiate’ or the Christ-Sun, is a variant of the Indian ‘Vikarttana’ (the Sun) shorn of his beams by Visvakarman, his Hierophant-Initiator, who thus shears the Chrestos-candidate for initiation of his golden radiance and crowns him with a dark, blackened aureole — the ‘crown of thorns.’ (See The Secret Doctrine for full explanation.) Solomon was never a living man. As is described in Kings, his life and works are an allegory on the trials of Initiation” (BCW 10:162-3n).
asinata (karmahin udasinata) ::: inactive indifference.
asya-madhura (dasya-madhura; dasya madhura) ::: same as madhura dasya, the relation (bhava) of loving servitude of the jiva to the isvara. d dasyam asyaṁ buddhicaturyam buddhicaturyaṁ karmalipsa karmalipsa pritih
at.avam ::: skill in work, an element of Mahasarasvati bhava. karmas karmasamarthya
Atman: (Skr.) Self, soul, ego, or I. Variously conceived in Indian philosophy, atomistically (cf. anu); monadically, etherially, as the hypothetical carrier of karma (q.v.), identical with the divine (cf. ayam atma brahma; tat tvam asi) or different from yet dependent on it, or as a metaphysical entity to be dissolved at death and reunited with the world ground. As the latter it is defined as "smaller than the small" (anor aniyan) or "greater than the great" (mahato mahiyan), i.e., magnitudeless as well as infinitely great. -- K.F.L.
Atropos (Greek) [from a not + trepo to turn] The third of the three Fates or Moira: Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, meaning respectively, the spinner, the lot-thrower, and one who cannot be turned aside. They are aspects of karma, Atropos being residual karma not yet worked out combined with the action of the will in the person, thus making the destined or relatively inevitable future — that which by our own making “cannot be turned aside,” because it is we ourselves as we shall be.
Bacteria, then, are a host of visible and invisible agents which, on our plane, subconsciously carry out many processes of evolutionary life and death. They are links in the karmic chain by which the divine recorders, who follow the immutable laws in the universal mind, return to each being the results of whatever it was the antecedent cause. Thus the bacteria of a disease will multiply and produce their injurious toxins only when the karmic conditions within or surrounding the individual provide a suitable culture-medium for them. Even then, the toxemia may or may not be modified or overcome by the natural antitoxins of the blood aided by competent medical treatment. The typical disease germs found inactive in healthy throats, etc., are instances of a karma which, paradoxically, provides a dangerous contact with individual protection. The healthy person may be an unconscious carrier of the disease germ to someone who is due to reap the full effects of causes he had set in motion at some time.
Bandhakarana (Sanskrit) Bandhakaraṇa [from bandha bondage + karaṇa from the verbal root kṛ to make, do] Making or causing bondage; binding, fettering, or a holding back. Subba Row (Notes on BG 71) assumes that mulaprakriti is the real or principal bandhakarana as the originating cause of karmic activity, but this has reference only to the most abstract and spiritual side of things, as in the last analysis even karma itself may be traced backwards and inwards to mulaprakriti as the field of all possible activity.
Because of their lofty position, they are identified with the universal intelligence, as its immediate vehicles or channels. Thus they are not only the channels but the imbodiments of karma, and therefore not only the interpreters or agents of karma, but the recorders or scribes upwards into cosmic ideation of whatever takes place on lower planes. Their function is thus dual: imbodiments, channels, or interpreters of karma to be worked out in the universe in which the lipikas function, and thus agents of cosmic ideation; and second, as the scribes or recorders of the innumerably multitudinous karmic records of the beings below themselves.
Being composite, at the death of the physical body the personal ego disintegrates, and at the next imbodiment a new personality is brought together by the reincarnating ego, although this new personality is but a reconstruction of the old personality with only such changes as have been brought about by the working of karma over time.
Bhagavad Gita: Sanskrit for Song of the Divine One. The title of a celebrated philosophic epic poem, inserted in the Mahabharata (q.v.), containing a dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna, which clearly indicates the relationship between morality and absolute ethical values in the Hindu philosophy of action (Karma Yoga); it is considered to be one of the most influential philosophical poems of Sanskrit literature; the exact date of origin is unknown.
bhoga ::: enjoyment; a response to experience which "translates itself into joy and suffering" in the lower being, where it "is of a twofold kind, positive and negative", but in the higher being "it is an actively equal enjoyment of the divine delight in self-manifestation";(also called sama bhoga) the second stage of active / positive samata, reached when the rasagrahan.a or mental "seizing of the principle of delight" in all things takes "the form of a strong possessing enjoyment . . . which makes the whole life-being vibrate with it and accept and rejoice in it"; the second stage of bhukti, "enjoyment without desire" in the pran.a or vital being; (when priti is substituted for bhoga as the second stage of positive samata or bhukti) same as (sama) ananda, the third stage of positive samata or bhukti, the "perfect enjoyment of existence" that comes "when it is not things, but the Ananda of the spirit in things that forms the real, essential object of our enjoying and things only as form and symbol of the spirit, waves of the ocean of Ananda". bhoga h hasyam asyaṁ karmalips karmalipsa a samabh samabhava
Karmabandha (Sanskrit) Karmabandha [from karma action, activity + bandha bond, fetter] The bonds of karma or action; the repeated existences of an entity brought about by the karmic bonds of continuation, born of thought, feeling, and action. A being which has no karmabandha has attained freedom from the enthralling chains and attractions of material existence; but such a jivanmukta nevertheless has karma belonging to and suitable to the plane on which it then is. Thus a jivanmukta can rise above karma relative to the lower realms of being; but as long as any entity, however high, endures as an individualized monadic center, it inevitably produces karma of some kind appropriate to its own high sphere of life and activity. For the meaning of karma is action or activity of any kind — spiritual, intellectual, psychological, astral, or physical. We human beings, living in the lower planes, produce karma corresponding to us and our environment; but the gods, because individualized and active beings in their own spheres, produce of necessity karma corresponding with their own lofty state.
Karma(Karman, Sanskrit) ::: This is a noun-form coming from the root kri meaning "to do," "to make." Literallykarma means "doing," "making," action. But when used in a philosophical sense, it has a technicalmeaning, and this technical meaning can best be translated into English by the word consequence. Theidea is this: When an entity acts, he acts from within; he acts through an expenditure in greater or lessdegree of his own native energy. This expenditure of energy, this outflowing of energy, as it impactsupon the surrounding milieu, the nature around us, brings forth from the latter perhaps an instantaneousor perhaps a delayed reaction or rebound. Nature, in other words, reacts against the impact; and thecombination of these two -- of energy acting upon nature and nature reacting against the impact of thatenergy -- is what is called karma, being a combination of the two factors. Karma is, in other words,essentially a chain of causation, stretching back into the infinity of the past and therefore necessarilydestined to stretch into the infinity of the future. It is unescapable, because it is in universal nature, whichis infinite and therefore everywhere and timeless; and sooner or later the reaction will inevitably be feltby the entity which aroused it.It is a very old doctrine, known to all religions and philosophies, and since the renascence of scientificstudy in the Occident has become one of the fundamental postulates of modern coordinated knowledge.If you toss a pebble into a pool, it causes ripples in the water, and these ripples spread and finally impactupon the bank surrounding the pool; and, so modern science tells us, the ripples are translated intovibrations, which are carried outward into infinity. But at every step of this natural process there is acorresponding reaction from every one and from all of the myriads of atomic particles affected by thespreading energy.Karma is in no sense of the word fatalism on the one hand, nor what is popularly known as chance, onthe other hand. It is essentially a doctrine of free will, for naturally the entity which initiates a movementor action -- spiritual, mental, psychological, physical, or other -- is responsible thereafter in the shape ofconsequences and effects that flow therefrom, and sooner or later recoil upon the actor or prime mover.Since everything is interlocked and interlinked and interblended with everything else, and no thing andno being can live unto itself alone, other entities are of necessity, in smaller or larger degree, affected bythe causes or motions initiated by any individual entity; but such effects or consequences on entities,other than the prime mover, are only indirectly a morally compelling power, in the true sense of the wordmoral.An example of this is seen in what the theosophist means when he speaks of family karma as contrastedwith one's own individual karma; or national karma, the series of consequences pertaining to the nationof which he is an individual; or again, the racial karma pertaining to the race of which the individual is anintegral member. Karma cannot be said either to punish or to reward in the ordinary meaning of theseterms. Its action is unerringly just, for being a part of nature's own operations, all karmic actionultimately can be traced back to the kosmic heart of harmony which is the same thing as saying pureconsciousness-spirit. The doctrine is extremely comforting to human minds, inasmuch as man may carvehis own destiny and indeed must do so. He can form it or deform it, shape it or misshape it, as he wills;and by acting with nature's own great and underlying energies, he puts himself in unison or harmonytherewith and therefore becomes a co-worker with nature as the gods are.
Karma, Karman: (Skr.) Action, movement, deed, a category e.g. in the Vaisesika (q.v.). In Indian philosophy generally thought of as a metaphysical entity carried by the individual along in samsara (q.v.). As law, karma would be identical with physical causation or causality while working with equal rigor in man's psychic and thought life. As such it is the unmitigated law of retribution working with equal precision in "good" and "evil" deeds and thoughts, thus determining the nature and circumstances of incarnation. Karma is classified into prarabdha (effects determining the unavoidable circumstances of man's life), samcita (effects able to be expiated or neglected, e.g., through jnana), and agami (effects currently generated and determining the future). Jainas (q.v.) enumerate 148 kinds of karma. -- K.F.L.
Karma does not obviate free will or imply fatalism or mechanistic determinism. It is not merely a mechanical or mechanistic chain of linked cause and effect, by which every act is predetermined by some previous act and by no other cause. Man is a divine spark expressing itself through a series of vehicles, forming by means of these vehicles a series of egos, each conscious and operative on its own plane. Through his contract with higher planes, he has the power of bringing new forces into operation, so he is not inexorably bound in a mechanistic sense by his karma. On the other hand, to speak of an absolutely free will is meaningless; the will becomes more and more emancipated from conditions as we penetrate deeper into the recesses of our nature; but it must always be actuated by motive of some kind, and hence, being conditioned by motive, it comes under the operation of the universal law of karma.
::: "Karma is only a machinery, it is not the fundamental cause of terrestrial existence — it cannot be, for when the soul first entered this existence, it had no Karma.” *Letters on Yoga
“Karma is only a machinery, it is not the fundamental cause of terrestrial existence—it cannot be, for when the soul first entered this existence, it had no Karma.” Letters on Yoga
Karma is only a machinery ; it is not the fundamental cause of terrestrial existence ; it cannot be, for when the soul first entered this existence, it had no Karma.
Karmakanda (Sanskrit) Karmakāṇḍa That part of the Sruti or Vedic writings which relates to ceremonial acts and sacrificial rites; Blavatsky holds them to be unimportant spiritually (BCW 4:366). Also one of the scriptures of the Jains.
Karmakanda: (Skr., see Karma above) That portion of the Veda (q.v.) with which the priests are concerned. -- K.F.L.
Karma ::: Madhav: “Each action produces a result and the action of today is often plagued by the reaction of yesterday.” Readings in Savitri, Vol. I.
Karma-marga: Sanskrit for path of action. The term applied in Hindu philosophy to the approach to God and spiritual perfection through selfless and harmonious actions (cf. Karma; karma yoga).
Karma-Nemesis [from Sanskrit karma action, cause and effect + Greek Nemesis goddess of harmony or retribution] The appointed karmic lot or destiny of any entity, latent in the entity’s germinal existence and unfolded progressively in the course of its growth or evolution. The universe as a whole fulfills, in the course of its cyclic evolution, all that is contained in the germ at the dawn of its manifestation; and the individual, who in essence is a spark of the divine life, follows the same inscrutable law of destiny, as do also the worlds and all the beings in and on them.
Karma ::: Refers to a Universal Law that expresses how Consciousness becomes entangled and dualistically expressed the way it is in the moment It is expressing. This is based on the interconnectedness of all archetypes and is intimately tied into the causal nature of reality as it emanates from Non-Duality. See Causality.
Karmasannyasa Yoga (Sanskrit) Karmasannyāsa-yoga The attaining of at-one-ment with the highest by means of renunciation of action for personal benefit, treated in the fifth chapter of the Bhagavad-Gita. An ascetic who seeks nothing for self and rejects nothing for self, who is free from the influence of the pairs of opposites, is thereby released from the bonds forged by action or karma; but renunciation of action and devotion through action are both means of final emancipation, and of the two, devotion through action or karma yoga is superior to renunciation. Thus it is better for the personal man to act, and if necessary to act strongly, for spiritual things and causes, than to renounce personal action of any kind and thereby sink into fruitless quietism.
Karma (Sanskrit) Karma [from the verbal root kṛ to do, make, denoting action] Action, the causes and consequences of action; that which produces change. One of the primary postulates of every comprehensive system of philosophy, described as a universal law, unceasingly active throughout universal nature and rooted in cosmic harmony, in its operations existing from eternity, inevitable, inherent in the very nature of things. It is action, absolute harmony, the adjuster; it preserves equilibrium by compensating and adjusting all actions, excessive or defective. Hence it is called the law of retribution, implying neither reward nor punishment, based on nature’s own urge of harmonious equilibrium. As such it has been personalized as Nemesis and by many other names, a practice which lends itself to popular imagining of avenging deities, such as God or Gods, Furies, Fates, Destiny, etc. As there are no such things as inanimate beings in the universe, it is not surprising to hear of karmic agents and of scribes or lipika who record karma. Karma must necessarily be transmitted by living beings of one grade or another, because there is no other means possible, and universal nature is but a vast, virtually frontierless being whose entire structure, laws, and operations are the innumerable hierarchies of beings in all-various grades, which thus not only condition nature, but are in fact universal nature itself. By our acts we create living beings which act upon other people and ultimately react upon ourselves. These beings, then, are agents of karma on one plane; on higher planes other orders of beings are such agents.
Karma: Sanskrit for action or deed. In Hinduism and occult philosophy, the dynamic manifestation of mental and physical energy in deeds, speech or thought which inevitably produces a good, evil or indifferent effect, according as the action is good, evil or indifferent, and the effect itself becomes the cause of further effects. Thus karma is the law of physical causation or cause and effect, the unmitigated law of retribution, working with equal precision in good and evil thoughts and deeds, thus determining the nature and circumstances of man’s future incarnation. Thus karma is (1) action-energy, past or present, latent or manifest, actual or potential; (2) a self-operating law of cause and effect and retribution; (3) the entity of the individual or of the universe carried along in the series of the Wheel of Life (samsara ).
Karma ::: The doctrine of reincarnation and Karma tells us that the soul has a past which shaped its present birth and existence; it has a future which our present action is shaping; our past has taken and our future will take the form of recurring terrestrial births and Karma, our own action, is the power which by its continuity and development as a subjective and objective force determines the whole nature and eventuality of these repeated existences.
Karma-vadins (Sanskrit) Karma-vādin-s Karma-preachers; applied to the followers of the Karma-Mima-nsa-Darsana, one name of the Purva-Mima-nsa school founded by Jaimini, which taught a merely critical interpretation of the text of the Veda.
Karma Yoga ::: Aims at the dedication of every human activity to the supreme Will. It begins by the renunciation of all egoistic aim for our works, all pursuit of action for an interested aim or for the sake of a worldly result. By this renunciation it so purifies the mind and the will that we become easily conscious of the great universal Energy as the true doer of all our actions and the Lord of that Energy as their ruler and director with the individual as only a mask, an excuse, an instrument or, more positively, a conscious centre of action and phenomenal relation. The choice and direction of the act is more and more consciously left to this supreme Will and this universal Energy. To That our works as well as the results of our works are finally abandoned. The object is the release of the soul from its bondage to appearances and to the reaction of phenomenal activities. Karmayoga is used, like the other paths, to lead to liberation from phenomenal existence and a departure into the Supreme. But here too the exclusive result is not inevitable. The end of the path may be, equally, a perception of the Divine in all energies, in all happenings, in all activities, and a free and unegoistic participation of the soul in the cosmic action. So followed it will lead to the elevation of all human will and activity to the divine level, its spiritualisation and the justification of the cosmic labour towards freedom, power and perfection in the human being.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 39-40
Karma Yoga (Sanskrit) Karma-yoga [from karma action + yoga union] One of the methods or stages of yoga practice and training, involving attaining at-one-ment or union with the spiritual-divine essence within by means of unselfish action or works.
Karma yoga: The quest of the mystic union with the Divine Spirit through the karma-marga, consecrated action; complete control of one’s personality is sought, in order to subdue its self-conscious, self-centered desires, so as to make one’s actions cosmocentric, in complete harmony with the purposes of the universal One.
Blavatsky says that “rebirths may be divided into three classes: the divine incarnations called Avataras; those of Adepts who give up Nirvana for the sake of helping on humanity — the Nirmanakayas; and the natural succession of rebirths for all — the common law. The Avatara . . . is a descent of the manifested Deity — whether under the specific name of Siva, Vishnu, or Adi-Buddha — into an illusive form of individuality, an appearance which to men on this illusive plane is objective, but it is not so in sober fact. That illusive form having neither past nor future, because it had neither previous incarnation nor will have subsequent rebirths, has naught to do with Karma, which has therefore no hold on it” (BCW 14:373-4).
Boehme, Jacob or Bohme, Jakob (1575-1624). Great German mystic philosopher, one of those individuals who, showing unusual spiritual insight due to excellent past karma, are especially watched over by the Great Lodge in preparation for future work. A shepherd as a boy, he became a shoemaker after learning to read and write.
brahmanyadhaya (brahmani adhaya) karmani ::: having reposed (or founded) works on the brahman. [Gita 5.10]
Bruno, Giordano: (1548-1600) A Dominican monk, eventually burned at the stake because of his opinions, he was converted from Christianity to a naturalistic and mystical pantheism by the Renaissance and particularly by the new Copernican astronomy. For him God and the universe were two names for one and the same Reality considered now as the creative essence of all things, now as the manifold of realized possibilities in which that essence manifests itself. As God, natura naturans, the Real is the whole, the one transcendent and ineffable. As the Real is the infinity of worlds and objects and events into which the whole divides itself and in which the one displays the infinite potentialities latent within it. The world-process is an ever-lasting going forth from itself and return into itself of the divine nature. The culmination of the outgoing creative activity is reached in the human mind, whose rational, philosophic search for the one in the many, simplicity in variety, and the changeless and eternal in the changing and temporal, marks also the reverse movement of the divine nature re-entering itself and regaining its primordial unity, homogeneity, and changelessness. The human soul, being as it were a kind of boomerang partaking of the ingrowing as well as the outgrowing process, may hope at death, not to be dissolved with the body, which is borne wholly upon the outgoing stream, but to return to God whence it came and to be reabsorbed in him. Cf. Rand, Modern Classical Philosophers, selection from Bruno's On Cause, The Principle and the One. G. Bruno: De l'infinito, universo e mundo, 1584; Spaccio della bestia trionfante, 1584; La cena delta ceneri, 1584; Deglieroici furori, 1585; De Monade, 1591. Cf. R. Honigswald, Giordano Bruno; G. Gentile, Bruno nella storia della cultura, 1907. -- B.A.G.F. Brunschvicg, Leon: (1869-) Professor of Philosophy at the Ecole Normale in Paris. Dismissed by the Nazis (1941). His philosophy is an idealistic synthesis of Spinoza, Kant and Schelling with special stress on the creative role of thought in cultural history as well as in sciences. Main works: Les etapes de la philosophie mathematique, 1913; L'experience humaine et la causalite physique, 1921; De la connaissance de soi, 1931. Buddhism: The multifarious forms, philosophic, religious, ethical and sociological, which the teachings of Gautama Buddha (q.v.) have produced. They centre around the main doctrine of the catvari arya-satyani(q.v.), the four noble truths, the last of which enables one in eight stages to reach nirvana (q.v.): Right views, right resolve, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. In the absence of contemporary records of Buddha and Buddhistic teachings, much value was formerly attached to the palm leaf manuscripts in Pali, a Sanskrit dialect; but recently a good deal of weight has been given also the Buddhist tradition in Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese. Buddhism split into Mahayanism and Hinayanism (q.v.), each of which, but particularly the former, blossomed into a variety of teachings and practices. The main philosophic schools are the Madhyamaka or Sunyavada, Yogacara, Sautrantika, and Vaibhasika (q.v.). The basic assumptions in philosophy are a causal nexus in nature and man, of which the law of karma (q.v.) is but a specific application; the impermanence of things, and the illusory notion of substance and soul. Man is viewed realistically as a conglomeration of bodily forms (rupa), sensations (vedana), ideas (sanjna), latent karma (sanskaras), and consciousness (vijnana). The basic assumptions in ethics are the universality of suffering and the belief in a remedy. There is no god; each one may become a Buddha, an enlightened one. Also in art and esthetics Buddhism has contributed much throughout the Far East. -- K.F.L.
Caodaism: An esoteric religion and mystery cult founded in Indo-China in the 1920’s, claiming to have received its teaching from the Supreme Being (Cao Dai) through spiritualistic implements. It honors Christ, Buddha, Confucius and Lao-Tzu as saviors sent by the same deity. It teaches the existence of the soul, reincarnation and the law of Karma.
catus.t.aya (chatushtaya; chatusthaya; chatusthay; chatustaya) ::: group catustaya of four, tetrad, quaternary; any of the seven parts of the sapta catus.t.aya, the system received by Sri Aurobindo as a programme for his yoga. The seven catus.t.ayas are: (1) samata catus.t.aya or santi catus.t.aya, (2) sakti catus.t.aya, (3) vijñana catus.t.aya, (4 sarira catus.t.aya, (5) karma catus.t.aya or lilacatus.t.aya, (6) brahma .. catus.t.aya, (7) (saṁ)siddhi catus.t.aya or yoga catus.t.aya. The first four catus.t.ayas are the catus.t.ayas of the adhara-siddhi; the last three are the general catus.t.ayas. The word catus.t.aya may also be applied to other groups of four, such as lipi catus.t.aya. catv catvaro
Causality ::: The process through which the diversity of dualistic experiences emerge that characterize a current state of awareness, a particular thread or stream of Mind. The Kabbalah is one system that attempts to model this causal process that emanates stages of awareness from Consciousness amid similar maps that depict this ontological stacking of "selves". The Causal Plane is considered outside of the realm of causality because dualistic experience emanates from the Causal: the actual existence of dualistic experience is predicated on a Non-Duality of experience. This is a complex topic and active area of research; causality heavily determines the current form and subjective nature of Mind. See also Samsara and Karma.
Cause(s). See KARMA; NIDANA; FIRST CAUSE
Chain of Causation. See NIDANA; KARMA
Chatur-maharajas (Sanskrit) Catur-mahārāja [from catur four + mahā great + rājan king] Four great kings; exoterically guardians of the four quarters of the lowest of the six sensuous worlds; esoterically the four spiritual regents in and of our solar system, mystically intimately connected with karma. See also MAHARAJA
Chatur-yoni (Sanskrit) Catur-yoni Four wombs; the four modes of birth; the four ways of entering on the path of birth as decided by karma. These four ways as described in ancient books are: 1) birth from the womb, as men and mammalia; 2) birth from an egg, as birds and reptiles; 3) birth from moisture and air-germs, as insects; and 4) by sudden self-transformation, as bodhisattvas and gods (anupapadaka — “parentless”). The anupapadaka birth is brought about by the intrinsic energy and karmic merit of the individual, thus transforming himself into a nobler being.
cheshwarabhavah sarvakarmasamarthyam) ::: heroism, impetuosity, the urge towards battle, loud laughter, compassion, sovereignty, capacity for all action: the four specific attributes of Mahakali and the three attributes common to all four aspects of daivi prakr.ti. savaso napatah savaso
COMPASSION There is the Dtvme Compassion acting on as many as it can reach throuch the nets of the Law (cosmic or of Karma) and giving them tbcir chance
Compensation, Law of. See KARMA
Confucius spoke of the dragon as one who “feeds in the pure water of Wisdom and sports in the clear waters of Life”; while the Twan-ying-tu says of the yellow dragon, “His wisdom and virtue are unfathomable . . . he does not go in company and does not live in herds (he is an ascetic). He wanders in the wilds beyond the heavens. He goes and comes, fulfilling the decree (Karma); at the proper seasons if there is perfection he comes forth, if not he remains (invisible)” (SD 2:365).
consequence ::: “ Karma is nothing but the will of the Spirit in action, consequence nothing but the creation of will. What is in the will of being, expresses itself in karma and consequence. When the will is limited in mind, karma appears as a bondage and a limitation, consequence as a reaction or an imposition. But when the will of the being is infinite in the spirit, karma and consequence become instead the joy of the creative spirit, the construction of the eternal mechanist, the word and drama of the eternal poet, the harmony of the eternal musician, the play of the eternal child.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
daiva ::: divine; short for daiva karma. daiva aisvaryabh aisvaryabhava
daiva karma ::: the "religious" part of Sri Aurobindo"s life-work (see adesa), involving the establishment of a new system of Yoga and imparting it to others.
daya ::: compassion; "oneness, a participating sympathy, a free idendaya tity, with all energies in all beings and therefore a spontaneous and fruitful harmony with all the divine will in the universe", a quality common to the four aspects of daivi prakr.ti. daya isvarabhavah. karmasamarthyam (daya ishwarabhavah kardaya
daya isvarabhavah. sarvakarmasamarthyam ::: compassion, soverdaya eignty, capacity for all action (the attributes common to all four aspects of daivi prakr.ti).
Day Be With Us, Great The lipikas, karmic recorders of the universe, make a barrier — the so-called ring pass-not — impassable during its existence but passable through evolution, between the personal ego and the impersonal or cosmic self. The incarnating monads cannot pass this “ring” until they have through evolutionary risings and development become merged once more in the universal or cosmic soul. The lipikas “are directly connected with Karma and what the Christians call the Day of Judgment; in the East it was called the Day after Mahamanvantara, or the ‘Day-Be-With-Us.’ Then everything becomes one, all individualities are merged into one, yet each knowing itself . . . then, that which to us now is non-consciousness or the unconscious, will then be absolute consciousness” (TBL 112). This is called with the Egyptians the Day of Come-to-Us and refers to what the Hindus call the paranirvana or great night of union in Brahman.
destiny ::: “Destiny in the rigid sense applies only to the outer being so long as it lives in the Ignorance. What we call destiny is only in fact the result of the present condition of the being and the nature and energies it has accumulated in the past acting on each other and determining the present attempts and their future results. But as soon as one enters the path of spiritual life, this old predetermined destiny begins to recede. There comes in a new factor, the Divine Grace, the help of a higher Divine Force other than the force of Karma, which can lift the sadhak beyond the present possibilities of his nature. One’s spiritual destiny is then the divine election which ensures the future.” Letters on Yoga
Destiny. See KARMA; KARMA-NEMESIS; MOIRA
Determinism: The doctrine that every fact in the universe is guided entirely by law and is dependent upon and conditioned by causes. (Cf. Karma.)
Devavardhaki (Sanskrit) Devavardhaki Architect of the gods; a title given to Visvakarman, who according to Hindu mythology was the cosmic demiurge or world-former.
dharma-karma ::: work of dharma. dharma-sa dharma-sankara
dharma ::: law of being; "a fundamental law of our nature which secretly conditions all our activities"; the law of religious and spiritual life; the religious or spiritual part of karma.
dhi; adesh-siddhi; adesh siddhi) ::: fulfilment of the divine command (adesa) enjoining the accomplishment of a certain mission (karma), a work for the world with literary, political, social and spiritual aspects.
Disease Broadly stated, disease is a disordered or inharmonious vital state of the organism, with more of less excess, defect, or perversion of functional activity. The condition may be some chemical or mechanical wrong which renders the body unable to respond naturally to the psychoelectric and other forces which play through and sustain the physical person. Moreover, the material and immaterial elements of the human constitution react upon each other for health or disease, because the mind and emotions on the one hand, and the organs and their functions on the other, are interrelated parts of the same entity. As a rule, this interplay between the material and the conscious person becomes a vicious circle in disease. Mental or emotional shock or strain can so affect function as to result in organic disease. Long continued selfish emotions cause a distorted and inharmonious interaction of the pranic or vital currents of the body, resulting in one or another disorder, according to the type of the emotions and the individual karma.
Divine Force other than the force of karma, which can lift the
DIVISION. ::: Division is the cause of ignorance as ignorance is the cause of suffering.
Division of being ■ A necessary stage In the yogic develop- ment and experience. One feels that there is a twofold being, the inner psychic which is the true one and the other, the outer human being which is instrumentaf for the outward life. To live in the inner psychic being in union with the Divine while doing the outward work is the first stage in Karmayoga.
Live always in the psychic being, your true being. The psychic will, in due time, awaken and turn to the Divine all the rest of the nature, so that even the outer being will feel itself in touch with the Divine and moved by the Divine in all it is and feels and does.
divyam karma ::: divine works.
effective half (of the fifth catus.t.aya) ::: karma and kama1, the third and fourth members of the karma catus.t.aya.
Eneidfaddeu (Welsh) [from enaid soul + maddeu to forgive] The Druidic doctrine that the soul was cleared of its sins by suffering, that suffering was both the result and the forgiveness of wrong thinking and doing; the law of karma.
ENERGIES. ::: All energies put info activity — thought, speech, feeling, act — go to constitute Karma. These things help to develop the nature in one direction or Another, and the nature and Us actions and reactions produce their consequences inward and outward ::: they also act on others and create movements in the general sum of forces which can return upon oneself sooner or later. Thoughts unexpressed can also go out as forces and produce their elTccts. It Is a mistake to think that a thought or will can have effect only when it is expressed in speech or act ::: the unspoken thought, the unexpressed w-ill arc also active energies and can produce their own vibrations, effects or reac- tions.
ESOTERIC HISTORY AFTER 1875 The instrument the planetary hierarchy had chosen for the task of publicizing the knowledge which had been kept secret since Atlantis was H. P. Blavatsky (1831-1891). Blavatsky was enjoined not to give out any esoteric facts without special permission in each individual case. She was not to mention anything about the planetary hierarchy.
The truth, or the knowledge of reality, is only to be given gradually, with sparing facts, to a mankind unprepared to receive it. It is necessary to find connections to established fictions of which people have heard enough for them to believe that they comprehend what it all is about. A new, revolutionary system of ideas would be rejected off hand as a mere fantastic invention. It could not be comprehended, let alone understood, without careful preparation.
The most important reason, which probably only esotericians are able to understand, is the fact of the dynamic energy of ideas.
Once the esoteric knowledge was permitted to be published there was no longer any need of initiation into the old knowledge orders, nobody having been initiated into anyone of them since 1875. Although those initiated in previous incarnations were not given the opportunity to revive all their old knowledge, enough was made known, and besides hinted at, for them to be able to discover the most essential by themselves.
The most important esoteric facts to be found in the works of Sinnett, Judge, and
Hartmann &
Every point in space, every particle of even material substance, is a living being or life-atom; such a life-atom finding itself in proper physical surroundings on our own plane, and if impelled by its own karmic urge, will begin to express itself on this plane and to gather nourishment to itself, first by osmosis from the surrounding ether or air, and finally from the environing matter of the place where it is. Now if such a life-atom thus appearing on our plane has the evolutionary history behind it enabling it to develop into a being of high order it will so continue to grow, barring accidents or similar preventive causes; if again its karmic urge working from within outwards will take it no higher than a being of intermediate class, such as an animal or plant, it will express itself as an animal or plant, or if its urge from stored up karma can take it no higher on the evolutionary ladder than the mineral kingdom on this plane, then it will express itself as a mineral atom. What actually takes place in the history of the life-germ even on earth today, as in the growth of the human seed into the embryo and thereafter into the human child, is but a more complicated picture of what spontaneous generation was in the early history of our globe, when almost any point of physical matter was quivering with life and actually anxious to self-express itself through evolutionary unfolding as a living being. Spontaneous generation, therefore, is simply growth appropriate, living beings will begin to evolve into expanding growth in almost any appropriate medium.
FAMILY DUTIES. ::: They exist so long os one is in the ordi- nary consciousness of (he sfbasiha ;* if the call to a spiritual life comes, whether one keeps to them or not depends partly upon the way of yoga one follows, partly on one’s own spiritual necessity. There are many who pursue inwardly the spiritual life and keep the family duties, not as social duties but as a field for the practice of karmayoga, others abandon everything to follow the spiritual call or line and they are justified if that is necessary for the yoga they practise or If that is the impera- tive demand of the sou! within (hem.
Fatalism. See FATE; KARMA
Fate [from Latin fatum that which is divinely decreed from fari to speak] The regents of the kosmos, acting as karmic agents of past destiny, are said to be the establishers of fate or destiny for the world or universe then beginning its manvantaric evolution. They establish in the noumenal worlds the roots, and in the phenomenal worlds the fruits, of the essential laws of being. Fatalism is the belief that human beings have no free will; however, in actual fact, though perhaps we cannot maintain our own personal will against the laws of the universe except in very moderate degree, yet we have considerable latitude to make experiments and learn from our mistakes. The Latin fatum means the laws of nature or the will of the gods, personified as the Parcae or three Fates, the Greek Moirai. In the best sense therefore it means our lot, appointed by the destiny born of our own past thoughts, feelings, and acts. See also KARMA; MOIRA
fate ::: “The Indian explanation of fate is Karma. We ourselves are our own fate through our actions, but the fate created by us binds us; for what we have sown, we must reap in this life or another. Still we are creating our fate for the future even while undergoing old fate from the past in the present. That gives a meaning to our will and action and does not, as European critics wrongly believe, constitute a rigid and sterilising fatalism. But again, our will and action can often annul or modify even the past Karma, it is only certain strong effects, called utkata karma, that are non-modifiable. Here too the achievement of the spiritual consciousness and life is supposed to annul or give the power to annul Karma. For we enter into union with the Will Divine, cosmic or transcendent, which can annul what it had sanctioned for certain conditions, new-create what it had created, the narrow fixed lines disappear, there is a more plastic freedom and wideness. Neither Karma nor Astrology therefore points to a rigid and for ever immutable fate.” Letters on Yoga
FATE. ::: Tlic Indian explanation of fate is karma. We our- selves arc our own fate through our actions, but the fate created by us binds us ; for what we have sown, we must reap in this life or another. Still, we arc creating our fate tor the future even while undergoing old fate from the past in the present,
gahana karmano gatih ::: thick and tangled is the way of works. [Gita 4.17]
gata-sangasya muktasya jnanavasthitacetasah yajnayacaratah karma samagram praviliyate ::: [all the works of the liberated man, freed from attachment, with mind, heart and spirit (cetas) firmly founded in self-knowledge who acts for the sake of sacrifice are dissolved]. [Gita 4.23]
ghoram karma ::: a dreadful work. [cf. Gita 3.1]
God-parents Christian law, strong in the Greek Orthodox Church, weaker in the Roman Catholic, and forgotten in the Protestant, based in the fact that once a spiritual teacher begins to teach the disciple, he takes on the student’s karma in connection with the occult sciences until the student becomes in turn a master. The god-parents “tacitly take upon themselves all the sins of the newly baptised child — (anointed, as at the initiation, a mystery truly!) — until the day when the child becomes a responsible unit, knowing good and evil” (BCW 9:156, cf 9:285-6).
Grace (Divine Grace) ::: the help of a higher Divine Force other than the force of Karma, which can lift the sadhak beyond the present possibilities of his nature.
Group-souls The idea that there are entities which express themselves through the collectivity of the individuals of a race or nation, or other similar group, somewhat as the soul of a person may express itself through the collectivity of the living units which compose his organism. However, the living units of our body do not of themselves engender a unitary entity but, having been drawn together by similarity of karma and by the vital magnetism of the imbodied soul, form the vehicle for the expression of the entity of a higher order. The individuals of a race or nation, though drawn by similarity of karma and character into the same race or nation, do not thereby constitute a vehicle for the manifestation of any entity of a higher order which is the predominant and almost exclusive factor in the case.
guna-karma ::: quality and particular force of working.
Gyan (Persian) Also Gian-ben-Gian, Gyan-ben-Gian. According to the Persian legend, Gyan was king of the peris or sylphs. He had a wonderful shield which served as a protection against evil or black magic — the sorcery of the devs. Blavatsky remarks that Gyan might be spelled Gnan (which corresponds to the Sanskrit jnana), meaning true or occult wisdom. His shield, “produced on the principles of astrology, destroyed charms, enchantments, and bad spells, could not prevail against Iblis, who was an agent of Fate (or Karma)” (SD 2:394).
Here too the achievement of the spiritual consciousness and life is supposed to annul or give the power to annul karma. For we enter into union with the Will Divine, cosmic or transcendent, which can annul what it had created, the narrow fixed lines dis- appear, there is a more plastic freedom and wideness.
Her sisters are Urd (origin), irrevocable causes set in motion in the past; and Skuld (debt), who is created by her two sisters, the past and present. She is the debt of karma owed to the future, the inevitable result of past and present causes.
Hippopotamus In ancient Egypt, a symbol connected with every goddess, especially Rert or Rertu, Apet, and Ta-urt. It was used as a kindly guardian of the dead in the underworld in the Book of the Dead. In a contrary aspect, the monster Am-mit, which appears in the judgment scene, has the hindquarters of a hippopotamus. It represents the horrors and fear of the astral world awaiting the defunct, which spring into life if that person’s karma has brought about awakening self-consciousness in kama-loka.
Hiram Abif is a type-figure of all the saviors of humanity who sacrificed themselves for the salvation of mankind, a direct human representative of its prototype among the divinities, such as Odin and Visvakarman, the builder and artificer of the gods. Hiram Abif is also the type-figure of the individual’s inner god, crucified upon the cross of material existence.
Holocaust ::: Madhav: “Holocaust—this profound sacrifice of the soul, the soul of the ‘burdened great’, those who sacrifice their celestial status and accept to undergo the yoke of Fate and Death. Their holocaust, chosen sacrifice, is not a sacrifice imposed by their karma for they have no karma, but a self-chosen sacrifice in furtherance of God’s work.” Sat-Sang Talk, 25/8/91
. i akarma ::: inaction in action. [Gita 4.18] karmap karmapatavam
Indian Ethics: Ethical speculations are inherent in Indian philosophy (q.v.) with its concepts of karma, moksa, ananda (q.v.). Belief in salvation is universal, hence optimism rather than pessimism is prevalent even though one's own life is sometimes treated contemptuously, fatalism is embraced or the doctrine of non-attachment and desirelessness is subscribed to. Social institutions, thoughts, and habits in India are interdependent with the theory of karma and the belief in universal law and order (cf. dharma). For instance, caste exists because dharma is inviolable, man is born into his circumstances because he reaps what he has sown. Western influence, in changing Indian institutions, will eventually also modify Indian ethical theories. All the same, great moral sensitiveness is not lacking, rather much the contrary, as is proven by the voluminous story and didactic fable literature which has also acted on the West. Hindu moral conscience is evident from the ideals of womanhood (symbolized in Sita), of loyalty (symbolized in Hanuman), of kindness to all living beings (cf. ahimsa), of tolerance (the racial and religious hotchpotch which is India being an eloquent witness), the great respect for the samnyasin (who, as a member of the Brahman caste has precedence over the royal or military). Critics confuse -- and the wretched conduct of some Hindus confirm the indistinction -- practical morality with the fearless statements of metaphysics pursued with relentless logic "beyond good and evil."
In later mythology Surya is particularly identified with Savitri as one of the twelve adityas of the sun in the twelve months of the year, and his seven-horsed chariot is described as driven by Aruna (dawn). Surya was represented also as the husband of Sanjna (spiritual consciousness, cosmic or human), and the offspring of Aditi (space), mother of all the gods. One legend represents Surya as crucified on a lathe by Visvakarman — his father-in-law, the creator of gods and men, and their carpenter — and having an eighth part of his rays cut off, which deprives his head of its effulgency, creating round it a dark aureole — “a mystery of the last initiation, and an allegorical representation of it” (TG 313).
In modern theosophy, the seven jewels are given as reimbodiment, karma, hierarchies, svabhava, evolution, the two paths, and atma-vidya (self-knowledge, the One and the many).
In the ancient Syrian system of enumerating the hierarchies, the Cherubim were equivalent to the sphere of the Stars. In the Jewish Qabbalah a close association is made with them and the four letters of the Tetragrammaton, YHVH; and further with the world of ‘Asiyyah. In the system of hierarchies propounded by Dionysius the pseudo-Areopagite, the Cherubim rank second in the first trinity: Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones. But the Cherubim have a still more mystical connection: “the four celestial beings are . . . the protectors of mankind and also the Agents of Karma on Earth” (SD 1:126).
In the Avesta (Yasht 22), on the fourth day after death, the soul of the defunct finds itself in the presence of a maid of divine beauty or of fiendish ugliness according as he himself was good or bad, and she leads him into heaven or hell. This holy bridge and this maid are naught but karma; and as a person is essentially his own karma, the maid he meets after death is himself, divine in beauty or fiendish in ugliness; or again his constitution itself after death is the holy bridge which in the good and noble person can be traversed safely, but in the case of the wicked person who has starved his spiritual nature to a mere thread, his constitution becomes like the edge of a razor, and if there is not sufficient good and decency in the defunct to traverse this razor bridge, he falls into the lower regions.
In the Greek, remission (of sins) meant sending away, the intent being that the disciples and the assembled believers together were able to work a change of heart in the sinner so that he would sin no more (James 5:16), not a remission of the karmic penalty due. Only much later was the power of remission taken over by the priest. Moreover, for a thousand years the formula used was “May Christ absolve thee,” superseded by “I absolve thee.” While clearly a priest may release one from the penalties imposed by his church, he cannot release anyone from the natural consequences of his acts; yet Christians have attached extreme importance to death-bed absolution by a priest. Such death-bed repentance had its origin in the fact that the last thoughts of a dying person color his afterdeath experiences, and even his next incarnation. But though well-wishers and people of high attainment can help with their counsel and example, they cannot set aside the laws of nature. Real absolution must be emancipation from error and wrongdoing, not an escape from the demands of justice or karma.
In the New Testament, Joseph the carpenter is the father of Jesus (Matt 1:16, Luke 2:4), considered as connecting him to the house of David despite the Christian doctrine that Mary conceived Jesus immaculately without human father. Cosmically, he may be connected with such mythic carpenters as Visvakarman and Tvastri. In another sense, Joseph is Jesus’ spiritual teacher, Joseph ben Pandira (IU 2:201). (2nd Joseph)
In the Rig-Veda, Visvakarman is said to sacrifice himself to himself. This refers, among other things, to the fact that when manvantara opens, in order for its vast content of worlds and hierarchies to appear, the originating entities must — because of karmic mandate or impulse — themselves form the beginnings of things from themselves, thus sacrificing themselves to themselves so that the cosmos may appear in manifestation. Another significance of the statement is the reference to the spiritual resurrection at the end of the manvantara or, in the case of man, to the choice to be spiritual rather than material, to rise self-consciously from material existence into the one Life. “Then he ascends into heaven indeed; where, plunged into the incomprehensible absolute Being and Bliss of Paranirvana, he reigns unconditionally, and whence he will re-descend again at the next ‘coming,’ which one portion of humanity expects in its dead-letter sense as the second advent, and the other as the last ‘Kalki Avatar’ ” (SD 1:268).
It is only in this world that the action of fate seems extraneous to human will, for in reality we are the weaver of our own fates. The Morai are karmic agents or forces rather than karma, which is fundamentally the law governing universal equilibrium. In its essence the constant working of cosmic harmony, karma must of necessity manifest itself in multimyriad forms and manners — in and through multimyriad agents or forces. Karma being essentially the law of cosmic unity and concord, it is only the individuals which disturb this universal equilibrium who can feel the reaction therefrom, whether in one life or in a later one; but the karmic effects are by no means always identic with the originating causative action of the individual, because of the karmic agents of many kinds through which karma works. Thus, the gods, all human beings, the earth itself, and all its component forces and substances are karmic agents constantly interacting upon each other; so that while abstractly the action of karma is infallible and infinitely unerring and cannot ever be escaped or set aside, its reactions upon the individual who broke its laws may take place in diverse ways and usually through agents or instruments, since karma is no individual or cosmic god.
It is the reproducing agent, principle, or instrument in the constitution of a being such as man, which brings about the repetitive reimbodiments that such being is impelled, and in one sense compelled, by karma to undergo. Such a reimbodiment can be of two types: if the causal instrument is on a high plane, such as buddhi-manas — the treasury of all ingathered seeds of being which will reproduce themselves in future existences as the higher parts of an individual — then in such case it is the buddhi-manas which is the karana-sarira; on the other hand, if the main causal instrument or principle bringing about such repetitive imbodiments is of a lower type, and reproduces existences for the reincarnating entity in lower vehicles, then we can say it is the kama-manas or lower manas which is the karana-sarira. Thus there are in the composite human constitution at least two such karanic or causal elements, one of a higher and one of a lower character. However, neither the karana-sarira nor the karanopadhi is, strictly speaking, the inner god of man which is the atman or fundamental self of our reimbodying monad, called the karanatman.
Jaimini (Sanskrit) Jaimini Celebrated sage and philosopher of antiquity, pupil of Vyasa, to whom the Sama-Veda was transmitted by his teacher (Bh-P 1.4.21). The founder of the Purva-Mimansa or Karma-Mimansa system — one of the six Darsanas or schools of Hindu philosophy.
Jainism: An Indian religion claiming great antiquity, the last of the great teachers (tirthankara) being Mahavira (6th cent. B.C.), embracing many philosophical elements of a pluralistic type of realism. It rejects Vedic (q.v.) authority and an absolute being, gods as well as men partaking of mortality, and holds the mythologically conceived world to be eternal and subject only to the fixed sequence of six ages, good and bad, but not periodic creation and destruction. There is an infinitude of indestructible individual souls or spiritual entities, each possessing by nature many properties inclusive of omniscience, unlimited energy and bliss which come to the fore upon attaining full independence. The non-spiritual substances are space and time, rest and motion, and matter composed of atoms and capable of being apprehended by the senses and combining to form the world of infinite variety. Matter also penetrates spiritual substance like a physician's pill, changing to karma and producing physical attachments. The good life consists in the acquisition of the three gems (triratna) of right faith (samyag-darsana), right knowledge (samyag-jnana), right conduct (samyag-caritra). Salvation, i.e., becoming a kevalin (cf. kevala), is an arduous task achieved in 14 stages of perfection, the last being bodiless existence in bliss and complete oblivion to the world and its ways. -- K.F.L.
Jainism: An Indian religion claiming great antiquity, the last of the great teachers (tirthankara) being Mahavira (6th century B.C.), embracing many philosophical elements of a pluralistic type of realism. It rejects Vedic (q.v.) authority and an absolute being, gods as well as men partaking of mortality, and holds the mythologically conceived world to be eternal and subject only to the fixed sequence of six ages, good and bad, but not periodic creation and destruction. There is an infinitude of indestructible individual souls or spiritual entities, each possessing by nature many properties inclusive of omniscience, unlimited energy and bliss which come to the fore upon attaining full independence. The non-spiritual substances are space and time, rest and motion, and matter composed of atoms and capable of being apprehended by the senses and combining to form the world of infinite variety. Matter also penetrates spiritual substances like a physician’s pill, changing to karma and producing physical attachments.
janma karma ca me divyam ::: My divine birth and work. [see the following] ::: janma karma ca me divyam evam yo vetti tattvatah ::: tyaktva deham punarjanma naiti mam eti sorjuna, ::: He who knoweth thus in its right principles My divine birth and My divine work, when he abandons his body, comes not to rebirth, he comes to Me, O Arjuna. [Gita 4.9] ::: vitaragabhayakrodha manmaya mam upasritah ::: bahavo jnanatapasa puta madbhavam agatah ::: Delivered from liking and fear and wrath, full of Me, taking refuge in Me, many purified by austerity of knowledge have arrived at My nature of being. [Gita 4.10]
Jewels of Wisdom, The Seven Theosophical term for seven fundamental teachings explanatory of the universe, its structure, laws, and operations. As enumerated with their Sanskrit names, they are: 1) reimbodiment (punarjanman); 2) the doctrine of consequences, results, or of causes and effects (karma); 3) hierarchies (lokas and talas); 4) individual characteristics involving self-generation or self-becoming (svabhava); 5) evolution and involution (pravritti and nivritti); 6) the two paths (amritayana and pratyekayana); and 7) the knowledge of the divine self and how the One becomes the many (atma-vidya).
Jhumur: “These are not just images and not just there for effect. They represent certain movements in the being, certain forces that are universal, independent. It is not one man who suffers. At a certain level of existence these experiences are universal. There are forces that are at work on these levels, forces that really prey on man, really hound him in that sense. You can’t seem to escape them. When one is semi-conscious or lives as we do in an in-between state, not knowing exactly which is your direction, you have this force really at your heels, pushing you sometimes into suffering, into death. You feel that you have been deserted. Sometimes there is a notion of karma, at other times you feel that it is some force that is pushing you. These are universal forces in the field of life, in the field of the subconscient, in the unconsciousness. On these levels they are not images they are powers which Sri Aurobindo has given a certain shape, form, image.”
Jivanmukta: A Sanskrit term, denoting one who has attained salvation while in this present life: all but a remainder of prarabdha karma has been neutralized and no new karma is accumulated in virtue of the person’s having gained insight, jnana (q.v.).
Jlvanmukta: (Skr.) One who has attained salvation while in this present life: all but a remainder of prarabdha karma (q.v.) has been neutralized and no new karma is accumulated in virtue of the person's having gained insight, jnana (q.v.). -- K.F.L.
jnanakanda ::: the section of knowledge [of the Veda], identified with the Upanisads. [cf. karmakanda]
Justice ::: Cosmic law and order. As consciousness needs to exist on a fulcrum, the swing back and forth between Mercy and Severity helps to create equilibrium and deepens wisdom. Can also refer to principles of causality and karma.
jyayasi karmano buddhih ::: the intelligence [buddhi] is greater than works. [Gita 3.1]
Kalikr.s.n.a (Kalikrishna; Kali krishna) ::: (also called Kr.s.n.akali) the Kalikrsna union of Kali and Kr.s.n.a, whether seen in the perception (darsana) of the external world or experienced in oneself in a spiritual realisation which is the basis of karma and kama1, where Kali as prakr.ti "take[s] up the whole nature into the law of her higher divine truth and act[s] in that law offering up the universal enjoyment of her action and being to the Anandamaya Ishwara" (Kr.s.n.a), while the individual soul (jiva) is "the channel of this action and offering".
kamah, karma iti karmachatushtayam) ::: Kr.s.n.a, Kali, kama1 and karma: these constitute the karma catus.t.aya.
. kama karma (nishkama karma) ::: desireless action. nis niskama
KARMA. ::: Action entailing its consequences.
karma ::: action, work; activity, motion; action in the world based on vijñana and expressing the union of Kr.s.n.a and Kali, the third member of the karma catus.t.aya, often conceived in terms of a fourfold mission (literary, political, social and spiritual) enjoined by a divine command (adesa) while Sri Aurobindo was in jail; the karma catus.t.aya itself; work, an attribute of Aniruddha; the sum of one"s actions, each action being viewed as a link in a chain of cause and effect extending over many lives. karma catus catustaya
karma ::: action, work; the work or function of a man; the power which by its continuity and development as a subjective and objective force determines the nature and eventuality of the soul's repeated existences. ::: karmani [plural]
karma bandha. :::bondage caused by karma
karmabandham prahasyasi ::: thou shalt cast away the bondage of works. [Gita 2.39]
karma ::: Karma Originating in Hindu philosophy, Karma is a concept that is used to explain injustice and retribution. Through karma, a crime committed in this life may be punished in the next. This is because every action, no matter how big or small, has its inescapable consequence. In other words, sooner or later each good deed is repaid by good and each bad deed by bad.
karmacatustaya (Karmachatushtaya) ::: [the catustaya of action]. ::: karmacatustayam [nominative]
karmadeha (karmadeha; karma deha) ::: karma-body; a kind of subtle vital-physical atmosphere surrounding the body and containing saṁskaras due to one"s past karma.
karmadeva (karmadeva; karma deva) ::: a god of action; one who has achieved divinity by works.
karmadevata ::: same as karmadeva. karmadevata karmahina karmahina ud udasinata
karmadharaya ::: [in Sanskrit grammar: the appositional compound].
karma jyayo hyakarmanah ::: action is greater than inaction. [Gita 3.8]
karmakama (karmakama; karma-kama; karma kama) ::: the combikarmakama nation of karma and kama1, divine action and divine enjoyment, which together form the "effective half" of the karma catus.t.aya.
karma kanda. :::fruitive activities; activities for sense gratification; activities under vedic injunction, which gradually purify one to understand his true position &
karmakanda ::: the section of (ritual) works [of the Veda], identified with the hymns. [cf. jnanakanda]
karmalipsa ::: the urge to work, an element of Mahasarasvati bhava. karmalipsa karman karmani
karmamarga ::: [the path of works, karmayoga].
karma marg&
karmanaiva hi samsiddhim asthita janakadayah ::: [it was indeed by works that Janaka and others attained to perfection]. [Gita 3.20]
karmani praviliyante ::: actions disappear. [cf. Gita 4.23]
karmani ::: see under karma
karma ::: n. --> One&
karmanyevadhikaraste ::: thou hast a right to action. [Gita 2.47]
karmaphala ::: fruit of works.
karmaphala. ::: the fruit of actions; the consequence of a deed
karma-siddhi asiddhi ::: success and failure in karma. karma-sraddh karma-sraddha
karmasiddhi (karmasiddhi; karma-siddhi; karma siddhi) ::: success of action in the world; perfection of karma in all its parts as laid down by the adesa; fulfilment of the karma catus.t.aya, especially its effective half.
KARMA (Skt, T.B.) means:
karmathian ::: n. --> One of a Mohammedan sect founded in the ninth century by Karmat.
karmavira ::: [a hero in action].
KARMA YOGA. ::: It alms at the dedication of every human activity to the supreme Wilt. It begins by the renunciation of all egoistic aim for our works, all pursuit of action for an inter- ested aim or for the sake of a worldly result. By this renuncia- tion it so purifies the mind and the will that we become easily conscious of the great universal Energy as the true doer of all our actions and the Lord of that Energy as their ruler and director with the individual as only a mask, an excuse, an instrument or, more positively, a conscious centre^ of action and phenomenal relation. The choice and direction of the act is more and more consciously left to this supreme Will and this universal Energy. To that our works as well as the results of our works are finally abandoned. The object is the release of the soul from its bondage to appearances and to the reaction of phenomenal activities. Karmayoga is used, like the other paths, to lead to liberation from phenomenal existence and a departure into the Supreme. But here too the exclusive result is not inevitable. The end of the path may be, equally, a perception of the divine in all energies, in all happenings, in all activities, and a free and unegoislic participation of the soul in the cosmic action. So followed it will lead to the elevation of all human will and activity to the divine level, its spiritualisation and the
karma yoga. ::: the yoga of action chosen primarily by those of an outgoing nature; the yoga of selfless devotion of all inner and outer activities as a sacrifice to the Lord; selfless service to God without any intention for gain or reward; one of the four paths of yoga
karmayoga ::: the yoga of (desireless) works; to do the divine works as a means towards the divine birth before it is attained and an expression of it after it is attained.
karmayogena yoginam ::: by the way of works of the yogins. [Gita 3.3]
karma yogi. ::: the one whose actions are not motivated by desire for personal benefit or by any other kind of attachment
Karmic ::: “If we believe that the soul is repeatedly reborn in the body, we must believe also that there is some link between the lives that preceded and the lives that follow and that the past of the soul has an effect on its future; and that is the spiritual essence of the law of Karma.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Karmic ::: Of or pertaining to Karma.
Karmic: Relating to or having the characteristics of the effects of Karma (q.v.).
Karnia-marga is a much simpler road provided one's mind is not fixed on the karma to the exclusion of the Divine. The aim must be the Divine and the work can only be a means,
kartavya karma ::: same as kartavyaṁ karma.
kartavyam karma ::: the thing to be done, the work we have to do.
kim karmani ghore mam niyojayasi ::: why dost Thou appoint me to a dreadful work. [Gita 3.1]
Kismet (Turkish) [from Arab qismat from qasama to divide] Fate, destiny; used by Moslems to designate all the incidents and details that occur to a person during life — what is commonly called one’s lot, but implying that this is foreordained and irrevocable. As such it is not identical with karma.
Kr.s.n.adr.s.t.i (Krishnadrishti) ::: same as Kr.s.n.adarsana.Krsnadrsti Kr.s.n.ah., Kali, kamah., karma iti karmacatus.t.ayam (Krishnah, Kali,Krsnah,
Krsnah kali kamah karma iti karmacatustayam ::: see these words separately
Kr.s.n.akali (Krishnakali; KrishnaKali; Krishna-Kali; Krishna Kali) —Krsnakali (also called Kalikr.s.n.a) the union of Kr.s.n.a and Kali, forming the "subjective base" of karma; Kali as prakr.ti surrendering herself in a relation of (madhura) dasya to Kr.s.n.a, the purus.a; "a complete union of the two sides of the Duality" of isvara-sakti which, when it rules one"s consciousness, can draw it "altogether out of the confused clash of Ideas and Forces here into a higher Truth and enable the descent of that Truth to illumine and deliver and act sovereignly upon this world of Ignorance"; the same union of Kr.s.n.a and Kali seen everywhere in the vision (darsana) of the external world, a perception which because of its "vivid personality" is regarded as superior to that of purus.a-prakr.ti; short for Kr.s.n.akali bhava or Kr.s.n.akali darsana.Kr Krsnakali bhava (Krishnakali bhava; Krishna-Kali -; Krishna Kali -). s.n.akali bhava
Kr.s.n.a (Krishna) ::: the eighth avatara of Vis.n.u in the Hindu tradition, regarded by Sri Aurobindo as an embodiment of "the complete divine manhood" and as the avatara who opened the possibility of overmind in the evolution of consciousness on earth; a name of the universal Deity (deva) and supreme Being (purus.ottama) who is the fourfold isvara and also "the Destroyer, Preserver, Creator in one" (Rudra2,Vis.n.u, Brahma), manifesting "through the Vishnu aspect as his frontal appearance"; "the Ishwara taking delight in the world" (anandamaya isvara or lilamaya purus.a), realisation of oneness with whom is the first part of the karma catus.t.aya, seen in all things and beings in the several intensities and degrees of Kr.s.n.adarsana.
kr.ti (kriti) ::: action, work; same as karma, especially the political part krti of karma.
krtsnakarmakrt ::: a doer of all works. [Gita 4.18]
kuru karma ::: do action. [Gita 3.8]
Lanka (Sanskrit) Laṅkā The ancient name of the island of Ceylon (Sri Lanka). The third root-race ended its career in that part of a continent which later became the Lanka of the Atlanteans. In the Ramayana it is described as of gigantic extent and magnificence, “with seven broad moats and seven stupendous walls of stone and metal.” Its foundation is attributed to Visvakarman, who built it for Kuvera, the king of the demons, from whom it was taken by Ravana, the great foe of Rama, hero of the Ramayana. The Bhagavata-Purana shows Lanka or Ceylon as primarily the summit of Mount Meru, which was broken off by Vayu, god of the wind, and hurled into the ocean.
Law of Karma ::: If we believe that the soul is repeatedly reborn in the body, we must believe also that there is some link between the lives that preceded and the lives that follow and that the past of the soul has an effect on its future ; and that is the spiritual essence of (he law of Karma,
Law of Cause and Effect ::: See Causality and Karma.
Law of Retribution: Karma (q.v.), the Law of Ethical Causation.
lilacatus.t.aya (lilachatusthaya) ::: the quaternary of the divine play; lilacatustaya another name for the karma catus.t.aya.
lila ::: play, game; the world as a game of the Lord or isvara, "a play of lila the divine Being with the conditions of cosmic existence in this world of an inferior Nature"; life (especially in the objective world or field of karma, as distinguished from yoga) "experienced as a play of the divine Delight".
Lipika (Sanskrit) Lipika [from the verbal root lip to write] A scribe; divine beings connected with karma, recorders who impress on the astral light a record of every act and thought, great or small, in the phenomenal universe. The lipika are active cosmic karmic intelligences, the highest class of architects, which lay down from manvantara to manvantara the tracks of karmic evolution to be followed by all evolving entities within the manvantara about to begin; and these tracks are rigidly begun, and their direction controlled, by the endpoint of the paths of karmic achievement in the preceding manvantara. They “project into objectivity from the passive Universal Mind the ideal plan of the universe, upon which the ‘Builders’ reconstruct the Kosmos after every Pralaya, . . . it is they who are the direct amanuenses of the Eternal Ideation — or, as called by Plato, the ‘Divine Thought’ ” (SD 1:104). The lipika thus are in every sense the agents of karmic destiny, for they are both the vehicles of divine ideation in their work, and yet the expressions of karmic law arising in the past and projected on the background of the future. Their intelligence and vitality permeate their particular universe and all the beings in it, so that the lipikas are stamped with whatever takes place.
Lipika(s)(Sanskrit) ::: This word comes from the verb-root lip, meaning "to write"; hence the word lipikas means the"scribes." Mystically, they are the celestial recorders, and are intimately connected with the working ofkarma, of which they are the agents. They are the karmic "Recorders or Annalists, who impress on the (tous) invisible tablets of the Astral Light, 'the great picture-gallery of eternity,' a faithful record of everyact, and even thought, of man [and indeed of all other entities and things], of all that was, is, or ever willbe, in the phenomenal Universe" (The Secret Doctrine 1:104).Their action although governed strictly by kosmic consciousness is nevertheless rigidly automatic, fortheir work is as automatic as is the action of karma itself. They are entities as a matter of fact, but entitieswhich work and act with the rigid automatism of the kosmic machinery, rather than like the engineer whosupervises and changes the running of his engines. In one sense they may perhaps better be called kosmicenergies -- a most difficult matter to describe.
Lunar Chain, Moon-Chain The planetary chain of the solar system which, although now dead and in decay, was the former imbodiment of our present earth-chain. When the life forces inherent in a globe of a planetary chain have completed seven rounds on that globe, these life forces progressively pass out into a laya-center which then becomes, after a time period determined by karma, the vital nucleus for the corresponding globe or the next imbodiment of that planetary chain. This took place on the lunar chain as the globes of this chain in the preceding chain-manvantara reached the end of their life-term in manifestation, and died in serial order from the first to the last globe. Thus each globe of the lunar chain as it died became a lunar globe-corpse still infilled with the molecular life of the globe, but deprived of all its higher, more ethereal and spiritual parts — exactly as happens at the death and decay of a human physical body. Though globe D of the moon-chain, as an instance in point, thus passed into invisibility with the disintegration of its molecular components and with the passage of cosmic ages, yet we are able to discern its phantom, our moon, because our senses, correlated to the physical plane of matter of our chain, are also correlated to what on the lunar chain would be astral matter, and thus are able to perceive what is actually the kama-rupa or astral shell of globe D of the lunar chain (our moon). Hence the earth-chain is the child or reimbodiment of the lunar chain.
Madhav: “protagonists of Inconscience, darkness, the hierarchy of the dark reign, the dualities and the Laws of Karma …”
MAHASARASWATI ::: the goddess of divine skill and of the works of the Spirit, and hers is the Yoga that is skill in works, yogah karmasu kausalam, and the utilities of divine knowledge and the self-application of the spirit to life and the happiness of its harmonies.
ma karmaphalaheturbhuh ::: let not the fruits of thy works be thy motive. [Gita 2.47]
manasa niyamya arabhate karmayogam ::: controlling (the senses) by the mind he engages in the yoga of action. [Gita 3.7]
"Man, born into the world, revolves between world and world in the action of Prakriti and Karma. Purusha in Prakriti is his formula: what the soul in him thinks, contemplates and acts, that always he becomes. All that he had been, determined his present birth; and all that he is, thinks, does in this life up to the moment of his death, determines what he will become in the worlds beyond and in lives yet to be. If birth is a becoming, death also is a becoming, not by any means a cessation.” Essays on the Gita
“Man, born into the world, revolves between world and world in the action of Prakriti and Karma. Purusha in Prakriti is his formula: what the soul in him thinks, contemplates and acts, that always he becomes. All that he had been, determined his present birth; and all that he is, thinks, does in this life up to the moment of his death, determines what he will become in the worlds beyond and in lives yet to be. If birth is a becoming, death also is a becoming, not by any means a cessation.” Essays on the Gita
Marga: Sanskrit for path; used in the sense of method or approach in the endeavor to attain spiritual enlightenment. (See bhakti-marga, jnana-marga, karma-marga.)
mayi samnyasya (karmani) ::: giving up (works) into Me. [see the following]
mayi sarvani karmani samnyasyadhyatmacetasa ::: with a consciousness identified with the Self, renouncing all actions into Me. [Gita 3.30]
ṁ karma ::: the work that is to be done.
Mohism: See Mo chia and Chinese philosophy. Moksa: (Skr.) Liberation, salvation from the effects of karma (q.v.) and resulting samsara (q.v.). Theoretically, good karma as little as evil karma can bring about liberation from the state of existence looked upon pessimistically. Thus, Indian philosophy early found a solution in knowledge (vidyd, jnana) which, disclosing the essential oneness of all in the metaphysical world-ground, declares the phenomenal world as maya (q.v.). Liberation is then equivalent to identification of oneself with the ultimate reality, eternal, changeless, blissful, or in a state of complete indifference either with or without loss of consciousness, but at any rate beyond good and evil, pleasure and pain. Divine grace is also recognized by some religious systems as effecting moksa. No generalization is possible regarding the many theories of moksa, its nature, or the mode of attaining it. See Nirvana, Samadhi, Prasada. -- K.F.L.
Mukta (Sanskrit) Mukta [from the verbal root muc to set free, release] Freed; one who is liberated from sentient life, freed from matter and karma connected with the earthly plane; one who already has entered into the state of moksha, being thus a candidate for future freedom from flesh and matter, or life on this earth. See also JIVANMUKTA
muktasya karma ::: the action of the liberated man.
Myalba (Tibetan) dmyal ba (nyal-wa) Northern Buddhist name for our earth, which they considered a hell for those whose karma it is to reincarnate on it for the purgation of suffering and experience. Exoterically, Myalba is usually translated and is looked upon as one of the hells. Equivalent to the Sanskrit naraka or avichi.
na buddhibhedam janayed ajnanam karmasanginam ::: he should not create a division of their understanding [buddhi] in the ignorant who are attached to their works. [Gita 3.26]
na karma lipyate nare ::: action cleaves not to a man. [Isa 2]
na kartavyam na karmani ::: neither the state of the doer nor the works. [see the following]
na kartrtvam na karmani srjati na karma-phala-samyoga ::: does not create the state of the doer or works or the joining of the works to their fruit. [Gita 5.14]
“Narada is here, there, and everywhere; and yet, none of the Puranas gives the true characteristics of this great enemy of physical procreation. Whatever those characteristics may be in Hindu Esotericism, Narada — who is called in Cis-Himalayan Occultism Pesh-Hun, the ‘Messenger,’ or the Greek Angelos — is the sole confidant and the executor of the universal decrees of Karma and adi-Budh a kind of active and ever incarnating logos, who leads and guides human affairs from the beginning to the end of the Kalpa.
Nemesis (Greek) [from nemo distribute, allot] Originally a goddess of due proportion, who restores the proper order of things, but later used for the operation of divine wrath, for people who get their desserts tend to impute the wrath they feel to the divine law which allots. Nemesis has been called the retributive aspect of karma, yet in the earlier Greek writers she is the goddess who distributes both happiness and misery. It was only among the later writers that she became specially the punisher of crimes and the corrector of overweening exultation in good fortune. One of her names was Adrasteia, she whom no man can escape. But the idea of reward is, equally with that of punishment, man-made; for “Karma-Nemesis is the creator of nations and mortals, but once created, it is they who make of her either a fury or a rewarding Angel: (SD 1:642).
Nemesis is the automatic reestablishing of equilibrium brought about by the action of the human being — a reestablishing as impersonal and impassive as the kosmic laws operating around us. Themis is the instinct for order and harmony which, when it is able to express itself in human life through man’s active will, frees one from karmic necessity; for such harmony working in the human ego and faithfully followed is becoming at one with nature and following its inherent Law — which the word Themis means — of equilibrium. Human free will grows ever greater as it becomes the free will of the universe of which mankind is a integral and inseparable part. Thus, it is man who creates causes, and karma which adjusts the effects. See also KARMA-NEMESIS; MOIRA
nishkama karma. ::: desireless action; disinterested action; action dedicated to Reality without personal desire for the fruits of the action; selfless action
Nishkamakarma ::: see niskama karma,
niskama karma (Nishkamakarma) ::: desireless works.
niskama karmayogin ::: [one who does desireless works as yoga].
nityakarma ::: (in traditional Hinduism) daily ritual, "the Vedic rule, the routine of ceremonial sacrifice, daily conduct and social duty"; the routine of daily activities, a routine that "is ritam & necessary for karma, only it must be ritam of the brihat, part of the infinite, not narrow & rigid, a flexible instrument, not a stiff & unpliant bondage".
nityakarma ::: regular works (of sacrifice, ceremonial and the daily rule of Vedic living).
niyatam karma ::: controlled action. [Gita 3.8]
niyatam kuru karma tvam ::: do action (thus) self-controlled. [Gita 3.8]
niyatasya tu sannyasah karmano nopapadyate ::: [but the renunciation of rightly regulated actions is not proper]. [Gita 18.7]
“No purely spiritual Buddhi (divine Soul) can have an independent (conscious) existence before the spark which issued from the pure Essence of the Universal Sixth principle, — or the over-soul, — has (a) passed through every elemental form of the phenomenal world of that Manvantara, and (b) acquired individuality, first by natural impulse, and then by self-induced and self-devised efforts (checked by its Karma), thus ascending through all the degrees of intelligence, from the lowest to the highest Manas, from mineral and plant, up to the holiest archangel (Dhyani-Buddha)” (SD 1:17).
“no purely spiritual Buddhi (divine Soul) can have an independent (conscious) existence before the spark which issued from the pure Essence of the Universal Sixth principle — or the OVERSOUL — has (a) passed through every elemental form of the phenomenal world of that Manvantara, and (b) acquired individuality, first by natural impulse, and then by self-induced and self-devised efforts (checked by its Karma), thus ascending through all the degrees of intelligence, from the lowest to the highest Manas, from mineral and plant, up to the holiest archangel (Dhyani-Buddha)” (SD 1:17).
“Nor would the ways of Karma be inscrutable were men to work in union and harmony, instead of disunion and strife. For our ignorance of those ways — which one portion of mankind calls the ways of Providence, dark and intricate; while another sees in them the action of blind Fatalism; and a third, simple chance, with neither gods nor devils to guide them — would surely disappear, if we would but attribute all these to their correct cause. With right knowledge, or at any rate with a confident conviction that our neighbours will no more work to hurt us than we would think of harming them, the two-thirds of the World’s evil would vanish into thin air. Were no man to hurt his brother, Karma-Nemesis would have neither cause to work for, nor weapons to act through. . . . We stand bewildered before the mystery of our own making, and the riddles of life that we will not solve, and then accuse the great Sphinx of devouring us. But verily there is not an accident in our lives, not a misshapen day, or a misfortune, that could not be traced back to our own doings in this or in another life” (SD 1:643-4).
"No system indeed by its own force can bring about the change that humanity really needs; for that can only come by its growth into the firmly realised possibilities of its own higher nature, and this growth depends on an inner and not an outer change. But outer changes may at least prepare favourable conditions for that more real amelioration, — or on the contrary they may lead to such conditions that the sword of Kalki can alone purify the earth from the burden of an obstinately Asuric humanity. The choice lies with the race itself; for as it sows, so shall it reap the fruit of its Karma.” The Human Cycle*
“No system indeed by its own force can bring about the change that humanity really needs; for that can only come by its growth into the firmly realised possibilities of its own higher nature, and this growth depends on an inner and not an outer change. But outer changes may at least prepare favourable conditions for that more real amelioration,—or on the contrary they may lead to such conditions that the sword of Kalki can alone purify the earth from the burden of an obstinately Asuric humanity. The choice lies with the race itself; for as it sows, so shall it reap the fruit of its Karma.” The Human Cycle
OBVIOUSLY we must leave far behind us the current theory of Karma and its shallow attempt to justify the ways of the Cosmic Spirit by forcing on them a crude identity with the summary notions of law and justice, the crude and often savagely primitive methods of reward and punishment, lure and deterrent dear to the surface human mind. There is here a more authentic and spiritual truth at the base of Nature’s action and a far less mechanically calculable movement. Here is no rigid and narrow ethical law bound down to a petty human significance, no teaching of a child soul by a mixed system of blows and lollipops, no unprofitable wheel of a brutal cosmic justice automatically moved in the traces of man’s ignorant judgments and earthy desires and instincts. Life and rebirth do not follow these artificial constructions, but a movement spiritual and intimate to the deepest intention of Nature. A cosmic Will and Wisdom observant of the ascending march of the soul’s consciousness and experience as it emerges out of subconscient Matter and climbs to its own luminous divinity fixes the norm and constantly enlarges the lines of the law—or, let us say, since law is a too mechanical conception, — the truth of Karma.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 20, 13 Page: 128, 427
of or pertaining to Karma.
Of the many types of astral elementals, connection with even those friendly to man are injurious, for they all use part of the living for their automatic actions. Moreover, black magicians who live in their kama-rupas — in the astral world — relatively few though they are, survive by using many of these nature spirits to vampirize vitality from the living. The elementaries who, unfortunately, are galvanized into a fictitious life by devitalizing the medium and the sitters — as clairvoyants have often seen — are making new evil karma, and even inviting final spiritual disaster.
One phase of hatha yoga is the pranayama (suppression of the breath), interference with the normal and healthy respiration of the body; a practice which can readily produce tuberculosis of the lungs. It is breathing deeply, healthfully, and as often as common sense suggests, that brings benefits to the body because bringing about a better oxygenation of the blood and therefore a better physical tone. In very rare circumstances only, where a chela has advanced relatively far mentally and spiritually, but has still an unfortunate and heavy physical karma as yet not worked out, it may possibly be proper, under the guidance of a genuine teacher, to use the hatha yoga methods in a limited degree, but only under the teacher’s own eye. For this reason hatha yoga books are occasionally mentioned in theosophical literature — the Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali, for example, is a hatha yoga scripture, but one of the highest type. But generally, hatha yoga practices are injurious and therefore unwise, for they distract the attention from things of the spirit and direct it to the lower parts of the constitution.
One thus released or freed is called a jivanmukta (freed monad), which is never again during that manvantara subject to the qualities of either matter or karma. But if these beings choose, for the sake of doing good in the world, they may incarnate on earth as nirmanakayas. See also ABSOLUTE
Orlog (Icelandic) [from or, ur primal + log law] In Norse mythology, the primal law of all existence, corresponding to karma, the beginningless and endless succession of causes and effects constantly modifying each being’s fate or destiny as a result of its own actions. The agents of Orlog are the three norns that represent the past (Urd, origin), present (Verdandi, becoming), and future (Skuld, debt). It is the inescapable result of all that has gone before and is presently creating the future, whether of universal gods or human beings.
Padartha (Sanskrit) Padārtha [from pada step, stride, foot + artha relating to a thing or object; purpose or object, motive or reason] The meaning of a word; also that which corresponds to the meaning of a word, hence a material object and even a man, a person. In philosophy and logic, used as a category or predicament, the Vaiseshika school and the Vedantins enumerating seven, while the Sankhyas enumerate 25. Blavatsky compares the seven padarthas of the Vaiseshikas to the seven attributes of the seven principles as follows: dravya to sthula-sarira; guna to jiva; karma to linga-sarira; samanya to kama; visesha to manas; samavaya to buddhi; abhava to atman (BCW 4:580).
Paramapada (Sanskrit) Paramapada Highest state or position; that which is not material but loftily spiritual, in and to which appertain jivanmuktas or monads who have attained freedom from karma; thus they attain the highest condition or state in any hierarchical sense. See also PARAMAVADHI
Peratae (Latin) Peratai (Greek) One of the Gnostic bodies or associations, the Naaseni or Ophites, the “Serpent Gnostics,” so called because of the mystical prominence of the serpent symbol in their rites and observances. This Gnostic body is said by scholars to have been founded by Euphrates, who possessed wide astrological knowledge, and because of the teachings which his school followed were they named Peratai — wanderers, i.e., on this earth of trial and tribulation; or “those of the other side,” signifying individuals who regarded themselves as merely wanderers or pilgrims in regions far from their native home, the spirit. Among other ideas, they held that the celestial bodies in a person’s horoscope are the instruments of destiny or karma, which because of causes engendered in other lives bring the individuals to birth on this earth under the destined yoke marked in the celestial spaces by the sun, moon, and planets; and in order to protect themselves from the malignant influence of the genii of the planets they wore serpent sigils or talismans. C. W. King states that the Ophites were the descendants of the Bacchic Mystae, basing this on the fact that coins of the period bear the Bacchic serpent, which is represented as raising himself out of the sacred coffer, while the reverse side of the coin shows two serpents entwined around torches (Gnostics and Their Remains 225).
“ ‘Pesh-Hun’ is a general not a special Hindu possession. He is the mysterious guiding intelligent power, which gives the impulse to, and regulates the impetus of cycles, Kalpas and universal events. He is Karma’s visible adjuster on a general scale; the inspirer and the leader of the greatest heroes of this Manvantara. In the exoteric works he is referred to by some very uncomplimentary names; such as ‘Kali-Karaka,’ strife-maker, ‘Kapi-vaktra,’ monkey-faced, and even ‘Pisuna,’ the spy, though elsewhere he is called Deva-Brahma. . . .
Pity: A more or less condescending feeling for other living beings in their suffering or lowly condition, condoned by those who hold to the inevitability of class differences, but condemned by those who believe in melioration or the establishment of more equitable relations and therefore substitute sympathy (q.v.). Synonymous with "having mercy" or "to spare" in the Old Testament (the Lord is "of many bowels"), Christians also are exhorted to be pitiful (e.g., 1. Pet. 3.8). Spinoza yet equates it with commiseration, but since this involves pain in addition to some good if alleviating action follows, it is to be overcome in a life dictated by reason. Except for moral theories which do not recognize feeling for other creatures as a fundamental urge pushing into action, such as utilitarianism in some of its aspects and Hinduism which adheres to the doctrine of karma (q.v.), however far apart the two are, pity may be regarded a prime ethical impulse but, due to its coldness and the possibility of calculation entering, is no longer countenanced as an essentially ethical principle in modern moral thinking. -- K.F.L.
prarabdha (karma) ::: mechanical action of the instruments of the prakrti continuing by force of old impulsion and habit or continued initiation of past energy.
prarabdha karma. ::: the destined acts that one has to undergo in one's present life; the part of sanchita karma which is ready to be experienced through the present body incarnation; portion of the past karma which is responsible for the present body &
Prarabhda (Sanskrit) Prārabhda [from pra-ā-rabh to begin, undertake] That which has commenced or been undertaken; that karma arising from the past which is already ripe and which begins to work itself out in the present incarnation. That class of karma which is in the making and will exhaust itself in the future is called sanchita-karma. Prarabhda-karma parallels the Greek idea of the Moira Lachesis; whereas sanchita-karma corresponds to Atropos; Clotho, third of the Moirae, is the spinner of the present, the karma or destiny which we are now spinning for ourselves. See also LIPIKA
praviliyante karmani ::: works vanish and are dissolved. [cf. Gita 4.23]
Principles of Man ::: The seven principles of man are a likeness or rather copy of the seven cosmic principles. They areactually the offspring or reflection of the seven cosmic principles, limited in their action in us by theworkings of the law of karma, but running in their origin back into THAT which is beyond: into THATwhich is the essence of the universe or the universal -- above, beyond, within, to the unmanifest, to theunmanifestable, to that first principle which H. P. Blavatsky enunciates as the leading thought of thewisdom-philosophy of The Secret Doctrine.These principles of man are reckoned as seven in the philosophy by which the human spiritual andpsychical economy has been publicly explained to us in the present age. In other ages these principles orparts of man were differently reckoned -- the Christian reckoned them as body, soul, and spirit,generalizing the seven under these three heads.Some of the Indian thinkers divided man into a basic fourfold entity, others into a fivefold. The Jewishphilosophy, as found in the Qabbalah which is the esoteric tradition of the Jews, teaches that man isdivided into four parts: neshamah, ruah, nefesh, and guf.Theosophists for convenience often employ in their current literature a manner of viewing man'scomposite constitution which is the dividing of his nature into a trichotomy, meaning a division intothree, being spirit, soul, and body, which in this respect is identical with the generalized Christianizedtheosophical division. Following this trichotomy, man's three parts, therefore, are: first and highest, thedivine spirit or the divine monad of him, which is rooted in the universe, which spirit is linked with theAll, being in a highly mystical sense a ray of the All; second, the intermediate part, or the spiritualmonad, which in its higher and lower aspects is the spiritual and human souls; then, third, the lowest partof man's composite constitution, the vital-astral-physical part of him, which is composed of material orquasi-material life-atoms. (See also Atman, Buddhi, Manas, Kama, Prana, Linga-sarira, Sthula-sarira)
Providence [from Latin providens foreseeing] In man, prudence, foresight, practical wisdom; but applied to a divine being, it has come to mean in the Occident protective care qualified by a wisdom superior to ours. Equivalent to the Greek phronesis, translated divine light. See also KARMA; NEMESIS
Pudgala: (Skr. beautiful, lovely) The sou], or personal entity, admitted by some thinkers even though belonging to the schools of Buddhism (s.v.), they hold that at least a temporary individuality must be assumed as vehicle for karma (q.v.) -- K.F.L.
purusa evedam sarvam karma tapo brahma paramrtam ::: it is the divine soul that is all this, even all action and all active force and brahman and the supreme immortality. [cf. Mund. 2.1.10]
Purva-mimansa (Sanskrit) Pūrva-mīmāṃsā [from pūrva prior + mīmāṃsā profound or striving thought or meditation from the verbal root man to think] Inquiry into the first portion of the Veda — the matra portion; the fifth of the six Darsanas or schools of Hindu philosophy. The school of philosophy in our days considered to be chiefly concerned with the correct interpretation of the Vedic texts; hence sometimes called the First Vedantic School. Jaimini is reputed to be its founder, as well as the author of the Mimansa-darsana, the sutras or aphorisms which constitute its chief doctrinal authority. This school is also sometimes termed Karma-mimansa because of the doctrine advocated that by its teaching one can be more or less freed from the making of new karma.
REAPING, THE LAW OF The law of reaping says that all the good and evil we have initiated in thoughts, feelings, words, and deeds are returned to us with the same effect. Every consciousness manifestation has an effect in manifold ways and entails either good or bad sowing which will ripen and be reaped some time. K 1.41.13
If man lives in accordance with the laws of life, his development will progress as rapidly as possibly, without friction, harmoniously, with the greatest possible degree of happiness. But every mistake as to the laws of life (known or unknown ones) entails consequences calculated eventually (the number of incarnations is up to him) to teach the individual to discover the laws and apply them correctly. If he has caused suffering to other beings, he is himself to experience the same measure of suffering. This is the law of uncompromising justice which no arbitrary grace can free him from.
It is part of man&
Rebirth ::: The act of returning to a stable anchor of self-identity within the phenomenal world. This can be in a physical reality, a more subtle realm, or a more dense realm. Contrasted with Reincarnation the process of rebirth is generally viewed as unintentional and as a consequence of karma.
Referring to the forming of mankind, the Stanzas of Dzyan say: “Who perfects the last body? Fish, Sin, and Soma.” Soma was in Hindustan also a name of the moon, and fish refers to a similar fact — fishes often being taken as symbols of the productive power of the lunar influence because of their great fecundity. Fish, Sin, and the moon conjointly are the three symbols of the immortal Being (SD 1:263). As these symbols, among other things, stand for Pisces, karma, and the mother of terrestrial life, it would seem that the pilgrimage of the human monad through the halls of experience, and the completing of its evolution thereby, is indicated.
Reincarnation ::: The act of intentionally deciding to return to a stable anchor of self-identity within the phenomenal world. This is usually in a physical reality or a more subtle realm. Contrasted with Rebirth which is generally viewed as unintentional and as a consequence of karma.
Resonance: Metaphysical feedback; traces of past actions and magickal spells. Commonly (and often erroneously) known as karma, Threefold Return, and “payback is a bitch.”
Retribution Repayment, fiscal or moral; often used as a synonym for karma in human affairs. A tendency exists to apply the word specially to the seemingly bitter aspects of karma, as being the so-called punishment for evildoing; and reward is commonly applied to that aspect of karma which brings forth happy, pleasurable, and elevating factors in human life. See also KARMA
Ring-pass-not The limit in spiritual, intellectual, or psychological power or consciousness, beyond which an individual is unable to pass until he evokes from within the strength and the vision to carry him forwards and over the circumscribing limits set by that individual’s own karma. In the Stanzas of Dzyan, the lipikas are said to circumscribe the triangle, the first one, the cube, the second one, and the pentacle within the egg, which is the ring called pass not for those who descend and ascend and for those who are progressing toward the great Day Be-With-Us. Also called the dhyanipasa (rope of the dhyanis or angels) that hedges off the phenomenal from the noumenal kosmos. The world circumscribed by this ring is signified mathematically by 31415 = 14 expressing hierarchies of dhyan-chohans. The imbodying monads, and men who are ascending towards purification but have not yet quite reached the goal, can cross the ring only on the Day Be-With-Us, the day when man will have freed himself from the trammels of ignorance and recognized fully the nonseparateness of his personal ego from the universal ego, and returns into conscious at-one-ness with Brahman.
sabija samadhi. ::: savikalpa samadhi wherein the seeds of samskaras or karmas are not destroyed, and which produces the highest and subtlest of samskaras or karmas
sabija. ::: with seed; with attributes; producing samskaras or subtle karmas
Sadaikarupa (Sanskrit) Sadaikarūpa [from sadā always + eka one + rūpa form] Always the one and same body; the essence of immutable nature. This Hindu philosophical term means the cosmically perduring (through both pralaya and manvantara following each other alternately) of the karmic substance of universal nature, however much cosmic karma may mold or vary the cosmic fields in and upon which it is eternally active.
sahajam karma ::: work born with a man. [Gita 18.48]
sahitya ::: literature; literary work (karma) said to fall "under three sahitya
sahityasiddhi (sahityasiddhi; sahitya-siddhi; sahitya siddhi) ::: perfecsahityasiddhi tion of literary work in all its forms, one of the "particular siddhis", involving the application of the power of vak to karma.
Samba (Sanskrit) Sāmba, Śāmba The reputed son of Krishna by Jambavati. According to esoteric tradition Krishna had no son; therefore Samba is symbolic of some power attained by Krishna. Through a curse of some holy sages, Samba was condemned to produce offspring in the shape of a terrific iron club for the destruction of the race of Yadu. Samba accordingly brought forth as iron club which was pounded and cast into the sea. But one piece which could not be crushed was subsequently found in the belly of a fish, and was used to tip an arrow used by the hunter Jaras (old age) to unintentionally kill Krishna. Thus old age finally overtakes and gathers in all things; and our future karma flows forth from our emotional and mental offspring, and sooner or later overtakes us all through time or old age. The iron club may represent the blows of destiny, based upon the kama of which iron is often a symbol; we may attempt to destroy the effects of our feelings and thoughts, but always there will be one little portion which cannot be crushed, and which is the seed of the future destiny, at least of our lower self.
Samsara ::: A Sanskrit term translated as "wandering". This is the concept of cyclic rebirth amongst phenomenal reality due to karma and the nature of causality. The process of escaping the Wheel of Samsara is through Enlightenment.
Samsara: (Skr.) "Going about", the passage of the soul in the cycle of births and deaths, the round of existence, transmigration, a universally accepted dogma in India, early justified philosophically on the basis of karma (q.v.). and the nature of atman (q.v.), but its modus operandi variously explained. It is the object of practically every Indian philosophy to find a way to escape from samsara and attain moksa (q.v.). -- K.F.L.
Samskara is intimately connected with causative action and its consequences, i.e., with karma. It is the creative mind continually weaving together new ideas and new notions in action which develops the propensities and impulses to consequent reactions or effects. As a metaphysical term Samskara is defined variously: as illusion, as notion, or as a species of discrimination. As the eleventh Nidana, it is action on the plane of illusion with the essential significance as the causative impulses which impel to action on the plane of illusion.
Samskara: Sanskrit for putting together. Mental impression, memory. Also the effects of Karma (q.v.) as shaping one’s life.
Samskara: (Skr. putting together) Mental impression, memory. Also the effects of karma (q.v.) as shaping one's life. -- K.F.L.
Samyak-Karmanta (Sanskrit) Samyakkarmānta [from samyak perfect + karmānta accomplishment, conclusion of a sacred action] Literally, “working out perfectly the very end of one’s karmic destiny.” In Buddhism, “Right Action,” one Path of the Holy Eightfold Path.
sanchita karma. ::: all the accumulated actions of all previous births that still remains to be experienced; the store of karmic debts accumulated from the past or previous births; a collection of past karmas
Sanchita (Sanskrit) Saṃcita [from sam-ci to unite, accumulate] That which is piled together or gathered; sanchita-karma is that accumulated karma which is not yet worked out, and is therefore unripe, waiting for expression in manifestation. Prarabdha-karma is that karma which is ripe, which has arisen from the past and is expressing itself.
sangah akarmani ::: attachment to inaction. [Gita 2.47]
Sanga (Sanskrit) Saṅga [from the verbal root sañj to adhere, attach] Worldly or selfish attachment or affection; “the Sankhyas say: give up Sangam, that desire to do Karma, which alone seems to connect the soul with it, and renounce this connection, which alone renders the soul responsible for the Karma” (N on BG 114).
Sani (Sanskrit) Śani The planet Saturn or its regent; in the Hindu pantheon, the son of Surya (the sun) and of either Sanjna (spiritual consciousness), the daughter of Visvakarman, or Chhaya (shadow), the spiritual shadow thrown off or left behind by Sanjna. Sani is almost invariably represented as a black individual clothed in black, and his titles include Saptarchi (seven-rayed one) and Asita (dark or obscure). The influence of Saturn, spiritually and astrologically, is enormous, and though commonly considered the great malefic in astrology, this is but a one-sided view, for Saturn’s influence often is as helpful as it is dangerous upon occasions.
Sanjna, Samjna (Sanskrit) Sañjñā, Saṃjñā [from sam wholly, completely + the verbal root jñā to know] Full knowledge, understanding, comprehension; mystically, spiritual consciousness. According to the Puranas, the daughter of Visvakarman and wife of Surya (the sun). In the Vishnu-Purana (3:2) Sanjna, “ ‘unable to endure the fervours of her lord,’ gave him her chhaya (shadow, image, or astral body), while she herself repaired to the jungle to perform religious devotions, or Tapas. The Sun, supposing the ‘chhaya’ to be his wife begat by her children, like Adam with Lilith — an ethereal shadow also, as in the legend, though an actual living female monster millions of years ago” (SD 2:174). This refers to the creation of the first root-race, the “chhaya-birth, or that primeval mode of sexless procreation, the first-race having eased out, so to say, from the body of the Pitris . . .” (ibid).
Sankalpa or Samkalpa (Sanskrit) Saṅkalpa, Saṃkalpa [from sam-klṛp to be brought into existence, wish, produce] A conception or idea formed in the mind or heart; thought, ideation, desire. The Vedas say that the whole universe is evolved through sankalpa — the ceaselessly acting impulsions of karma driven by cosmic kama — and hence it is only through sankalpa that the universe retains its karmic structure, appearances, and continuance.
sariram kevalam karma ::: purely physical action. [Gita 4.21]
sarirayatrapi...akarmanah ::: even the maintenance of (thy) physical life [cannot be effected] without action. [Gita 3.8]
sarvadarsana (sarvadarshana) ::: vision of all; especially, the vision of sarvadarsana ananda on every plane. sarvakarmas sarvakarmasamarthya
sarvakarmani josayan ::: helping them to do all actions with joy and acceptance. [cf. Gita 3.26]
sarvakarmani samnyasya ::: [having given up all actions]. [Gita 5.13; 18.57]
sarvakarmani ::: works of all kinds.
Sarva-medha (Sanskrit) Sarvamedha [from sarva all, whole, universal + medha sacrifice] The universal sacrifice, spoken of in the Rig-Veda as being performed by Visvakarman, the cosmic architect or demiurge. It is a ten days’ sacrificial ceremony — the ten having reference not only to the ten cosmic planes, but to other decads in the universe, such as the ten primordial conscious forces, etc.
sarvam karmakhilam (partha) jnane parisamapyate ::: all the totality of works [O Partha (Arjuna)] finds its rounded culmination in knowledge. [Gita 4.33]
satkarma. ::: good or meritorious acts
satyasya drstih srutih smrtih pratibodha iti jnanam; vrtte tu karmani ca satyadharma eva jnanam ::: [the seeing, hearing and remembering of truth, and realisation, these are jnana; and in conduct and action the Law of the Truth is jnana].
Science has not yet solved the problem of the origin of the Cromagnons. Blavatsky hints that they came indirectly from Atlantis by way of Africa: “The earliest Palaeolithic men in Europe — about whose origin Ethnology is silent, and whose very characteristics are but imperfectly known . . . were of pure Atlantean and ‘Africo’-Atlantean stocks. . . . As to the African tribes — themselves diverging offshoots of Atlanteans modified by climate and conditions — they crossed into Europe over the peninsula which made the Mediterranean an inland sea. Fine races were many of these European cave-men; the Cro-Magnon, for instance. But, as was to be expected, progress is almost non-existent through the whole of the vast period allotted by Science to the Chipped Stone-Age. The cyclic impulse downwards weighs heavily on the stocks thus transplanted — the incubus of the Atlantean Karma is upon them” (SD 2:740-1).
Seraphim (Hebrew) Śĕrāfīm [from the verbal root śāraf to burn; plural of śārāf] Fiery, burning, venomous, poisonous. The word came to have the significance of serpents, referring to those beings described in Isaiah 6:2 as possessing six wings, guarding the divine throne, and endowed with a voice with which they praise the deity; “they are the symbols of Jehovah, and of all the other Demiurgi who produce out of themselves six sons or likenesses — Seven with their Creator” (SD 2:387n). In later Jewish writings they are associated with the Cherubim and ’Ophannim (wheels) of Ezekiel. They parallel the Hindu nagas — semi-divine beings of serpent character. “The Seraphim are the fiery Serpents of Heaven which we find in a passage describing Mount Meru as: ‘the exalted mass of glory, the venerable haunt of gods and heavenly choristers. . . . not to be reached by sinful men. . . . because guarded by Serpents.’ They are called the Avengers, and the ‘Winged Wheels’ ” (SD 1:126) — avengers in the sense of being the agents of karma. They are the Flames, a class of dhyani-chohans who dried the “turbid dark waters” with which the earth was covered in an early stage of its development (SD 2:16).
Several meanings are possible: thirst for gold may be taken as the thirst for wisdom which causes deities to imbody in worlds, leaving their divine spheres to higher powers. This is reminiscent of the Hindu agnishvattas and kumaras. The thrice purified gold has been identified with manas, the conscious soul (SD 2:520). A more obvious meaning is that thirst for gold represents greed for possessions, and that Gullveig was an enchantress who brought sin into the world and with it the action of karma.
Sibika or Sivika (Sanskrit) Śibikā, Śivikā The weapon of Kuvera, the Vedic god of wealth equivalent to the Greek Pluto; made out of the parts of the divine splendor of Vishnu, a sun god, and filed off by Visvakarman, the architect of the gods.
Skuld (Icelandic) A debt, due; the third of the three norns who determine the fate of heroes in Norse mythology and who parallel the Greek Moirai. Skuld represents the future or unexpended karma, that which is due and owing. Her sister norns are named Urd (origin) and Verdandi (becoming). Skuld is said to be created by her two sisters: by the causes set in motion in the past (Urd) and the decisions and actions taken in the present (Verdandi). Hence she is the inevitable consequence of what has gone before.
Sri Aurobindo: A symbol, as I understand it, is the form on one plane that represents a truth of another. For instance, a flag is the symbol of a nation…. But generally all forms are symbols. This body of ours is a symbol of our real being and everything is a symbol of some higher reality. There are, however, different kinds of symbols: 1. Conventional symbols, such as the Vedic Rishis formed with objects taken from their surroundings. The cow stood for light because the same word `go ‘ meant both ray and cow, and because the cow was their most precious possession which maintained their life and was constantly in danger of being robbed and concealed. But once created, such a symbol becomes alive. The Rishis vitalised it and it became a part of their realisation. It appeared in their visions as an image of spiritual light. The horse also was one of their favourite symbols, and a more easily adaptable one, since its force and energy were quite evident. 2. What we might call Life-symbols, such as are not artificially chosen or mentally interpreted in a conscious deliberate way, but derive naturally from our day-to-day life and grow out of the surroundings which condition our normal path of living. To the ancients the mountain was a symbol of the path of yoga, level above level, peak upon peak. A journey, involving the crossing of rivers and the facing of lurking enemies, both animal and human, conveyed a similar idea. Nowadays I dare say we would liken yoga to a motor-ride or a railway-trip. 3. Symbols that have an inherent appositeness and power of their own. Akasha or etheric space is a symbol of the infinite all-pervading eternal Brahman. In any nationality it would convey the same meaning. Also, the Sun stands universally for the supramental Light, the divine Gnosis. 4.* Mental symbols, instances of which are numbers or alphabets. Once they are accepted, they too become active and may be useful. Thus geometrical figures have been variously interpreted. In my experience the square symbolises the supermind. I cannot say how it came to do so. Somebody or some force may have built it before it came to my mind. Of the triangle, too, there are different explanations. In one position it can symbolise the three lower planes, in another the symbol is of the three higher ones: so both can be combined together in a single sign. The ancients liked to indulge in similar speculations concerning numbers, but their systems were mostly mental. It is no doubt true that supramental realities exist which we translate into mental formulas such as Karma, Psychic evolution, etc. But they are, so to speak, infinite realities which cannot be limited by these symbolic forms, though they may be somewhat expressed by them; they might be expressed as well by other symbols, and the same symbol may also express many different ideas. Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: " Karma is nothing but the will of the Spirit in action, consequence nothing but the creation of will. What is in the will of being, expresses itself in karma and consequence. When the will is limited in mind, karma appears as a bondage and a limitation, consequence as a reaction or an imposition. But when the will of the being is infinite in the spirit, karma and consequence become instead the joy of the creative spirit, the construction of the eternal mechanist, the word and drama of the eternal poet, the harmony of the eternal musician, the play of the eternal child.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Destiny in the rigid sense applies only to the outer being so long as it lives in the Ignorance. What we call destiny is only in fact the result of the present condition of the being and the nature and energies it has accumulated in the past acting on each other and determining the present attempts and their future results. But as soon as one enters the path of spiritual life, this old predetermined destiny begins to recede. There comes in a new factor, the Divine Grace, the help of a higher Divine Force other than the force of Karma, which can lift the sadhak beyond the present possibilities of his nature. One"s spiritual destiny is then the divine election which ensures the future.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "If we believe that the soul is repeatedly reborn in the body, we must believe also that there is some link between the lives that preceded and the lives that follow and that the past of the soul has an effect on its future; and that is the spiritual essence of the law of Karma.” *Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: “If we believe that the soul is repeatedly reborn in the body, we must believe also that there is some link between the lives that preceded and the lives that follow and that the past of the soul has an effect on its future; and that is the spiritual essence of the law of Karma.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: "The Indian explanation of fate is Karma. We ourselves are our own fate through our actions, but the fate created by us binds us; for what we have sown, we must reap in this life or another. Still we are creating our fate for the future even while undergoing old fate from the past in the present. That gives a meaning to our will and action and does not, as European critics wrongly believe, constitute a rigid and sterilising fatalism. But again, our will and action can often annul or modify even the past Karma, it is only certain strong effects, called utkata karma, that are non-modifiable. Here too the achievement of the spiritual consciousness and life is supposed to annul or give the power to annul Karma. For we enter into union with the Will Divine, cosmic or transcendent, which can annul what it had sanctioned for certain conditions, new-create what it had created, the narrow fixed lines disappear, there is a more plastic freedom and wideness. Neither Karma nor Astrology therefore points to a rigid and for ever immutable fate.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "This idea of universality, of oneness not only with God or the eternal Self in me, but with all humanity and other beings, is growing to be the most prominent strain in our minds and it has to be taken more largely into account in any future idea or computation of the significance of rebirth and karma.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "This truth of Karma has been always recognised in the East in one form or else in another; but to the Buddhists belongs the credit of having given to it the clearest and fullest universal enunciation and the most insistent importance. In the West too the idea has constantly recurred, but in external, in fragmentary glimpses, as the recognition of a pragmatic truth of experience, and mostly as an ordered ethical law or fatality set over against the self-will and strength of man: but it was clouded over by other ideas inconsistent with any reign of law, vague ideas of some superior caprice or of some divine jealousy, — that was a notion of the Greeks, — a blind Fate or inscrutable Necessity, Ananke, or, later, the mysterious ways of an arbitrary, though no doubt an all-wise Providence.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga *Ananke"s.
Sri Aurobindo: “This truth of Karma has been always recognised in the East in one form or else in another; but to the Buddhists belongs the credit of having given to it the clearest and fullest universal enunciation and the most insistent importance. In the West too the idea has constantly recurred, but in external, in fragmentary glimpses, as the recognition of a pragmatic truth of experience, and mostly as an ordered ethical law or fatality set over against the self-will and strength of man: but it was clouded over by other ideas inconsistent with any reign of law, vague ideas of some superior caprice or of some divine jealousy,—that was a notion of the Greeks,—a blind Fate or inscrutable Necessity, Ananke, or, later, the mysterious ways of an arbitrary, though no doubt an all-wise Providence.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
sri ::: glory, splendour, beauty, prosperity; creation of prosperity and sri beauty in the world, part of Sri Aurobindo"s karma or life-work.
Sterility The otherwise unaccountable sterility which ethnologist note among certain so-called primitive peoples is a physiological prevision by which karmic law hastens the closing scenes for the remnants of a racial cycle. American Indians, Eskimos, Papuans, aboriginal Australians, most of the Polynesians, etc., are all said to be dying out as the tidal wave of incarnating egos rolls past them to harvest experience in less senile stocks. It is a physical proof of karma “that the lowest races of men are now rapidly dying out; a phenomenon largely due to an extraordinary sterility setting in among the women, from the time that they were first approached by the Europeans. A process of decimation is taking place all over the globe, among these races whose ‘time is up’ — among just these stocks, be it remarked, which esoteric philosophy regards as the senile representatives of lost archaic nations” (SD 2:779-80). She adds that while the cruelties and abuses perpetrated by colonists, as well as changes in diet, etc., have done much to reduce these peoples in number, “the people that have been most spared . . . Hawaiians or Maoris, have been no less decimated than the tribes massacred or tainted by European intrusion” (ibid.).
subjective half (of the fifth catus.t.aya) ::: Kr.s.n.a and Kali, the first two members of the karma catus.t.aya. subjective k kama
" Suffering is not inflicted as a punishment for sin or for hostility — that is a wrong idea. Suffering comes like pleasure and good fortune as an inevitable part of life in the ignorance. The dualities of pleasure and pain, joy and grief, good fortune and ill-fortune are the inevitable results of the ignorance which separates us from our true consciousness and from the Divine. Only by coming back to it can we get rid of suffering. Karma from the past lives exists, much of what happens is due to it, but not all. For we can mend our karma by our own consciousness and efforts. But the suffering is simply a natural consequence of past errors, not a punishment, just as a burn is the natural consequence of playing with fire. It is part of the experience by which the soul through its instruments learns and grows until it is ready to turn to the Divine.” Letters on Yoga
“ Suffering is not inflicted as a punishment for sin or for hostility—that is a wrong idea. Suffering comes like pleasure and good fortune as an inevitable part of life in the ignorance. The dualities of pleasure and pain, joy and grief, good fortune and ill-fortune are the inevitable results of the ignorance which separates us from our true consciousness and from the Divine. Only by coming back to it can we get rid of suffering. Karma from the past lives exists, much of what happens is due to it, but not all. For we can mend our karma by our own consciousness and efforts. But the suffering is simply a natural consequence of past errors, not a punishment, just as a burn is the natural consequence of playing with fire. It is part of the experience by which the soul through its instruments learns and grows until it is ready to turn to the Divine.” Letters on Yoga
Superspiritual Those realms and spheres of the cosmic being and life which are the causal noumena even of the spirit; and hence we may speak of the superspiritual as being the divine, out of which the spiritual flows during the course of cosmic evolution. The spheres of action of the combined forces of evolution and karma are the superspiritual or noumenal, the spiritual, the psychological, the astro-ethereal, the subastral, the vital, and the purely physical. Man in the first round and first root-race on globe D was a highly ethereal being, nonintelligent in our sense, but spiritual, and the offspring of superspiritual monadic essences; and the same rule applied, but less forcibly, in the first root-race of the fourth round.
Sushumna (Sanskrit) Suṣumṇa, Suṣumna Astronomically, the highest of the seven principal rays or Logoi of the sun, the others being Harikesa, Visvakarman, Visvatryarchas, Sannaddha, Sarvavasu, and Svaraj. These rays “are all mystical, and each has its distinct application in a distinct state of consciousness, for occult purposes. The Sushumna, which, as said in the Nirukta (II, 6), is only to light up the moon, is the ray nevertheless cherished by the initiated Yogis. The totality of the Seven Rays spread through the Solar system constitute, so to say, the physical Upadhi (basis) of the Ether of Science; in which Upadhi, light, heat, electricity, etc., etc., — the forces of orthodox science — correlate to produce their terrestrial effects. As psychic and spiritual effects, they emanate from, and have their origin in, the supra-soar Upadhi, in the ether of the Occultist — or Akasa” (SD 1:515n).
svabhavajam karma ::: the work born of one's svabhava. [cf. Gita 18.42,43,44]
svabhavajena svena karmana ::: by (thy) own work born of (thy) svabhava. [Gita 18.60]
svabhavaniyatam karma ::: an action proceeding from and determined by the inner nature [svabhava]. [Gita 18.47]
sva-karmana ::: by one's own work. [Gita 18.46]
Svaraj (Sanskrit) Svarāj The self-ruling, the self-resplendent; one of the seven principal rays of the sun, “the last or seventh (synthetical) ray of the seven solar rays; the same as Brahma” (TG 315). These seven are really the entire range of the seven occult forces, or divinities, of the solar system; hence the names of these seven rays are names given to them in Hindu semi-occult philosophical literature as Sushumna, Harikesa, Visvakarman, Visvatryarchas, Samnaddhas, Sarvavasu, and Svaraj. Otherwise these seven rays are the seven solar logoi whose functions in the solar system are at once creative — or the intelligent impulses behind cosmic evolution — and supportive of the solar system, in addition to bringing about the various regenerating changes. The seven rays are elaborations of the Hindu Trimurti of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva. See also SURYA
symbol ::: A symbol, as I understand it, is the form on one plane that represents a truth of another. For instance, a flag is the symbol of a nation…. But generally all forms are symbols. This body of ours is a symbol of our real being and everything is a symbol of some higher reality. There are, however, different kinds of symbols: 1. Conventional symbols, such as the Vedic Rishis formed with objects taken from their surroundings. The cow stood for light because the same word `go ‘ meant both ray and cow, and because the cow was their most precious possession which maintained their life and was constantly in danger of being robbed and concealed. But once created, such a symbol becomes alive. The Rishis vitalised it and it became a part of their realisation. It appeared in their visions as an image of spiritual light. The horse also was one of their favourite symbols, and a more easily adaptable one, since its force and energy were quite evident. 2. What we might call Life-symbols, such as are not artificially chosen or mentally interpreted in a conscious deliberate way, but derive naturally from our day-to-day life and grow out of the surroundings which condition our normal path of living. To the ancients the mountain was a symbol of the path of yoga, level above level, peak upon peak. A journey, involving the crossing of rivers and the facing of lurking enemies, both animal and human, conveyed a similar idea. Nowadays I dare say we would liken yoga to a motor-ride or a railway-trip. 3. Symbols that have an inherent appositeness and power of their own. Akasha or etheric space is a symbol of the infinite all-pervading eternal Brahman. In any nationality it would convey the same meaning. Also, the Sun stands universally for the supramental Light, the divine Gnosis. 4. Mental symbols, instances of which are numbers or alphabets. Once they are accepted, they too become active and may be useful. Thus geometrical figures have been variously interpreted. In my experience the square symbolises the supermind. I cannot say how it came to do so. Somebody or some force may have built it before it came to my mind. Of the triangle, too, there are different explanations. In one position it can symbolise the three lower planes, in another the symbol is of the three higher ones: so both can be combined together in a single sign. The ancients liked to indulge in similar speculations concerning numbers, but their systems were mostly mental. It is no doubt true that supramental realities exist which we translate into mental formulas such as Karma, Psychic evolution, etc. But they are, so to speak, infinite realities which cannot be limited by these symbolic forms, though they may be somewhat expressed by them; they might be expressed as well by other symbols, and the same symbol may also express many different ideas. Letters on Yoga
tapas &
Ta-urt (Egyptian) Ta-urt. One name of the hippopotamus goddess more commonly known as Rert or Rertu; regarded as the consort of Typhon, and closely associated with the beast portrayed in the Judgment scene from The Egyptian Book of the Dead called the Eater of the Dead — the Devourer of the Unjustified. Abstractly, Ta-urt represents not so much the punitive but the retributive aspect of karma, with a special application to the postmortem conditions of the defunct in kama-loka. See also HIPPOPOTAMUS
. t.aya (karmachatusthaya; karma chatusthaya) ::: the fifth catus.t.aya, the quaternary of action, consisting of Kr.s.n.a, Kali, karma and kama1; also called the lilacatus.t.aya.
. t.ayas ::: the last three of the seven parts of the sapta catus.t.aya, namely the karma catus.t.aya, brahma catus.t.aya and siddhi catus.t.aya, which when combined constitute "an ideal action of the . Divine through our perfected being in the largeness of the Brahmic unity".
That gives a meaning to our will and action. Our will and action can often annul or modify even the past karma, it is only cer- tain strong effects, called tiikata karma, that arc non-modifiable.
That the child carries on or transmits many features from his parents cannot be denied, but it is of no greater significance than the fact that he also derives features from a variety of other sources, all which contribute materials and subordinate agents by which the karma of the individual is fulfilled. That karma is the innate character of the individual, as imbodied in the various spiritual, manasic, psychological, or astral vehicles which contribute to the composite human being. Without taking into account these acquired characteristics on the inner planes, what determines the extent or manner in which the character of the offspring will be modified by the modicum of new physical influence derived from the parents cannot be explained. For, “it is . . . unquestionable that in the case of human incarnations the law of Karma, racial or individual, overrides the subordinate tendencies of ‘Heredity,’ its servant” (SD 2:178).
The alchemical action of the astral light and its intimate connection with the physical sphere explains epidemics, whether physical or psychological. Because it transmits thoughts and emotions, its connection with karma is evident. The astral light is the mother of the physical world, just as akasa is the mother of the astral light.
The destiny which lies in the germ is the destiny which belongs to the spiritual entity in its various attributes behind that germ, and these attributes as a whole — in other words the svabhava of the entity — are born of that entity’s portion of free will leading it off into strange bypaths during the ages-long course of its evolutionary growth. The incarnate person, having the power of choice, can wander temporarily far astray from the path of his divine destiny, lured by the attractions of the lower planes of manifestation. This stirring up of karmic results which actually becomes Karma-Nemesis, that which cannot be avoided and must be worked out, is the beneficent but inexorable adjuster and restorer of harmony.
The effect of karma on human beings is merely the natural reaction from their actions, which may be described as only half-actions, for they are not completed until the reaction has ensued. Since the consequences of acts do not necessarily ensue immediately, it follows that at any stage of our career we may experience the results of actions performed a long time in the past.
The fall of man is symbolized in the zodiacal signs of Virgo-Scorpio, and it is mankind who has become the serpent of Genesis and thus causes daily and hourly the fall and sin of the celestial Virgin, who becomes the mother of gods and devils at the same time. But karma in one of its senses would be a better word for this: “Karma . . . means, as a synonym of sin, the performance of some action for the attainment of an object of worldly, hence selfish, desire, which cannot fail to be hurtful to somebody else” (SD 2:302n).
The greatest initiates and yogis since Sankaracharya’s time are reputed to have come from the ranks of the Advaita-Vedantists. “Yet the root philosophy of both Adwaita and Buddhist scholars is identical, and both have the same respect for animal life, for both believe that every creature on earth, however small and humble, ‘is an immortal portion of the immortal matter’ — for matter with them has quite another significance than it has with either Christian or materialist — and that every creature is subject to Karma” (SD 1:636; cf 2:637).
The hermaphroditic state is repeated in the developing embryo where the organs of both sexes arise from the same germinal layer of cells, and the differentiation does not occur until near the middle of the viable period of fetal life. Today, the orderly unfolding of embryonic cells into a human form is due to following the invisible model which, in keeping with the imbodying ego’s karma, is directed by creative spiritual entities and forces.
The karma which brings to a person conditions which he does not choose or wish for in his present life, is yet consistent with his free will because he is the result of all his previous actions, now expressing themselves in results. These reactions of causes which he set in motion in this or in former lives, being the result which was inherent in his previous choices, is a self-imposed destiny; but it is not fatalism, because he is now free to decide again how he will meet the results of what he previously had chosen for himself. Karma is mathematically exact, both physically and metaphysically, but it is so constantly involved with new elements of choice and of proportion that its effects of necessity are measured on a sliding scale of being, so to say.
The lipikas correspond to the Egyptian Assessors of Amenti, to the four Recording Angels of the Qabbalah, the Hindu four Maharajas and chitra-gupta, the Christian seven Angels of the Presence, and to the Book of Life of Revelations. They are directly connected with karma, with the Day of Judgment, or the Day-Be-With-Us, when everything becomes one, all individualities becoming one, yet each knowing itself.
The merging of the little ego ia union with the Divine, puri- fication, surrender, the substitution of the Divine guidance for one’s own ignorant self-guidance based on one's personal Ideas and personal feelings is the aim of Karmajoga, the surrender of one's own will to the Divine Will.
The merging of the little ego in union with the Divine, purification, surrender, the substitution of the Divine guidance for one’s own ignorant self-guidance based on one’s personal ideas and personal feelings is the aim of Karma Yoga, the surrender of one’s own will to the Divine Will.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 35, Page: 752-753
Themis (Greek) Goddess of justice, who preserves harmony, adjusting effect to cause; considered, when conjoined with Nemesis and Adrasteia, as personifying karma.
The names of the seven principal rays of the sun are: Sushumna, Harikesa, Visvakarman, Visvatryarchas, Sannaddha, Sarvavasu, and Svaraj. “These seven rays are the entire gamut of the seven occult forces (or gods) of nature, as their respective names well prove. . . . As each stands for one of the creative gods or Forces, it is easy to see how important were the functions of the sun in the eyes of antiquity, and why it was deified by the profane” (TG 315). These principal rays of Surya are from another standpoint the seven solar logoi, each one of the seven having its respective home in the seven sacred planets; equally, there may be said to be twelve rays of the sun, and twelve sacred planets, each one a home or mansion of one of the solar logoi.
The noun parinamana means bringing to full development, in relation to karma. See also APARINAMIN
There are four Vedas: the Rig-Veda, Yajur-Veda, Sama-Veda, and Atharva-Veda, this last commonly supposed to be of later date than the former three. The Laws of Manu always speaks of the three Vedas. The Rig-Veda is the original work, the Yajur-Veda and Sama-Veda in their mantric portions are different arrangements of its hymns for special purposes. The Vedas are divided into two parts, the Mantra and Brahmana. The Mantra part is composed of suktas (hymns in verse); the Brahmana part consists of liturgical, ritualistic, exegetical, and mystic treatises in prose. The Mantra or verse portion is considered more ancient than the prose works; and the books in which the hymns are collected are called sanhitas (collections). More or less closely connected with the Brahmanans (and in a few exceptional cases with the Mantra part) are two classes of treatises in prose and verse called Aranyaka and Upanishad. The Vedic writings are again divided into two great divisions, exoteric and esoteric, the former called the karma-kanda (the section of works) and the latter the jnana-kanda (section of wisdom).
There are many types of karma, such as human, racial, national, family, individual, etc. A chain of causation, stretched out in time, will be intersected by any given present moment; so that in speaking of a person, we may say he sums up in himself both his past and his future, he is his own karma. Since the whole universe and all the beings which compose it are linked and blended together, it follows that no person can have exclusive interests and that the karma of all beings is linked and, in a profound sense, identical. Karma in its moral aspect is cosmic justice. It should not interfere in any way with helping others, nor does it render futile the exercise of compassion, for we incur as much responsibility by refraining from action as by acting. “Sow kindly acts and thou shalt reap their fruition. Inaction in a deed of mercy becomes an action in a deadly sin” (VS 31).
There are, nonetheless, such things as the national genius, which can be metaphysically explained by calling it a minor ray from the logos, to which belong the already relatively highly evolved individual units of the group thus overenlightened. Such a national or racial aggregation of individuals of like karma and character likewise create a vital atmosphere, a manifestation of the genius, which exists in the creative ideation of the planetary spirit, both as an imbodied idea and as an abstract spiritual entity. It is in this sense that such expressions were used in ancient Greek and other mythologies when speaking of nature spirits, genii loci, or denoting families and races by an eponym, ancestor, or the name of a god.
There are profound, highly mystical differences which distinguish the Maharajas from the lipikas. The Maharajas, who are both the protectors of mankind on earth and the agents of karma, are those highly evolved spiritual powers or individualized cosmic beings who belong to the light-side of universal nature, to the hierarchies of compassion representing beings of unfolded evolutionary development who by the very nature of their essence become almost the automatic guardians of light and cosmic order which the semi-intelligent and so-called unintelligent forces and energies of nature automatically obey.
There are several types of yoga such as karma yoga, hatha yoga, bhakti yoga, raja yoga, and jnana yoga. “Similar religious aspirations or practices likewise exist in Occidental countries, as, for instance, what is called ‘Salvation by Works,’ somewhat equivalent to the Hindu Karma-Yoga, or, again, ‘Salvation by Faith — or Love,’ somewhat similar to the Hindu Bhakti-Yoga; while both Orient and Occident have, each one, its various forms of ascetic practices which may be grouped under the term Hatha-Yoga.
There is and has been a great deal of confusion, not only at present but throughout the ages, about these matters, and several mystical schools have even chosen the language of the tavern and drinking house as the cloak for conveying occult or semi-occult teaching. A noted example is the Sufi school with its poems lauding the flowing bowl and the joys of the tavern and the bosom friends therein, and the beloved’s breast. Here the tavern was the universe, the flowing cup or wine was the wine of the spirit bringing inner ecstasy, the bosom of the beloved was the raising oneself into inner communion with the god within, of which the Jewish bosom of Abraham is a feeble correspondence. The friends of the tavern are those perfect human relations brought about by a community of spiritual and intellectual interests, and the associations of the tavern are the mysteries of the world around us with their marvels and arcana. Nevertheless in various countries as the fourth root-race ran toward its evil culmination, the mystic became translated into the material, the spiritual degenerated into the teaching of matter, so that indeed in later Atlantean times the drugging of initiates was common, and the results always disastrous, this being one of the sorceries for which the Atlanteans in occult history have remained infamous. Yet even in the fifth root-race, due to the heavy Atlantean karma still weighing on us, many nations as late as historic times employed more or less harmless potations to bring about a temporary dulling or stupefying of the brain and nervous system — a procedure always vigorously opposed by the theosophic occult school which has never at any time allowed it.
There was an enmity lasting for ages between the benevolent and the selfish portions of the fourth root-race, which continued with the Aryan adepts of the nascent fifth root-race and finally ended in the triumph of the positive; but nevertheless the karma of Atlantean black magic even yet blights our own fifth root-race, for the people of today were imbodied as the humans of Atlantean times. Descendants of fourth root-race humanity even now are among the inhabitants of the earth, together with rapidly dying out remnants of the third root-race, and also various mixtures of all these.
“The Secret Doctrine teaches that ‘He who is the first to appear at Renovation will be the last to come before Re-absorption (pralaya).’ Thus the logoi of all nations, from the Vedic Visvakarma of the Mysteries down to the Saviour of the present civilised nations, are the ‘Word’ who was ‘in the beginning’ (or the reawakening of the energising powers of Nature) with the One Absolute. Born of Fire and Water, before these became distinct elements, It was the ‘Maker’ (fashioner or modeller) of all things . . . who finally may be called, as he ever has been, the Alpha and the Omega of manifested Nature” (SD 1:470).
These ring-pass-not are therefore obviously not actual rings of matter, but inabilities to pass beyond the limits set by one’s own strength. They refer to tangible and intangible, albeit temporarily impassible, frontiers or barriers raised by past karma and guarded by the lipikas, those cosmic spirits of extremely mystical character who are at the same time the guardians and agents of karma.
::: "The spiritual law of Karma is that the nature of each being can be only the result of his past energies; . . . .” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“The spiritual law of Karma is that the nature of each being can be only the result of his past energies; …” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
The Taittiriya-Sanhita says: “This universe was formerly waters, fluid. On it Prajapati, becoming wind, moved. He saw this [earth]. Becoming a boar, he took her up. Becoming Visvakarman, he wiped [the moisture from] her. She extended. She became the extended one [prithivi].”
The work here is a field and an opportunity for the Karma- yoga part of the Integral yoga, for learning to w-ork in the true yogic way, dedication through service, practical selflessness, obedience, scrupulousness, dkciplioe, setting the Divine and the
Thus destiny is not fatalism, but emphatically supports the idea of intrinsically spiritual free will. The stirring up of these seeds of Karma-Nemesis are the consequences or results of the entity’s own will in act, feeling, and consequent result. Thus destiny is of two kinds: that which the evolving entity has stored up as character, propensities, biases, and svabhava in other lives; and that which the entity, using its modicum of free will, is now storing up for its future, but in accordance with its own exercise of will or choice. See also FREE WILL; KARMA; NEMESIS
Tiqqun (Aramaic) Tīqqūn [from the verbal root tāqan to prepare, establish, set in order, make form or solid] The first manifestation or Third Logos: the Logos of creative activity or the Demiourgos (world-builder). If one adds the philosophical idea always connected with the Third Logos of the immanent karma from the past manvantara guiding through divine ideation the operations of the creative Logos, the deep significance of the term becomes clear. Tiqqun may be called the first born from the active-passive field of logoic activity which in connection with its emanated hierarchies is termed in the Qabbalah the Heavenly Man, ’Adam Qadmon.
Transmigration The belief that human souls after death pass into other bodies either human or animal, and mistakenly given as a synonym for reincarnation, metempsychosis, etc. Transmigration in general means the passing of an entity from one imbodiment to another, without regard to the status of the entity or the form of the imbodiments, so that it includes various specific meanings denoted by other terms. Actually the word refers to the transmigration of life-atoms, especially those of the human vehicles after dissolution. According to their own affinities and degree of development, these life-atoms which have composed the lower human principles transmigrate to other physical psychomental bodies, there to pursue each its own further specific evolution, unretarded by the temporary association with its former body. Eventually, when the proper cyclic time arrives, they are all again attracted back to the reincarnating human entity to which they formerly belonged. The teaching as to the transmigration of the life-atoms is very important in elucidation of the unity of all life, the interaction of all nature, and the working of karma.
trimarga ::: the triple path of Knowledge [jnanayoga], Devotion [bhaktiyoga] and Works [karmayoga].
Tvashtri (Sanskrit) Tvaṣṭṛ The divine artist and carpenter of the gods, father of the gods and of the sacred creative fire, and therefore equivalent to the Greek cosmic Demiurge. Maker of divine weapons, such as Indra’s Thunderbolt, and teacher of the ribhus or adityas, he was considered as the great patron of initiates. The Tvashtri of the Vedas is synonymous with the Visvakarman of the Puranas. Many of the functions ascribed in Hindu legend to Tvashtri are reminiscent of similar functions ascribed to the Greek Hephaestos or Latin Vulcan.
ūks.mapran.avad annam (sukshmapranavad annam) ::: a component of the karmadeha, composed of material substance filled with subtle life-energy. ssuksma
ūlapran.avad annam ::: a component of the karmadeha, composed of material substance filled with physical life-energy. sthula sth ūla sarira
Unfortunately, however, physical practices of various kinds seem to be particularly attractive to the average person because apparently within the sphere of easy performance. One does not know the dangers lurking there; but actually, to achieve even the minor results that come from perfect performance, greater effort and larger difficulties have to be encountered than in raising one’s eyes to the nobler forms of yoga. It is always safe and indeed requisite for a disciple to practice the higher branches of yoga: jnana yoga, raja yoga, bhakti yoga, and karma yoga, which means the yoga of unselfish action in daily life. Consequently, when considered apart from the nobler forms of yoga there is not a particle of spirituality in all these hatha yoga practices.
universality ::: “This idea of universality, of oneness not only with God or the eternal Self in me, but with all humanity and other beings, is growing to be the most prominent strain in our minds and it has to be taken more largely into account in any future idea or computation of the significance of rebirth and karma.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Urd, Urdr (Scandinavian, Icelandic) [cf Swedish ur original, fundamental; Anglo-Saxon wyrd, English weird] Also Urdar. The principal of the three norns (Fates) in Norse mythology, representing the past in the sense of causation: all that has gone before, giving rise to the present. Her sister norns are Verdande (becoming), usually translated as the present; and Skuld (debt), obligations yet to be repaid. The past and present create the third sister, norn of the future, which is suggestive of karma, where the future is the outcome of all past and present acts.
utkata karma ::: [karma exceeding the usual measure], certain strong effects [of one's past actions] that are unmodifiable.
utsideyur ime loka na kuryam karma cedaham ::: these worlds would crumble to pieces (would be overpowered by tamas and sink into inaction) if I did not do actions. [Gita 3.24]
Vaisesika: One of the major systems of Indian philosophy (q.v.) founded by Ulaka, better known by his surname Kanada. It is a pluralistic realism, its main insistence being on visesa or particularity of the ultimate reality, incidental to an atomism. There are theistic implications. Reality falls into seven categories: nine substances (dravya, q.v.), 24 qualities (guna, q.v.), action (karma, q.v.), universality (samanya, q.v.), particularity (visesa), inherence (samavdya), and non-existence (abhava). -- K.F.L.
Vali, Vale (Icelandic, Scandinavian) In Norse mythology, a son of Odin who avenges the death of the sun god Balder; also a son of Loki. This paradox may be resolved in that the son of Loki (mind), being also the offspring of Allfather Odin as all beings are, is the future human race in its character as a redeemer and consummation of human evolution. He also may be a personification of karma-nemesis.
varna&
varta eva ca karmani ::: I abide verily in action. [Gita 3.22]
Veda(s)(Sanskrit) ::: From a verbal root vid signifying "to know." These are the most ancient and the most sacredliterary and religious works of the Hindus. Veda as a word may be described as "divine knowledge." TheVedas are four in number: the Rig-Veda, the Yajur-Veda, the Sama-Veda, and the Atharva-Veda, thislast being commonly supposed to be of later date than the former three.Manu in his Work on Law always speaks of the three Vedas, which he calls "the ancient triple Brahman"-- sanatanam trayam brahma." Connected with the Vedas is a large body of other works of variouskinds, liturgical, ritualistic, exegetical, and mystical, the Veda itself being commonly divided into twogreat portions, outward and inner: the former called the karma-kanda, the "Section of Works," and thelatter called jnana-kanda or "Section of Wisdom."The authorship of the Veda is not unitary, but almost every hymn or division of a Veda is ascribed to adifferent author or rather to various authors; but they are supposed to have been compiled in their presentform by Veda-Vyasa. There is no question in the minds of learned students of theosophy that the Vedasrun back in their origins to enormous antiquity, thousands of years before the beginning of what is knownin the Occident as the Christian era, whatever Occidental scholars may have to say in objection to thisstatement. Hindu pandits themselves claim that the Veda was taught orally for thousands of years, andthen finally compiled on the shores of the sacred lake Manasa-Sarovara, beyond the Himalayas in adistrict of what is now Tibet.
Vicarious Atonement In Christian theology, the idea that God accepted the sacrifice of Jesus Christ as a substitution for the guilt incurred by man at the Fall, and that mankind will consequently escape punishment, provided that they accept by faith Jesus Christ’s sacrifice. The idea that by an atoning for evil done or sin committed, one undoes the past — broadened by Christian theology to include the doctrine of the vicarious atonement by some great spiritual being for the sins of others — is a theory rejected by the theosophic philosophy. To those who believe the Christian doctrine that every person was born into this world burdened with inevitable doom through Adam’s sin, such a compensatory doctrine seems to be necessary; but it discourages people’s faith in their own innate divinity and in their power thereby to effect their own spiritual and moral salvation, and violates our sense of justice by offering a way of avoiding the consequences of our own bad actions — which avoidance of sin already incurred is distinctly denied in several places in the New Testament where the ancient theosophical doctrine of karma is taught that as a man sows, that (and not something else) must he invariably reap. Vicarious atonement may be a distorted doctrine of reconciliation, in Christian notion reconciliation between God and man; also of the idea that the spiritual monad in man takes on itself the consequences for actions or “sins” committed by the less evolved human monad. Every human being is raised by the sacrifice made by the Christos within himself, so that whoever believes in and conforms his acts to his own spiritual nature, is “saved.”
visvadevaloka ::: the world of the all-gods or karmadevatas. visvadevaloka
visvaisvarya (visvaiswarya) ::: universal power, omnipotence..Visvakarman
Visvakarman (Sanskrit) Viśvakarman The omnificent, the all-worker; in the Rig-Veda, the highest and oldest of the cosmic architects, and hence the father, initiator, or teacher of the hierarchies of later gods under him. As a collective name, he corresponds in many respects to the Greek cosmocratores, in some to the Third Logos. He is spoken of as the divine artist and carpenter, the architect of the universe, the creative god, father of the creative fire, the builder and artificer of the gods, and the great patron of initiates.
Visvakarman ::: the divine architect of the universe, identified with Tvas.t.r..
Wind is also used alternatively with air. The regents of the cosmic forces of north, south, east, and west — the four Maharajas connected with karma — have as their material agents the four corresponding winds or spirits, which mightily influence all living things.
with her foot on the Divine itself ::: then she comes to herself and the struggle and destruction are over"; the Goddess (devi) into whose undivided consciousness-force (cit-sakti) "our divided & unequal individual force of action & thought" is to be renounced in order "to 86 replace our egoistic activities by the play in our body of the universal Kali and thus exchange blindness & ignorance for knowledge and ineffective human strength for the divine effective Force"; the sakti carrying out the lila according to the pleasure of the isvara, the second member of the karma catus.t.aya; sometimes the same as Mahakali.
work ::: “I do not mean by work action done in the ego and the ignorance, for the satisfaction of the ego and in the drive of rajasic desire. There can be no Karmayoga without the will to get rid of ego, rajas and desire, which are the seals of ignorance.
work ::: Sri Aurobindo: "I do not mean by work action done in the ego and the ignorance, for the satisfaction of the ego and in the drive of rajasic desire. There can be no Karmayoga without the will to get rid of ego, rajas and desire, which are the seals of ignorance.
yatha karma yatha srutam ::: according to their deeds and after the measure of their revealed knowledge. [Katha 2.2.7]
yesam tvantagatam papam jananam punyakarmamam ::: [but those men of virtuous deeds, in whom sin has come to an end]. [Gita 7.28]
yogah karmasu kausalam ::: yoga is skill in works. [Gita 2.50]
yogasamnyastakarmanam atmavantam na karmani nibadhnanti ::: works do not bind him who has given up all works and is in possession of the Self. [Gita 4.41]
Yoga(Sanskrit) ::: Literally "union," "conjunction," etc. In India it is the technical name for one of the sixDarsanas or schools of philosophy, and its foundation is ascribed to the sage Patanjali. The name Yogaitself describes the objective of this school, the attaining of union or at-one-ness with the divine-spiritualessence within a man. The yoga practices when properly understood through the instructions of genuineteachers -- who, by the way, never announce themselves as public lecturers or through books oradvertisements -- are supposed to induce certain ecstatic states leading to a clear perception of universaltruths, and the highest of these states is called samadhi.There are a number of minor forms of yoga practice and training such as the karma yoga, hatha yoga,bhakti yoga, raja yoga, jnana yoga, etc. Similar religious aspirations or practices likewise exist inOccidental countries, as, for instance, what is called salvation by works, somewhat equivalent to theHindu karma yoga or, again, salvation by faith -- or love, somewhat similar to the Hindu bhakti yoga;while both Orient and Occident have, each one, its various forms of ascetic practices which may begrouped under the term hatha yoga.No system of yoga should ever be practiced unless under the direct teaching of one who knows thedangers of meddling with the psychomental apparatus of the human constitution, for dangers lurk atevery step, and the meddler in these things is likely to bring disaster upon himself, both in matters ofhealth and as regards sane mental equilibrium. The higher branches of yoga, however, such as the rajayoga and jnana yoga, implying strict spiritual and intellectual discipline combined with a fervid love forall beings, are perfectly safe. It is, however, the ascetic practices, etc., and the teachings that go withthem, wherein lies the danger to the unwary, and they should be carefully avoided.
yogasiddhi (yogasiddhi; yoga-siddhi; yoga siddhi) ::: "the perfection that comes from the practice of Yoga"; the progressive or eventual attainment of perfection (siddhi) in yoga, especially in the yoga of selfperfection outlined in the sapta catus.t.aya, often not including karma or the effective half of the karma catus.t.aya.
Yoga: (Skr. "yoking") Restraining of the mind (see Manas), or, in Patanjali's (q.v.) phrase: citta vrtti nirodha, disciplining the activity of consciousness. The object of this universally recommended practice in India is the gaining of peace of mind and a deeper insight into the nature of reality. On psycho-physical assumptions, several aids are outlined in all works on Yoga, including moral preparation, breath-control, posture, and general toning up of the system. Karma or kriya Yoga is the attainment of Yoga ends primarily by doing, bhakti Yoga by devotion, jnana Yoga by mental or spiritual means. The Yogasutras (q.v.) teach eight paths: Moral restraint (see yama), self-culture (see niyama), posture (see asana), breath-control (see prandyama), control of the senses (see pratyahara), concentration (see dharana), meditation or complete surrender to the object of meditation (see samadhi). See Hathayoga. -- K.F.L.
yogasthah kuru karmani ::: fixed in yoga do actions. [Gita 2.48]
YOGA The original yoga methods were elaborated by
&
yoga ::: union; "the union of that which has become separated in the play of the universe with its own true self, origin and universality"; any of various methods of seeking for such a union; especially the path of pūrn.a yoga, culminating in a "Yoga of self-perfection" by which the "liberated individual being, united with the Divine in self and spirit, becomes in his natural being a self-perfecting instrument for the perfect outflowering of the Divine in humanity". In Sri Aurobindo"s diary, "the Yoga" usually refers to his practice of this Yoga of self-. perfection, whose elements are enumerated in the sapta catus.t.aya; but the effective half of the karma catus.t.aya is for some purposes treated as part of "life" or the lila, as distinct from the yoga. yoga catustaya
yoga. ::: "union"; union with the Reality; fusion of individual self with the universal Self; spiritual practice designed to purify one's mind and bring one closer to Self-realisation; the practice of stilling the mind, whereby thoughts, memories, emotions, associations and perceptions are refocused onto the Reality and where a natural disgarding takes place; there are four main paths of yoga &
yuktah krtsnakarmakrt ::: a doer of all actions, in yoga. [Gita 4.18]
zorch /zorch/ 1. [TMRC] To attack with an inverse heat sink. 2. [TMRC] To travel with velocity approaching lightspeed. 3. [MIT] To propel something very quickly. "The new comm software is very fast; it really zorches files through the network." 4. [MIT] Influence. Brownie points. Good karma. The intangible and fuzzy currency in which favours are measured. "I'd rather not ask him for that just yet; I think I've used up my quota of zorch with him for the week." 5. [MIT] Energy, drive, or ability. "I think I'll {punt} that change for now; I've been up for 30 hours and I've run out of zorch." 6. [MIT] To flunk an exam or course. 7. Computing power. [{Jargon File}] (1997-07-09)
zorch ::: /zorch/ 1. [TMRC] To attack with an inverse heat sink.2. [TMRC] To travel with velocity approaching lightspeed.3. [MIT] To propel something very quickly. The new comm software is very fast; it really zorches files through the network.4. [MIT] Influence. Brownie points. Good karma. The intangible and fuzzy currency in which favours are measured. I'd rather not ask him for that just yet; I think I've used up my quota of zorch with him for the week.5. [MIT] Energy, drive, or ability. I think I'll punt that change for now; I've been up for 30 hours and I've run out of zorch.6. [MIT] To flunk an exam or course.7. Computing power.[Jargon File] (1997-07-09)
KEYS (10k)
66 Sri Aurobindo
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3 17th Karmapa
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1:Regardless of what we do, our karma has no hold on us. ~ Bodhidharma, #KEYS
2:Everyone in this world suffers from his own karma. Such is the universal law. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
3:Every time the world shakes you up, you feel something has happened not to your liking, you're accruing karma. ~ Robert Adams, #KEYS
4:Karma done unselfishly purifies the mind and helps to fix it in meditation. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
5:Until realisation there will be Karma, i.e., action and reaction; after realisation there will be no Karma, no world. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
6:Karma in its effect on character is the most tremendous power that man has to deal with. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #KEYS
7:299. Turn all things to honey; this is the law of divine living.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma,#KEYS
8:Bhakti Yoga and not Jnana Yoga or Karma Yoga is the Yuga-Dharma, the adequate path of this age. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
9:Bhakti Yoga reduces karma or work to a minimum. It teaches the necessity of prayer without ceasing. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
10:Give up the sense of doership. Karma will go on automatically or Karma will drop away from you ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
11:the morning glories
have strong karma
autumn frost
~ Ogawa, @BashoSociety#KEYS
12:Necessity is the child of the spirit's free self-determination. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Karma and Freedom, #KEYS
13:Karma is only a machinery, it is not the fundamental cause of terrestrial existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, Rebirth, #KEYS
14:Bhakti and Karma cannot be perfect and enduring unless they are based upon Jnana. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - I, Bhawani Mandir, #KEYS
15:For this Kali-Yuga, Bhakti Yoga, as recommended by Rishi Narada, is enjoyed. There is hardly time for Karma-Yoga ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
16:The renunciation of karma comes of itself when the love of God swells up. Let them work who are made to do so by God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
17:Law and Process are one side of our existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality, #KEYS
18:252. I have failed, thou sayest. Say rather that God is circling about towards His object.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma,#KEYS
19:265. Care not for time and success. Act out thy part, whether it be to fail or to prosper.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma,#KEYS
20:A jnani has no karma [that is, a jnani performs no actions]. That is his experience. Otherwise he is not a jnani. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
21:There is Law, but there is also spiritual freedom. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality, #KEYS
22:The chain of Karma only binds the movement of Nature and not the soul. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad: The Inhabiting Godhead, Life and Action, #KEYS
23:Our Spirit, our Self must be greater than its Karma. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality, #KEYS
24:Karma, or destiny, is an expression of a beneficial law: the universal trend towards balance, harmony and unity. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, #KEYS
25:Friends or foes, they are all instruments in Her hands to help us work out our own Karma, through pleasure or pain. ~ Swami Vivekananda, (C.W. VI. 435), #KEYS
26:Jnana, discrimination of God from the unreal universe, and Karma, work without attachment, are far more difficult than Bhakti in this age ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
27:244. Suffer yourself to be tempted within so that you may exhaust in the struggle your downward propensities.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma,#KEYS
28:Avatars, like Krishna, act and behave to all appearance as common men, while their heart and soul are adsorbed in the Highest, beyond karma. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
29:But all is not Law and Process, there is also Being and Consciousness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality, #KEYS
30:304. There are two ways of avoiding the snare of woman; one is to shun all women and the other to love all beings.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma,#KEYS
31:Our spiritual orientation, the magnetism that draws the soul, is to eternal Being and not to eternal Non-Being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Karma, #KEYS
32:312. Each man of us has a million lives yet to fulfil upon this earth. Why then this haste and clamour and impatience?
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma[53],#KEYS
33:Self-expression and experience are what the soul seeks by its birth into the body. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality, #KEYS
34:Forget about reincarnation. Reincarnation is not for you. It is for the deluded ones. You are free of all karma, free of all samskaras, free of playing games. Feel your freedom. All is well. ~ Robert Adams, #KEYS
35:The nature of the energy put forth must determine the nature of the result or outcome. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality, #KEYS
36:313. Stride swiftly for the goal is far; rest not unduly, for thy Master is waiting for thee at the end of thy journey.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma, 53, [T5],#KEYS
37:Pull on the Vital
The lame foot of Punishment reaches at last the successful offender. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality,#KEYS
38:Yoga is a sadhana. It will not be necessary after jnana is attained. All the sadhanas are called yogas, e.g., Karma yoga; Bhakti yoga; Jnana yoga; Ashtanga yoga. What is yoga? Yoga means 'union'. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi #KEYS
39:Prakriti is the field of law and process, but the soul, the Purusha, is the giver of the sanction. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality, #KEYS
40:Nature takes us as we are and to some extent suits her movements to our need or our demands on her. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality, #KEYS
41:Our life is affected not only by its own energies but by the energies of others and by universal Forces. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality, #KEYS
42:Rebirth is not a constant reiteration but a progression, it is the machinery of an evolutionary process. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality, #KEYS
43:283. Death is sometimes a rude valet; but when he changes this robe of earth for that brighter raiment, his horseplay and impertinences can be pardoned.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma,#KEYS
44:373. Shall I accept death or shall I turn and wrestle with him and conquer? That shall be as God in me chooses. For whether I live or die, I am always.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma, 473,#KEYS
45:As long as you believe in karma, then karma will always grab you, and turn you in all directions. But when you ask, "For whom is there karma?", and realize it's only for the personal 'I', then there is no longer any karma. ~ Robert Adams, #KEYS
46:To seek to know the significance of life is itself the result of good karma in past births.
Those who do not seek such knowledge are simply wasting their lives. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talks, 558,#KEYS
47:Rest in natural great peace, this exhausted mind,
Beaten helpless by karma and neurotic thoughts,
Like the relentless fury of the pounding waves
In the infinite ocean of samsara.
Rest in natural great peace. ~ Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche,#KEYS
48:302. The mediaeval ascetics hated women and thought they were created by God for the temptation of monks. One may be allowed to think more nobly both of God and of woman.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma,#KEYS
49:Chance, that vague shadow of an infinite possibility, must be banished from the dictionary of our perceptions; for of chance we can make nothing, because it is nothing. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Karma, #KEYS
50:The law that deprives us of the memory of past lives is a law of the cosmic Wisdom and serves, not disserves its evolutionary purpose. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality, #KEYS
51:266. There are three forms in which the command may come, the will and faith in thy nature, thy ideal on which heart and brain are agreed and the voice of Himself or His angels.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma,#KEYS
52:As long as a man is the doer, he also reaps the fruit of his deeds, but, as soon as he realizes the Self through enquiry as to who is the doer, his sense of being the doer falls away and the triple karma is ended. This is the state of eternal liberation. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
53:Karma leads to that result alone which can produce, reach, evolve or modify; liberation is not brought about in any of these ways; hence Karma cannot be the means of liberation." ~ "Naishkarmya Siddhi" treatise on Advaita Vedanta, 8th Cent. CE., comprises 423 verses, Wikipedia., #KEYS
54:True teachers who do not deceive on the supreme path, are like great ships that rescue beings from the ocean of existence. They are like rain of nectar that covers the flames of karma and defilements. And they are like the sun and moon that dispels the darkness of ignorance. ~ Jigme Lingpa, #KEYS
55:359. Men burrow after little details of knowledge and group them into bounded and ephemeral thought systems; meanwhile all infinite wisdom laughs above their heads and shakes wide the glory of her iridescent pinions.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma,#KEYS
56:358. Men hunt after petty successes and trivial masteries from which they fall back into exhaustion and weakness; meanwhile all the infinite force of God in the universe waits vainly to place itself at their disposal.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma,#KEYS
57:Whatever type of karma one performs, one's mind will become exactly like that. The mind of one who performs noble and holy work becomes broad, elevated, and pure. Work done for God makes the mind go towards God; it is the attitude that matters, not the external form of the work ~ Swami Adbhutananda, #KEYS
58:It is the inner Person that survives death, even as it pre-exists before birth; for this constant survival is a rendering of the eternity of our timeless spirit into the terms of Time. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality, #KEYS
59:Cosmic existence is not a vast administrative system of universal justice with a cosmic Law of recompense and retribution as its machinery or a divine Legislator and Judge at its centre. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality, #KEYS
60:Innumerable are the ways that lead to God. There are the paths of jnāna, of karma, and of bhakti. If you are sincere, you will attain God in the end, whichever path you follow. Roughly speaking, there are three kinds of yoga: jnanayoga, karma yoga, and bhaktiyoga ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
61:280. If thy heart is troubled within thee, if for long seasons thou makest no progress, if thy strength faint and repine, remember always the eternal word of our Lover and Master, 'I will free thee from all sin and evil; do not grieve.'
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma, [T1],#KEYS
62:The path of karma is extremely difficult. Therefore one should pray: 'O God, make my duties fewer and fewer; and may I, through Thy grace, do the few duties that Thou givest me without any attachment to their results! May I have no desire to be involved in many activities! ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
63:Aug 6 The Divine Mother is the power of all causation. She energizes every cause unmistakably to produce the effect. Her will is the only law, and as She cannot make a mistake, nature's laws--Her will--can never be changed. She is the life of the law of karma, or causation.~ Swami Vivekananda, #KEYS
64:But, nevertheless, if there is even the slightest recognition, liberation is easy. Should you ask why this is so-it is because once the awesome, terrifying and fearful appearances arise, the awareness does not have the luxury of distraction. The awareness is one-pointedly concentrated.
~ Karma-glin-pa, The Tibetan Book of the Dead,#KEYS
65:The sex-vampire eats up the other's vital and gives nothing or very little. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV: Interactions with Others and the Practice of Yoga
Sec-Vampire
In myself is the seed of all my creation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Karma,#KEYS
66:368. The Vedanta is God's lamp to lead thee out of this night of bondage and egoism; but when the light of Veda has dawned in thy soul, then even that divine lamp thou needest not, for now thou canst walk freely and surely in a high and eternal sunlight.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma, [T8],#KEYS
67:Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. ~ Steve Jobs, #KEYS
68:247. Men in the world have two lights, duty and principle; but he who has passed over to God, has done with both and replaced them by God's will. If men abuse thee for this, care not, O divine instrument, but go on thy way like the wind or the sun fostering and destroying.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma,#KEYS
69:362. Limit not sacrifice to the giving up of earthly goods or the denial of some desires and yearnings, but let every thought and every work and every enjoyment be an offering to God within thee. Let thy steps walk in thy Lord, let thy sleep and waking be a sacrifice to Krishna.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma, [T1],#KEYS
70:Kama (Desire)
Delight and laughter walking hand in hand
Go with Me, and I play with grief and pain. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems: Kama
Kama (Desire)
All energies put into activity—thought, speech, feeling, act—go to constitute Karma. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, Karma and Heredity,#KEYS
71:Who cares for your bhakti and mukti? Who cares what your scriptures say? I will go into a thousand hells cheerfully if I can rouse my countrymen, immersed in tamas, to stand on their own feet and be men inspired with the spirit of karma-yoga. I am a follower only of he or she who serves and helps others without caring for his own bhakti and mukti! ~ Swami Vivekananda, #KEYS
72:three first approaches of Karma Yoga :::
Equality, renunciation of all desire for the fruit of our works, action done as a sacrifice to the supreme Lord of our nature and of all nature, - these are the three first Godward approaches in the Gita's way of Karmayoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, Self-Surrender in Works - The Way of the Gita, [105],#KEYS
73:Some dislike prayer; if they entered deep into their heart, they would find it was pride — worse than that, vanity. And then there are those who have no aspiration, they try and they cannot aspire; it is because they do not have the flame of the will, it is because they do not have the flame of humility. Both are needed. There must be a very great humility and a very great will to change one's Karma. ~ The Mother, #KEYS
74:At all times, do not lose courage in your inner awareness; uplift yourself, while assuming a humble position in your outer demeanor. Follow the example of the life and complete liberation of previous accomplished masters. Do not blame your past karma; instead, be someone who purely and flawlessly practices the dharma. Do not blame temporary negative circumstances; instead, be someone who remains steadfast in the face of whatever circumstances may arise. ~ Dudjom Rinpoche, #KEYS
75:Never underestimate the long-term consequences of your actions. For as long as the mind has the obscurration of grasping at an inherently existing "me", then there will be karma. No matter how far on the path one is, no matter how realised one is, no matter how many miraculous powers one has attained, for as long as there is even a subtle trace of this obscurration, karma is there.
That is why Padmasambhava, an enlightened being not even affected by it, had skilfully told ordinary beings, "My realization is higher than the sky, but my observance of karma is finer than grains of flour." ~ Chamtrul Rinpoche,#KEYS
76:The reason why you do not touch fire is because you know that it will cause you to suffer. Likewise, if you truly understand karma, you will not commit a single negative action, because unless that negative karma is purified, you know that it will eventually ripen into suffering.
You might forget this natural process, or you might not believe in it, because the ripening does not always happen immediately. But your karma will follow you like your shadow, that gets closer and closer without you realising, until you are eventually touched by it. Please, I urge you to always remember this. ~ Chamtrul Rinpoche,#KEYS
77:Lojong Slogan 1. First, train in the preliminaries; The four reminders. or alternatively called the Four Thoughts
1. Maintain an awareness of the preciousness of human life.
2. Be aware of the reality that life ends; death comes for everyone; Impermanence.
3. Recall that whatever you do, whether virtuous or not, has a result; Karma.
4. Contemplate that as long as you are too focused on self-importance and too caught up in thinking about how you are good or bad, you will experience suffering. Obsessing about getting what you want and avoiding what you dont want does not result in happiness; Ego.
~ Wikipedia,#KEYS
78:What we call destiny is only in fact the result of the present condition of the being and the nature and energies it has accumulated in the past acting on each other and determining the present attempts and their future results. But as soon as one enters the path of spiritual life, this old predetermined destiny begins to recede. There comes in a new factor, the Divine Grace, the help of a higher Divine Force other than the force of Karma, which can lift the sadhak beyond the present possibilities of his nature. One's spiritual destiny is then the divine election which ensures the future.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - I, [T1],#KEYS
79:If renunciation is not embraced
By the pure motivation of bodhicitta,
It will not become a cause for the perfect bliss of unsurpassed awakening,
So the wise should generate supreme bodhicitta.
Beings are swept along by the powerful current of the four rivers,
Tightly bound by the chains of their karma, so difficult to undo,
Ensnared within the iron trap of their self-grasping,
And enshrouded in the thick darkness of ignorance.
Again and yet again, they are reborn in limitless saṃsāra,
And constantly tormented by the three forms of suffering.
This is the current condition of all your mothers from previous lives—
Contemplate their plight and generate supreme bodhichitta. ~ Tsongkapa,#KEYS
80:Where can you find anyone who steals because his karma is deep or his sins heavy? Stealing is the karma, stealing is the sin! If it weren't for stealing, that sin and karma couldn't exist. Whether you steal or whether you don't depends on the present state of your own mind, not on your past karma. And what I'm telling you now doesn't go only for stealing. Generally speaking, all delusions are just the same as stealing. Whether you're going to be deluded or you're not going to, all depends on the present state of your own mind. When you're deluded, you're an unenlightened being; when you're not deluded, you're a buddha. There's no special shortcut to being a buddha beyond this. Isn't it so? Everyone, realize this conclusively!" ~ Bankei, #KEYS
81:The oil consecrates everything that is touched with it; it is his aspiration; all acts performed in accordance with that are holy. The scourge tortures him; the dagger wounds him; the chain binds him. It is by virtue of these three that his aspiration remains pure, and is able to consecrate all other things. He wears a crown to affirm his lordship, his divinity; a robe to symbolize silence, and a lamen to declare his work. The book of spells or conjurations is his magical record, his Karma. In the East is the Magick Fire, in which all burns up at last. We will now consider each of these matters in detail.
~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA, Book 4, Magick, Part II - Magick (elemental theory), Preliminary Marks,#KEYS
82:To be able to receive the Divine Power and let act through you in the things of the outward life, there are three necessary conditions:
(i) Quietude, equality - not to be disturbed by anything that happens, to keep the mind still and firm, seeing the play of forces, but itself tranquil.
(ii) Absolute faith - faith that what is for the best will happen, but also that if one can make oneself a true instrument, the fruit will be that which one's will guided by the Divine Light sees as the thing to be done - kartavyam karma.
(iii) Receptivity - the power to receive the Divine Force and to feel its presence and the presence of the Mother in it and allow it to work, guiding one's sight and will and action. If this power and presence can be felt and this plasticity made the habit of the consciousness in action, - but plasticity to the Divine force alone without bringing in any foreign element, - the eventual result is sure. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#KEYS
83:Karma Yoga, the Path of Works; :::
The Path of Works aims at the dedication of every human activity to the supreme Will. It begins by the renunciation of all egoistic aim for our works, all pursuit of action for an interested aim or for the sake of a worldly result. By this renunciation it so purifies the mind and the will that we become easily conscious of the great universal Energy as the true doer of all our actions and the Lord of that Energy as their ruler and director with the individual as only a mask, an excuse, an instrument or, more positively, a conscious centre of action and phenomenal relation. The choice and direction of the act is more and more consciously left to this supreme Will and this universal Energy. To That our works as well as the results of our works are finally abandoned. The object is the release of the soul from its bondage to appearances and to the reaction of phenomenal activities. Karmayoga is used, like the other paths, to lead to liberation from phenomenal existence and a departure into the Supreme. But here too the exclusive result is not inevitable. The end of the path may be, equally, a perception of the divine in all energies, in all happenings, in all activities, and a free and unegoistic participation of the soul in the cosmic action. So followed it will lead to the elevation of all human will and activity to the divine level, its spiritualisation and the justification of the cosmic labour towards freedom, power and perfection in the human being.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Conditions of the Synthesis, The Systems of Yoga, 39,#KEYS
84:The Nirmanakaya manifestation of Amitabha, I,
the Indian Scholar, the Lotus Born,
From the self-blossoming center of a lotus,
Came to this realm of existence through miraculous powers
To be the prince of the king of Oddiyana.
Then, I sustained the kingdom in accordance with Dharma.
Wandering throughout all directions of India,
I severed all spiritual doubts without exception.
Engaging in fearless activity in the eight burial grounds,
I achieved all supreme and common siddhis.
Then, according to the wishes of King Trisong Detsen
And by the power of previous prayers, I journeyed to Tibet.
By subduing the cruel gods, nagas, yakshas, rakshas,
and all spirits who harm beings,
The light of the teachings of secret mantra has been illuminated.
Then, when the time came to depart for the continent of Lanka,
I did so to provide refuge from the fear of rakshas
For all the inhabitants of this world, including Tibet.
I blessed Nirmanakaya emanations to be representatives of my body.
I made sacred treasures as representatives of my holy speech.
I poured enlightened wisdom into the hearts of those with fortunate karma.
Until samsara is emptied, for the benefit of sentient beings,
I will manifest unceasingly in whatever ways are necessary.
Through profound kindness, I have brought great benefit for all.
If you who are fortunate have the mind of aspiration,
May you pray so that blessings will be received.
All followers, believe in me with determination.
Samaya. ~ The Wrathful Compassion of Guru Dorje Drollo, Vajra Master Dudjom Yeshe Dorje, translated by Dungse Thinley Norbu Rinpoche,#KEYS
85:on purifying ego and desire :::
The elimination of all egoistic activity and of its foundation, the egoistic consciousness, is clearly the key to the consummation we desire. And since in the path of works action is the knot we have first to loosen, we must endeavour to loosen it where it is centrally tied, in desire and in ego; for otherwise we shall cut only stray strands and not the heart of our bondage.These are the two knots of our subjection to this ignorant and divided Nature, desire and ego-sense. And of these two desire has its native home in the emotions and sensations and instincts and from there affects thought and volition; ego-sense lives indeed in these movements, but it casts its deep roots also in the thinking mind and its will and it is there that it becomes fully self conscious. These are the twin obscure powers of the obsessing world-wide Ignorance that we have to enlighten and eliminate.
In the field of action desire takes many forms, but the most powerful of all is the vital selfs craving or seeking after the fruit of our works. The fruit we covet may be a reward of internal pleasure; it may be the accomplishment of some preferred idea or some cherished will or the satisfaction of the egoistic emotions, or else the pride of success of our highest hopes and ambitions. Or it may be an external reward, a recompense entirely material, -wealth, position, honour, victory, good fortune or any other fulfilment of vital or physical desire. But all alike are lures by which egoism holds us. Always these satisfactions delude us with the sense of mastery and the idea of freedom, while really we are harnessed and guided or ridden and whipped by some gross or subtle, some noble or ignoble, figure of the blind Desire that drives the world. Therefore the first rule of action laid down by the Gita is to do the work that should be done without any desire for the fruit, niskama karma. ...
The test it lays down is an absolute equality of the mind and the heart to all results, to all reactions, to all happenings. If good fortune and ill fortune, if respect and insult, if reputation and obloquy, if victory and defeat, if pleasant event and sorrowful event leave us not only unshaken but untouched, free in the emotions, free in the nervous reactions, free in the mental view, not responding with the least disturbance or vibration in any spot of the nature, then we have the absolute liberation to which the Gita points us, but not otherwise. The tiniest reaction is a proof that the discipline is imperfect and that some part of us accepts ignorance and bondage as its law and clings still to the old nature. Our self-conquest is only partially accomplished; it is still imperfect or unreal in some stretch or part or smallest spot of the ground of our nature. And that little pebble of imperfection may throw down the whole achievement of the Yoga
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, Self-Surrender in Works - The Way of the Gita, [102],#KEYS
86:Something happened to you before you were born, and this is what it was:
STAGE ONE: THE CHIKHAI
The events of the 49-day Bardo period are divided into three major stages, the Chikhai, the Chonyid, and the Sidpa (in that order). Immediately following physical death, the soul enters the Chikhai, which is simply the state of the immaculate and luminous Dharmakaya, the ultimate Consciousness, the BrahmanAtman. This ultimate state is given, as a gift, to all individuals: they are plunged straight into ultimate reality and exist as the ultimate Dharmakaya. "At this moment," says the Bardo Thotrol, "the first glimpsing of the Bardo of the Clear Light of Reality, which is the Infallible Mind of the Dharmakaya, is experienced by all sentient beings.''110 Or, to put it a different way, the Thotrol tells us that "Thine own consciousness, shining, void, and inseparable from the Great Body of Radiance, hath no birth, nor death, and is the Immutable Light-Buddha Amitabha. Knowing this is sufficient. Recognizing the voidness of thine own intellect to be Buddhahood ... is to keep thyself in the Divine Mind."110 In short, immediately following physical death, the soul is absorbed in and as the ultimate-causal body (if we may treat them together).
Interspersed with this brief summary of the Bardo Thotrol, I will add my commentaries on involution and on the nature of the Atman project in involution. And we begin by noting that at the start of the Bardo experience, the soul is elevated to the utter heights of Being, to the ultimate state of Oneness-that is, he starts his Bardo career at the top. But, at the top is usually not where he remains, and the Thotrol tells us why. In Evans-Wentz's words, "In the realm of the Clear Light [the highest Chikhai stage] the mentality of a person . . . momentarily enjoys a condition of balance, of perfect equilibrium, and of [ultimate] oneness. Owing to unfamiliarity with such a state, which is an ecstatic state of non-ego, of [causal] consciousness, the . . . average human being lacks the power to function in it; karmic propensities becloud the consciousness-principle with thoughts of personality, of individualized being, of dualism, and, losing equilibrium, the consciousness-principle falls away from the Clear Light."
The soul falls away from the ultimate Oneness because "karmic propensities cloud consciousness"-"karmic propensities'' means seeking, grasping, desiring; means, in fact, Eros. And as this Erosseeking develops, the state of perfect Oneness starts to "break down" (illusorily). Or, from a different angle, because the individual cannot stand the intensity of pure Oneness ("owing to unfamiliarity with such a state"), he contracts away from it, tries to ''dilute it," tries to extricate himself from Perfect Intensity in Atman. Contracting in the face of infinity, he turns instead to forms of seeking, desire, karma, and grasping, trying to "search out" a state of equilibrium. Contraction and Eros-these karmic propensities couple and conspire to drive the soul away from pure consciousness and downwards into multiplicity, into less intense and less real states of being. ~ Ken Wilber, The Atman Project,#KEYS
87:Talk 26
...
D.: Taking the first part first, how is the mind to be eliminated or relative consciousness transcended?
M.: The mind is by nature restless. Begin liberating it from its restlessness; give it peace; make it free from distractions; train it to look inward; make this a habit. This is done by ignoring the external world and removing the obstacles to peace of mind.
D.: How is restlessness removed from the mind?
M.: External contacts - contacts with objects other than itself - make the mind restless. Loss of interest in non-Self, (vairagya) is the first step. Then the habits of introspection and concentration follow. They are characterised by control of external senses, internal faculties, etc. (sama, dama, etc.) ending in samadhi (undistracted mind).
Talk 27.
D.: How are they practised?
M.: An examination of the ephemeral nature of external phenomena leads to vairagya. Hence enquiry (vichara) is the first and foremost step to be taken. When vichara continues automatically, it results in a contempt for wealth, fame, ease, pleasure, etc. The 'I' thought becomes clearer for inspection. The source of 'I' is the Heart - the final goal. If, however, the aspirant is not temperamentally suited to Vichara Marga (to the introspective analytical method), he must develop bhakti (devotion) to an ideal - may be God, Guru, humanity in general, ethical laws, or even the idea of beauty. When one of these takes possession of the individual, other attachments grow weaker, i.e., dispassion (vairagya) develops. Attachment for the ideal simultaneously grows and finally holds the field. Thus ekagrata (concentration) grows simultaneously and imperceptibly - with or without visions and direct aids.
In the absence of enquiry and devotion, the natural sedative pranayama (breath regulation) may be tried. This is known as Yoga Marga. If life is imperilled the whole interest centres round the one point, the saving of life. If the breath is held the mind cannot afford to (and does not) jump at its pets - external objects. Thus there is rest for the mind so long as the breath is held. All attention being turned on breath or its regulation, other interests are lost. Again, passions are attended with irregular breathing, whereas calm and happiness are attended with slow and regular breathing. Paroxysm of joy is in fact as painful as one of pain, and both are accompanied by ruffled breaths. Real peace is happiness. Pleasures do not form happiness. The mind improves by practice and becomes finer just as the razor's edge is sharpened by stropping. The mind is then better able to tackle internal or external problems. If an aspirant be unsuited temperamentally for the first two methods and circumstantially (on account of age) for the third method, he must try the Karma Marga (doing good deeds, for example, social service). His nobler instincts become more evident and he derives impersonal pleasure. His smaller self is less assertive and has a chance of expanding its good side. The man becomes duly equipped for one of the three aforesaid paths. His intuition may also develop directly by this single method. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, Sri Ramanasramam,#KEYS
88:STAGE TWO: THE CHONYID
The Chonyid is the period of the appearance of the peaceful and wrathful deities-that is to say, the subtle realm, the Sambhogakaya. When the Clear Light of the causal realm is resisted and contracted against, then that Reality is transformed into the primordial seed forms of the peaceful deities (ishtadevas of the subtle sphere), and these in turn, if resisted and denied, are transformed into the wrathful deities.
The peaceful deities appear first: through seven successive substages, there appear various forms of the tathagatas, dakinis, and vidyadharas, all accompanied by the most dazzlingly brilliant colors and aweinspiring suprahuman sounds. One after another, the divine visions, lights, and subtle luminous sounds cascade through awareness. They are presented, given, to the individual openly, freely, fully, and completely: visions of God in almost painful intensity and brilliance.
How the individual handles these divine visions and sounds (nada) is of the utmost significance, because each divine scenario is accompanied by a much less intense vision, by a region of relative dullness and blunted illuminations. These concomitant dull and blunted visions represent the first glimmerings of the world of samsara, of the six realms of egoic grasping, of the dim world of duality and fragmentation and primitive forms of low-level unity.
According to the Thotrol. most individuals simply recoil in the face of these divine illuminations- they contract into less intense and more manageable forms of experience. Fleeing divine illumination, they glide towards the fragmented-and thus less intense-realm of duality and multiplicity. But it's not just that they recoil against divinity-it is that they are attracted to the lower realms, drawn to them, and find satisfaction in them. The Thotrol says they are actually "attracted to the impure lights." As we have put it, these lower realms are substitute gratifications. The individual thinks that they are just what he wants, these lower realms of denseness. But just because these realms are indeed dimmer and less intense, they eventually prove to be worlds without bliss, without illumination, shot through with pain and suffering. How ironic: as a substitute for God, individuals create and latch onto Hell, known as samsara, maya, dismay. In Christian theology it is said that the flames of Hell are God's love (Agape) denied.
Thus the message is repeated over and over again in the Chonyid stage: abide in the lights of the Five Wisdoms and subtle tathagatas, look not at the duller lights of samsara. of the six realms, of safe illusions and egoic dullness. As but one example:
Thereupon, because of the power of bad karma, the glorious blue light of the Wisdom of the Dharmadhatu will produce in thee fear and terror, and thou wilt wish to flee from it. Thou wilt begat a fondness for the dull white light of the devas [one of the lower realms].
At this stage, thou must not be awed by the divine blue light which will appear shining, dazzling, and glorious; and be not startled by it. That is the light of the Tathagata called the Light of the Wisdom of the Dharmadhatu.
Be not fond of the dull white light of the devas. Be not attached to it; be not weak. If thou be attached to it, thou wilt wander into the abodes of the devas and be drawn into the whirl of the Six Lokas.
The point is this: ''If thou are frightened by the pure radiances of Wisdom and attracted by the impure lights of the Six Lokas [lower realms], then thou wilt assume a body in any of the Six Lokas and suffer samsaric miseries; and thou wilt never be emancipated from the Ocean of Samsara, wherein thou wilt be whirled round and round and made to taste the sufferings thereof."
But here is what is happening: in effect, we are seeing the primal and original form of the Atman project in its negative and contracting aspects. In this second stage (the Chonyid), there is already some sort of boundary in awareness, there is already some sort of subject-object duality superimposed upon the original Wholeness and Oneness of the Chikhai Dharmakaya. So now there is boundary-and wherever there is boundary, there is the Atman project. ~ Ken Wilber, The Atman Project, 129,#KEYS
89:64 Arts
1. Geet vidya: art of singing.
2. Vadya vidya: art of playing on musical instruments.
3. Nritya vidya: art of dancing.
4. Natya vidya: art of theatricals.
5. Alekhya vidya: art of painting.
6. Viseshakacchedya vidya: art of painting the face and body with color
7. Tandulakusumabalivikara: art of preparing offerings from rice and flowers.
8. Pushpastarana: art of making a covering of flowers for a bed.
9. Dasanavasanangaraga: art of applying preparations for cleansing the teeth, cloths and painting the body.
10. Manibhumikakarma: art of making the groundwork of jewels.
11. Aayyaracana: art of covering the bed.
12. Udakavadya: art of playing on music in water.
13. Udakaghata: art of splashing with water.
14. Citrayoga: art of practically applying an admixture of colors.
15. Malyagrathanavikalpa: art of designing a preparation of wreaths.
16. Sekharapidayojana: art of practically setting the coronet on the head.
17. Nepathyayoga: art of practically dressing in the tiring room.
18. Karnapatrabhanga: art of decorating the tragus of the ear.
19. Sugandhayukti: art of practical application of aromatics.
20. Bhushanayojana: art of applying or setting ornaments.
21. Aindrajala: art of juggling.
22. Kaucumara: a kind of art.
23. Hastalaghava: art of sleight of hand.
24. Citrasakapupabhakshyavikarakriya: art of preparing varieties of delicious food.
25. Panakarasaragasavayojana: art of practically preparing palatable drinks and tinging draughts with red color.
26. Sucivayakarma: art of needleworks and weaving.
27. Sutrakrida: art of playing with thread.
28. Vinadamurakavadya: art of playing on lute and small drum.
29. Prahelika: art of making and solving riddles.
30. Durvacakayoga: art of practicing language difficult to be answered by others.
31. Pustakavacana: art of reciting books.
32. Natikakhyayikadarsana: art of enacting short plays and anecdotes.
33. Kavyasamasyapurana: art of solving enigmatic verses.
34. Pattikavetrabanavikalpa: art of designing preparation of shield, cane and arrows.
35. Tarkukarma: art of spinning by spindle.
36. Takshana: art of carpentry.
37. Vastuvidya: art of engineering.
38. Raupyaratnapariksha: art of testing silver and jewels.
39. Dhatuvada: art of metallurgy.
40. Maniraga jnana: art of tinging jewels.
41. Akara jnana: art of mineralogy.
42. Vrikshayurvedayoga: art of practicing medicine or medical treatment, by herbs.
43. Meshakukkutalavakayuddhavidhi: art of knowing the mode of fighting of lambs, cocks and birds.
44. Sukasarikapralapana: art of maintaining or knowing conversation between male and female cockatoos.
45. Utsadana: art of healing or cleaning a person with perfumes.
46. Kesamarjanakausala: art of combing hair.
47. Aksharamushtikakathana: art of talking with fingers.
48. Dharanamatrika: art of the use of amulets.
49. Desabhashajnana: art of knowing provincial dialects.
50. Nirmitijnana: art of knowing prediction by heavenly voice.
51. Yantramatrika: art of mechanics.
52. Mlecchitakutarkavikalpa: art of fabricating barbarous or foreign sophistry.
53. Samvacya: art of conversation.
54. Manasi kavyakriya: art of composing verse
55. Kriyavikalpa: art of designing a literary work or a medical remedy.
56. Chalitakayoga: art of practicing as a builder of shrines called after him.
57. Abhidhanakoshacchandojnana: art of the use of lexicography and meters.
58. Vastragopana: art of concealment of cloths.
59. Dyutavisesha: art of knowing specific gambling.
60. Akarshakrida: art of playing with dice or magnet.
61. Balakakridanaka: art of using children's toys.
62. Vainayiki vidya: art of enforcing discipline.
63. Vaijayiki vidya: art of gaining victory.
64. Vaitaliki vidya: art of awakening master with music at dawn.
~ Nik Douglas and Penny Slinger, Sexual Secrets,#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:Only man makes Karma. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 2:The law of Karma is the law of causation. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 3:Let us blame none, let us blame our own Karma. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 4:Regardless of what we do, our karma has no hold on us. ~ bodhidharma, @wisdomtrove 5:How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours. ~ wayne-dyer, @wisdomtrove 6:Whether we believe in God or karma, ethics is the foundation of every religion. ~ dalai-lama, @wisdomtrove 7:When the karma of a relationship is done, only love remains. It's safe. Let go. ~ elizabeth-gilbert, @wisdomtrove 8:Destiny, or karma, depends upon what the soul has done about what it has become aware of. ~ edgar-cayce, @wisdomtrove 9:Each man has a mission in life, which is the result of all his infinite past Karma. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 10:Your task is not to judge or punish. Karma will take care of that. Your task is to love. ~ brian-l-weiss, @wisdomtrove 11:Selfless giving has a lot to do with what happens to you in the future. There is karma, both good and bad. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 12:Can you be compassionate even to those who have no compassion? If so, there is no finer karma that you can create. ~ gary-zukav, @wisdomtrove 13:How do you become enlightened? I don't know: Luck, karma, skill, friends in high places, friends in low places. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 14:Pure experience does not bind; experience caught between desire and fear is impure and creates karma. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 15:To go from mortal to Buddha, you have to put an end to karma, nurture your awareness, and accept what life brings. ~ bodhidharma, @wisdomtrove 16:I don't like the idea that I am going to come back as an ant or a sparrow if I don't get along in the great karma of life. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove 17:The three essentials of Hinduism are belief in God, in the Vedas as revelation, in the doctrine of Karma and transmigration. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 18:The secret of karma yoga which is to perform actions without any fruitive desires is taught by Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 19:It's considered very, very bad karma, if I can cut to the chase, to take power from a teacher and not use it for something very positive. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 20:When we judge, we create negative karma. When we say of an action: & 21:We are suffering from our own Karma. It is not the fault of God. What we do is our own fault, nothing else. Why should God be blamed?. . . ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 22:Now is wanted intense Karma-Yoga with unbounded courage and indomitable strength in the heart. Then only will the people of the country be roused. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 23:Words like meditation, karma, samskaras, they're just words. You can get into the jargon, you can speak it, but that doesn't mean you'll be any freer. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 24:Karma is the eternal assertion of human freedom. . . . Our thoughts, our words, and deeds are the threads of the net which we throw around ourselves. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 25:Friends or foes, they are all instruments in Her hands to help us work out our own karma, through pleasure or pain. As such, & 26:If I used justice, you'd all be dead. The karma that you throw at me when you don't like me - if I just let it come back, you'd all be destroyed in no time. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 27:Even chance meetings are the result of karma.¶ Things in life are fated by our previous lives. That even in the smallest events there’s no such thing as coincidence. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 28:Is there Chance? No. There is karma. Karma causes all things to happen. There is only one thing karma cannot decide, and that is how far you will evolve in this lifetime. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 29:Even a good self will create another good self in the next life, and another one, and that good self will never be enlightened. You'll be bound, life after life, by good karma. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 30:Karma means that all actions have consequences. Grace means that in a moment of atonement -taking responsibility, making amends, asking for forgiveness - all karma is burned. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove 31:The final battles are the samskaras of good karma. They prevent Samadhi. Naturally for a religious person the avoidance is intensive. They are so hung up on good karma and on method. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 32:A saint is someone who has been very selfless and, over a period of lifetimes, generated a tremendous amount of good karma, which has caused them to enter into very lovely states of mind. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 33:There is the path of karma, selfless action, the path of love and devotion, the path of training the mind and the path of Yoga, mantra and tantra this is what the various saints advocated. ~ mata-amritanandamayi, @wisdomtrove 34:I have written and spoken my thoughts over many years. Now I'm on new ground and spirit. I want to bring these together. Things like karma yoga, bhakti yoga, conscious dying, conscious aging. Consciousness. ~ ram-das, @wisdomtrove 35:There are the samskaras, the tendencies from your other lifetimes, ways of seeing, habits that are so strong, they affect you now. They are the operative situations in your life that are created by karma. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 36:Jnana, bhakti, yoga and karma - these are the four paths which lead to spiritual freedom. One must follow the path for which one is best suited. But in this age, special stress should be laid on karma yoga. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 37:Stephen Gaskin (2005) describes karma as hitting golf balls in a shower. Often our attempts at payback just get in the way of balls already ricocheting back toward the person who sent them flying in the first place. ~ rick-hanson, @wisdomtrove 38:Many spiritual teachers have done this. They have disbanded their whole community because everyone got angry. The karma, at a certain point, has to go back to the person; it's intensified and hurts them spiritually. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 39:The universal law of karma ... is that of action and reaction, cause and effect, sowing and reaping. In the course of natural righteousness, man, by his thoughts and actions, becomes the arbiter of his destiny. ~ paramahansa-yogananda, @wisdomtrove 40:The high-priests and priestesses of Atlantis had discovered many of the deepest secrets of the universe. They had come to understand all about reincarnation, karma, and the innermost workings of the Enlightenment Cycle. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 41:We are the makers of our own lives. There is no such thing as fate. Our lives are the result of our previous actions, our karma, and it naturally flows that, having been ourselves the makers of our karma, we must also be able to unmake it. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 42:I may discuss contemporary cinema, how to shop at a mall without losing energy, how to use the power of mind to increase career and academic success, the Zen of sports, reincarnation, karma, sex, the experience of "suchness" or a new book by Stephen King. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 43:Since karma is meeting self, we acquire karma as we meet self in our many attitudes and emotions; when we serve in loving kindness and patience or hold resentful malicious thoughts What we do to our fellow man we do to our Maker our karma or problem is within self. ~ edgar-cayce, @wisdomtrove 44:Action is called karma. And that's your continuation. When this body disintegrates, you continue on with your actions. It's like the cloud in the sky. When the cloud is no longer in the sky, it hasn't died. The cloud is continued in other forms like rain or snow or ice. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 45:I've got to love the souls of people. Because I can't love every incarnation. I have to identify with my own soul. And then I can have such compassion for that soul who has an incarnation like George Bush. I feel compassion. That's karma of the here. Compassion and love, that's all. ~ ram-das, @wisdomtrove 46:Still others commit all sorts of evil deeds, claiming karma doesn't exist. They erroneously maintain that since everything is empty, committing evil isn't wrong. Such persons fall into a hell of endless darkness with no hope of release. Those who are wise hold no such conception. ~ bodhidharma, @wisdomtrove 47:In the beginning all souls were as a unity to the God-Force. As self added or subtracted that which was in keeping with God's purpose, ye added or subtracted from the blessings ye might be conscious of in materiality. Thus karma is builded. And the law is perfect - what ye sow, ye reap. ~ edgar-cayce, @wisdomtrove 48:I like extreme athletics, extreme meditation and extremely beautiful women. Perhaps I'm an extreme person, or it's simply my Karma. But I must tell you, as if you hadn't read about me in a newspaper or seen me on a magazine format television show, there are extreme risks involved with all three. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 49:A buddha is someone who finds freedom in good fortune and bad. Such is his power that karma can't hold him. No matter what kind of karma, a buddha transforms it. Heaven and hell are nothing to him. But the awareness of a mortal is dim compared to that of a buddha, who penetrates everything, inside and out. ~ bodhidharma, @wisdomtrove 50:Just as an age was ready to receive the Copernican theory of the universe, so is our own age ready for the ideas of reincarnation and karma to be brought into the general consciousness of humanity. And what is destined to happen in the course of evolution will happen no matter what powers rise up against it. ~ rudolf-steiner, @wisdomtrove 51:A temptation is the universe's gracious way of allowing a soul to evolve without creating negative karma. In other words, a temptation is like a magnet that draws to awareness, negativity, that would otherwise create negative karma if it remained unconscious. A temptation is a dress rehearsal for a negative karmic act. ~ gary-zukav, @wisdomtrove 52:Every act of charity, every thought of sympathy, every action of help, every good deed, is taking so much of self-importance away from our little selves and making us think of ourselves as the lowest and the least, and, therefore, it is all good. Here we find that Jn√¢na, Bhakti, and Karma - all come to one point. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 53:This is the ultimate truth of synchrodestiny—that the sum total of the universe is conspiring to create your personal destiny… We cannot even imagine the complex forces behind every event that occurs in our lives. There’s a conspiracy of coincidences that weave the web of karma or destiny and creates an individual’s personal life. ~ deepak-chopra, @wisdomtrove 54:Who cares for your bhakti and mukti? Who cares what your scriptures say? I will go into a thousand hells cheerfully if I can rouse my countrymen, immersed in tamas, to stand on their own feet and be men inspired with the spirit of karma-yoga. I am a follower only of he or she who serves and helps others without caring for his own bhakti and mukti! ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 55:Karma is only a store of unspent energies, of unfulfilled desires and fears not understood. The store is being constantly replenished by new desires and fears. It need not be so for ever. Understand the root cause of your fears - estrangement from yourself: and of desires - the longing for the self, and your karma will dissolve like a dream. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 56:To find Buddha, you have to see your nature. Whoever sees his nature is a Buddha. If you don't see your nature, invoking buddhas, reciting sutras, making offerings, and keeping precepts are all useless. Invoking buddhas results in good karma, reciting sutras results in a good memory, keeping precepts results in good rebirth, and making offerings results in future blessings-but no Buddha. ~ bodhidharma, @wisdomtrove 57:What brings the karmic result from the patterns of our actions is not our action alone. As we intend and then act, we create [our] karma: so another key to understanding the creation of karma is becoming aware of intention. The heart is our garden, and along with each action there is an intention that is planted like a seed. The result of the patterns of our karma is the fruit of these seeds. ~ jack-kornfield, @wisdomtrove 58:So somebody comes along and gets to me. They get me angry or uptight or they awaken some desire in me, wow am I delighted. They got me. And that’s my work on myself. If I am angry with you because your behavior doesn’t fill my model of how you should be, that’s my problem for having models. No expectations, no upset. If you are a liar and a cheat, that’s your Karma. If I’m cheated, that’s my work on myself. ~ ram-das, @wisdomtrove 59:Q: The other day you told us that there is no such thing as karma. Yet we see that everything has a cause and the sum total of all the causes may be called karma. M: As long as you believe yourself to be a body, you will ascribe causes to everything. I do not say things have no causes. Each thing has innumerable causes. It is as it is, because the world is as it is. Every cause in its ramifications covers the universe. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 60:If your struggle with the conflicting parts of yourself is conscious, you are able to choose consciously the response that will create the karma that you desire. You will be able to bring to bear upon your decision an awareness of what lies behind each choice, and the consequences of each choice, and choose accordingly. When you enter into your decision-making dynamic consciously, you insert your will consciously into the creative cycle through which your soul evolves, and you enter consciously into your own evolution. ~ gary-zukav, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:See karma, make dharma ~ Gary Gach, #NFDB
2:Karma is my religion. ~ Jewel E Ann, #NFDB
3:Karma comes back around. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
4:Karma is a bitch, bitch. ~ Eileen Cook, #NFDB
5:Maybe this is karma. ~ Sophie Kinsella, #NFDB
6:Karma is a cruel mistress. ~ Kelley York, #NFDB
7:Karma is one hell of a bitch! ~ Whitney G, #NFDB
8:Only man makes Karma. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
9:Karma had everyone’s address, ~ James Swain, #NFDB
10:Karma is God's girlfriend. ~ Allan Williams, #NFDB
11:karma's a bitch, and so am I ~ Rachel Caine, #NFDB
12:Karma’s a bitch, and so am I. ~ Rachel Caine, #NFDB
13:The sum total of karma is God. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
14:Instant Karma is going to get you. ~ John Lennon, #NFDB
15:Karma, you are one demented bitch. ~ Carian Cole, #NFDB
16:Your Karma is of your own making. ~ Nalini Singh, #NFDB
17:Laugh now, cry later: this is the karma. ~ Cormega, #NFDB
18:My karma just ran over my dogma. ~ Barbara Johnson, #NFDB
19:It's karma, baby. And it goes around. ~ Alicia Keys, #NFDB
20:Jesus, Karma, you are one hateful bitch. ~ J Daniels, #NFDB
21:Karma was a bitch and a half. ~ Jennifer L Armentrout, #NFDB
22:Karma is for learning, not for punishment. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
23:Karma is real, it balances the universe. ~ Ronnie Radke, #NFDB
24:Karma’s a hammer, not a feather ~ Gregory David Roberts, #NFDB
25:Oh, karma. You and I should be friends. ~ Bella Forrest, #NFDB
26:It’s best not to mess with karma.” Why ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
27:Ain’t happening—no one is limited by karma. ~ Mike Dooley, #NFDB
28:I feel the hot winds of karma driving me. ~ Philip K Dick, #NFDB
29:Karma’s a bitch, but I sure like her tonight ~ Amy Harmon, #NFDB
30:I am a road man for the lords of karma. ~ Hunter S Thompson, #NFDB
31:I believe that time wounds all heals. (karma) ~ John Lennon, #NFDB
32:We loved with a love that was more than love. ~ Karma Brown, #NFDB
33:Fate. Hell and karma. It’s what governs our lives. ~ Jo Nesb, #NFDB
34:It never hurts to have karma in your corner. ~ Max Hawthorne, #NFDB
35:"Karma means: what happens to me is what I do." ~ Alan Watts, #NFDB
36:Karma was a bitch with a good sense of humor. ~ Jill Shalvis, #NFDB
37:I’m sick of waiting for karma. Karma can suck it. ~ Jenny Han, #NFDB
38:Karma chameleon: we come and go, we come and go. ~ Boy George, #NFDB
39:Man should make himself a lot of good karma. ~ Gautama Buddha, #NFDB
40:The law of Karma is the law of causation. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
41:When there is no "I" there is no karma. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
42:when there is no ‘I’ there is no karma. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
43:Fuck Karma … that bitch worked too slowly. ~ Ashley Antoinette, #NFDB
44:karma is an evil bitch with a very long memory. ~ Zach Fortier, #NFDB
45:One action produces a reaction; that is karma. ~ Thubten Yeshe, #NFDB
46:She was right. Karma was a bitch, but so was I. ~ Julie Murphy, #NFDB
47:Even chance meetings are the result of karma. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
48:My karma's the comma that puts you inside of a coma, ~ Chino XL, #NFDB
49:I have been lying in bed thinking about karma. ~ Teresa Driscoll, #NFDB
50:Being vegan just gives you such great karma. ~ Alicia Silverstone, #NFDB
51:It’s up to you how the law of karma all works out. ~ Pema Ch dr n, #NFDB
52:Let us blame none, let us blame our own Karma. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
53:Love conquers everything even karma. ~ Julien Offray de La Mettrie, #NFDB
54:Life and death are the same...Leave karma to karma. ~ James Clavell, #NFDB
55:Regardless of what we do, our karma has no hold on us. ~ Bodhidharma, #NFDB
56:The atma-jnani alone can be a good karma-yogi. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
57:And Karma? She was well known as a hormonal, raging bitch. ~ L J Shen, #NFDB
58:Karma doesn't mean that everything works out justly. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
59:Regardless of what we do, our karma has no hold on us. ~ Bodhidharma, #NFDB
60:caught tightly in a marriage of afflictions and karma, ~ Thupten Jinpa, #NFDB
61:Clear spirits destroy karma. Brown spirits build karma. ~ Stanley Bing, #NFDB
62:Karma works entirely too fast in my case to go against it. ~ Mark Tufo, #NFDB
63:When action comes out of nothing it creates no karma. ~ Gautama Buddha, #NFDB
64:Karma-sutra: fate fucking you in all kinds of creative ways ~ Linda Kage, #NFDB
65:Karma was a malicious bitch who always had the last laugh. ~ K M Golland, #NFDB
66:How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
67:Why seek revenge? Karma is going to get the bastards anyway ~ Ajahn Brahm, #NFDB
68:Life does not mean mere karma or mere bhakti or mere jnana. ~ Vinoba Bhave, #NFDB
69:To go beyond karma you have to end the structure of self. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
70:How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours. ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
71:Was the person in charge of karma on vacation? It wasn’t fair. ~ Rich Amooi, #NFDB
72:Dear Karma, I really hate you right now, you made your point. ~ Ottilie Weber, #NFDB
73:People walking? Karma walking ... Buddha nature walking..! ~ Frederick Franck, #NFDB
74:Truth burns up all karma and frees you from all births. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
75:"Understanding karma makes our life meaningful right now." ~ Mingyur Rinpoche, #NFDB
76:A fool will seek revenge, the wise man will allow God's karma. ~ Keshia Chante, #NFDB
77:Instant Karma's gonna get you, gonna knock you right on the head ~ John Lennon, #NFDB
78:Karma, continuing the Screw Dez kick it seemed to be on lately... ~ Jus Accardo, #NFDB
79:Karma grows from our hearts. Karma terminates from our hearts. ~ Gautama Buddha, #NFDB
80:Karma Yoga is mindful service to the humanity with love and respect. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
81:Like gravity, karma is so basic we often don't even notice it. ~ Sakyong Mipham, #NFDB
82:Cuando se acaba el karma de una relación, sólo queda el AMOR ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
83:I guess karma comes back around 'cause now I'm the one that's hurting ~ Jessie J, #NFDB
84:Karma is what we fabricate when we no longer trust the universe. ~ Ethan Nichtern, #NFDB
85:Karma, simply put, is an action for an action ... good or bad. ~ Stephen Richards, #NFDB
86:I believe in letting karma do its thing. What comes around goes around. ~ Tim Gunn, #NFDB
87:There is no heaven for me and no hell. And certainly not any Karma. ~ Henry Rollins, #NFDB
88:Only for a person who is living with duality there is good and bad karma. ~ Sadhguru, #NFDB
89:Our Karma determines what we deserve and what we can assimilate. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
90:There is no better karma or bhakti than enquiry into the Self. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
91:You’re my karma, sunshine. And I’m pretty sure you were made for me. ~ Julie Johnson, #NFDB
92:I want karma to drive stakes into the dark hearts that keep me bitter. ~ Corey Taylor, #NFDB
93:karma, which is Sanskrit for action, is the cause and not the result. ~ Tashi Tsering, #NFDB
94:Someone should have mentioned to him that Karma was a venomous witch. ~ Courtney Cole, #NFDB
95:she'll get what's coming to her. Karma's a bigger bitch than she is, ~ Kathleen Brooks, #NFDB
96:You have to trust in something--your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. ~ Steve Jobs, #NFDB
97:Karma, which is but the sum total of Causes set into motion in the Past ~ Linda Goodman, #NFDB
98:no matter where you go, due to karma you will find enemies and friends. ~ Thupten Jinpa, #NFDB
99:Through knowledge and devotion, transcend all karma and be free. ~ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, #NFDB
100:I love 'Last Friday Night' by Katy Perry almost as much as 'Karma Police', ~ Chris Martin, #NFDB
101:This is Karma. I’m a bitch. Can you think of anyone who deserves a bitch slap? ~ Jenny Han, #NFDB
102:I used to steal a lot. But I don't do that anymore, because I believe in karma. ~ Andy Dick, #NFDB
103:Because I have always wanted to believe. In God, in ghosts, in karma, in UFOs. ~ Katie Heaney, #NFDB
104:How people treat you is their karma. How you react is yours.” —Wayne W. Dyer ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
105:Karma and manifestation work 24/7 to balance the scales. Do justice, in due time. ~ T F Hodge, #NFDB
106:Karma means law, and it applies everywhere. Everything is bound by Karma. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
107:Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal. ~ Karma Brown, #NFDB
108:In contrast to reincarnation and karma, all other views seem petty and narrow ~ Richard Wagner, #NFDB
109:Never bully anyone because Karma has everyone’s address and a motherf**king stamp! ~ Lady Gaga, #NFDB
110:SEE GOD IN EVERYONE. IT IS DECEPTION TO TEACH BY INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES AND KARMA.3 ~ Ram Dass, #NFDB
111:I'm a true believer in karma. You get what you give, whether it's bad or good. ~ Sandra Bullock, #NFDB
112:I must have killed a lot of cows in a past life for Karma to hate me this much. ~ Katie McGarry, #NFDB
113:"Recognizing that we will die energizes our aspiration to create good karma." ~ Mingyur Rinpoche, #NFDB
114:Teaching yoga itself is great karma yoga, because it reconnects people to the source. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
115:This is Karma. I’m a bitch. Can you think of anyone who deserves a bitch slap? - Kat ~ Jenny Han, #NFDB
116:This is what happens when you believe in hope. Karma comes around to destroy it. ~ Katie McGarry, #NFDB
117:When we judge, we create negative karma. Judgment is a function of the personality. ~ Gary Zukav, #NFDB
118:...as I apprehend the Buddhist doctrine of karma, I agree in principle with that. ~ William James, #NFDB
119:Karma done unselfishly purifies the mind and helps to fix it in meditation. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
120:Karma means always wanting more of what won't get you anywhere in the first place. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
121:Only what is done as duty for duty’s sake ... can scatter the bondage of Karma ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
122:Karma is not a receipt of a physical experience, because of what someone has done. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
123:When the karma of a relationship is done, only love remains. It's safe. Let go. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
124:Karma means ultimate responsibility. You even take responsibility for your genetics. ~ Jaggi Vasudev, #NFDB
125:We must have been very very bad in our last lives, cos karma's busy making macramé with us. ~ Poppet, #NFDB
126:Whatever you do is what you are supposed to do; you are following your own karma. ~ Vincent Bugliosi, #NFDB
127:When you know who you truly are, you can live more freely and in tune with your karma. ~ Alan Finger, #NFDB
128:And guys, if you exploit a girl, it will come back to get you. That's called 'karma.' ~ Bill O Reilly, #NFDB
129:Karma has always existed, as have you, I, and all things in this wonderful universe. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
130:Karma means who you are and where your awareness field is on the band of perception. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
131:No matter what his reason is, it feels good to see karma finally making the rounds ~ Corinne Michaels, #NFDB
132:See God in everyone. It is deception to teach by individual differences and karma. ~ Neem Karoli Baba, #NFDB
133:You have a right to change your present if it doesn't fit with the future you envision. ~ Karma Brown, #NFDB
134:Your task is not to judge or punish. Karma will take care of that. Your task is to love. ~ Brian Weiss, #NFDB
135:Destiny, or karma, depends upon what the soul has done about what it has become aware of. ~ Edgar Cayce, #NFDB
136:Each man has a mission in life, which is the result of all his infinite past Karma. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
137:As long as karma exists, the world changes. There will always be karma to be taken care of. ~ Nina Hagen, #NFDB
138:He’s still due a bit of comeuppance, then, but karma never seems to distribute itself evenly. ~ J D Horn, #NFDB
139:I always wear my evil eye necklace to ward off bad karma. I always wear one to protect me. ~ Gracie Gold, #NFDB
140:laws of karma: ‘Every action has consequences. Why blame the instrument of karma for ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
141:Reaction and non-action both create karma, but conscious action transcends karma. ~ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, #NFDB
142:The laws of karma were complicated, and ultimately, one never escaped them. ~ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, #NFDB
143:Bahwa benda itu adalah satu rantai, satu karma yang merantai hidup kita, hidup sengsara ini. ~ Tan Malaka, #NFDB
144:I don't have any reason to hate anybody; I believe in good karma and spreading good energy. ~ Vanilla Ice, #NFDB
145:When we choose the path of love, we grow spiritually, help others, and balance our karma. ~ Doreen Virtue, #NFDB
146:Oy, your karma really sucks, bubbee. You musta been Hitler in a former life or something. ~ Gemma Halliday, #NFDB
147:"Karma means that we are not defined by our situation but rather by the choices we make." ~ Gyalwang Drukpa, #NFDB
148:The idea of karma is that you continually get the teaching that you need to open your heart. ~ Pema Chodron, #NFDB
149:I have learned of this great force and will never test the boundless energy of what is karma. ~ Ronnie Radke, #NFDB
150:I've crashed into another bad wall of karma and in the process lost my lightness of being. ~ Sarah Macdonald, #NFDB
151:Remember ‘karma’. As you sow, you shall reap. If you are not greedy and make sure that the next ~ David Lamb, #NFDB
152:We all have our own karma and so different teachers will be meaningful to different students. ~ Tenzin Palmo, #NFDB
153:I try to live with the idea that karma is a very real thing. So I put out what I want to get back. ~ Megan Fox, #NFDB
154:It was karma, it was kismet, it was magic. It doesn't matter how it happened, just that it did. ~ Shannon Hale, #NFDB
155:I would suggest your awareness is your karma. How you feel generates your level of attention. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
156:you are all bound by the law of Karma, the Upanishads admit, but they declare the way out. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
157:Fear is a constant, and faith is a choice. Fear comes from karma, from faith arises dharma. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
158:Seeds of past karma cannot germinate if they are roasted in the divine fires of wisdom. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
159:Seeds of past karma cannot germinate if they are roasted in the fires of divine wisdom. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
160:Si vous avez envie de bonne nourriture et que vous n'en mangez pas, vous créez un bon karma. ~ Taisen Deshimaru, #NFDB
161:¿Cómo es el refrán? ¿Karma Sutra: ¿El destino te ha follado en todo tipo de modos creativos? ~ Linda Kage, #NFDB
162:The idea of "karma" reeks of primitive religious superstition, so I don't place a lot of stock in it. ~ Jim Goad, #NFDB
163:The purpose of karma yoga is to transcend the bondage of selfish genes through the service of others. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
164:There is no amount of bad karma that can compete with a contrite spirit and God's forgiveness. ~ Shannon L Alder, #NFDB
165:Anyone can give advice, but a person cannot act, cannot do his karma, unless he is confident. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
166:The study of our habitual conditioning and how habit leads us to react is the study of karma. On ~ Ethan Nichtern, #NFDB
167:But, mark my words; someday she'll get what's coming to her. Karma's a bigger bitch than she is, ~ Kathleen Brooks, #NFDB
168:In some darkened corner, an evil troll named Karma was rolling on the floor laughing, hysterically. ~ Belle Malory, #NFDB
169:We pay Karma not only for the evil we do but also for the good left undone, being able to do it. ~ Samael Aun Weor, #NFDB
170:299. Turn all things to honey; this is the law of divine living.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma,#NFDB
171:All my experience is with this kind of thing not working, so it’s hard to imagine anything different. ~ Karma Brown, #NFDB
172:If Karma is a thing, then wouldn’t wanting someone to experience bad Karma also get YOU bad Karma? ~ Steve Maraboli, #NFDB
173:If you lie to a person at least tell someone else you've lied to the truth. It balances out your karma. ~ Dane Cook, #NFDB
174:Karma: The delusion of the pretentious; who think the Universe should act as their debt collector. ~ Steve Maraboli, #NFDB
175:Peace is the foundation of yoga. Karma yoga is the effort for bringing peace and happiness in the world. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
176:Sometimes karma takes years to pay a person back, but that day, it had a fast backhand return... ~ Joshilyn Jackson, #NFDB
177:Give up the sense of doership. Karma will go on automatically or Karma will drop away from you ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
178:If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself. The dreams will come to you. ~ Randy Pausch, #NFDB
179:Karma has a way of catching up with you, especially when you laughed in her face one too many times. ~ Jay Crownover, #NFDB
180:Karma is your survival and your bondage. And if you handle it right, it can also be your liberation. ~ Jaggi Vasudev, #NFDB
181:I did some things to some people that was downright evil. Is it karma coming back to me - so much drama. ~ Gucci Mane, #NFDB
182:I've seen 'karma' slap people in the face. You have to be good to people. It really does come around. ~ Kirsten Dunst, #NFDB
183:Karma is not a sentence already printed. It is a series of words that authors can arrange as she chooses. ~ Sara Gran, #NFDB
184:Karma theory is a spiritual philosophy used to explain and maintain the economic status of Asia. ~ Stephen H Wolinsky, #NFDB
185:When you say, "Wait a moment," you are bound by your karma; when you say "Yes I will," you are free. ~ Shunryu Suzuki, #NFDB
186:Crazy. Karma is a b****. Gets you every time. Its not good to wish bad on anybody. God sees everything! ~ LeBron James, #NFDB
187:Follow your passions, believe in karma, and you won't have to chase your dreams, they will come to you. ~ Randy Pausch, #NFDB
188:Once you know the nature of anger and joy is empty and you let them go, you free yourself from karma. ~ Gautama Buddha, #NFDB
189:my karma was to be born in America where nobody has any fun or believes in anything, especially freedom. ~ Jack Kerouac, #NFDB
190:The karma that is most interesting is the mental karma because ultimately it generates physical action. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
191:Karma was coming swiftly, and in the form of my very own angel of death. Was this what bloodlust felt like? ~ Celia Aaron, #NFDB
192:Komm mir bloß nicht mit dem Karma-Kram«, erwiderte Rincewind. »Meinem Glücksrad fehlen einige Speichen. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
193:Though the names 'karma', 'yoga' and 'sannyasa' are different, the truth at the heart of both is the same. ~ Vinoba Bhave, #NFDB
194:I believe in karma, and I believe if you put out positive vibes to everybody, that's all you're going to get back. ~ Kesha, #NFDB
195:Karma is a medicine which is given for our own good. Karma is the law of compensation, not of vengeance. ~ Samael Aun Weor, #NFDB
196:Oppressive bastards, think they own the place. I told them that karma's going to kick their asses. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson, #NFDB
197:Karma has a surprising way of taking care of these situations. All you have to do is sit back and watch. ~ Candace Bushnell, #NFDB
198:Selfless giving has a lot to do with what happens to you in the future. There is karma, both good and bad. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
199:Frigging irony is a bitch, nope wait, it’s karma that’s a bitch. So what’s that make irony? An asshole, perhaps? ~ Mark Tufo, #NFDB
200:Good and bad karma are just ways of evaluating causal experience. What you do affects your attention field. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
201:If there is such a thing as karma, let's hope that Sarah Palin comes back as a wolf being shot at from a plane. ~ Bill Maher, #NFDB
202:I teach that we must go beyond pure ego-consciousness and move to a new manifestation of energy karma force. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
203:The path of bhakti, karma and love as expounded in the Gita leaves no room for the despising of man by man. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
204:You cannot believe what you do not believe, Rumi siad. I am an Untouchable because my karma dictates it. ~ Christopher Moore, #NFDB
205:It is best to think of karma, not so much in terms of physical action, but as waveforms of vibratory energy. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
206:Karma indicates action, but not necessarily physical action; nor is karma a result in the sense of a reward. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
207:Oppressive bastards, think they own the place. I told them that karma's going to kick their asses.... ~ Laurie Halse Anderson, #NFDB
208:The whole thing of life and all the answers to everything are in one divine law, Karma action and reaction. ~ George Harrison, #NFDB
209:Everyone must live, and everyone must express themselves, and must express themselves in the way of their karma. ~ Maya Tiwari, #NFDB
210:He’s put her through so much… so goddamn much. Karma’s a bitch, though, and that bitch had better get to work. ~ Melissa Brown, #NFDB
211:I heard that karma is vengeful and is also a light sleeper. So I’ve chosen to love you like this.
Quietly. ~ Rudy Francisco,#NFDB
212:Your karma should be good, and everything else will follow. Your good karma will always win over your bad luck. ~ Rohit Shetty, #NFDB
213:Can you be compassionate even to those who have no compassion? If so, there is no finer karma that you can create. ~ Gary Zukav, #NFDB
214:This is what Krishna says in the Bhagavad-Gita - Karma Yoga. If you can't avoid action, you might as well act. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
215:Do I believe in reincarnation? Well, let's say that I believe in karma. I think you make your own karma. ~ Diane von Furstenberg, #NFDB
216:How do you become enlightened? I don't know: Luck, karma, skill, friends in high places, friends in low places. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
217:I believe in luck and fate and I believe in karma, that the energy you put out in the world comes back to meet you. ~ Chris Pine, #NFDB
218:To go from mortal to Buddha, you have to put an end to karma, nurture your awareness, and accept what life brings. ~ Bodhidharma, #NFDB
219:There’s no such thing as karma. That only exists in a fair world, and we both know the world is anything but fair. ~ Karina Halle, #NFDB
220:whenever I achieve a little something and am complimented, shortly thereafter I am swiftly kicked in the ass by karma. ~ Ruby Wax, #NFDB
221:Necessity is the child of the spirit’s free self-determination. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Karma and Freedom, #NFDB
222:When someone has a strong intuitive connection, Buddhism suggests that it's because of karma, some past connection. ~ Richard Gere, #NFDB
223:You know as well as I do that fortune never sends the best-case scenario our way
You have way too much bad karma. ~ Eoin Colfer,#NFDB
224:Consider intentions carefully. Karma gives a damn about ego, awards allegiance to none, and its justice is truly blind. ~ T F Hodge, #NFDB
225:Karma is only a machinery, it is not the fundamental cause of terrestrial existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, Rebirth, #NFDB
226:Well, one of the greatest ecstasies possible is to feel oneself carried by the Divine, not by the stars or Karma... ~ Sri Aurobindo, #NFDB
227:Whenever you employ your ego to identify yourself as the doer of an action, that action becomes a karma for you. ~ Robert E Svoboda, #NFDB
228:One's own karma, one's own actions are responsible to come to bring either happiness or success or whatever. ~ Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, #NFDB
229:Bhakti and Karma cannot be perfect and enduring unless they are based upon Jnana. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - I, Bhawani Mandir, #NFDB
230:I’m not proud of it, but I celebrated karma’s brilliance in a drunken rage of laughter, facemasks, and nail polish. So ~ Harper Sloan, #NFDB
231:lying created bad karma and that often you were stuck with the lie. She said it was God showing his sense of humor. When ~ Robyn Carr, #NFDB
232:Such is the ancient law of the universe. Of karma and its fruit. The idea of motive is irrelevant to it. ~ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, #NFDB
233:I think his karma became to serve in nature and not to serve in the world, while I think my karma is to be in the world. ~ Karan Bajaj, #NFDB
234:The person who gives selflessly in this lifetime immediately goes into a better state of mind. That is instant karma. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
235:This is the law of Karma, which is Sanskrit for "Comeback." "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. ~ Florence Scovel Shinn, #NFDB
236:A jnani has no karma [that is, a jnani performs no actions]. That is his experience. Otherwise he is not a jnani. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
237:Friends or foes, they are all instruments in Her hands to help us work out our own Karma, through pleasure or pain. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
238:If someone blames you directly, do not believe it. Just know that they are taking away your bad karma and let it ~ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, #NFDB
239:Question: How to get released from karma?See whose karma it is. You will find you are not the doer. Then you will be free. ~ Sri Ramana, #NFDB
240:A jnani has no karma [that is, a jnani performs no actions]. That is his experience. Otherwise he is not a jnani. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
241:Every morning I stay in bed for ten minutes to ponder my place in the universe. Then I wash my face and check my karma. ~ Drew Barrymore, #NFDB
242:I don't like the idea that I am going to come back as an ant or a sparrow if I don't get along in the great karma of life. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
243:Karma exists within causality. It is three-dimensional. Free will exists outside of causality; it is not bound by karma. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
244:Fix all your attention on your own path, and do not imitate others. Your life is unique, and your karma is yours alone. ~ Taisen Deshimaru, #NFDB
245:If you want to do a great or a good work, do not trouble to think what the result will be. ~ Swami Vivekananda from C.W. Vol 1, Karma Yoga, #NFDB
246:I let out a sigh, hoping it releases some of the bad karma I just incurred from being so heinous. (Sean Griswold's Head) ~ Lindsey Leavitt, #NFDB
247:Each individual has to burn out his own karma and escape from the chains of maya (illusion), reincarnation, and all that. ~ George Harrison, #NFDB
248:Law and Process are one side of our existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality, #NFDB
249:All beings are the heirs of their own karma. Their happiness or unhappiness depends on their actions, not upon my wishes. ~ Joseph Goldstein, #NFDB
250:"Fix all your attention on your own path, and do not imitate others. Your life is unique, and your karma is yours alone." ~ Taisen Deshimaru, #NFDB
251:252. I have failed, thou sayest. Say rather that God is circling about towards His object.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma,#NFDB
252:265. Care not for time and success. Act out thy part, whether it be to fail or to prosper.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma,#NFDB
253:I'm a great believer in karma and the vengeance that it serves up to those who are deliberately mean is generally enough for me. ~ Beth Ditto, #NFDB
254:This is a business that I have always had the last laugh in.It has nothing to do with acting, it has to do with good karma. ~ George Hamilton, #NFDB
255:All Beings are owners of their Karma. Whatever volitional actions they do, good or evil, of those they shall become the heir. ~ Gautama Buddha, #NFDB
256:Call it eternal optimism or romantic rebellion, but one of these days karma would stop flipping her the bird and pay it forward. ~ Marina Adair, #NFDB
257:Everyone gets dumped and everyone gets hurt and there's karma to love in regards to what you've done to other people. ~ Marina and the Diamonds, #NFDB
258:I believe that the laws of karma do not apply to show business, where good things happen to bad people on a fairly regular basis. ~ Chuck Lorre, #NFDB
259:I guess one of the ways that karma works is that it finds out what you are most afraid of and then makes that happen eventually. ~ Cheech Marin, #NFDB
260:There is Law, but there is also spiritual freedom. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality, #NFDB
261:When we judge, we create negative karma. When we say of an action: 'This is right,' or, 'That is wrong,' we create negative karma. ~ Gary Zukav, #NFDB
262:A child is born on that day and at that hour when the celestial rays are in mathematical harmony with his individual karma. ~ Sri Yukteswar Giri, #NFDB
263:Be yourself and enjoy yourself. Show me a smile and I'll show you one back. Karma: Believe in it. It's real. It comes back to you. ~ Vanilla Ice, #NFDB
264:Can I ask you something?” Jo
"Maybe" Thorn
“What’s between you and Karma?” Jo
“Right about now … three miles.” Thorn ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,#NFDB
265:I'm not saying you didn't deserve it, O." Dakota laughed. "But I'm restocking the karma bank and you're at the top of my list. ~ Carolyn Mackler, #NFDB
266:The chain of Karma only binds the movement of Nature and not the soul. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad: The Inhabiting Godhead, Life and Action, #NFDB
267:There is a popular conception about karma, and that is that as you sow, so shall you reap. That's only true if you're a farmer. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
268:There's a natural law of karma that vindictive people, who go out of their way to hurt others, will end up broke and alone. ~ Sylvester Stallone, #NFDB
269:The three essentials of Hinduism are belief in God, in the Vedas as revelation, in the doctrine of Karma and transmigration. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
270:Our Spirit, our Self must be greater than its Karma. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality, #NFDB
271:Some people said that Karma was a bitch, but I couldn’t disagree more. Karma was like a patient mother watching out for her children. ~ Elin Peer, #NFDB
272:Karma means your have to live with the consequences of the actions you have taken in the past. Whatever you put out is coming back. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
273:To the worldy man Karma is a stern Nemesis, to the spiritual man Karma unfolds itself in harmony with his highest aspirations. ~ William Quan Judge, #NFDB
274:It is always possible to get into a higher state of mind. The way you get into a higher state of mind is by generating good karma. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
275:It is not what
has happened or what will happen that is relevant; what you do in the now is significant.
That defines your karma. ~ Kavita Kan,#NFDB
276:People say karma is a bitch but I have news for you, karma doesn’t have anything on fate when she is after blood. Not a single thing. ~ Harper Sloan, #NFDB
277:When we cling to a thought or follow its track, we are performing a mental karma, and that, in turn, is the seed of all physical actions. ~ Om Swami, #NFDB
278:It is the interplay between our experience and how we respond to it that makes karma devastating or helpfully invigorating. ~ Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, #NFDB
279:She has a right to be afraid of me. Girls like that never get the karma they deserve. If she’s not careful, I’ll deliver my own karma. ~ Karina Halle, #NFDB
280:The secret of karma yoga which is to perform actions without any fruitive desires is taught by Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
281:Karma, ahhh. We sow what we reap... We reap what we sow! We reap what we sow. The law of cause and effect. And we are all under this law. ~ Nina Hagen, #NFDB
282:We transmit our thoughts, speech and actions - collectively known as our karma to our children and to the world, that is our future. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
283:You are in charge of your own karma, your own life, your own spiritual path, and your own liberation, just as I am in charge of mine. ~ Lama Surya Das, #NFDB
284:For every action there is a reaction. Karma can be examined within the structure of an hour, a year, a lifetime, a thousand lifetimes. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
285:In other words, if you're not motivated to be nice because of the good karma, be motivated to be nice because ultimately it saves time ~ Jocelyn K Glei, #NFDB
286:The first sign that Karma was now in cahoots with the Devil Incarnate to ruin her existance should've been before sunrise and pre-coffee. ~ Kelly Moran, #NFDB
287:Well, wouldn’t that be a nice fuck you from karma. Here, Dylan, feast your eyes on this magnificent penis that you can’t even handle. ~ Jessica Daniels, #NFDB
288:Karma is not a cop-out. The esoteric meaning of karma is that you are who you are, because of what you have done and who you have been. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
289:It's considered very, very bad karma, if I can cut to the chase, to take power from a teacher and not use it for something very positive. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
290:Success will come about because you are in a higher state of mind. If you create good karma, then you will go into higher states of mind. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
291:Everyone experiences desire. Desire is not bad. There is no good or bad from the point of view of karma. There is only structured reaction. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
292:If you just live totally, you will dissolve lots of karma. Living totally means that you experience anything that comes fully and intensely. ~ Jaggi Vasudev, #NFDB
293:Karma simply means that whatever type of energy you project, or you allow to pass through your being, you will become for a period of time. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
294:One who previously made bad karma, but who reforms and creates good karma, brightens the world like the moon appearing from behind a cloud. ~ Gautama Buddha, #NFDB
295:The world was filled with clever killers who mistakenly believed that they’d never be caught. This was not true. Karma had everyone’s address, ~ James Swain, #NFDB
296:I convinced myself that everything was going to be okay. This is what happens when you believe in in hope. Karma comes around and destroy it. ~ Katie McGarry, #NFDB
297:So what happens if you step back from everything? Stop holding yourself responsible for everyone else's happiness so you can focus on your own? ~ Karma Brown, #NFDB
298:we stated that of the five items (īśvara, jīva, prakṛti, time and karma) four are eternal, whereas karma is not eternal. ~ A C Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhup da, #NFDB
299:Karma moves in two directions. If we act virtuously, the seed we plant will result in happiness. If we act non-virtuously, suffering results. ~ Sakyong Mipham, #NFDB
300:We are suffering from our own Karma. It is not the fault of God. What we do is our own fault, nothing else. Why should God be blamed?. . . ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
301:244. Suffer yourself to be tempted within so that you may exhaust in the struggle your downward propensities.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma,#NFDB
302:For it is not what happens to us that determines our character, our experience, our karma, and our destiny - but how we relate to what happens. ~ Lama Surya Das, #NFDB
303:Irrespective of whether we are believers or agnostics, whether we believe in God or karma, moral ethics is a code which everyone is able to pursue. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
304:It has taken me some time to learn that although karma exists, you can let your hatred go, not by destroying your own magic but by letting it grow. ~ Nikita Gill, #NFDB
305:Life works on strange laws of nature (Karma). One never knows when a friend turns enemy & vice-versa. Rely on your Self; self-reliance ~ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, #NFDB
306:Such is the law of karma. Every action, howsoever innocent, has a reaction, that one has to experience if not in this life, then in the next, ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
307:Whether or not we believe in survival of consciousness after death, reincarnation, and karma, it has very serious implications for our behavior. ~ Stanislav Grof, #NFDB
308:"It takes courage to accept life fully, to say yes to our life, yes to our karma, yes to our mind, emotions and whatever else unfolds." ~ Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, #NFDB
309:Through True Love, she merges with Him. She who does not know her Husband Lord, the Architect of karma, is deluded by falsehood she herself is false. ~ Guru Nanak, #NFDB
310:What you have done causes things to happen. Your situation in life now has been caused, is predicated upon, your previous actions. That is karma. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
311:A man is born alone and dies alone; and he experiences the good and bad consequences of his karma alone; and he goes alone to hell or the Supreme abode. ~ Chanakya, #NFDB
312:But all is not Law and Process, there is also Being and Consciousness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality, #NFDB
313:In life in general, you're never bulletproof, about the time you start thinking that, I always tell people, the karma train will come run you over. ~ Kevin Harvick, #NFDB
314:Whether it is suffering or joy, going through experiences in life is not so much of a karma. Depriving yourself of any experience is the big karma. ~ Jaggi Vasudev, #NFDB
315:Friends or foes, they are all instruments in Her hands to help us work out our own karma, through pleasure or pain. As such, 'Mother' bless all. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
316:Irrespective of whether we are believers or agnostics, whether we believe in God or karma, moral ethics is a code which everyone is able to pursue. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
317:I used the walker for a while, then graduated to a wooden cane like the ones we used to crack people over the head with. Talk about karma. ~ Stanley Tookie Williams, #NFDB
318:304. There are two ways of avoiding the snare of woman; one is to shun all women and the other to love all beings.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma,#NFDB
319:I see the horrible way some stars deal with other people, and I don't know how they get away with it. Maybe it comes back to them in a different karma. ~ Emily Lloyd, #NFDB
320:Just as one can make a lot of garlands from a heap of flowers, so man, subject to birth and death as he is, should make himself a lot of good karma. ~ Gautama Buddha, #NFDB
321:Karma will lead you to a larger more expansive happier view or a dinger darker view. That view will enable you to make choices and have experiences. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
322:You should never use the word Karma when talking about someone else, it's only a concept you should apply to yourself as a matter of investigation. ~ Sharon Salzberg, #NFDB
323:Karma is a tricky thing. To serve Karma, one must repay good Karma to others. To serve Karma well, one must sometimes deliver bad Karma where it is due. ~ M R Mathias, #NFDB
324:Now is wanted intense Karma-Yoga with unbounded courage and indomitable strength in the heart. Then only will the people of the country be roused. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
325:Our spiritual orientation, the magnetism that draws the soul, is to eternal Being and not to eternal Non-Being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Karma, #NFDB
326:People often speak of bad karma, concentrating on the aspect of wrong; but in its purest form, karma can be right or wrong and still leave an imprint. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
327:Death is only a summer vacation for us. We don't really change or lose what we have learned or who we have been when we die, because we are our karma. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
328:Gita are basically giving confidence to a scared man. Anyone can give advice, but a person cannot act, cannot do his karma, unless he is confident. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
329:In the first few days, I failed to distinguish between collar and color, khaki and car key, letters and lettuce, bed and bared, karma and calmer. Needing ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB
330:I tentatively believe in a god. I was brought up in a fairly religious home. I think the world is compatible with reincarnation, karma, all that stuff. ~ Bjorn Lomborg, #NFDB
331:It has been said that sleeping, dreaming, and meditating, or developing awareness, are the only states in which we do not sow further seeds of karma. ~ Ch gyam Trungpa, #NFDB
332:Life works on strange laws of nature (Karma).
One never knows when a friend turns enemy & vice-versa.
Rely on your Self; self-reliance ~ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar,#NFDB
333:Something this good was bound to end terribly. It was karma evening the score - you get a gorgeous man in return for your tragic life and early death. ~ Laura Thalassa, #NFDB
334:Such is the law of karma. Every action, howsoever innocent, has a reaction, that one has to experience if not in this life, then in the next,’ said ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
335:Words like meditation, karma, samskaras, they're just words. You can get into the jargon, you can speak it, but that doesn't mean you'll be any freer. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
336:If our best efforts come to nothing often enough, we need consolation, and thoughts of unfolding, infinite destiny, or karma , are sometimes consoling. ~ Simon Blackburn, #NFDB
337:I'm pessimistic about the future of the planet. These big guys don't realize for everything they do, there's a reaction. You have to pay. That's karma. ~ George Harrison, #NFDB
338:Karma is the eternal assertion of human freedom. . . . Our thoughts, our words, and deeds are the threads of the net which we throw around ourselves. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
339:We've been so focused on the concept of punishing those who have caused us pain that we've completely disregarded the entire other half of what Karma is. ~ Jessica Brody, #NFDB
340:My favorite cause is the enlightenment of others. I think that is the best place to put money. You get the highest yield in terms of karma on your money. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
341:Opportunity has a way of popping up without warning or planning. Always helpful were a good banker, good advice, good credit, and good karma. Knock on wood. ~ Tracy Ellen, #NFDB
342:Someone please tell me that we’re not seriously having a friggin’ debate over the genius of ‘Karma Chameleon’ at seven o’clock in the morning? (Xypher) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
343:A realized being would not be making any fresh karma because karma is very much connected to the ego but would still be receiving the results of past karma. ~ Tenzin Palmo, #NFDB
344:The karma of immediate availability is the condition of your awareness field. The karma of potentiality is what is stored inside you from your past lives. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
345:The people find great solace in the idea of a personal God whose grace, obtained through devotion, can overpower the shackles of karma and samsara. The ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
346:You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. ~ Steve Jobs, #NFDB
347:It's indispensable to fully understand the basis and modus operandi of the Law of Karma to orientate the ship of our life in a positive and exemplary way. ~ Samael Aun Weor, #NFDB
348:The paths to liberation are numerous, but the bank along the way is always the same, the Bank of Karma, where the liberation account of each of us is credited ~ Yann Martel, #NFDB
349:312. Each man of us has a million lives yet to fulfil upon this earth. Why then this haste and clamour and impatience?
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma[53],#NFDB
350:If I used justice, you'd all be dead. The karma that you throw at me when you don't like me - if I just let it come back, you'd all be destroyed in no time. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
351:It was not uncommon for the children to be told they were being treated this way because it was their bad karma and they must have hurt a child in a past life. ~ Mary Garden, #NFDB
352:The reasons, Samantha, are far-reaching and complicated and involve universal laws of attraction and karma, all wrapped around past lives and previous agreements. ~ J R Rain, #NFDB
353:For the keynote of the law of Karma is equilibrium, and nature is always working to restore that equilibrium whenever through man's acts it is disturbed. ~ Christmas Humphreys, #NFDB
354:Self-expression and experience are what the soul seeks by its birth into the body. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality, #NFDB
355:Those who have not become enlightened will have to return to another, denser planet that is still involved with negativity, to work out their remaining karma. ~ Dolores Cannon, #NFDB
356:Your karma is the sum total of your awareness field. Your awareness field is comprised of all the experiences that you've had in this life and all other lives. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
357:England is like some stricken beast too stupid to know it is dead. Ingloriously foundering in its own waste products, the backlash and bad karma of empire. ~ William S Burroughs, #NFDB
358:Good karma leads to rebirth also. The desire for higher states of mind is a desire. When you are fixated on higher states of mind, you don't become enlightened. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
359:Nobody owes anybody anything. The only person you owe anything to is yourself. As long as you’re not intentionally causing other people harm, your karma’s secure. ~ Janis Thomas, #NFDB
360:One has to reap the fruits of his karma. The law of karma is inevitable and is accepted by all the great philosophies of the world: 'As you sow, so shall you reap.' ~ Rama Swami, #NFDB
361:Nije bila riječ o ostvarenju vaših snova, već o tome kako ćete živjeti život. Ako ga živite na pravi način, karma će se pobrinuti sama za sebe. Snovi će doći vama. ~ Randy Pausch, #NFDB
362:Puja (worship) is offering to God, prathana (prayer) is demanding from God. When we pray by offering all our karma and even ourselves to God, the prayer fruitifies. ~ Mahesh Babu, #NFDB
363: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. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
364:The law of Karma is inexorable and impossible of evasion. There is thus hardly any need for God to interfere. He laid down the law and, as it were, retired. After ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
365:The nature of the energy put forth must determine the nature of the result or outcome. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality, #NFDB
366:313. Stride swiftly for the goal is far; rest not unduly, for thy Master is waiting for thee at the end of thy journey.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma, 53, [T5],#NFDB
367:Dangerous consequences will follow when politicians and rulers forget moral principles. Whether we believe in God or karma, ethics is the foundation of every religion. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
368:As for the law of moral causation ('karma'): this is human justice dressed up as cosmic justice and then imputed to the impersonal workings of the natural world. ~ Stephen Batchelor, #NFDB
369:Everything that exists in this or any other world or dimension, does so because of the way that things were in the previous moment. I call this the karma of moment. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
370:Karma’s not like a bank. Make a deposit, take a withdrawal. But more and more, I am starting to suspect that all this is payback for something—only not the good kind. ~ Gayle Forman, #NFDB
371:Even chance meetings are the result of karma… Things in life are fated by our previous lives. That even in the smallest events there’s no such thing as coincidence. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
372:El quinto recuerdo nos indica que lo único que sigue con nosotros al morir son nuestros pensamientos, nuestras palabras y nuestras acciones, es decir, nuestro karma. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
373:Once it happened…Four men were walking in the forest. The first was a gnana yogi, the second was a bhakti yogi, the third was a karma yogi, and the fourth was a kriya yogi. ~ Sadhguru, #NFDB
374:You don’t need to take revenge. Just sit back and wait, because karma will get hold of those that hurt you and, if you are lucky, God will let you watch. -Author Unknown ~ Donya Lynne, #NFDB
375:Dangerous consequences will follow when politicians and rulers forget moral principles. Whether we believe in God or karma, ethics is the foundation of every religion. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
376:When you’re kind to people, and you pay attention, you make a field of comfort around them, and you get it back—the Golden Rule meets the Law of Karma meets Murphy’s Law. ~ Anne Lamott, #NFDB
377:Even the snap of a finger, he says, provides us with sixty-five opportunities to wake up and to choose actions that will produce beneficial karma and turn our lives around. ~ Ruth Ozeki, #NFDB
378:People say that karma is a bitch, but I have news for you. Karma doesn’t have anything on fate when she is after blood. Not a single thing. I wish I knew what it was that ~ Harper Sloan, #NFDB
379:The events in your life are the result of your past deeds, performed in this lifetime or the ones before. You alone are responsible for it. Such is the law of karma. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
380:What a man must do is realize that his continued belief in the inferiority of women is going to produce a type of karma that is going to hold him back, and already has. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
381:Fate. Now that's a loaded word. Like "yoga" or "karma", it's one of those words that slipped out of its native culture and ended up a celebrity with an extreme makeover. ~ Debra Ollivier, #NFDB
382:I had my own dump truck of bad karma waiting for me somewhere ahwad. I had certainly earned it, but I raced to avoid it if I could; there was no way I wanted to fell that. ~ Kevin Hearne, #NFDB
383:It is good not to think of karma as an alien force that is outside of yourself. You are the generator of karma. Karma is the energy patterns that emanate from your life. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
384:Selfless actions create a higher karma, which brings you into higher states of mind. When you are in higher states of mind you will see things that you never saw before. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
385:Because this is the beauty of strangers: we're all just doing our best to help each other out, motivated not by karma but by a natural instinct to help the greater whole. ~ Sloane Crosley, #NFDB
386:Fate might hate me, but that doesn't stop me from hoping one day she forgets about her favorite chew toy. When that day comes I hope karma has some fun with that bitch fate ~ Harper Sloan, #NFDB
387:Is there Chance? No. There is karma. Karma causes all things to happen. There is only one thing karma cannot decide, and that is how far you will evolve in this lifetime. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
388:O prince, abide in meditative equipoise on the spacelike ultimate. [16] In the illusionlike subsequent periods, reflect on karma and its fruits.” When the teacher revealed ~ Thupten Jinpa, #NFDB
389:I don't have any spiritual anything.You shoot a guy with a gun, he dies. You step on a bug, the bug dies. There is no heaven for me and no hell. And certainly not any Karma. ~ Henry Rollins, #NFDB
390:I have this tattooed on my left side! I love the saying and it's a perfect description of Karma, don't judge/discriminate and don't do to someone what you wouldn't want done to you. ~ Plato, #NFDB
391:Mas existe uma teia... uma teia de escuridão tecida em torno de todos nós. E enquanto o tempo continuar a existir, nunca poderá ser desfeita ou destruída. É o karma. ~ Marion Zimmer Bradley, #NFDB
392:Things are going to catch up to you one day, asshole!” She yells as I step into the hallway. “Karma is one hell of a bitch!” “I know.” I toss back. “I fucked her two weeks ago... ~ Whitney G, #NFDB
393:I just threw a very big egg, Katie. You would have been proud. And whenever you're ready to jump off that cliff, you jump. I'm going to take care of everyone for you. I promise. ~ Karma Brown, #NFDB
394:Karma is simply the law of cause and effect in action. All moments and occurrences are caused by other moments and occurrences that preceded them in an endless, causal chain. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
395:Meditate upon all the perfect light within your own mind! Do this repeatedly and the radiant Bodhisattvas of Wisdom and Laughter will visit you and change your karma forever! ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
396:No doubt, God alone has become all these objects, animate and inanimate, but in the relative world all beings act and suffer according to their past Karma and innate tendencies. ~ Sarada Devi, #NFDB
397:Prakriti is the field of law and process, but the soul, the Purusha, is the giver of the sanction. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality, #NFDB
398:Nature takes us as we are and to some extent suits her movements to our need or our demands on her. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality, #NFDB
399:The role of the Buddhist teacher is to explain your options and to show you what creates karma. All our discussions are basically karmic until you're fully engaged in samadhi. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
400:This brings me back to my question about my karma,” Wilson said. “You probably set kittens on fire,” Schmidt said. “And the rest of us were probably there with you, with skewers. ~ John Scalzi, #NFDB
401:Even a good self will create another good self in the next life, and another one, and that good self will never be enlightened. You'll be bound, life after life, by good karma. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
402:It’s not about how to achieve your dreams. It’s about how to lead your life. If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself. The dreams will come to you. ~ Randy Pausch, #NFDB
403:it's not about how to achieve your dreams. it's about how to lead your life. if you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself. the dreams will come to you. ~ Randy Pausch, #NFDB
404:Karma means changing planes of reality or changing fields of attention. There will be perhaps a resulting physical action stemming from the change of these fields of attention. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
405:This is Karma. I'm a bitch. Can you think of anyone who deserves a bitch slap?"
My phone buzzes again.
"If so meet at Judy Blue Eyes, 2am. If not, sit back and enjoy the show. ~ Jenny Han,#NFDB
406:Free will exists and operates outside causality. It is not hooked to karma. Free will is like a well that is on your property. You can choose to draw water from the well or not. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
407:Karma isn't fate. Nor is it a punishment imposed on us by some external agent. We create our own karma. Karma is the result of the choices that we make every moment of every day. ~ Tulku Thondup, #NFDB
408:tranquillity is only one aspect of the harmony of life. And harmony is what all people strive to achieve. Harmony is the basis of a clear mind, of a good and powerful karma. ~ Eric Van Lustbader, #NFDB
409:I had a rule that I had to go to bed before the sun came up. So I used to look up the sunrise times because I thought it would be bad karma to be going to bed as dawn was arriving. ~ Eric Schmidt, #NFDB
410:Innumerable are the ways that lead to God. There are the paths of jnana, of karma, and of bhakti. If you are sincere, you will attain God in the end , whichever path you follow. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
411:Karma yoga is giving food to the hungry, clothes to the needy, shelter to the homeless, education to the uneducated, medicine to the sick, and trees and cleanliness to the environment. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
412:One's longing is not so much there for sense-gratification, profit and self-preservation, instead one's karma is there for no other purpose than inquiring after the Absolute Truth. ~ Ramesh Menon, #NFDB
413:A fool may buy all the books in the world, and they will be in his library; but he will be able to read only those that he deserves to; and this deserving is produced by Karma. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
414:It’s not about how to achieve your dreams. It’s about how to lead your life. If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself. The dreams will come to you.” I ~ Randy Pausch, #NFDB
415:Karma means that all actions have consequences. Grace means that in a moment of atonement -taking responsibility, making amends, asking for forgiveness - all karma is burned. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
416:It's not about how to achieve your dreams, it's about how to lead your life, ... If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself, the dreams will come to you. ~ Randy Pausch, #NFDB
417:Our life is affected not only by its own energies but by the energies of others and by universal Forces. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality, #NFDB
418:Rebirth is not a constant reiteration but a progression, it is the machinery of an evolutionary process. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality, #NFDB
419:You and I have been physically given two hands and two legs and half-decent brains. Some people have not been born like that for a reason. The karma is working from another lifetime. ~ Glenn Hoddle, #NFDB
420:From the scientific view, the theory of karma may be a metaphysical assumption -- but it is no more so than the assumption that all of life is material and originated out of pure chance ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
421:In the centre of the cyclone one is off the wheel of Karma, of life, rising to join the Creators of the Universe, the Creators of us. Here we find that we have created Them who are Us. ~ John C Lilly, #NFDB
422:The final battles are the samskaras of good karma. They prevent Samadhi. Naturally for a religious person the avoidance is intensive. They are so hung up on good karma and on method. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
423:Your believing or not believing in karma has no effect on its existence, nor on its consequences to you. Just as a refusal to believe in the ocean would not prevent you from drowning. ~ F Paul Wilson, #NFDB
424:I feel like I'm worried about my later years in life because I feel like I'm using up so much good karma right now. There's going to be some sort of karmic backlash somewhere down the road. ~ Ed Helms, #NFDB
425:Egalitarianism and karma are very attractive ideas to INFJs, and they tend to believe that nothing would help the world so much as using love and compassion to soften the hearts of tyrants. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
426:From the scientific view, the theory of karma may be a metaphysical assumption -- but it is no more so than the assumption that all of life is material and originated out of pure chance ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
427:If you’re going to do something that repulsive, own it. Ralph doesn't realize it yet, but karma has no menu. You’re served what you deserve. And Ralph is about to get a heaping portion. ~ Scarlett Avery, #NFDB
428:283. Death is sometimes a rude valet; but when he changes this robe of earth for that brighter raiment, his horseplay and impertinences can be pardoned.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma,#NFDB
429:The conscious process is reflected in the imagination; the unconscious process is expressed as karma, the generation of actions divorced from thinking and alienated from feeling. ~ William Irwin Thompson, #NFDB
430:A saint is someone who has been very selfless and, over a period of lifetimes, generated a tremendous amount of good karma, which has caused them to enter into very lovely states of mind. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
431:If I hear ‘Karma Chameleon’ one more time, I swear I’m going to find Boy George and make him eat Jesse’s record. What does red, gold, and green have to do with anything anyway? (Gloria) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
432:Are you familiar with the Eastern concept of karma?’ ‘I’ve heard of it, yes. An old sergeant of mine when I was new to the force used to talk about it. “Double Entry Bookkeeping for the Soul”, ~ T E Kinsey, #NFDB
433:I'm probably my biggest critic. I worry that if you spend any quality time reveling in good things then karma will slap you upside the head, so I try to stay as even keel as I'm able. ~ Neil Patrick Harris, #NFDB
434:To seek to know the significance of life is itself the result of good karma in past births.
Those who do not seek such knowledge are simply wasting their lives. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talks, 558,#NFDB
435:Anton showed me an instrument that allows one to view an ionized single atom. Try as I might, though, I simply could not see it. Perhaps my karma wasn’t ripe enough to enjoy this spectacle. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
436:My karma was to be born in America where adults do not believe in happiness or fun, or at most these are considered low priorities. But everytime I leave this country, I always long for home. ~ Jos N Harris, #NFDB
437:373. Shall I accept death or shall I turn and wrestle with him and conquer? That shall be as God in me chooses. For whether I live or die, I am always.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma, 473,#NFDB
438:I wondered how many rounds dear old dad was in before his body finally gave up. I wondered if it was the scotch I sent him that finally did him in. That would be a beautiful kind of karma. ~ Jessica Gadziala, #NFDB
439:The notion of karma is unique to Indian thought. No action exists in isolation. Every decision impacts the ecosystem. Karma is often mistaken for the adage, “As you sow, so shall you reap. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
440:Where there is Dharma there is no karma. So we have to lean on Dharmic values and we have to build a Dharmic family, we have to relate to that family and we have to relate to it deeply. ~ Harbhajan Singh Yogi, #NFDB
441:Happiness is something that comes from creating good karma. The monk who feels that what they are doing is unpleasant is not really creating any good karma and will not have a better lifetime. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
442:If you are not happier every day, if you don't see a progression of development, then you are certainly not practicing yoga or Buddhism and therefore you cannot be amassing any positive karma. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
443:The paths to liberation are numerous, but the bank along the way is always the same, the Bank of Karma, where the liberation account of each of us is credited or debited depending on our actions. ~ Yann Martel, #NFDB
444:There are different pathways - be it Zen, tantra, karma yoga, or jnana yoga. Different ways have been devised to do the same thing for different types of people according to their temperament. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
445:Beings with un-redeemed earthly karma are not permitted after astral death to go to the high causal sphere of cosmic ideas , but must shuttle to and fro from the physical and astral worlds. ~ Sri Yukteswar Giri, #NFDB
446:Causes and conditions” is just another way of expressing the word “karma.” Merit is any karmic activity that takes you closer to the realization of truth, toward love and compassion. ~ Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse, #NFDB
447:There comes a time when a race of beings makes a decision. When they chose to reject enlightenment, it's the end of their world because the karma is inevitable. They have to destroy themselves. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
448:There is the path of karma, selfless action, the path of love and devotion, the path of training the mind and the path of Yoga, mantra and tantra this is what the various saints advocated. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi, #NFDB
449:Karma is engendered by states of mind. If you are in a happy state of mind, that will engender one kind of karma. If you are in an unhappy state of mind, that will engender another kind of karma. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
450:As a writer, its important to stay true to your story without giving a hoot about publishers, critics and readers. You should do your karma as an author the way you want to, and rest is up to God. ~ Amish Tripathi, #NFDB
451:Karma is the sum total of who you are, everything you've been. The mind state you are in is karmic. Meaning, it's related by a causal chain of existences, of moments, of particles of timelessness. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
452:Unless you're doing some kind of God conscious thing and you know that He's the one who's really in charge, you're just building up a lot of karma and not really helping yourself or anybody else. ~ George Harrison, #NFDB
453:Karma means that through your thoughts and feelings and actions, you are generating a state of mind. That state of mind has a view. That view will cause things to happen to you or not happen to you. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
454:This supreme lesson of karma (and also of Western psychology, by the way)-take care of the problems now, or else you'll just have to suffer again later when you screw everything up the next time. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
455:Did you really believe I was Toby? Puh-lease. I would have killed myself too. I mean, honestly - ew. He totally had it coming. Karma's a bitch, and so am I - just ask Aria, Emily, Hanna, and Spencer.... ~ Sara Shepard, #NFDB
456:I have written and spoken my thoughts over many years. Now I'm on new ground and spirit. I want to bring these together. Things like karma yoga, bhakti yoga, conscious dying, conscious aging. Consciousness. ~ Ram Dass, #NFDB
457:It's always said that when one is a soldier who dies in battle, you go to a very high world. There's a great and good karma for the soldier who dies in battle because it's an extended selfless giving. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
458:I understand the need to keep a handle on things, to exude the image you desperately want people to see because the real one is scary and unpredictable and might take over if you give it a chance. “She’s ~ Karma Brown, #NFDB
459:The intellectual approach to Ganesha is called gyan yoga. The emotional approach to Ganesha is called bhakti yoga. And a mechanical, ritualistic, approach to Ganesha is called karma yoga. Different ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
460:(About The Last Lecture) It's not about how to achieve your dreams. It's about how to lead your life. If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself. The dreams will come to you. ~ Randy Pausch, #NFDB
461:When we stop asking the question “Whose fault is it?” and start asking the question “How can I work with this now?” then we are truly stepping onto the path of taking responsibility for our karma. When ~ Ethan Nichtern, #NFDB
462:Buddhists understand that today and all other days have turned out the way they have because of karma. The interconnection of one moment with another moment, of one action with another action, is karma. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
463:The yogi is greater than body-disciplining ascetics, greater even than the followers of the path of wisdom (jnana yoga), or of the path of action (karma yoga); be thou, O disciple Arjuna, a yogi! ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
464:When you do things in a selfish way, let alone a destructive way, then you are bound by that karma. Your state of mind will go down. You will find yourself becoming depressed, nervous, anxious and upset. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
465:302. The mediaeval ascetics hated women and thought they were created by God for the temptation of monks. One may be allowed to think more nobly both of God and of woman.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma,#NFDB
466:There are the samskaras, the tendencies from your other lifetimes, ways of seeing, habits that are so strong, they affect you now. They are the operative situations in your life that are created by karma. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
467:He believed fully that whatever suffering we experience is due to our own doing, and not due to a divine hand. Therefore, the pacification of suffering is also in our own hands. This was his idea of karma. ~ Traleg Kyabgon, #NFDB
468:noción del karma implica que el cielo y el infierno sólo se hallan aquí, en la tierra, donde tenemos capacidad para crearlos, ya que generamos el bien o el mal dependiendo de nuestro destino y nuestro carácter. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
469:Chance, that vague shadow of an infinite possibility, must be banished from the dictionary of our perceptions; for of chance we can make nothing, because it is nothing. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Karma, #NFDB
470:In the Bhagavad Gita, one of the oldest and most beautiful spiritual teachings in existence, nonattachment to the fruit of your action is called Karma Yoga. It is described as the path of “consecrated action. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
471:Karma is not something complicated or philosophical. Karma means watching your body, watching your mouth, and watching your mind. Trying to keep these three doors as pure as possible is the practice of karma. ~ Thubten Yeshe, #NFDB
472:All she knew was that she’d inflicted pain on someone she cared about, and that always cost you something, even if you were just doing your job. It left you feeling dirty and mean, exposed to the laws of karma. ~ Tom Perrotta, #NFDB
473:Karma keeps good and evil in balance. Karma is a divine law. When the law is violated, however innocently, it can’t be undone. One snapped thread alters the whole design; one misdeed alters a person’s destiny. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
474:The consequences of karma are definite: Negative actions always bring about suffering, and positive actions always bring happiness. If you do good, you will have happiness; if you do bad, you yourself suffer. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
475:According to most writers, groups of souls tend to reincarnate together again and again, working out their karma (debts owed to others and to the self, lessons to be learned) over the span of many lifetimes. In ~ Brian L Weiss, #NFDB
476:I try to hold on to the things I believe to be good and true. Good things happen to good people. Karma is real. There is a larger, better plan for us all if we stay positive, keep pushing and get out of our own way. ~ Rob Lowe, #NFDB
477:Jnana, bhakti, yoga and karma - these are the four paths which lead to spiritual freedom. One must follow the path for which one is best suited. But in this age, special stress should be laid on karma yoga. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
478:The law that deprives us of the memory of past lives is a law of the cosmic Wisdom and serves, not disserves its evolutionary purpose. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality, #NFDB
479:266. There are three forms in which the command may come, the will and faith in thy nature, thy ideal on which heart and brain are agreed and the voice of Himself or His angels.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma,#NFDB
480:The scriptures say that we have our ‘karma’ and our sin and that is why we are here, but this is for the ignorant masses. One who has realized the self-knowledge ‘I am’ for him these stories are of no use. ~ Nisargadatta Maharaj, #NFDB
481:Too often in the west we fail to realize that even in eastern disciplines the spiritual life is not meant as an escape from the worldly life. There is karma to be fulfilled on earth, within the dharma of necessity. ~ James Hillman, #NFDB
482:Karma is the seed that ripens into suffering. But karmic actions are triggered by our delusions, which themselves can be broken down into our afflictive emotions and the fundamental confusion that is the root cause. ~ Tashi Tsering, #NFDB
483:Many spiritual teachers have done this. They have disbanded their whole community because everyone got angry. The karma, at a certain point, has to go back to the person; it's intensified and hurts them spiritually. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
484:I don’t worry about the future,” Lou said. “The Japanese have the word ‘karma.’ It means—if it’s going to happen, there’s nothing I can do to stop it. I know my time is limited. And so what? I’ve had a good shot at it. ~ Atul Gawande, #NFDB
485:There is no dharma greater than a word uttered by a man of conscience; there is no karma greater than a man listening to himself! Since an intention precedes action, it should be the reference point for any action. ~ Thiruman Archunan, #NFDB
486:The universal law of karma ... is that of action and reaction, cause and effect, sowing and reaping. In the course of natural righteousness, man, by his thoughts and actions, becomes the arbiter of his destiny. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
487:Action arising out of suffering is contaminated with suffering and causes further suffering, and that is karma. Action that arises out of a state of "acceptance" is totally free of karma. And there is a vast difference. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
488:With free will, we can modify, to a certain extent the chain of karma that has been set in motion by the karma of the previous moment. That is what free will really is, the ability to alter the sequence of karmic fate. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
489:The high-priests and priestesses of Atlantis had discovered many of the deepest secrets of the universe. They had come to understand all about reincarnation, karma, and the innermost workings of the Enlightenment Cycle. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
490:Just as we cast off worn clothes and wear new ones, when the time arrives, the soul casts off the body and finds a new one to work out its karma. Therefore the wise grieve neither for the living nor the dead. ~ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, #NFDB
491:No event is spontaneous; it is the result of many past events. This is karma. The events in your life are the result of your past deeds, performed in this lifetime or the ones before. You alone are responsible for it. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
492:Retribution is tricky. . . . The insult isn't usually worth the risk of punishment. And eventually one learns that karma has a surprising way of taking care of these situations. All you have to do is sit back and watch. ~ Candace Bushnell, #NFDB
493:For example, if a person once had money but has none now, it’s no use going shopping. Similarly, although we may have accumulated virtuous karma previously, it cannot benefit us if we have no virtuous karma in the present. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
494:Just as we cast off worn clothes and wear new ones, when the time arrives, the soul casts off the body and finds a new one to work out its karma. Therefore the wise grieve neither for the living nor the dead. I ~ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, #NFDB
495:On days where I feel the karma is in balance I'm not afraid of death. And when I feel it's weighing heavily on the negative side, then I get very scared and just think about eternal damnation and how unpleasant that would be. ~ Will Oldham, #NFDB
496:Every action generates a force of energy that returns to us in like kind... what we sow is what we reap. And when we choose actions that bring happiness and success to others, the fruit of our karma is happiness and success. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
497:I think I used to be like those houses - once new and fresh and holding great promise - but was now much more like the current versions. Run-down and imperfect but somehow still functioning if not sagging a little to the left. ~ Karma Brown, #NFDB
498:On the cross Jesus paid our debt in full. There is no karma to face—Christ's work is sufficient. Christians have this message of joy and hope for our Hindu friends, who would agree: there's absolutely nothing funny about karma. ~ Paul Copan, #NFDB
499:She was starting to think there might be such a thing as karma - that repetition - maybe you lived through the same thing over and over until you stopped caring. Maybe eventually it got less intense, until it was just nothing. ~ Janet Fitch, #NFDB
500:Some would say karma, but Javier never much believed in that. What he did believe in was that sooner or later, everyone will be at the same level, everything will even out. It was just luck if you were alive to see it happen. ~ Karina Halle, #NFDB
501:He turned and watched her go, seeing Jack standing in the doorway, glowering. Oh, he’d pissed off the big man. Too fucking bad, he thought. Maybe everyone would have been better off if he hadn’t made it. He brought bad karma. He ~ Robyn Carr, #NFDB
502:Rest in natural great peace, this exhausted mind,
Beaten helpless by karma and neurotic thoughts,
Like the relentless fury of the pounding waves
In the infinite ocean of samsara.
Rest in natural great peace. ~ Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche,#NFDB
503:Luck isn’t about fate, or worth, or karma, or tiny green Irish men. Luck is about foresight paired with strategic action. Luck is about planning. Luck is about deliberately putting yourself in the right spot at the right time. ~ Mike Michalowicz, #NFDB
504:The burden of Karma is heavy. All alike have heavy debts to pay. Yet none, so the Wisdom teaches, is ever faced with more than he can bear. Whether or not we can grin, we must bear it, and it is folly to attempt to run away. ~ Christmas Humphreys, #NFDB
505:Karma becomes most relevant if we simply examine it as a psychology of habit. Karma is about beginning to see the general script we act from, the strategies we employ when confronted with familiar obstacles along our commute. This ~ Ethan Nichtern, #NFDB
506:Why read on? Why pick up their book from the far wall where it has been thrown away in disgust and pain, and read on? Why submit to such cruelty, such bad karma, such bad plotting? The reason is simple: these things happened. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson, #NFDB
507:Mooner was walking around laying his hands on the cars, divining karma. "this is it", he said, standing by a small khaki-colored jeep."this car has protective qualities" You mean like a guardian angel?" I mean, like, it has seatbelts ~ Janet Evanovich, #NFDB
508:Everyone has their set of problems and I'm certainly not going to sensationalize mine or try to evoke pity or sympathy out of people because I don't think they warrant that sort of thing. That's my private karma that I have to work out. ~ Chrissie Hynde, #NFDB
509:Karma can be compared to a seed. Before the rains, the whole land is barren. There would be nothing. It rains; suddenly all kinds of vegetation will sprout up. The seeds are already there; they’re just waiting for the right kind of atmosphere. ~ Sadhguru, #NFDB
510:Life was so fucking unfair at times. She had the thing I wanted more than anything—even worse, she got it by accident when I had been trying for years. And I had what she wanted: infertility, the perfect excuse to justify a child-free life. ~ Karma Brown, #NFDB
511:Those who believe in karma do not blame. They do not judge. They accept that humans live in a sea of consequences, over which there is limited control. So they accept every moment as it is supposed to be. They act without expectation. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
512:How long the path may be depends for any man on where he stands today and his speed of travel. These are his past and present choosing, but the beginning of the way is here and now, and karma and rebirth are the means of treading it. ~ Christmas Humphreys, #NFDB
513:Karma brings us ever back to rebirth, binds us to the wheel of births and deaths. Good Karma drags us back as relentlessly as bad, and the chain which is wrought out of our virtues holds as firmly and as closely as that forged from our vices. ~ Annie Besant, #NFDB
514:By approaching everything with a sense of suspicion and struggle, we like to think we're in control of things. But in truth our past karma is simply playing itself out. Instead of struggling with it, however, we can choose to dance. ~ Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, #NFDB
515:Mooner was walking around laying his hands on the cars, divining karma. "this is it", he said, standing by a small khaki-colored jeep."this car has protective qualities"
You mean like a guardian angel?"
I mean, like, it has seatbelts ~ Janet Evanovich,#NFDB
516:We are the makers of our own lives. There is no such thing as fate. Our lives are the result of our previous actions, our karma, and it naturally flows that, having been ourselves the makers of our karma, we must also be able to unmake it. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
517:Had I been wrong about Ryan? Did he beat Noah up and leave him there for me to suck the remaining breath from his unconscious body? Were we like some anti-superhero duo, working together to spread our evil stepsibling karma across the planet? ~ Melissa Francis, #NFDB
518:She waved good-bye and hurried down the street towards her family's house, thinking again that some nights had good karma and some nights were cursed, and for a few moments, tonight had seemed like the former, but it had ended up the latter. ~ Elin Hilderbrand, #NFDB
519:One person’s karma becomes two people’s karma through sexual relations, which can be good or bad. That is why you must have sexual relations with only one partner so that you do not load yourself with the karma and pollution of many others. ~ Torkom Saraydarian, #NFDB
520:to do anything with attachment. With desire . . . with anger..greed..lust . . . fear.. is only creating more karma, which is keeping you in the game . . . on the wheel of birth and death once you see through that. . . Desires can’t help but fall away ~ Ram Dass, #NFDB
521:From the standpoint of karma, being present is all about trust—trusting vulnerability. Being vulnerable doesn’t always feel like seeing an inspiring painting or taking a walk in nature. It is often a much more painful and awkward experience, the ~ Ethan Nichtern, #NFDB
522:So when we wake from the ignorance of this world, the dream of existence, all of the experiences that we have ever had fall away. The ideas of life and death, of rebirth, of reincarnation, karma, God, truth, knowledge - all these things fall away. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
523:When we spend lifetimes numbing out against now, even the gentle stillness of the present moment becomes a threat. Even slowing down long enough to look at your own heartmind becomes an act of revolution against the sheer pace of our social karma. ~ Ethan Nichtern, #NFDB
524:Karma, memory, and desire are just the software of the soul. It's conditioning that the soul undergoes in order to create experience. And it's a cycle. In most people, the cycle is a conditioned response. They do the same things over and over again. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
525:I’ve found I still serve a purpose. I remind people to pray, to calculate the odds, to thank the fates, the gods, good karma, whatever it was that made this happen to me and not them. I’m in the worst sort of club. The one no one else wants to be in. ~ Tracy Guzeman, #NFDB
526:Plantie is a very strong Protestant, that is to say, he's against all churches, especially the Protestant: and he thinks a lot of Buddha, Karma and Confucius. He is also a bit of an anarchist and three or four years ago he took up Einstein and vitamins. ~ Joyce Cary, #NFDB
527:359. Men burrow after little details of knowledge and group them into bounded and ephemeral thought systems; meanwhile all infinite wisdom laughs above their heads and shakes wide the glory of her iridescent pinions.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma,#NFDB
528:Enron's president, Ken Lay, passed away last week. So, I guess even God lost money on that Enron deal. I believe the official cause of death was listed as "karma." The family asked in lieu of flowers, please send some elderly retiree's entire life savings. ~ Jay Leno, #NFDB
529:358. Men hunt after petty successes and trivial masteries from which they fall back into exhaustion and weakness; meanwhile all the infinite force of God in the universe waits vainly to place itself at their disposal.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma,#NFDB
530:Karma comes after everyone eventually. You can't get away with screwing people over your whole life, I don't care who you are. What goes around comes around. That's how it works. Sooner or later the universe will serve you the revenge that you deserve. ~ Jessica Brody, #NFDB
531:Assume that karma is real: what you give, you get back. If you treat people well, you’ll be treated well. If you spread happiness, you’ll reap happiness. If you are generous, you’ll be rewarded with generosity. Practice loving, compassion, and extraversion. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
532:On Sofia Coppola's 16th birthday, way back in 1987, I stole a lip gloss from her Sistine Chapel of a bedroom. Years later, I left a Chanel lip gloss in the reception of the Mercer Hotel for her. You know why? I believe that you've got to fix your karma. ~ Courtney Love, #NFDB
533:Do you see, being here with me, or during the Isha Yoga programs, there have been many moments of awareness? This is the beginning of freedom. Your business is just to establish that, not to bother about your karma. Let the karmas go wherever they want to go. ~ Sadhguru, #NFDB
534:O Karma não é um castigo,mas antes uma oportunidade de crescimento. Mesmo que as experiências sejam difíceis e dolorosas, elas não são uma retribuição. São apenas a via para aprender a lição que precisamos de aprender. Meio de aprendizagem e crescimento. ~ Brian L Weiss, #NFDB
535:I may discuss contemporary cinema, how to shop at a mall without losing energy, how to use the power of mind to increase career and academic success, the Zen of sports, reincarnation, karma, sex, the experience of "suchness" or a new book by Stephen King. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
536:You believe in God?" demanded Billy Karma.
"I believe in thirty-seven separate and distinct gods," answered Argyle proudly. "That puts me thirty-six ahead of you."
"It makes you a pagan."
"It makes you a man of limited vision," said Argyle. ~ Mike Resnick,#NFDB
537:Even he with the worst of karma who ceaselessly meditates on Me quickly loses the effects of his past bad actions. Becoming a high-souled being, he soon attains perennial peace. Know this for certain: the devotee who puts his trust in Me never perishes! ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
538:It is the inner Person that survives death, even as it pre-exists before birth; for this constant survival is a rendering of the eternity of our timeless spirit into the terms of Time. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality, #NFDB
539:The law of karma states simply that every event is both a cause and an effect. Every act has consequences of a similar kind, which in turn have further consequences and so on; and every act, every karma, is also the consequence of some previous karma. ~ Krishna Dwaipayana Vyasa, #NFDB
540:Those who believe in karma do not blame. They do not judge. They accept that humans live in a sea of consequences, over which there is limited control. So they accept every moment as it is supposed to be. They act without expectation. This is nishkama karma. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
541:Cosmic existence is not a vast administrative system of universal justice with a cosmic Law of recompense and retribution as its machinery or a divine Legislator and Judge at its centre. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality, #NFDB
542:Since karma is meeting self, we acquire karma as we meet self in our many attitudes and emotions; when we serve in loving kindness and patience or hold resentful malicious thoughts What we do to our fellow man we do to our Maker our karma or problem is within self. ~ Edgar Cayce, #NFDB
543:The sex-vampire eats up the other’s vital and gives nothing or very little. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV: Interactions with Others and the Practice of Yoga
Sec-Vampire
In myself is the seed of all my creation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Karma,#NFDB
544:I don’t put much stock in luck. I don’t really believe what goes around comes around, or that everything balances out in the end. But if I’ve earned any karma at all — it’s you,” he says simply. “You’re my karma, sunshine. And I’m pretty sure you were made for me. ~ Julie Johnson, #NFDB
545:I live my life through the prism of capitalism and physiological limits and eventualities. In all of that, there is no spirituality required. No God and karma is needed for the numbers. I live my life by the numbers. Not only am I an American, I am an Americanist. ~ Henry Rollins, #NFDB
546:Claiming to love self, but willingly default to cheating at the first sign of trouble is nothing short of playing yourself. Your ego may feel avenged - temporarily - but your heart and soul, the true self, will suffer the long term affects of karma's justifiable sting. ~ T F Hodge, #NFDB
547:My old chief taught me three lessons: Never believe anything you hear and only half of what you see. Never go into debt because you will never get out. And never pat yourself on the back because karma will bite you in the ass.
Karma, I think, meet ass. ~ David Macinnis Gill,#NFDB
548:Action is called karma. And that's your continuation. When this body disintegrates, you continue on with your actions. It's like the cloud in the sky. When the cloud is no longer in the sky, it hasn't died. The cloud is continued in other forms like rain or snow or ice. ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
549:The law of karma states simply that every event is both a cause and an effect. Every act has consequences of a similar kind, which in turn have further consequences and so on; and every act, every karma, is also the consequence of some previous karma. This ~ Krishna Dwaipayana Vyasa, #NFDB
550:You can’t get there alone. People have to help you and I do believe in karma. I believe in paybacks. You get people to help you by telling the truth. Being earnest. I’ll take an earnest person over a hip person any day, because hip is short term. Earnest is long term. ~ Randy Pausch, #NFDB
551:Karma waits on the doorstep,” meaning that a person may try to walk away from past actions, but like a dog sleeping by the door until its master returns, Karma can be endlessly patient. Eventually the universe will insist on redressing the balance of wrong with right. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
552:But we cannot blame anyone for our misfortunes, as all calamities are an outcome of our past deeds. We have to take responsibility for all the good that happens to us and all the bad. We are the cause, and we have to face the consequences. This is the law of karma. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
553:I feel very strongly that I am under the influence of questions which were left incomplete and unanswered by my parents and grandparents & more distant ancestors. It often seems as if there were an impersonal karma within a family, which is passed on from parents to children ~ Jung, #NFDB
554:The "Bhagavad Gita" is actually a very good text for yoga - the yoga of love, the yoga of action or karma, the yoga of understanding of intellect, and the yoga of reflection and meditation. I think it's a very important map for understanding the nature of consciousness. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
555:It's already bad. I'm honestly not sure how much worse it's going to get." Notice that I didn't say couldn't get worse. It can always get worse. I know this. And thus I refuse to tempt fate. Superstitious - probably. But magic exists. So does karma, and karma can be a bitch. ~ Cat Adams, #NFDB
556:Problems or successes, they all are the results of our own actions. Karma. The philosophy of action is that no one else is the giver of peace or happiness. One's own karma, one's own actions are responsible to come to bring either happiness or success or whatever. ~ Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, #NFDB
557:That's the beauty of Karma. You can piss it off so it throws a truckload of crap back at you, but you can fight it. You can tell it to piss off back to wherever it came from and take matters into your own hands, 'cause what's the use in your life if you ain't got a say in it? ~ Emma Hart, #NFDB
558:You don't understand. I only prostitute the part of the body that isn't important, and nobody suffers except my karma a little bit. I don't do big harm. You prostitute your mind. Mind is seat of Buddha. What you do is very very bad. You should not use your mind in that way ~ John Burdett, #NFDB
559:Furthermore, because your spiritual teachers, parents, and bodhisattvas are objects of special significance—the fruitional effects are inconceivably [grave] if you accumulate negative karma in relation to them—single them out [for special focus] and engage in the training. ~ Thupten Jinpa, #NFDB
560:Since I retired to Cold Mountain I've lived by eating mountain fruits What is there to worry about? Life passes according to karma The months pass like a flowing stream Days and nights like sparks from flint Heaven and earth endlessly change While I sit happily among these cliffs ~ Hanshan, #NFDB
561:True teachers who do not deceive on the supreme path, are like great ships that rescue beings from the ocean of existence. They are like rain of nectar that covers the flames of karma and defilements. And they are like the sun and moon that dispels the darkness of ignorance. ~ Jigme Lingpa, #NFDB
562:What drives my life is not the desire to get along with other people or make friends so much as a moral obligation to give back as much as—no, more than—I take. That’s karma. It’s really not so far from the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Some ~ Ed Viesturs, #NFDB
563:You are only as strong as your weakest link. And I was the weak link, but not because of what I could or couldn't remember - because I had been pushing everyone away, unwilling to accept the help I desperately needed and insisting the problem was mine (and mine alone) to solve. ~ Karma Brown, #NFDB
564:280. If thy heart is troubled within thee, if for long seasons thou makest no progress, if thy strength faint and repine, remember always the eternal word of our Lover and Master, 'I will free thee from all sin and evil; do not grieve.'
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma, [T1],#NFDB
565:I believe in fate. Sometimes that means an old bearded guy sitting on a cloud and pulling the strings; sometimes it means random atoms swirling through a cheerless universe; sometimes it means everything being preordained thanks to your karma credit from your previous lives. ~ Kyle MacLachlan, #NFDB
566:In the karmic worldview, you are queer because of karma, and it may be a boon or curse. In the one-life worldview, you are queer because you choose to be so, to express your individuality or to defy authority (Greek mythology) or God/Devil wills it so (biblical mythology). ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
567:Karma Repair Kit Items 1-4.
1.Get enough food to eat,
and eat it.
2.Find a place to sleep where it is quiet,
and sleep there.
3.Reduce intellectual and emotional noise
until you arrive at the silence of yourself,
and listen to it.
4. ~ Richard Brautigan,#NFDB
568:Well madam, I will tell you one thing. You must listen. You are back in India for a good shaking. Here you will dance with death and be reborn. You will be a chameleon of karma and there are many guides to show you the way. You will search India's land of gods and find faith ~ Sarah Macdonald, #NFDB
569:How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours. Maxim for life: You get treated in life the way you teach people to treat you. If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
570:In India, they use the word ‘karma,’ for lack of any better term. But it’s a concept that’s rarely given a proper explanation. It isn’t what you did in the past that will affect the present. It’s what you do in the present that will redeem the past and thereby change the future. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
571:I've got to love the souls of people. Because I can't love every incarnation. I have to identify with my own soul. And then I can have such compassion for that soul who has an incarnation like George Bush. I feel compassion. That's karma of the here. Compassion and love, that's all. ~ Ram Dass, #NFDB
572:no decision is right or wrong. Decisions can be beneficial or harmful, in the short-term or long-term, to oneself or to others. Essentially, every decision has a consequence, no matter which rule is upheld and which one is ignored. This law of consequence is known as karma. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
573:Still others commit all sorts of evil deeds, claiming karma doesn't exist. They erroneously maintain that since everything is empty, committing evil isn't wrong. Such persons fall into a hell of endless darkness with no hope of release. Those who are wise hold no such conception. ~ Bodhidharma, #NFDB
574:without ego-involvement and without getting entangled in whether things work out the way we want; only then will we not fall into the terrible net of karma. We cannot hope to escape karma by refraining from our duties: even to survive in the world, we must act. True, ~ Krishna Dwaipayana Vyasa, #NFDB
575:LIFE IS CRAZY, and sometimes it totally veers off course. Seriously, sometimes it flows by nice and smooth and then wham! you get bitch-slapped out of nowhere by events and coincidences that seem nigh unbelievable. Is this what the poets call fate or destiny or karma? Maybe. ~ Ilsa Madden Mills, #NFDB
576:I had never been able to believe that God would give us poor frail humans only one chance at making it -- that we would be assigned to some kind of hell because we failed during one experience of mortal life. ... So the concepts of karma and reincarnation made logical sense to me. ~ Jane Goodall, #NFDB
577:Yes, karma propels us into all kinds of unexpected situations,” His Holiness said. “This is another reason we should behave with love and compassion toward all living beings. We never know in what circumstances we will meet up with them again. Sometimes even in this same lifetime. ~ David Michie, #NFDB
578:Karma once done is never wasted in a crore of kalpas and one must enjoy or suffer the fruit of every deed. Evil karma gets one to hell, karma that is only good, to heaven. Mixed karma results in a human birth and the birth is good or evil according to the proportion of the mixture. ~ Ramesh Menon, #NFDB
579:I suppose it was karma that Substance would then turn out to be our biggest-selling album ever; we gave away our biggest-selling record to the record company at a reduced cost – for no reason other than they couldn’t pay us for the other ones at the full rate because of bad management. ~ Peter Hook, #NFDB
580:Karma is a Sanskrit word meaning “action.” It denotes an active force, the inference being that the outcome of future events can be influenced by our actions. To suppose that karma is some sort of independent energy which predestines the course of our whole life is simply incorrect. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
581:Thus, no decision is right or wrong. Decisions can be beneficial or harmful, in the short-term or long-term, to oneself or to others. Essentially, every decision has a consequence, no matter which rule is upheld and which one is ignored. This law of consequence is known as karma. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
582:In the beginning all souls were as a unity to the God-Force. As self added or subtracted that which was in keeping with God's purpose, ye added or subtracted from the blessings ye might be conscious of in materiality. Thus karma is builded. And the law is perfect - what ye sow, ye reap. ~ Edgar Cayce, #NFDB
583:Os antigos Gregos costumavam dizer que a Sorte era uma mulher muito bonita de cabelo encaracolado que caminhava na rua entre as pessoas. Talvez o seu nome fosse Karma. É uma amante inconstante, uma mulher prudente, uma rameira e uma adepta do Manchester United. Costumava ser minha. ~ Michael Robotham, #NFDB
584:Death will be the direct result of merits and demerits earned by living creatures in their lifetime. You will merely oversee the transition. The burden of death shall be borne by those who live.’ Thus all creatures die not because of external factors but because of their own karma. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
585:What we have done, the result of that comes to us whenever it comes, either today, tomorrow, hundred years later, hundred lives later, whatever, whatever. And so, it's our own karma. That is why that philosophy in every religion: Killing is sin. Killing is sin in every religion. ~ Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, #NFDB
586:This isn’t about karma. I’m not trying to rack up I’m-a-Good-Person points.” You shouldn’t donate to charity, help the elderly cross the street, or rescue puppies in the hopes you’ll be repaid later. I may not be able to cure cancer or end world hunger, but small kindnesses go a long way. ~ Adam Silvera, #NFDB
587:I hate you. One day, you will suffer as your victims suffer. One day, Karma will come and bite your ass.” I had no idea if my promise would come true, but I’d make it a life’s mission to bring the wrath of the law on their heads and save innocent women. I hated them. I hated everything. ~ Pepper Winters, #NFDB
588:You and I have been physically given two hands and two legs and half-decent brains. Some people have not been born like that for a reason. The karma is working from another lifetime. I have nothing to hide about that. It is not only people with disabilities. What you sow, you have to reap. ~ Glenn Hoddle, #NFDB
589:Those who believe in the principles of Karma would continue to be law-abiding in every situation, as they know that they can’t escape the laws of Karma. They avoid evil deeds because even if they can avoid punishment in this life—they are sure to suffer for their evil acts in future lives. ~ Awdhesh Singh, #NFDB
590:Kama (Desire)
Delight and laughter walking hand in hand
Go with Me, and I play with grief and pain. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems: Kama
Kama (Desire)
All energies put into activity—thought, speech, feeling, act—go to constitute Karma. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, Karma and Heredity,#NFDB
591:Things don't just happen in this world of arising and passing away. We don't live in some kind of crazy, accidental universe. Things happen according to certain laws, laws of nature. Laws such as the law of karma, which teaches us that as a certain seed gets planted, so will that fruit be. ~ Sharon Salzberg, #NFDB
592:368. The Vedanta is God's lamp to lead thee out of this night of bondage and egoism; but when the light of Veda has dawned in thy soul, then even that divine lamp thou needest not, for now thou canst walk freely and surely in a high and eternal sunlight.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma, [T8],#NFDB
593:I like extreme athletics, extreme meditation and extremely beautiful women. Perhaps I'm an extreme person, or it's simply my Karma. But I must tell you, as if you hadn't read about me in a newspaper or seen me on a magazine format television show, there are extreme risks involved with all three. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
594:We have to know what is Buddhadharma and what is not Buddhadharma. It needn't go on forever. You don't have to spend 18 years at it. But still, a basic and uncompromised understanding of Buddhist principles is important. Very basic: the three signs of being, the four noble rruths, karma, and so on. ~ Tenzin Palmo, #NFDB
595:Belief in karma ought to make the life pure, strong, serene and glad. Only our own deeds can hinder us; only our own will can fetter us. Once let men recognize this truth, and the hour of their liberation has struck. Nature cannot enslave the soul that by wisdom has gained power and uses both in love. ~ Annie Besant, #NFDB
596:I have an appearance on a new TV show called 'Bar Karma' on Current TV. I had the most fun ever making this episode. I play someone with a multiple personality, and I think my fans will be surprised and get a real giggle out of it. It's a new model for TV in that it is interactive with the community. ~ Genie Francis, #NFDB
597:I became part of the air that surrounded Sui, and breathed her incomprehensible sadness. I think that part of those feelings live within my soul. Burdened by bad karma, and a soul that beckoned such unfortunate fate, Sui used all the resources she had to make her way through love. I witnessed that. ~ Banana Yoshimoto, #NFDB
598:If you want to transform your karma to a more desirable experience, look for the seed of opportunity within every adversity, and tie that seed of opportunity to your dharma, or purpose in life. This will enable you to convert the adversity into a benefit, and transform the karma into a new expression. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
599:The development of personal awareness is the only thing the human person can control, and once we understand that, a lot of the appendages fall away, and we look at purpose and karma and not get besotted by the karmas of other people because we carry them from life to life and year to year and day to day. ~ Maya Tiwari, #NFDB
600:A buddha is someone who finds freedom in good fortune and bad. Such is his power that karma can't hold him. No matter what kind of karma, a buddha transforms it. Heaven and hell are nothing to him. But the awareness of a mortal is dim compared to that of a buddha, who penetrates everything, inside and out. ~ Bodhidharma, #NFDB
601:I feel like karma is something that's real. I try and be the best possible person I can be, but not only that I try to help as many people as possible and influence others in a positive manner. And that's all stuff brought on by MMA because I want to be successful so want to be the best possible person. ~ Danny Castillo, #NFDB
602:Material nature itself is constituted by three qualities: the mode of goodness, the mode of passion and the mode of ignorance. Above these modes there is eternal time, and by a combination of these modes of nature and under the control and purview of eternal time there are activities, which are called karma. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
603:Karma is often wrongly confused with the notion of a fixed destiny. It is more like an accumulation of tendencies that can lock us into particular behavior patterns, which themselves result in further accumulations of tendencies of a similar nature... But is is not necessary to be a prisoner of old karma. ~ Jon Kabat Zinn, #NFDB
604:247. Men in the world have two lights, duty and principle; but he who has passed over to God, has done with both and replaced them by God's will. If men abuse thee for this, care not, O divine instrument, but go on thy way like the wind or the sun fostering and destroying.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma,#NFDB
605:Had they known the difficulties that were to befall them, they might not have been so rash in falling in love. But perhaps there was no way of avoiding it. Fate, karma [...] call it what you like, it was surely meant to happen. After all, in all the vastness of the Universe they had been thrown together. ~ Isabel Greenberg, #NFDB
606:When we pay attention to life, it is easy to recognize that every action has a consequence: when we cling, we suffer; when we act selfishly or violently, we cause suffering for ourselves or others. This is the teaching of karma: positive actions have positive outcomes; negative actions have negative outcomes. ~ Noah Levine, #NFDB
607:As no cause remains without its due effect from greatest to least, from a cosmic disturbance down to the movement of your hand, and as like produces like, Karma is that unseen and unknown law which adjusts wisely, intelligently, and equitably each effect to its cause, tracing the latter back to its producer. ~ H P Blavatsky, #NFDB
608:When we cross the gates of death, our karma is all we take with us. Everything else that we enjoyed in this life we leave behind... Our karma is the only thing that will count in determining our rebirth, for our next life is nothing but the effects of our karmic tendencies that materialize in our perception. ~ Tulku Thondup, #NFDB
609:Just as an age was ready to receive the Copernican theory of the universe, so is our own age ready for the ideas of reincarnation and karma to be brought into the general consciousness of humanity. And what is destined to happen in the course of evolution will happen no matter what powers rise up against it. ~ Rudolf Steiner, #NFDB
610:It is your karma to fight evil. It doesn’t matter if the people that evil is being committed against don’t fight back. It doesn’t matter if the entire world chooses to look the other way. Always remember this. You don’t live with the consequences of other people’s karma. You live with the consequences of your own. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
611:So today’s talk was about achieving childhood dreams,” I said. “But did you figure out the head fake?” I paused. The room was quiet. “It’s not about how to achieve your dreams. It’s about how to lead your life. If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself. The dreams will come to you. ~ Randy Pausch, #NFDB
612:The distinguishing feature of karma yoga is that even though you may offer the fruits of your work to the benefit of others, you honestly do not have any expectations whatsoever that you will gain anything from that offering. In this way work itself is important to you, and eventually the work becomes art. In ~ Richard Freeman, #NFDB
613:Karma is experience, and experience creates memory, and memory creates imagination and desire, and desire creates karma again. If I buy a cup of coffee, that's karma. I now have that memory that might give me the potential desire for having cappuccino, and I walk into Starbucks, and there's karma all over again. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
614:It is your karma to fight evil. It doesn't matter if the people that evil is being committed against don't fight back. It doesn't matter if the entire world chooses to look the other way. Always remember this. You don't live with the consequences of other people's karma. You live with the consequences of your own ~ Amish Tripathi, #NFDB
615:Heir to your own karma doesn't mean 'You get what you deserve.' I think it means 'You get what you get.' Bad things happen to good people. My happiness depending on my action means, to me, that it depends on my action of choosing compassion--for myself as well as for everyone else--rather than contention. [p.61] ~ Sylvia Boorstein, #NFDB
616:Potent Quotes “Whatever you do, or eat, or give, or offer in adoration, let it be an offering to me; and whatever you suffer, suffer it for me. Thus you shall be free from the bonds of Karma which yield fruits that are evil and good; and with your soul one in renunciation you shall be free and come to me.”—Bhagavad Gita ~ Ram Dass, #NFDB
617:This means that when facing unavoidable and irreducible suffering, secular people must smuggle in resources from other views of life, having recourse to ideas of karma, or Buddhism, or Greek Stoicism, or Christianity, even though their beliefs about the nature of the universe do not line up with those resources. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
618:A temptation is the universe's gracious way of allowing a soul to evolve without creating negative karma. In other words, a temptation is like a magnet that draws to awareness, negativity, that would otherwise create negative karma if it remained unconscious. A temptation is a dress rehearsal for a negative karmic act. ~ Gary Zukav, #NFDB
619:Every act of charity, every thought of sympathy, every action of help, every good deed, is taking so much of self-importance away from our little selves and making us think of ourselves as the lowest and the least, and, therefore, it is all good. Here we find that Jnâna, Bhakti, and Karma - all come to one point. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
620:I was very rich now, a super myriad trillionaire in Samapatti transcendental graces, because of good humble karma, maybe because I had pitied the dog and forgiven men. But I knew now that I was a bliss heir, and that the final sin, the worst, is righteousness. So I would shut up and just hit the road and go see Japhy. ~ Jack Kerouac, #NFDB
621:But, nevertheless, if there is even the slightest recognition, liberation is easy. Should you ask why this is so-it is because once the awesome, terrifying and fearful appearances arise, the awareness does not have the luxury of distraction. The awareness is one-pointedly concentrated.
~ Karma-glin-pa, The Tibetan Book of the Dead,#NFDB
622:If you and I spend our seasons together we would find that our dreams and fantasies of happily-ever-after-love have holes in them through which the wind of karma blows: our yellow flag shakes. And I would like you to look ahead and see what I know: the wind will replace our pretty ideas with something brighter: life. ~ Waylon H Lewis, #NFDB
623:362. Limit not sacrifice to the giving up of earthly goods or the denial of some desires and yearnings, but let every thought and every work and every enjoyment be an offering to God within thee. Let thy steps walk in thy Lord, let thy sleep and waking be a sacrifice to Krishna.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma, [T1],#NFDB
624:Karma is not fate, for man acts with free will, creating his own destiny. The Vedas tell us, if we sow goodness, we will reap goodness; if we sow evil, we will reap evil. Karma refers to the totality of our actions and their concomitant reactions in this and previous lives, all of which determines our future. ~ Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, #NFDB
625:To encounter such a being is considered the ultimate karmic blessing in the sense that your life will be so configured that every single variant problematic karma will surface, which means you have the opportunity of passing through them all correctly, going over the ocean of the samsara and reaching nirvana yourself. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
626:We must act in a selfless spirit, Krishna says, without ego-involvement and without getting entangled in whether things work out the way we want; only then will we not fall into the terrible net of karma. We cannot hope to escape karma by refraining from our duties: even to survive in the world, we must act. ~ Krishna Dwaipayana Vyasa, #NFDB
627:Our merits create fortune. Our demerits create misfortune. Merits bring us joy. Demerits bring us sorrow. We are thus fettered by karma. Karma binds us to the material world, compels us to be born and compels us to die. No one can change this, except one. That one is God. Pray to God to cope with the fetter of karma. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
628:Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. ~ Steve Jobs, #NFDB
629:All believers, by definition, must be agnostics. The moment you declare that you believe in God or the law of karma, you are acknowledging that you do not know whether they exist or not. For if you did know, you would have no need to believe. Only fools, fanatics, and omniscient beings would claim to know such things. ~ Stephen Batchelor, #NFDB
630:Let your intention be freedom from useless suffering. Then, let go. Watch the heat of day pass into the cool night. Let go. When the karma of a relationship is done, only love remains. It’s safe. Let go. When the past has passed from you at last, let go. Then climb down and begin the rest of your life. With great joy. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
631:Had they known the difficulties that were to befall them, they might not have been so rash in falling in love. But perhaps there was no way of avoiding it. Fate, karma, the will of the Gods… call it what you like, it was surely meant to happen. After all, in all the vastness of the Universe they had been thrown together. ~ Isabel Greenberg, #NFDB
632:You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. ~ Christopher D Connors, #NFDB
633: It’s like you had a coming-out party,” Andrea said. “You’ve been presented to polite society, except now everybody wants to kill you.”
“Spare me.”
“Kate Daniels, a debutante.” Andrea grinned.
“It’s not funny.”
“It’s hilarious.” The smile slid off Andrea’s face and she vomited on the snow.
“Karma,” I told her. ~ Ilona Andrews,#NFDB
634:The Karma-Yogi is the man who understands that the highest ideal is non-resistance, and who also knows that this non-resistance is the highest manifestation of power in actual possession, and also what is called the resisting of evil is but a step on the way towards the manifestation of this highest power, namely, non-resistance ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
635:the Upanishads agree on their central ideas: Brahman, the Godhead; Atman, the divine core of personality; dharma, the law that expresses and maintains the unity of creation; karma, the web of cause and effect; samsara, the cycle of birth and death; moksha, the spiritual liberation that is life’s supreme goal. Even ~ Krishna Dwaipayana Vyasa, #NFDB
636:(...) 6,400,099,980 moments that constitute a single day. His point is that every single one of those moments provides an opportunity to reestablish our will. Even the snap of a finger, he says, provides us with sixty-five opportunities to wake up and to choose actions that will produce beneficial karma and turn our lives around. ~ Ruth Ozeki, #NFDB
637:I try to be a good daughter, as I believe in karma and feel that how you are with your parents is directly proportionate to what you receive in your life. I am a big oneness follower, and our gurus have told us that if you want to achieve external happiness, you need to be happy internally. And your inner circle is your family. ~ Shilpa Shetty, #NFDB
638:A child is born on that day, and at that hour when the celestial rays are in mathematical harmony with his individual Karma. His horoscope is a challenging portrait, revealing his unalterable past and its probable future result. But the natal chart can be rightly interpreted only by men of intuitive wisdom - These are few. ~ Sri Yukteswar Giri, #NFDB
639:Picture a place called the Karma Kafe and it'll save me the bother of describing it. There was nothing in it you wouldn't expect, from the Buddha flowerpots to the wallpaper decorated with symbols that probably said, "If you bought this just because it looked pretty, may Buddha piss in your coffee, you culturally ignorant moron. ~ Kelley Armstrong, #NFDB
640:The laws of Karma state that our soul is constantly influenced by our karma as it passes from one life to another. We are what our ‘accumulated actions’—Sanchita karmas—are. What we do, we become. Hence we are the masters of our destiny as by changing our actions, we can change our destiny for not only this life but also future ones. ~ Awdhesh Singh, #NFDB
641:People who are vitally weak do unconsciously and automatically pull on others. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV: Interactions with Others and the Practice of Yoga
Pull on the Vital
The lame foot of Punishment reaches at last the successful offender. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality,#NFDB
642:Sometimes, after you have taken part in a seven, one or two-day retreat, you could feel that your level of practice had risen. That was because we had given our undivided attention to breaking through our level of practice. We knew that was the sole purpose of coming to a retreat here, so our levels were uplifted and our karma left behind. ~ Ching Hai, #NFDB
643:The cult of positivity we have does everyone a disservice. It leads us to believe we’re more in charge of the world than we are, and holds us responsible for every pain and heartbreak we endure. It sets up a one-false-move world, in which we must be careful not to upset the gods, or karma, or our bodies with our thoughts and intentions. ~ Megan Devine, #NFDB
644:if a yogi is so well blessed with karma to be one who can tread the pleasant path, one who can gain wisdom without undergoing pain, then he can work on pleasant sensation. But for the overwhelming majority of us, as may be observed, there is no choice but to tread the path of unpleasant sensation, for we are not blessed with such karma. ~ Jack Kornfield, #NFDB
645:The present moment, though, is outside of time, it’s Eternity. In India they use the word “karma” for lack of any better term. But it’s a concept that’s rarely given a proper explanation. It isn’t what you did in the past that will affect the present. It’s what you do in the present that will redeem the past and thereby change the future. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
646:You can't escape karma ... It is what it is. It doesn't judge, it's neither good nor bad like most people think. It's the result of all the actions, positive and negative--a constant balancing act of events--cause and effect--tit for tat--reaping and sowing--what goes around comes around ... However you phrase it, it's the same in the end. ~ Alyson Noel, #NFDB
647:Sadness isn't a kilesha, a habit pattern evoked by challenge. Sadness is what the mind feels when it is bereaved or bereft. All the wisdom in the world about the inevitability of change or the lawfulness of karma does not ease the heaviness in the mind that we feel when we lose someone, or something, we hold dear [p. 148]. ~ Sylvia Boorstein, #NFDB
648:In Bhagavad-gītā, karma is described as yajñārtha. Yajñārtha-karma means “work done only for the satisfaction of Viṣṇu.” If something is done for sense gratification or any other purpose, it will be binding upon the worker. If one wants to be freed from the reaction of his work, he must perform everything for the satisfaction of Viṣṇu, or Yajña. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
649:In every conversation I've had - with housewives in Mumbai, with middle-class people, upper-class, in the slums - everyone says there is an underlying consciousness of karma. That people believe in karma - that what you're putting out is going to come back. If I do something to you, the energy of it is going to come back to me in the future. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
650:I reject karma and rebirth not only because I find them unintelligible, but because I believe they obscure and distort what the Buddha was trying to say. Rather than offering the balm of consolation, the Buddha encouraged us to peer deep and unflinchingly into the heart of the bewildering and painful experience that life can so often be. ~ Stephen Batchelor, #NFDB
651:Every single unfortunate thing that happens, including, for instance, the murder of my parents, I am responsible for. I am responsible for being the son of two people who got murdered. I didn't cause their murder. But if I'm suffering because of it, it's my karma that I have manifested in this lifetime in this particular set of circumstances. ~ Patrick Duffy, #NFDB
652:Lifes strange ,times change, but karma always finds the way. Stay strong, hold on. Don’t let all your dreams fade away. Yeah life can beat you down, what goes it comes around It’s not how you hit the ground, it’s how fast you get back up. And go, keep going ,till it feels like I’m giving my life away Gets hard,and harder, happiness is worth the wait. ~ Nelly, #NFDB
653:Taoism is simply the complete acceptance of yourself as you are right in this moment. It's about rolling with the changes, whether they are perceived as good or bad. Tao reminds us to live life through good actions (important for past karma and karma you are presently creating); through practicing things that engage our mind, body, and spirit. ~ Sheila Burke, #NFDB
654:You can also transcend the seeds of your karma by becoming independent of it. The way to do this is to keep experiencing the Self, your spirit, by going into silent meditation and coming out again. This is like washing a dirty piece of cloth in a stream of water. Each time you wash it, you take away a few stains, and it gets a little cleaner. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
655:At every moment in our lives we need compassion, but what more urgent moment could there be than when we are dying? What more wonderful and consoling gift could you give to dying people than the knowledge that they are being prayed for, and that you are taking on their suffering and purifying their negative karma through your practice for them? ~ Sogyal Rinpoche, #NFDB
656:The way of Wisdom lies, therefore, in recognizing things which happen to you as your own karma—not as punishments for misdeeds or rewards for virtue (for there really is no “bad” or “good” karma), but as your own doing. For in this way you come to see that the real “you” includes both the controlled and the uncontrolled aspects of your experience. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
657:Tutte le decisioni che prendi, tutte le scelte che fai sono determinate, tu credi, dal tuo libero arbitrio, ma anche questa e' una balla. Sono determinate da qualcosa dentro di te che innanzitutto e' il tuo istinto, e poi forse da qualcosa che i tuoi amici indiani chiamano il karma e con cui spiegano tutto, anche cio' che a noi e' inspiegabile. ~ Tiziano Terzani, #NFDB
658:When you give something to a man and expect nothing — do not even expect the man to be grateful — his ingratitude will not tell upon you, because you never expected anything, never thought you had any right to anything in the way of a return. You gave him what he deserved; his own Karma got it for him; your Karma made you the carrier thereof. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
659:The recognition of the law of the cause and effect, also known as karma, is a fundamental key to understand how you've created your world, with actions of your body, speech and mind. When you truly understand karma, then you realize you are responsible for everything in your life. It is incredibly empowering to know that your future is in your hands. ~ Keanu Reeves, #NFDB
660:Be grateful to everyone" is about making peace with the aspects of ourselves that we have rejected... If we were to make a list of people we don't like - people we find obnoxious, threatening, or worthy of contempt - we would discover much about those aspects of ourselves that we can't face... other people trigger the karma that we haven't worked out. ~ Pema Ch dr n, #NFDB
661:"Be grateful to everyone" is about making peace with the aspects of ourselves that we have rejected... If we were to make a list of people we don't like - people we find obnoxious, threatening, or worthy of contempt - we would discover much about those aspects of ourselves that we can't face... other people trigger the karma that we haven't worked out. ~ Pema Chodron, #NFDB
662:Twenty-four hours a day one looks for contentment in eight different directions but one must also explore the ninth place, which is to their own body and contemplate within. Within the body are the nine treasures of the Name of the Lord—seek the depths of these virtues. Those blessed with the karma of good actions praise the Lord and become true devotees ~ Guru Angad, #NFDB
663:Who cares for your bhakti and mukti? Who cares what your scriptures say? I will go into a thousand hells cheerfully if I can rouse my countrymen, immersed in tamas, to stand on their own feet and be men inspired with the spirit of karma-yoga. I am a follower only of he or she who serves and helps others without caring for his own bhakti and mukti! ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
664:Karma isn't revenge; it is a mirror of your souls mistakes and for those that wish bad karma for you it is also a mirror for their mistakes. Karma was never meant to be a punishment. It is a reminder of your soul's true self to be better than all the insecurities that hurt others because of your own fear and lack in faith that God has a plan for you. ~ Shannon L Alder, #NFDB
665:Who cares for your bhakti and mukti? Who cares what your scriptures say? I will go into a thousand hells cheerfully if I can rouse my countrymen, immersed in tamas, to stand on their own feet and be men inspired with the spirit of karma-yoga. I am a follower only of he or she who serves and helps others without caring for his own bhakti and mukti! ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
666:A fool may buy all the books in the world, and they will be in his library; but he will be able to read only those that he deserves to; and this deserving is produced by Karma. Our Karma determines what we deserve and what we can assimilate. We are responsible for what we are; and whatever we wish ourselves to be, we have the power to make ourselves. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
667:Things have been going too well for me lately. I feel like I have some bad karma headed my way.” Tamara frowns at me as she leads me toward the dressing rooms. “That’s a pretty dire outlook on life,” she says. “What’s the point in working to be happy if you’re going to be constantly looking over your shoulder, wondering when it’s time to pay the bill? ~ Jonathan Tropper, #NFDB
668:Only by spiritual practice can we break through our karma and the effects of the causes we have made. Only then can we escape from them. It matters not whether you have acquired any merit. Merit is merit. Karma is karma. Nonetheless, if one practices the Quan Yin Method, one can be liberated regardless of having any merit or not. It is so logical, so scientific. ~ Ching Hai, #NFDB
669:I'm not a believer in predetermined fates, being rewarded for one's efforts. I'm not a believer in karma. The reason why I try to be a good person is because I think it's the right thing to do. If I commit fewer bad acts there will be fewer bad acts, maybe other people will join in committing fewer bad acts, and in time there will be fewer and fewer of them. ~ Daniel Handler, #NFDB
670:Karma is like the vine that gathers strength through uninterrupted years, and which fastens its tendrils so closely that it is as strong as the structure to which it adheres. There is no way to destroy its power except by the separation of the parts, these parts renew themselves in other forms of life, but the structure is freed when its root is destroyed. ~ William Quan Judge, #NFDB
671:The law of karma is like the wind—blowing on all. Whether you are good or evil, bright or dim, kind or unkind, there is no escaping the effects of your thoughts and the actions that arise from those thoughts. In fact, the only
difference between the wise and the ignorant is that an illuminated mind erects windmills while the ignorant mind builds weather vanes. ~ Darren Main,#NFDB
672:Christianity teaches that, contra fatalism, suffering is overwhelming; contra Buddhism, suffering is real; contra karma, suffering is often unfair; but contra secularism, suffering is meaningful. There is a purpose to it, and if faced rightly, it can drive us like a nail deep into the love of God and into more stability and spiritual power than you can imagine. ~ Timothy Keller, #NFDB
673:Life is like a piece of string with a lot of knots tied in it. The knots are the karma you're born with from all your past lives, and the object of human life is to try and undo all those knots. That's what chanting and meditation in God consciousness can do. Otherwise you simply tie another ten knots each time you try to undo one knot. That's how karma works. ~ George Harrison, #NFDB
674:Christianity teaches that, contra fatalism, suffering is overwhelming; contra Buddhism, suffering is real; contra karma, suffering is often unfair; but contra secularism, suffering is meaningful. There is a purpose to it, and if faced rightly, it can drive us like a nail deep into the love of God and into more stability and spiritual power than you can imagine. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
675:Karma and hell and suffering aren’t things in their own right but disturbances in this flimsy substance of false self. The problem isn’t in the disturbing things but in the thing disturbed. The thing disturbed is the false thing and if it weren’t there, there’d be nothing to be disturbed. Nothing to get pierced or burned or dried out. Nothing to be wounded or slain. ~ Jed McKenna, #NFDB
676:If I become free from anger and shake off ignorance, if I become more vigilant and alert, I would be doing no karma even when occupied in some karma. This illustration explains both the ideas, of a person doing no karma even when occupied in karma and of another who, though he believes that he is doing no karma, is in fact weaving the bonds of karma round himself. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
677:Es importante recordar que el karma está relacionado con el aprendizaje, no con el castigo. Nuestros padres y todas las personas con las que nos relacionamos están dotados de libre albedrío. Pueden querernos y ayudarnos, u odiarnos y hacernos daño. Su elección no es nuestro karma. Su elección es una manifestación de su libre albedrío. También ellos están aprendiendo. ~ Brian L Weiss, #NFDB
678:I remember a Buddhist teachers reflections on the Holocaust...What terrible karma those Jews mustve had... This kind of fundamentalism, which blames the victims and rationalizes their horrific fate, is something no longer to be tolerated quietly. It is time for... modern Buddhism to outgrow it by accepting social responsibility and finding ways to address such injustices. ~ David Loy, #NFDB
679:On the whole, I think the Darwinian theory of evolution, at least with the additional insights of modern genetics, gives us a fairly coherent account of the evolution of human life on earth. At the same time, I believe that karma can have a central role in understanding the origination of what Buddhism calls “sentience,” through the media of energy and consciousness. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
680:You could sit on top of a mountain praying for hours a day and still not make it if you had no love in your heart. You could spend your life feeding the poor and still not make it because your karma required you to bear and nurture children. The path home to God is different for every person. Only communion with your Higher Self will reveal your path to you. ~ Elizabeth Clare Prophet, #NFDB
681:The concept of karma is a beautiful concept in Sanskrit. The whole idea of karma is that every being has an innate tendency - the karma of ice is to be cold, the karma of fire is to burn, the karma of the trees is to grow and bear fruit. In the same way, a human has a certain thrust. What I've realized is that my thrust is to be in the world, like in the world of business. ~ Karan Bajaj, #NFDB
682:three first approaches of Karma Yoga :::
Equality, renunciation of all desire for the fruit of our works, action done as a sacrifice to the supreme Lord of our nature and of all nature, - these are the three first Godward approaches in the Gita's way of Karmayoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, Self-Surrender in Works - The Way of the Gita, [105],#NFDB
683:On one occasion I got this really bizarre horoscope thing from someone. It was a full-on zodiac reading, charting and intersecting all this stuff. It was over 20 pages long and said we're destined to be together. That was totally bizarre. I don't really believe in that stuff anyway, although I do believe in Karma because it's already bitten me on the ass so many times. ~ Robert Pattinson, #NFDB
684:In one form or the other, the consequences of any action don't perish. Nature registers every little karma. I had this faith that if I kept digging patiently, one day I would hit a source of pure water. I did. You will too if you keep going. HURDLES ON THE PATH Physical and Environmental Hurdles Emotional Hurdles Mental Hurdles Restlessness Dullness Thoughts Images Other Hurdles ~ Om Swami, #NFDB
685:Karma is bullshit!' Landon yelled, slamming his hand on his desk. The room fell silent as everyone stared at him. Cassie's cheeks went red and she glared, jerking her head away from him. Apparently, he wasn't allowed to bellow statements that didn't agree with her argument. "Landon? Would you care to support your statement?" The teacher—always encouraging freedom of thought. ~ Wendy Knight, #NFDB
686:Karma is the beginning of knowledge. Next is patience. Patience is very important. The strong are the patient ones, Anjin-san. patience means holding back your inclination to the seven emotions: hate, adoration, joy, anxiety, anger, grief, fear. If you don't give way to the seven, you're patient, then you'll soon understand all manner of things and be in harmony with Eternity. ~ James Clavell, #NFDB
687:Never EVER attack another person for what they write. Particularly if they are a younger writer. You may not understand what they are trying to say, and perhaps they don't either, but to interfere in the creative process of a young person is absolutely one of the most horrible things another writer can do. The karma of that manner of attack will come back to find you. ~ Theresa Griffin Kennedy, #NFDB
688:Renounce and enjoy.” Those who are compulsively attached to the results of action cannot really enjoy what they do; they get downcast when things do not work out and cling more desperately when they do. So the Gita classifies the karma of attachment as pleasant at first, but “bitter as poison in the end” (18:38), because of the painful bondage of conditioning. Again, ~ Krishna Dwaipayana Vyasa, #NFDB
689:am in no mood for small talk with the staff, so I carry a chair to the balcony outside my room and sit. Just sit. My head is spinning. Karma Ura has thrown me for a loop. Happiness is low expectations? How do I reconcile that with my driving ambition, which has served me so well in life? Or has it? And what he said about compassion being the ultimate ambition. What was that about? ~ Eric Weiner, #NFDB
690:If you accumulate virtuous actions properly— such as avoiding killing, freeing animals, and cultivating patience toward others—it will be beneficial in the future and in the lives to come; whereas if you indulge in negative actions continuously, you definitely will face the consequences in the future. If you do not believe in the principle of karma, then you can do as you like. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
691:The Chinese say that you should never, ever buy a used desk unless you know the history of it. They claim that if it belonged to a bad businessman, his karma will befall you. This one here belonged to President Kennedy. So what do you think that means? (Randy) I don’t know, but if I were you, I wouldn’t ride through Dallas in a convertible in November. Bad feng shui. (Steele) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
692:Your flesh receives information about the external world through your five sense organs (gyan indriyas): eye, ear, nose, tongue and skin. Your flesh engages with the external material world through your five action organs (karma indriyas): hands, feet, face, anus and genitals. Between the stimulus and the response, a whole series of processes take place in your mind (manas). ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
693:From previous studies, it was learned that everyone is born under optimal conditions for karmic opportunities; therefore, it is wise to judge not, for what appears as misery or catastrophe may be the doorway to liberation for those who have negative karma to undo. Thus, seemingly catastrophic events may be the very essential and necessary elements for the evolution of the soul. ~ David R Hawkins, #NFDB
694:So do not be concerned with the fruit of your action-just give attention to the action itself. The fruit will come of its own accord. This is a powerful spiritual practice. In the Bhagavad Gita, one of the oldest and most beautiful spiritual teachings in existence, non-attachment to the fruit of your action is called Karma Yoga. It is described as the path of "consecrated action. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
695:So do not be concerned with the fruit of your action — just give attention to the action itself. The fruit will come of its own accord. This is a powerful spiritual practice. In the Bhagavad Gita, one of the oldest and most beautiful spiritual teachings in existence, nonattachment to the fruit of your action is called Karma Yoga. It is described as the path of “consecrated action. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
696:The Chinese say that you should never, ever buy a used desk unless you know the history of it. They claim that if it belonged to a bad businessman, his karma will befall you. This one here belonged to President Kennedy. So what do you think that means? (Randy)
I don’t know, but if I were you, I wouldn’t ride through Dallas in a convertible in November. Bad feng shui. (Steele) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,#NFDB
697:To the unaware person, karma is the prison in which the mind is held hostage. Because of karma, an unaware person is doomed to repeat the past in perpetuity as the seeds planted yesterday bear bitter fruit tomorrow. But to the mindful person, karma offers the promise of freedom. Mindfulness allows us to change our mind in the present, planting
new seeds that will bear sweet fruit. ~ Darren Main,#NFDB
698:To find Buddha, you have to see your nature. Whoever sees his nature is a Buddha. If you don't see your nature, invoking buddhas, reciting sutras, making offerings, and keeping precepts are all useless. Invoking buddhas results in good karma, reciting sutras results in a good memory, keeping precepts results in good rebirth, and making offerings results in future blessings-but no Buddha. ~ Bodhidharma, #NFDB
699:I'm a great believer in the hereafter, in karma, in reincarnation. It does make sense. I believe that God is not just a law-giver, but a creative artist. The greatest of all. And what characterises artists is that they want to redo their work. Maybe it didn't come off perfectly, so they want to see it done again, and improved. Reincarnation is a way for God to improve his earlier works. ~ Norman Mailer, #NFDB
700:I heard Zen teacher one time talking about abortion, and he was saying the way that abortion makes bad karma is any time the person involved pretends that there's not a cost to the choice, one way or the other; whether you get it or don't get it, there's a cost. That's just basic responsibility, to admit that there's a cost. And the bad karma is when you pretend that the thing is free. ~ George Saunders, #NFDB
701:People thought there was this huge chasm between life and death, but really there was nothing. Not when you had a gun. You could end someone in the blink of an eye. With the twitch of a finger. Before you even knew what happened. And the world didn’t stop like everyone probably thought it did. It just kept right on spinning. It didn’t give a shit about your karma or your act of violence. ~ Matt de la Pena, #NFDB
702:In the early Buddhist view, then, a persons identity resides not in an enduring self but in his actions (karma)- that is in the choices that shape these actions. Because the dispositions formed by previous choices can be modified in turn by present behaviour, this identity as choice-maker is fluid, its experience alterable. While it is affected by the past, it can also break free of the past. ~ Joanna Macy, #NFDB
703:Look," I said, "there are plenty of people in the world who believe our destiny is in the hands of some old white guy sitting above us dealing out rewards and punishment like...some old white guy. What I believe makes more sense than that. Some things are meant to be. Fate, destiny, karma-whatever you want to call it. The universe has plans- we just aren't smart enough to know how it works. ~ Graeme Simsion, #NFDB
704:I believe in kindness and karma—which could make me a Buddhist. I believe in mystic healing and crystals’ powers—which could make me a witch. I believe in truth, honor, and forgiveness—which could make me a Christian. I even believe in the existence of past lives and that each and every one of us is watched over by guides from the other side—which, to some, would make me totally woo-woo squared. ~ Emma Mildon, #NFDB
705:What brings the karmic result from the patterns of our actions is not our action alone. As we intend and then act, we create [our] karma: so another key to understanding the creation of karma is becoming aware of intention. The heart is our garden, and along with each action there is an intention that is planted like a seed. The result of the patterns of our karma is the fruit of these seeds. ~ Jack Kornfield, #NFDB
706:many abuse victims don’t wish to let their abusers move onto the next victim after terrorizing them, because they fear that the next person might be treated better, thereby confirming their own sense of worthlessness that was instilled by the abuser in the first place. They may also have an unending sense of needing a real “apology” or seeing karma at work before they feel they can truly let go. ~ Shahida Arabi, #NFDB
707:Destiny and desire, karma and kama, are the two forces that propel the world. Destiny is a reaction, an obligation that follows an action. Desire is an aspiration that forces the world to transform in a particular way. Destiny creates fate. Desire is based on free will. We have the freedom to accept life as it is or to make it the way we want it to be. That is what makes us Manavas or humans. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
708:The teaching on karma starts with the principle that people experience happiness and sorrow based on a combination of their past and present intentions. If we act with unskillful intentions either for ourselves or for others, we’re going to suffer. If we act with skillful intentions, we’ll experience happiness. So if we want to be happy, we have to train our intentions to always be skillful. ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu, #NFDB
709:Moving from a more focused approach to self-awareness and our own personal karma to a more relational approach to how we interact with others is referred to as the transition from the Hinayana7 (narrow vehicle) to the Mahayana (expansive vehicle) within the historically Tibetan tradition. The journey of relationships is not a better path—it’s just a natural broadening of the scope of our practice. ~ Ethan Nichtern, #NFDB
710:Some dislike prayer; if they entered deep into their heart, they would find it was pride — worse than that, vanity. And then there are those who have no aspiration, they try and they cannot aspire; it is because they do not have the flame of the will, it is because they do not have the flame of humility. Both are needed. There must be a very great humility and a very great will to change one’s Karma. ~ The Mother, #NFDB
711:with all our feelings and action — our tears and our smiles, our joys and our griefs, our weeping and our laughter, our curses and our blessings, our praises and our blames — every one of these we may find, if we calmly study our own selves, to have been brought out from within ourselves by so many blows. The result is what we are. All these blows taken together are called Karma — work, action. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
712:Korima sounds like karma and functions the same way, except in the here and now. It’s your obligation to share whatever you can spare, instantly and with no expectations: once the gift leaves your hand, it was never yours to begin with. The Tarahumara have no monetary system, so korima is how they do business: their economy is based on trading favors and the occasional cauldron of corn beer. ~ Christopher McDougall, #NFDB
713:No action exists in isolation. Every decision impacts the ecosystem. Karma is often mistaken for the adage, “As you sow, so shall you reap.” The assumption then is that if we sow good deeds, we will reap good rewards. But who decides what action is good or bad? The desire to qualify an action, and its consequence, as good or bad, right or wrong, is a peculiarly human trait. Nature does not do so. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
714:The fates are cruel,” Bheeshma whispered, “and they’ve been crueler than usual to you. But the sins you committed in ignorance are not your fault.”
“I’ll still have to pay for them,” Karna said. “Isn’t that how karma works? Look at what happened to Pandu, who killed a sage by accident, thinking him to be a wild deer. He had to bear the consequences of it for the rest of his life. ~ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni,#NFDB
715:As Steve Jobs said in his now legendary commencement address at Stanford, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.” There ~ Arianna Huffington, #NFDB
716:Goddammit. Yeah, I have. First, there's a huge difference between being arrested and being guilty. Second, see, the law changes and I don't. How I stand vis-à-vis the law at any given moment depends on the law. The law can change from state to state, from nation to nation, from city to city. I guess I have to go by a higher law. How's that? Yeah, I consider myself a road man for the lords of karma. ~ Hunter S Thompson, #NFDB
717:So somebody comes along and gets to me. They get me angry or uptight or they awaken some desire in me, wow am I delighted. They got me. And that’s my work on myself. If I am angry with you because your behavior doesn’t fill my model of how you should be, that’s my problem for having models. No expectations, no upset. If you are a liar and a cheat, that’s your Karma. If I’m cheated, that’s my work on myself. ~ Ram Dass, #NFDB
718:As Shantideva says, suffering has many good qualities because it purifies our negative karma, increases our renunciation and compassion, reduces our pride, and helps us to overcome our bad mental habits. If we think in this way we will feel that difficult circumstances are our best friends. When our mind is balanced in this way it becomes as stable as Mount Meru, and nothing can cause it to shake. ~ Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, #NFDB
719:Destiny and desire, karma and kama, are the two forces that propel the world. Destiny is a reaction, an obligation that follows an action. Desire is an aspiration that forces the world to transform in a particular way. Destiny creates fate. Desire is based on free will. We have the freedom to accept life as it is or to make it the way we want it to be. That is what makes us Manavas or humans. Kaikeyi ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
720:A. The eight parts of this path are called angas. They are: 1. Right Belief (as to the law of Causation, or Karma); 2. Right Thought; 3. Right Speech; 4. Right Action; 5. Right Means of Livelihood; 6. Right Exertion; 7. Right Remembrance and Self-discipline; 8. Right Concentration of Thought. The man who keeps these angas in mind and follows them will be free from sorrow and ultimately reach salvation. ~ Henry Steel Olcott, #NFDB
721:The law of karma states unequivocally that though we cannot see the connections, we can be sure that everything that happens to us, good and bad, originated once in something we did or thought. We ourselves are responsible for what happens to us, whether or not we can understand how. It follows that we can change what happens to us by changing ourselves; we can take our destiny into our own hands. ~ Krishna Dwaipayana Vyasa, #NFDB
722:The successful meeting of self and the overcoming of personal karma involves being able to develop an awareness and a response from within the self that is currently lacking. Too often individuals mistakenly assume that karma simply entails putting up with something repeatedly, but instead the successful meeting of karmic memory more often involves coming up with new resources and new modes of behavior. The ~ Kevin J Todeschi, #NFDB
723:A traditionalist can sometimes be looked at as someone who is a fundamentalist, or they can be looked at as someone with a very strict set of understandings of human nature. But a traditionalist in the Vedic tradition, is one who is open-hearted, who does not judge, there's nothing to judge whatsoever, who understands the basic understanding and karma of all of it, and who basically helps when help is called for. ~ Maya Tiwari, #NFDB
724:I was shocked when they told me congratulations, you won, that's the good news. Then the bad news is that you have six battles next week. That was a bit of a shocker. I was exhausted. And I had Chopped shooting that same week. I didn't have a sous chef lined up; I thought that was bad karma to try to think ahead. So I scrambled. I scrambled the jets, took off and we bombed our target. I think it's gone well. ~ Geoffrey Zakarian, #NFDB
725:Effortlessness means not doing anything, inactivity - AKARMA. Effort means doing much, activity - KARMA. Both have to be there. Do much, but don`t be a doer - then you achieve both. Move in the world, but don`t be a part of it. Live in the world, but don`t let the world live in you. Then the contradiction has been absorbed. Then you are not rejecting anything, not denying anything. Then the whole God has been accepted. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
726:The way of presentation is different according to each religion. In theistic religions like Buddhism, Buddhist values are incorporated. In nontheistic religions, like some types of ancient Indian thought, the law of karma applies. If you do something good, you get a good result. Now, what we need is a way to educate nonbelievers. These nonbelievers may be critical of all religions, but they should be decent at heart. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
727:At the moment of death, there are two things that count: whatever we have done in our lives, and what state of mind we are in at that very moment. Even if we have accumulated a lot of negative karma, if we are able to make a real change of heart at the moment of death, it can decisively influence our future, and transform our karma, for the moment of death is an exceptionally powerful opportunity to purify karma. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche, #NFDB
728:Forgiveness is the key to breaking the cycle of karma and reincarnation. Forgiveness doesn't mean: "What you did was okay." It simply means, "I'm no longer willing to carry the heavy toxic burdens of anger, resentment, and victimhood in my soul." You can work on healing, uplifting, and changing situations from a place of forgiveness, instead of from a place of resentment. Forgive yourself and everyone, and you are free! ~ Doreen Virtue, #NFDB
729:Many people think there's nothing they can do to change their karma - it's preordained so why bother trying to change their situation? This is what scares people. These folks think that to accept the reality of karma one must be passive. It simply isn't true. Karma is active. We can - in the blink of an eye - make decisions that will shape our futures and transform the parts of our lives that are causing us unhappiness. ~ Mary T Browne, #NFDB
730:Can there be a completely different set of laws of physics in a different universe, or do the laws of physics as we understand them hold true in all possible universes? If the answer is that a different set of laws can operate in a different universe system, this would suggest (from a Buddhist perspective) that even the laws of physics are entangled with the karma of the sentient beings that will arise in that universe. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
731:The universe that we inhabit and our shared perception of it are the results of a common karma. Likewise, the places that we will experience in future rebirths will be the outcome of the karma that we share with the other beings living there. The actions of each of us, human or nonhuman, have contributed to the world in which we live. We all have a common responsibility for our world and are connected with everything in it. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
732:But when I compare the idea that “Yeah, sometimes life sucks, and I have to deal with it as best I can” with the idea that “An immensely powerful being is screwing with me on purpose and won’t tell me why” — I, for one, find the first idea much more comforting. I don’t have to torture myself with guilt over how I must have angered my god or screwed up my karma, with that guilt piling onto the trauma I’m already going through. ~ Greta Christina, #NFDB
733:That is why we do not hold an understanding of karma in a narrow way. It is an extremely vast vision of life. If at a given moment we experience the fruits of a past action, whether wholesome or unwholesome, our experience is the experience of all beings. If we see an experience happening outside ourselves, we understand that this also is our experience,as in a dream when every character is some reflection of our own mind. ~ Sharon Salzberg, #NFDB
734:Learn to love Learn to listen Learn to receive Learn to love yourself Learn to speak your truth Learn how not to be a victim Learn not to let anyone define you Learn how to feel your own mastery Learn how to live with other Humans Learn how to get out of blaming others Learn to move out of duality [drop your karma] Learn to take care of yourself more than others Learn that you deserve to be here, and are not dirty when you are born ~ Lee Carroll, #NFDB
735:To get carried away by a thought is the state of a sentient being. Rather than that, recognize your basic state as being the essence, nature and capacity that are the three kayas of the buddhas. Remain in uncontrived naturalness for short moments, repeated many times. You can become accustomed to this. The short moments can grow longer. In one instant of remaining in unfabricated naturalness, a kalpa of negative karma is purified. ~ Tulku Urgyen, #NFDB
736:Arjuna, you have control over your action alone, not the fruits of your action. So do not be drawn to expectation, or inaction.—Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 2, Verse 47 (paraphrased). Those who believe in karma do not blame. They do not judge. They accept that humans live in a sea of consequences, over which there is limited control. So they accept every moment as it is supposed to be. They act without expectation. This is nishkama karma. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
737:Karma is the universal law of cause and effect. You reap what you sow. You get what you earn... If you give love, you get love. Revenge returns itself upon the avenger. What goes around comes around... Karma is justice. It does not reward or punish. It shows no favoritism because we have to earn all that we receive. Karma doesn't predestine anyone or anything. We create our own causes, and karma adjusts the effects with perfect balance. ~ Mary T Browne, #NFDB
738:...Now we get to the Karma thing: You make yourself so vulnerable by not tipping well or treating people in the service industry with respect. Not only is it wrong to treat another human being like that, but there's a practical consideration: They're standing between you and eating. Without waiters, nothing comes to your table and nothing goes away. Aren't you worried that they'll put rat poison in your food, or at least spit in it? pages 86-87 ~ Tim Gunn, #NFDB
739:The law of karma says that no matter what context I find myself in, it is neither my parents, nor my science teacher, nor the mailman, but I alone who have brought myself into this state because of my past actions. Instead of trapping me in a fatalistic snare, this gives me freedom. Because I alone have brought myself into my present condition, I myself, by working hard and striving earnestly, can reach the supreme state which is nirvana. ~ Eknath Easwaran, #NFDB
740:There are some whose Karma is such as to enable them to develop the purely spiritual faculties first of all -- to overleap the astral plane for the time, as it were; and when afterwards they make its acquaintance they have, if their spiritual development has been perfect, the immense advantage of dipping into it from above, with the aid of a spiritual insight which cannot be deceived and a spiritual strength which nothing can resist. ~ Charles Webster Leadbeater, #NFDB
741:But guilt is guilt. It doesn't go away. It can't be nullified. It can't even be fully understood, I'm certain - it's roots run too deep into private and long-standing karma. About the only thing that saves my neck when I get to feeling this way is that guilt is an imperfect form of knowledge. Just because it isn't perfect doesn't mean that it can't be used. The hard thing to do is to put it to practical use, before it gets around to paralyzing you. ~ J D Salinger, #NFDB
742:If you really want to judge of the character of a man, look not at his great performances. Every fool may become a hero at one time or another. Watch a man do his most common actions; those are indeed the things which will tell you the real character of a great man. Great occasions rouse even the lowest of human beings to some kind of greatness, but he alone is the really great man whose character is great always, the same wherever he be. Karma ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
743:Steve Jobs said it wisely: You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well-worn path; and that will make all the difference. ~ Vishen Lakhiani, #NFDB
744:The law of karma has made it so. According to classic Hinduism, if someone were to help those people by easing their suffering, they would be working against the law of karma. People suffer to work off their karmic debt, and if you helped them, then they would have to come back again and suffer even more to work off that debt. Plus, you would be doing something cruel by not letting them suffer, and you would increase your own karma problems. Helping ~ Norman L Geisler, #NFDB
745:In a situation like this, of course you identify with everyone who's suffering. (But we must also think about) the terrorists who are creating such horrible future lives for themselves because of the negativity of this karma. It's all of our jobs to keep our minds as expansive as possible. If you can see (the terrorists) as a relative who's dangerously sick and we have to give them medicine, and the medicine is love and compassion. There's nothing better. ~ Richard Gere, #NFDB
746:At all times, do not lose courage in your inner awareness; uplift yourself, while assuming a humble position in your outer demeanor. Follow the example of the life and complete liberation of previous accomplished masters. Do not blame your past karma; instead, be someone who purely and flawlessly practices the dharma. Do not blame temporary negative circumstances; instead, be someone who remains steadfast in the face of whatever circumstances may arise. ~ Dudjom Rinpoche, #NFDB
747:Don't try and change things for other people. Don't try and be persuaded by producers and people to change your vision. If you stick to your vision and you're true to yourself, it kind of works. I mean, it's tough. It's a big Fitzcarraldo journey, but then you'll have your good karma at the end of the day. You'll have your good soul. You know, if you start to sell little bits of it, you, you become nothing and nobody, and you don't have any vision remaining. ~ Lynne Ramsay, #NFDB
748:...we lay there in the dark for a split second before the beast galumphed toward us. Meabh, always quick with a sword, sprang to her feet and charged the dragon head-on while I mostly just wondered who or what I'd offended in a past life that this one was peopled by dragons. Except I didn't have any past lives, so apparently I'd offended somebody in this life and was facing instant karma. That didn't really improve anything, in my ever so humble opinion. ~ C E Murphy, #NFDB
749:How baffling it was that even the most cunning and clever people would frequently see only what they wanted to see, and would rarely look beyond the thinnest of facades. Or they would ignore reality, dismissing it as the facade. And then, when their whole world fell to pieces...they would tear their topknots or rend their clothes and bewail their karma, blaming gods or kami or luck or their lords or husbands or vassals-anything or anyone-but never themselves. ~ James Clavell, #NFDB
750:There is good Karma, there is bad Karma, and as the wheel of life moves on, old Karma is exhausted and again fresh Karma is accumulated... Karma is twofold, hidden and manifest, Karma is the man that is, Karma is his action. True that each action is a cause from which evolves the countless ramifications of effect in time and space... To the worldy man Karma is a stern Nemesis, to the spiritual man Karma unfolds itself in harmony with his highest aspirations. ~ William Quan Judge, #NFDB
751:When all is finally seen as it is, nothing hidden behind the fantasies of the mind-- That is Tathagata. That alone is the state of compassionate knowledge. Once this is realized, karma and its obstacles disappear into emptiness. But until that moment, one's debts must be paid. [2720.jpg] -- from This Dance of Bliss: Ecstatic Poetry from Around the World, Edited by Ivan M. Granger
~ Hsuan Chueh of Yung Chia, 55 - When all is finally seen as it is, (from The Shodoka)
,#NFDB
752:It's not really about asking for the raise but knowing and having faith that the system will actually give you the right raises as you go along. And that, I think, might be one of the additional superpowers that, quite frankly, women who don't ask for raises have. Because that's good karma. It'll come back. Because somebody's going to know: 'That's the kind of person that I want to trust. That's the kind of person that I want to really give more responsibility to.' ~ Satya Nadella, #NFDB
753:The beginning of karma yoga is the need to eat, to survive, and perhaps to get a paycheck. The result of that food or paycheck is the survival and hopefully the health of body and family. Body and family are not the happiness, joy, or the final goal or purpose of work: wisdom and compassion are. The underlying premise of karma yoga is that as you work, you should work eventually for the joy of working rather than becoming attached to the fruits of your labors. If ~ Richard Freeman, #NFDB
754:Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later. Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.8 ~ Jay Samit, #NFDB
755:This is the chapter in which he praises his young monks for their commitment to a path of awakening and explicates the granular nature of time: the 6,400,099,980 moments40 that constitute a single day. His point is that every single one of those moments provides an opportunity to reestablish our will. Even the snap of a finger, he says, provides us with sixty-five opportunities to wake up and to choose actions that will produce beneficial karma and turn our lives around. ~ Ruth Ozeki, #NFDB
756:God save the Queen and a fascist regime … a flabby toothless fascism, to be sure. Never go too far in any direction, is the basic law on which Limey-Land is built. The Queen stabilizes the whole sinking shithouse and keeps a small elite of wealth and privilege on top. The English have gone soft in the outhouse. England is like some stricken beast too stupid to know it is dead. Ingloriously foundering in its own waste products, the backlash and bad karma of empire ~ William S Burroughs, #NFDB
757:This Law -- whether Conscious or Unconscious --predestines nothing and no one. It exists from and in Eternity, truly, for it is ETERNITY itself; and as such, since no act can be co-equal with eternity, it cannot be said to act, for it is ACTION itself...Karma creates nothing, nor does it design. It is man who plans and creates causes, and Karmic law adjusts the effects; which adjustment is not an act, but universal harmony, tending ever to resume its original position. ~ H P Blavatsky, #NFDB
758:She was my queen and I wanted to be her king. I wanted to sit at the throne of her body and love her forever, but it wasn't just sex, although that had been over the fucking moon. No, with us it was about two broken people who looked deep into the eyes of the other person and just-meshed. Call it fate or destiny or just plain old karma, but whatever it was, the moment I watched her dance in the rain, my heart had known, only it had taken my head a while to catch up. ~ Ilsa Madden Mills, #NFDB
759:Aku, lelaki KNIL yang sekasar ddan sehebat itu di muka kompiku, aku tidak tahan merasakan penderitaan ditinggal oleh seorang ibu dan seorang adik perempuan. Keduanya kaum yang rapuh, tetapi entah begitu kuasa justru mereka itu karena kerapuhan mereka. Aku teringat Mayoor Verbruggen, yang pernah berantakan mengalami penderitaan kekasih diambil orang lain. Sampai ia jadi bajingan, menurut katanya sendiri. Apakah aku akan menerima balasan karma dan menjadi bajingan juga? ~ Y B Mangunwijaya, #NFDB
760:This one is from the immortals series i cant remember what book.
Damen to Ever
While we may judge things as good or bad, karma doesn't, ts a simple case of like gets like the ultimate balancing act, nothing more nothing less, and if your determined to fix every situation you deem as bad or difficult or some how unsavoury, then you rob the person of their own chance to fix it, learn from it or grow from it, some things no matter how painful happen for a reason. ~ Alyson Noel,#NFDB
761:There are some additional cultural problems to be overcome in discussing karma in the modern context, as we have stopped talking about ethical issues altogether, not just specifically issues around karma, but ethics generally. There is an ever-increasing level of discussion around rights and justice, and who is entitled to what, and who deserves a share of such-and-such, but very little about how we should behave and treat each other, and how we should live together, and why. ~ Traleg Kyabgon, #NFDB
762:From a Buddhist point of view, the actual experience of death is very important. Although how or where we will be reborn is generally dependent on karmic forces, our state of mind at the time of death can influence the quality of our next rebirth. So at the moment of death, in spite of the great variety of karmas we have accumulated, if we make a special effort to generate a virtuous state of mind, we may strengthen and activate a virtuous karma, and so bring about a happy rebirth. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
763:On ignorance depends karma; on karma depends consciousness; on consciousness depend name and form; on name and form depend the five organs of sense; on the five organs of sense depends contact; on contact depends sensation; on sensation depends desire; on desire depends clutching; on clutching depends existence; on existence depends birth; on birth depend old age and death, sorrow, lamentation, misery, grief and despair. —The Buddha’s twelvefold concatenation of cause and effect ~ Leonard Shlain, #NFDB
764:Karma is not something pessimistic. If you think of karma as something wrong, you are seeing karma only according to what happened in the past. You look at the past and karma becomes a monster. So you should also look at karma in the present and future. Then karma becomes something very wide and really alive. Through karma you can understand what your destiny is. Destiny itself has no solid form; it's something you can create. You can create your life. That is why we study karma. ~ Dainin Katagiri, #NFDB
765:A lot of the book [The Yoga of Max's Discontent] is about karma and rebirth. Things like that are very attuned to my life as an Indian, but when I approach it from a perspective of a Westerner, then I have a skeptical, yet kind of novice view on it. I think that choice really liberated the story to be its own story. A lot of the conclusions that Max reaches on his own are not mine at all. So, I think that allowed the story to take on its own momentum, to have its own propulsive force. ~ Karan Bajaj, #NFDB
766:The ideal man is he who, in the midst of the greatest silence and solitude, finds the intensest activity, and in the midst of the intensest activity finds the silence and solitude of the desert. He has learnt the secret of restraint, he has controlled himself. He goes through the streets of a big city with all its traffic, and his mind is as calm as if he were in a cave, where not a sound could reach him; and he is intensely working all the time. That is the ideal of Karma-Yoga, ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
767:I’ve just been transferred to Kanglung,” I say. They look at me to see if I am joking, and then they look at each other. There is a long, terrible silence and we all look at the floor. Karma Dorji wipes his runny nose on his sleeve and looks up. “Oh, miss,” he says sadly. “Please don’t go.”
“Just a minute,” I say, and go into the bathroom. I latch the door and turn on the tap full force. When the water is running noisily, I lean my hot forehead against the damp, flaking concrete, and cry. ~ Jamie Zeppa,#NFDB
768:For, owners of their deeds (karma) are the beings, heirs of their deeds; their deeds are the womb from which they sprang; with their deeds they are bound up; their deeds are their refuge. Whatever deeds they do-good or evil-of such they will be the heirs. And wherever the beings spring into existence, there their deeds will ripen; and wherever their deeds ripen, there they will earn the fruits of those deeds, be it in this life, or be it in the next life, or be it in any other future life. ~ Gautama Buddha, #NFDB
769:For most of us, karma and negative emotions obscure the ability to see our own intrinsic nature, and the nature of reality. As a result we clutch on to happiness and suffering as real, and in our unskillful and ignorant actions go on sowing the seeds of our next birth. Our actions keep us bound to the continuous cycle of worldly existence, to the endless round of birth and death. So everything is at risk in how we live now at this very moment: How we live now can cost us our entire future. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche, #NFDB
770:THESE FOUR MIND-CHANGING REFLECTIONS—OUR PREcious human birth, impermanence, the law of karma, and the defects of samsaric conditioning—turn our lives toward the Dharma, toward discovering the nature of our minds. These reflections begin to break apart the clouds of confusion and help us see the truth of our lives more clearly, help us let go more completely. Without them we are carried along on the powerful current of habitual action; with them, we enter into a timeless stream of awareness. ~ Joseph Goldstein, #NFDB
771:You are happening as a compulsive being, not as a conscious being. That is the basis of all unpleasantness in a human being.
Karma is deciding not about what happens. Karma is deciding how you experience your life. The quality of your life is always decided by how you experience, not by what you have around you. You can sit in a palace and be utterly miserable. You can be on the street and be joyful. So it is the quality of your experience, not what you have, which decides the quality of your life. ~ Sadhguru,#NFDB
772:Although I remain uncertain about God or any particular religion, I believe in karma. What goes around, comes around. How you live your life, the respect that you give others and the mountain, and how you treat people in general will come back to you in kindred fashion. I like to talk about what I call the Karma National Bank. If you give up the summit to help rescue someone who’s in trouble, you’ve put a deposit in that bank. And sometime down the road, you may need to make a big withdrawal. People ~ Ed Viesturs, #NFDB
773:Yoga tells us there are a few fundamental ways. If you employ your physical body to reach this ultimate union, we call this karma yoga, or the yoga of action. If you employ your intelligence to reach your ultimate nature, we call this gnana yoga, the yoga of intelligence. If you employ your emotions to reach your ultimate nature, we call this bhakti yoga, the yoga of devotion. And if you use your energies to reach the supreme experience, we call this kriya yoga, the yoga of transforming energies. Every ~ Sadhguru, #NFDB
774:O nobly-born, when thou art driven [hither and thither] by the ever-moving wind of karma, thine intellect, having no object upon which to rest, will be like a feather tossed about by the wind, riding on the horse of breath. Ceaselessly and involuntarily wilt thou be wandering about. To all those who are weeping [thou wilt say], ‘Here I am; weep not.’ But they not hearing thee, thou wilt think, ‘I am dead!’ And again, at that time, thou wilt be feeling very miserable. Be not miserable in that way. ~ W Y Evans Wentz, #NFDB
775:connecting. It’s a constant process of giving and receiving—of asking for and offering help. By putting people in contact with one another, by giving your time and expertise and sharing them freely, the pie gets bigger for everyone. This karma-tinged vision of how things work may sound naïve to those who have grown cynical of the business world. But while the power of generosity is not yet fully appreciated, or applied, in the halls of corporate America, its value in the world of networks is proven. ~ Keith Ferrazzi, #NFDB
776:But karma is not in fact a material accumulation, and does not depend on externals; rather its power to condition us depends on the obstacles that impede our knowledge. If we compare our karma and the ignorance that creates it to a dark room, knowledge of the primordial state would be like a lamp, which, when lit in the room, at once causes the darkness to disappear, enlightening everything. In the same way, if one has the presence of the primordial state, one can overcome all hindrances in an instant. ~ Namkhai Norbu, #NFDB
777:I was raised as a churchgoer but I wasn't a practising Christian. I wasn't an agnostic or atheist either. My view is that we should all take a bit from every religion and philosophy. I'm not a Buddhist but I like Buddhist philosophies, in particular. They give you a very good structure that you can build your life around. For instance, I definitely believe in karma, the idea that what goes around, comes around. I wondered whether Bob was my reward for having done something good, somewhere in my troubled life. ~ James Bowen, #NFDB
778:People get into a heavy-duty sin and guilt trip, feeling that if things are going wrong, that means that they did something bad and they are being punished. That's not the idea at all. The idea of karma is that you continually get the teachings that you need to open your heart. To the degree that you didn't understand in the past how to stop protecting your soft spot, how to stop armoring your heart, you're given this gift of teachings in the form of your life, to give you everything you need to open further. ~ Pema Ch dr n, #NFDB
779:People get into a heavy-duty sin and guilt trip, feeling that if things are going wrong, that means that they did something bad and they are being punished. That's not the idea at all. The idea of karma is that you continually get the teachings that you need to open your heart. To the degree that you didn't understand in the past how to stop protecting your soft spot, how to stop armoring your heart, you're given this gift of teachings in the form of your life, to give you everything you need to open further. ~ Pema Chodron, #NFDB
780:and the worst of times, a tale of the city where you begin to seriously doubt anything you’ve ever believed because you actually begin to study it, and a tale of the eternal city where, if it exists, you will share in joy among people from every tradition and no tradition because what is after this life is big enough for everything. Or maybe it’s the tale of three cities, or four or five depending on your karma, and you’ll come back to a new city, in a new form, because you’re still learning. No one actually knows. ~ Various, #NFDB
781:I feel very strongly that I am under the influence of things or questions which were left incomplete and unanswered by my parents and grandparents and more distant ancestors. It often seems as if there were an impersonal karma within a family which is passed on from parents to children. It has always seemed to me that I had to answer questions which fate had posed to my forefathers, and which had not yet been answered, or as if I had to complete, or perhaps continue, things which previous ages had left unfinished. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
782:The more truthful I am with myself and others, the more my conscience is clear and tranquil. Thus, I can more thoroughly and unequivocally inhabit the present moment and accept everything that happens without fear, knowing that what goes around comes around (the law of karma). Ethical morality and self-discipline represent the good ground, or stable basis. Mindful awareness is the skillful and efficacious grow-path, or way. Wisdom and compassion constitute the fruit, or result. This is the essence of Buddhism [...] ~ Surya Das, #NFDB
783:Karma," he said once, "is not a sentence already printed. It is a series of words the author can arrange as she choses."
Love. Murder. A broken heart. The professor in the drawing room with candlestick. The detective in the bar with the gun. The guitar player backstage with the pick.
Maybe it was true: Life was a series of words we'd been given to arrange as we pleased, only no one seemed to know how. A word game with no right solution, a crossword puzzle where we couldn't quite remember the name of that song. ~ Sara Gran,#NFDB
784:Leave the problems of God to God and karma to karma. Today you're here and nothing you do will change that. Today you are alive and here and honored and blessed with good fortune. Look at this suset, it's beautiful, neh? This sunset exists. Tomorrow does not exist. There is only now. Please look. It is so beautiful and it will never happen ever again, never, not this sunset, never in all infinity. Lose yourself in it, make yourself one with nature and do not worry about karma, yours, mine, or that of the village. ~ James Clavell, #NFDB
785:The more truthful I am with myself and others, the more my conscience is clear and tranquil. Thus, I can more thoroughly and unequivocally inhabit the present moment and accept everything that happens without fear, knowing that what goes around comes around (the law of karma). Ethical morality and self-discipline represent the good ground, or stable basis. Mindful awareness is the skillful and efficacious grow-path, or way. Wisdom and compassion constitute the fruit, or result. This is the essence of Buddhism [...] ~ Lama Surya Das, #NFDB
786:He reached into his jacket pocket. Over the years, people had often commented on his ability to produce exactly the right item from his pockets at exactly the right time. Some had speculated that his pockets were extensions of the TARDIS, others had guessed he was just lucky. But then, they’d never read Yeltstrom’s Karma and Flares: The Importance of Fashion Sense to the Modern Zen Master.
They didn’t appreciate the things a sentient life-form could achieve, if he was totally at one with the lining of his jacket. ~ Lawrence Miles,#NFDB
787:Nada Brahma Vishwaswaroopa Nada hi Sakala Jeeva Roopa Nada hi karma, Nada hi dharma Nada hi bandhana, Nada hi mukti Nada hi Shankara, Nada hi Shakti Nada Brahma Vishwaswaroopa Nadam Nadam, Sarvam Nadam Nadam Nadam, Nadam Nadam (Sound is Brahman, the manifestation of the universe, sound manifests itself in the form of all life, sound is bondage, sound is the means of liberation, sound is that which binds, sound is that which liberates, sound is the bestower of all, sound is the power behind everything, sound is everything.) ~ Sadhguru, #NFDB
788:If your struggle with the conflicting parts of yourself is conscious, you are able to choose consciously the response that will create the karma that you desire. You will be able to bring to bear upon your decision an awareness of what lies behind each choice, and the consequences of each choice, and choose accordingly. When you enter into your decision-making dynamic consciously, you insert your will consciously into the creative cycle through which your soul evolves, and you enter consciously into your own evolution. ~ Gary Zukav, #NFDB
789:I was raised as a churchgoer but I wasn't a practising Christian. I wasn't an agnostic or atheist either. My view is that we should all take a bit from every religion and philosophy. I'm not a Buddhist but I like Buddhist philosophies, in particular. They give you a very good structure that you can build your life around. For instance, I definitely believe in karma, the idea that what goes around, comes around. I wondered whether Bob was my reward for having done something good, somewhere in my troubled life. - Chapter 21 ~ James Bowen, #NFDB
790:Questioner: We were told about karma and reincarnation, evolution and Yoga, masters and disciples. What are we to do with all this knowledge?
Maharaj: Leave it all behind you. Forget it. Go forth, unburdened with ideas and beliefs. Abandon all verbal structures, all relative truth, all tangible objectives. The Absolute can be reached by absolute devotion only. Don't be half-hearted.
Q: I must begin with some absolute truth. Is there any?
M: Yes, there is, the feeling: 'I am'. Begin with that. ~ Nisargadatta Maharaj,#NFDB
791:But she’s going to have a lot of problems."
THAT’S WHAT LIFE IS ALL ABOUT. SO I’M TOLD. I WOULDN’T KNOW, OF COURSE.
"What about reincarnation?"
Death hesitated.
YOU WOULDN’T LIKE IT, he said. TAKE IT FROM ME.
"I’ve heard that some people do it all the time."
YOU’VE GOT TO BE TRAINED TO IT. YOU’VE GOT TO START OFF SMALL AND WORK UP. YOU’VE NO IDEA HOW HORRIBLE IT IS TO BE AN ANT.
"It’s bad?"
YOU WOULDN’T BELIEVE IT. AND WITH YOUR KARMA AN ANT IS TOO MUCH TO EXPECT. ~ Terry Pratchett,#NFDB
792:That Bhagavad Gita instruction to be unattached to the fruits of your actions is the key. If you are a parent raising a child, don’t get attached to the act of raising the child. That doesn’t mean you’re not a loving, active parent. Your job is to love and nurture, feed and clothe, take care and guard the safety of the child, and guide him or her with your moral compass. But how the child turns out is how the child turns out. Ultimately he or she is not your child; who they turn out to be is up to God and their own karma. Your ~ Ram Dass, #NFDB
793:Because of the caste system, because of the fact that there is no social link between those who make the decisions and those who suffer the decisions, the Indian government just goes ahead and does what it wants. The people also assume that this is their lot, their karma, what was written. It's quite an efficient way of doing things. Therefore, India has a very good reputation in the world as a democracy, as a government that cares, that has just got too much on its hands, whereas, in fact, it's actually creating the problems. ~ Arundhati Roy, #NFDB
794:I did it for a little girl who was about to go charging out and maybe get herself killed much the same way—if I didn’t do something. I did it because she was my guest and I temporarily stood in loco parentis to her. I did it because she was all guts and gallantry but too ignorant to be allowed to monkey with such a buzz saw; she’d get hurt. But you, my cynical and sin-stained chum, know all about those buzz saws. If your own asinine carelessness caused you to back into one, who am I to tamper with your karma? You picked it. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
795:Some people say that everything happens for a reason. Some people believe in fate or destiny. Others believe in luck. Don’t forget about Karma – what goes around comes around, or the old adage “Do unto others as you would do unto yourself.” Many say that you hold your future in your hands; that only you can choose the path your life takes. If you don’t like something, then change it. Easy as that. Some people believe that life is life and wherever you end up and however you got there is just the way it’s supposed to be. ~ Brooke Cumberland, #NFDB
796:This isn’t about karma. I’m not trying to rack up I’m-a-Good-Person points.” You shouldn’t donate to charity, help the elderly cross the street, or rescue puppies in the hopes you’ll be repaid later. I may not be able to cure cancer or end world hunger, but small kindnesses go a long way. Not that I’m saying any of this to Rufus, since all my classmates used to mock me for saying things like that, and no one should feel bad for trying to be good. “I think we made his day by not pretending he’s invisible. Thanks for seeing him with me. ~ Adam Silvera, #NFDB
797:Humour allows us to see that ultimately things don't make sense. The only thing that truly makes sense is letting go of anything we continue to hold on to. Our ego-mind and emotions are a dramatic illusion. Of course, we all feel that they're real: my drama, your drama, our confrontations. We create these elaborate scenarios and then react to them. But there is nothing really happening outside our mind! This is karma's cosmic joke. You can laugh about the irony of this, or you can stick with your scenario. It's your choice. ~ Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, #NFDB
798:When we hunt or fish, we deliberately kill a defenseless being who wishes us no harm. This is a direct violation of the First Precept. It is absolutely forbidden to Buddhists. As to eating meat, we know that the only way we can obtain it is for an animal to be killed. Therefore, when we eat meat, it is our intent that an innocent animal should die to satisfy our addiction to flesh. And that underlying intention, no matter how well hidden behind a smokescreen of rationalizations will block the growth of compassion and create negative karma. ~ Norm Phelps, #NFDB
799:Unless you see your nature, you shouldn't go around criticizing the goodness of others. There's no advantage in deceiving yourself. Good and bad are distinct. Cause and effect are clear. But fools don't believe and fall straight into a hell of endless darkness without even knowing it. What keeps them from believing is the heaviness of their karma. They're like blind people who don't believe there's such a thing as light. Even if you explain it to them, they still don't believe, because they're blind. How can they possibly distinguish light? ~ Bodhidharma, #NFDB
800:Bud·dhism n. a widespread Asian religion or philosophy, founded by Siddartha Gautama in northeastern India in the 5th century BC. Buddhism has no creator god and gives a central role to the doctrine of karma. The ‘four noble truths’ of Buddhism state that all existence is suffering, that the cause of suffering is desire, that freedom from suffering is nirvana, and that this is attained through the ‘eightfold’ path of ethical conduct, wisdom, and mental discipline (including meditation). There are two major traditions, Theravada and Mahayana. ~ Erin McKean, #NFDB
801:Could this be a dream? Maybe I was knocked unconscious and I’m really sitting in a hospital bed coming up with this whole crazy story. That’s plausible. Sort of.
Argh! I can’t believe this. Tears spring to my eyes again, only this time, I let them roll down my cheeks. This isn’t fair. I didn’t do anything to deserve this. Angela should be the one showcasing her survival skills. She made fun of me. Karma is supposed to catch up with things like that, not kick me when I’m down.
Today is officially the worst day of my life. ~ Mandy Hubbard,#NFDB
802:Ah,’ said the Doctor.
He reached into his jacket pocket. Over the years, people had often commented on his ability to produce exactly the right item from his pockets at exactly the right time. Some had speculated that his pockets were extensions of the TARDIS, others had guessed he was just lucky. But then, they’d never read Yeltstrom’s Karma and Flares: The Importance of Fashion Sense to the Modern Zen Master.
They didn’t appreciate the things a sentient life-form could achieve, if he was totally at one with the lining of his jacket. ~ Lawrence Miles,#NFDB
803:Whenever you’ll open your eyes, you will find nothing but ugliness and misery all around you. Everything looks fine when you are in an unconscious state. This is the reason why you find it difficult to conceive: CONSCIOUSNESS IS THE BEING. You say, ”Impossible!” That’s why one needs to go through pain. That is called tapascharya, spiritual practice. Whenever one begins to become aware, first he will have to go through suffering. For lives you have created misery around you, who else would pass through it if not you? That is what we have called the karma. ~ Osho, #NFDB
804:you know when i was a little kid in oregon i didn't feel that i was and american at all, with all that suburban ideal and sex repression and general dreary newspaper gray censorship of all our real human values but and when i discovered buddhism and all i suddenly felt that i had lived in a previous lifetime innumerable ages ago and now because of the faults and sins in that lifetime i was being degraded to a more grievous domain of existence and my karma was to be born in america where nobody has any fun or believes in anything, especially freedom. ~ Jack Kerouac, #NFDB
805:God does not deal our karma to us as a punishment. Karma is a manifestation of an impersonal law as well as a personal one. The purpose of our bearing our karma is that karma is our teacher. We must learn the lessons of how and why we misused the energy of life. Until that day comes when we recognize the Law of God as a Law of Love, we will probably encounter difficulties. But if we will only hasten that day's coming into our own life, we will recognize that karma is actually grace and beauty and joy. [and love and awareness and hope! -EM] ~ Elizabeth Clare Prophet, #NFDB
806:believe absolutely in the truth and the teachings of the saints, and in the revelations of God; live your lives by that belief; always be vigilant, because sin is never far, and weakness; perform your dharma unwaveringly; observe mowna as much as you can. Let your hearts be clear, and aware that the Lord is present everywhere. Be brave and committed to your quest, and you will rid yourself of the knot of ahamkara, and even the linga sarira. Those are the knots that bind with the karma of all your past lives, that bind with darkest delusion.” Rishabha ~ Ramesh Menon, #NFDB
807:We may seem to forget a person, a place, a state of being, a past life, but meanwhile what we are doing is selecting new actors, seeking the closest reproduction to the friend, the lover, the husband we are trying to forget, in order to re-enact the drama with understudies. And one day we open our eyes and there we are, repeating the same story. How could it be otherwise? The design comes from within us. It is internal. It is what the old mystics described as karma, repeated until the spiritual or emotional experience was understood, liquidated, achieved. ~ Ana s Nin, #NFDB
808:Do you know the concept of karma? It’s kind of like a circle, or cause-and-effect, like a slow-tolling bell you rang maybe a year ago, five years ago, maybe in another lifetime if you believe in that. Karma means that what you do today, and why you do it, makes you who you are forever: as if you were clay, and every thought and action left a mark in that clay, bent it, shaped it, even ruined it… but with karma there are no excuses, no explanations, no I-didn’t-really-mean-it-so-can-I-have-some-more-clay. Karma takes everything you do very, very seriously. ~ Kathe Koja, #NFDB
809:The ideal man is he who, in the midst of the greatest silence and solitude, finds the intensest activity, and in the midst of the intensest activity finds the silence and solitude of the desert. He has learnt the secret of restraint, he has controlled himself. He goes through the streets of a big city with all its traffic, and his mind is as calm as if he were in a cave, where not a sound could reach him; and he is intensely working all the time. That is the ideal of Karma-Yoga, and if you have attained to that you have really learnt the secret of work. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
810:The saying "no self, no problem" probably comes from Zen. In their cultures, where Buddhism is kind of taken for granted, as well as karma, causality, former and future life, and the possibility for becoming enlightened, then it's safe to skirt the danger of nihilism, which would be, I don't exist because Buddha said I have no self, and therefore I have no problem because I don't exist. That would be a bad misunderstanding. But in those cultures, it would not be as easy to have that understanding as it would be here in the west, where we really are nihilistic. ~ Robert Thurman, #NFDB
811:It's more that those flaws become part of you, as a couple. And they make your strengths shine brighter, which is what allows that love to change. It's knowing someone deeply, and loving him or her in spite of the things that drive you crazy. And that, my sweet girl, takes time."
"But I'm grateful for Gabe. For his presence in your life, however brief. Because no matter what happens now, or who else you decide to give your heart to, Gabe has helped shape who you are. And you have a beautiful heart, Tegan. The heart of a survivor."
Dad to his daughter, Tegan ~ Karma Brown,#NFDB
812:But we didn't, not in the moonlight, or by the phosphorescent lanterns of lightning bugs in your back yard, not beneath the constellations we couldn't see, let alone decipher, or in the dark glow that replaced the real darkness of night, a darkness already stolen from us, not with the skyline rising behind us while a city gradually decayed, not in the heat of summer while a Cold War raged, despite the freedom of youth and the license of first love-because of fate, karma, luck, what does it matter?-we made not doing it a wonder, and yet we didn't, we didn't, we never did. ~ Stuart Dybek, #NFDB
813:But we didn’t, not in the moonlight, or by the phosphorescent lanterns of lightning bugs in your back yard, not beneath the constellations we couldn’t see, let alone decipher, or in the dark glow that replaced the real darkness of night, a darkness already stolen from us, not with the skyline rising behind us while a city gradually decayed, not in the heat of summer while a Cold War raged, despite the freedom of youth and the license of first love—because of fate, karma, luck, what does it matter?—we made not doing it a wonder, and yet we didn’t, we didn’t, we never did. ~ Stuart Dybek, #NFDB
814:In America, karma is best expressed in popular phrases like what goes around, comes around and what you sow, you will reap. Karma has also been referred to as having a boomerang effect where the thoughts and actions that you send out into the world turn around and come back at you... Jesus says, Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Karma goes a step further and dictates that What you do unto others will come back to you. I think Jesus and the Hindus really had the same idea. Think about that the next time you want to say or do something nasty to someone else! ~ Carmen Harra, #NFDB
815:F is for Fisker, a California-based hybrid luxury sportscar manufacturer named after owner Henrik Fisker. They debuted their first prototype, the Karma, in 2008. Features: solar panels on the roof to run minor electrical systems; leather interiors made from the hides of free-range cattle that were never branded; wood trim from “non-living” trees (such as wood taken from trees long submerged in lakes); an “animal-free” model that uses bamboo-based cloth instead of leather; and a center console inlaid with fossilized leaves. Cost: from about $80,000 to $106,000. ~ Bathroom Readers Institute, #NFDB
816:Enlightened enquiry alone leads to liberation. Supernatural powers are all illusory appearances created by the power of maya (mayashakti). Self-realization which is permanent is the only true accomplishment (siddhi). Accomplishments which appear and disappear, being the effect of maya, cannot be real. They are accomplished with the object of enjoying fame, pleasures, etc. They come unsought to some persons through their karma. Know that union with Brahman is the real aim of all accomplishments. This is also the state of liberation (aikya mukti) known as union (sayujya). ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
817:The second wave is now in their late 20s and 30s. They have made the transition to life on Earth much more easily than the first wave. The second wave souls tend to work behind the scenes, often on their own, creating little or no Karma. In the sessions I conduct as a hypnotist, they have been described as antennas that unconsciously channel energy onto the Earth. They do not have to do anything; they just have to be. Their energy affects everyone they come into contact with. Their paradox is they are supposed to be sharing their energy, but they do not like being around people. ~ Dolores Cannon, #NFDB
818:Te libero de mí, de mis males, de mi mal genio, de los domingos por la tarde en donde nunca puedo más, del odio a mi cumpleaños, de no saber cómo hacer para regalarte algo que no pierdas. Te libero de mi desengaño, de tu karma, de mis novedades, de la contradicción que represento. Te libero de mis llamadas que te saben a autocompasión, de mis enredos, de mi cabello suelto, largo, sin peinar,. Te libero de mi consciencia , del desconcierto a fin de mes, de la caída, de la llegada, de mi huída inevitable. Te dejo libre para que me dejes, para que me veas de lejos y me quieras menos. ~ Mario Benedetti, #NFDB
819:How did I learn empathy? I learned it while suffering. How did I learn about karma? Because it came back to me and I deserved it. I now know when any hurt I experience is due to circumstances outside of my control, karma, or self-imposed consequences for foolish choices. I do feel justice is served if karma humbles someone who needs it, and as anyone who has been wronged can attest, what they seem to want most is for the offending party to experience how it feels and to know in that moment exactly what they did to someone else and to be filled with remorse and hopefully, repentance. ~ Donna Lynn Hope, #NFDB
820:A new beginning done right," she said out loud, because everyone knew that saying it out loud made it true. "You hear that, karma?" She glanced upward through her slightly leaky sunroof into a dark sky, where storm clouds tumbled together like a dryer full of gray wool blankets. "This time, I'm gong to be strong." Like Katharine Hepburn. Like Ingrid Bergman ."So go torture someone else and leave me alone."
A bolt of lightning blinded her, followed by a boom of thunder that nearly had her jerking out of her skin. "Okay, so I meant pretty please leave me alone."
-Maddie ~ Jill Shalvis,#NFDB
821:If religion is a reaction of man, and nothing more, it seems to me that it represents a human desire for wrongdoers to be punished. I hate the idea of Idi Amin living in Saudi Arabia for the last 25 years of his life. That galls me to no end. I feel some sort of need for biblical atonement, or justice, or something. I like to believe there is some comeuppance, that karma kicks in at some point, even if it takes years or decades to happen. My girlfriend says this great thing that’s become my philosophy as well. 'I want to believe there's a heaven. But I can't not believe there's a hell.' ~ Vince Gilligan, #NFDB
822:Right here and now, you are beginning to wonder: is there really something wrong? Yes, there is. But at this precise moment, you also realize that you can change your future by bringing the past into the present. Past and future exist only in our memory. The present moment, though, is outside of time, it’s Eternity. In India, they use the word ‘karma,’ for lack of any better term. But it’s a concept that’s rarely given a proper explanation. It isn’t what you did in the past that will affect the present. It’s what you do in the present that will redeem the past and thereby change the future. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
823:Everything we do produces karma in the mind. In fact, it is in the mind rather than the world that karma’s seeds are planted. Aptly, Indian philosophy compares a thought to a seed: very tiny, but it can grow into a huge, deep-rooted, wide-spreading tree. I have seen places where a seed in a crack of a pavement grew into a tree that tore up the sidewalk. It is difficult to remove such a tree, and terribly difficult to undo the effects of a lifetime of negative thinking, which can extend into many other people’s lives. But it can be done, and the purpose of the Gita is to show how. ~ Krishna Dwaipayana Vyasa, #NFDB
824:The American legal system is not supposed to be a karma-based organism of retribution for unpunished bad deeds, but that’s how it worked in Nevada. The Las Vegas case was a transparent attempt by the local authorities to issue payback for Simpson’s acquittal in the 1994 murders, notwithstanding the statements to the contrary by the judge in the case. The fracas in the hotel room was a kind of minor dispute that probably would have attracted little notice from law enforcement if Simpson had not been involved. Instead, he was not only prosecuted but also received a wildly excessive sentence. ~ Jeffrey Toobin, #NFDB
825:Zavallı Zemberekkuşu! dedi May Kasahara. Kumiko’yu kurtaracağım derken olanca gücünü tüketmişsin. Ve belki de başardın onu kurtarmayı. Değil mi? Zaten bu arada az insan kurtarmadın sen. Ama kendini kurtarmayı başaramadın. Ve kimse kurtaramadı, seni. Vargücünü ve olanca karma’nı başkalarını kurtarmaya harcadın. Kendin için artık zerresi bile kalmadı, hepsini başka yerlere saçtın. Sana hiçbir şey kalmadı. Öyle bir haksızlık ki bu, sana tüm yüreğimle acıyorum, zavallı Zemberekkuşu, içtenlikle acıyorum. Ama ne de olsa, bu yolu sen kendin seçtin. Ha, ne demek istediğimi anlıyor musun? – Galiba evet. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
826:Never underestimate the long-term consequences of your actions. For as long as the mind has the obscurration of grasping at an inherently existing "me", then there will be karma. No matter how far on the path one is, no matter how realised one is, no matter how many miraculous powers one has attained, for as long as there is even a subtle trace of this obscurration, karma is there.
That is why Padmasambhava, an enlightened being not even affected by it, had skilfully told ordinary beings, "My realization is higher than the sky, but my observance of karma is finer than grains of flour." ~ Chamtrul Rinpoche,#NFDB
827:The reason why you do not touch fire is because you know that it will cause you to suffer. Likewise, if you truly understand karma, you will not commit a single negative action, because unless that negative karma is purified, you know that it will eventually ripen into suffering.
You might forget this natural process, or you might not believe in it, because the ripening does not always happen immediately. But your karma will follow you like your shadow, that gets closer and closer without you realising, until you are eventually touched by it. Please, I urge you to always remember this. ~ Chamtrul Rinpoche,#NFDB
828:Laws by their very nature are arbitrary and depend on context. What one community considers fair, another may not consider to be fair. What is considered fair by one generation is not considered fair by the next. Rules always change in times of war and in times of peace, as they do in times of fortune and misfortune. Thus, no decision is right or wrong. Decisions can be beneficial or harmful, in the short-term or long-term, to oneself or to others. Essentially, every decision has a consequence, no matter which rule is upheld and which one is ignored. This law of consequence is known as karma. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
829:We cannot always tell why souls come into the world rich or poor, some to grow strong and survive, others to become weak and succumb; but this we do know, that the law of karma directs these things, placing each life where it will best learn the lesson needed for its growth. Some must learn in sickness and pain; others in laughter and joy. Some must learn to be exalted; others to humble themselves. But all are here to save their souls by the sweat of their brows; to knead the bread of their own existence, even though they must mix it with their own life-blood. ~ Manly P Hall, Magic: A Treatise on Esoteric Ethics, #NFDB
830:Man’s conscious state is an awareness of body and breath. His subconscious state, active in sleep, is associated with his mental, and temporary, separation from body and breath. His superconscious state is a freedom from the delusion that “existence” depends on body and breath.19 God lives without breath; the soul made in His image becomes conscious of itself, for the first time, only during the breathless state. When the breath-link between soul and body is severed by evolutionary karma, the abrupt transition called “death” ensues; the physical cells revert to their natural powerlessness. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
831:Ma’s pet peeve was how the Western world misunderstood the theory of karma. “I mean it’s the Bhagavad Gita they’re bastardizing. What is all this ‘karma’s a bitch’ nonsense!” Ma loved to say. The entire “what goes around comes around” thing was a backward view of karma. Karma was simply Sanskrit for action, and the theory was that your actions are the only thing under your control, as opposed to the fruits of your actions, which are not. And since actions always bear fruit, you were better off focusing your energy on your own actions, rather than worrying about the results you wanted them to produce. ~ Sonali Dev, #NFDB
832:I'm not ashamed of wanting you. And yes, I've missed touching you, and holding you, and I want that again. But that isn't all I've missed about you since you left town." He placed his palms on the sides of her face, bringing her gaze back to his. "I've missed the way you glance around when you think your karma is going to zap you. I miss watching you walk and the way you push your hair behind your ears. I miss the sound of your voice, and that you try to be a vegetarian and can't. I miss that you believe you're a pacifist even as you shock me on the arm. I've missed everything about you, Gabrielle. ~ Rachel Gibson, #NFDB
833:Lojong Slogan 1. First, train in the preliminaries; The four reminders. or alternatively called the Four Thoughts
1. Maintain an awareness of the preciousness of human life.
2. Be aware of the reality that life ends; death comes for everyone; Impermanence.
3. Recall that whatever you do, whether virtuous or not, has a result; Karma.
4. Contemplate that as long as you are too focused on self-importance and too caught up in thinking about how you are good or bad, you will experience suffering. Obsessing about getting what you want and avoiding what you dont want does not result in happiness; Ego.
~ Wikipedia,#NFDB
834:When we are at last freed from the body that has defined and dominated our understanding of ourselves for so long, the karmic vision of one life is completely exhausted, but any karma that might be created in the future has not yet begun to crystallize. So what happens in death is that there is a “gap” or space that is fertile with vast possibility; it is a moment of tremendous, pregnant power where the only thing that matters, or could matter, is how exactly our mind is. Stripped of a physical body, mind stands naked, revealed startlingly for what it has always been: the architect of our reality. So ~ Sogyal Rinpoche, #NFDB
835:Nu există loc în budism pentru folosirea efortului. Fii doar obișnuit și nimic mai mult. Ușurează-ți intestinele, elimină apa, pune-ți hainele, mănâncă-ți hrana. Când ești obosit, du-te și te întinde. Oamenii ignoranți vor râde de tine, dar cei înțelepți vor înțelege... Pe măsură ce mergi dintr-un loc în altul, dacă îl privești pe fiecare ca pe căminul tău, ele toate vor fi într-adevăr așa, fiindcă, atunci când circumstanțele se produc, nu trebuie să încerci să le schimbi. Astfel obișnuințele voastre de simțire, care produc karma pentru cele Cinci Iaduri, vor deveni de la sine Marele Ocean al Eliberării. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
836:Beings suffer injury alike From lifeless things as well as living beings. So why be angry only with the latter? Rather let us simply bear with harm. 67. Some do evil things because of ignorance, Some respond with anger, being ignorant. Which of them is faultless in such acts? To whom shall error be ascribed? 68. Instead, why did they act in times gone by That they are now so harmed at others’ hands? Since everything depends on karma, Why should I be angry at such things? 69. This I see and therefore, come what may, I’ll hold fast to the virtuous path And foster in the hearts of all An attitude of mutual love. ~ ntideva, #NFDB
837:Karma-Yoga, therefore, is a system of ethics and religion intended to attain freedom through unselfishness, and by good works. The Karma-Yogi need not believe in any doctrine whatever. He may not believe even in God, may not ask what his soul is, nor think of any metaphysical speculation. He has got his own special aim of realising selflessness; and he has to work it out himself. Every moment of his life must be realisation, because he has to solve by mere work, without the help of doctrine or theory, the very same problem to which the Jnâni applies his reason and inspiration and the Bhakta his love. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
838:It seems only fair," Matthew continued. "A bit of karma, if you will." He twirled the stake again. "Shall we see how long you scream?"
"Are you ever going to shut up?" I snapped, fear and irritation filling me in equal measures. "This isn't your monologue, Hamlet. It's the battle scene, in case you've forgotten."
His eyes narrowed so fast they nearly sparked. They were the color of honey on fire. One of the others growled like an animal, low in his throat. It made all the hairs on my arms stand straight up.
I was going to die for making fun of Shakespeare.
My English Lit professor would be so proud. ~ Alyxandra Harvey,#NFDB
839:What we call destiny is only in fact the result of the present condition of the being and the nature and energies it has accumulated in the past acting on each other and determining the present attempts and their future results. But as soon as one enters the path of spiritual life, this old predetermined destiny begins to recede. There comes in a new factor, the Divine Grace, the help of a higher Divine Force other than the force of Karma, which can lift the sadhak beyond the present possibilities of his nature. One's spiritual destiny is then the divine election which ensures the future.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - I, [T1],#NFDB
840:La interpretación ocurre en el nivel de la mente, pero la que está condicionada por la experiencia es nuestra alma individual; ésta influye en las elecciones e interpretaciones por los recuerdos de experiencias pasadas. Estos pequeñísimos granos o semillas de la memoria se acumulan en el transcurso de la vida y la combinación de recuerdos e imaginación basada en la experiencia recibe el nombre de karma. El karma se acumula en la parte personal del alma, en esa ola que forma la esencia de nuestro ser y la matiza. El alma personal gobierna la conciencia y es el paradigma de la clase de persona en que cada uno se convertirá. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
841:Erlendur didn’t believe in premonitions, visions or dreams, nor reincarnation or karma, he didn’t believe in God although he’d often read the Bible, nor in eternal life or that his conduct in this world would affect whether he went to heaven or hell. He felt that life itself offered a mixture of the two.
Then sometimes he experienced this incomprehensible and supernatural de´ja` -vu, experienced time and place as if he’d seen it all before, as if he stepped outside himself, became an onlooker to his own life. There was no way he could explain what it was that
happened or why his mind played tricks on him like this. ~ Arnaldur Indri ason,#NFDB
842:And there is no judgement in any of it. In the incredible vastness of the vision of buddha-mind, this world of rebirth, death, and change we call samsara had no beginning. In this inconceivably immense vision of reality, we have all wandered forever, and so we all trail an endless, infinite amount of past karma. Through this timelessness we have all done everything, everyone one of us: we have loved, hated, feared, killed, raped, stolen, given, served, loved. We have done it all. Through beginningless and ongoing rounds of rebirth, we are all one another's parents, children, friends, lovers, and enemies, over and over again. ~ Sharon Salzberg, #NFDB
843:Children inhabit a world of “it is,” not a world of “it isn’t.” They come to us with their being brimming with potential. Each of our children has their own particular destiny to live out—their own karma, if you like. Because children carry a blueprint within them, they are often already in touch with who they are and what they want to be in the world. We are chosen as their parents to help them actualize this. The trouble is that if we don’t pay close attention to them, we rob them of their right to live out their destiny. We end up imposing on them our own vision for them, rewriting their spiritual purpose according to our whims. ~ Shefali Tsabary, #NFDB
844:Many Buddhists understand the Round of birth-and-death quite literally as a process of reincarnation, wherein the karma which shapes the individual does so again and again in life after life until, through insight and awakening, it is laid to rest. But in Zen, and in other schools of the Mahayana, it is often taken in a more figurative way, as that the process of rebirth is from moment to moment, so that one is being reborn so long as one identifies himself with a continuing ego which reincarnates itself afresh at each moment of time. Thus the validity and interest of the doctrine does not require acceptance of a special theory of survival. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
845:All things are transient. Buddha says it is so, and Hock Seng, who didn't believe in or care about karma or the truths of the dharma when he was young, has come in his old age to understand his grandmother's religion and its painful truths. Suffering is his lot. Attachment is the source of his suffering. And yet he cannot stop himself from saving and preparing and striving to preserve himself in this life which has turned out so poorly.
How is it that I sinned to earn this bitter fate? Saw my clan whittled by red machetes? Saw my businesses burned and my clipper ships sunk? He closes his eyes, forcing memories away. Regret is suffering. ~ Paolo Bacigalupi,#NFDB
846:How do you honor the spirit of karma yoga and also honor your own needs? ... [Y]ou can come to karma yoga by determining what is possible for you right here and right now. You can assess your physical health, energy level, and abilities. You can say no if that is more truthful than a resentful yes. You can notice when you get internal messages that you are helping in order to gain power, or recognition, or love. ... When you serve yourself, you make it possible to serve others. And when you serve others, you acknowledge your interdependence with all of life. ... What kind of servant are you: resentful and manipulative, or joyful and inspiring? ~ Judith Hanson Lasater, #NFDB
847:Ignorance leads to exaggerating the importance of beauty, ugliness, and other qualities. Exaggeration of these qualities leads to lust, hatred, jealousy, belligerence, and so on. These destructive emotions lead to actions contaminated by misperception. These actions (karma) lead to powerless birth and rebirth in cyclic existence and repeated entanglement in trouble. Removing ignorance undermines our exaggeration of positive and negative qualities; this undercuts lust, hatred, jealousy, belligerence, and so on, putting an end to actions contaminated by misperception, thereby ceasing powerless birth and rebirth in cyclic existence. Insight is the way out. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
848:So when people asked me why I was moving away from the city of my dreams, I asked them why I wouldn't. It's not about greener pastures. It's never been about that. All it's ever been about is exploring and falling and pulling myself back together. Every time I do, I get stronger. I get faster. I get smarter. I get sweeter, hungrier, and happier. Dreams are mobile, fate doesn't live in one city, and karma is your shadow. I was offered a career opportunity that knocked quietly. It wasn't a million dollar check on my doorstep, it was more like the passing words of a stranger at a bar that change your perspective of the world. Something clicked and I had to accept. ~ Kelton Wright, #NFDB
849:What is it that makes a person insist passionately on the existence of metaphysical realities that can be neither demonstrated nor refuted?
I suppose some of it has to do with fear of death, the terror that you and your loved ones will disappear and become nothing. But I suspect that for such people, the world as presented to their senses and reason appears intrinsically inadequate, incapable of fulfilling their deepest longings for meaning, truth, justice, or goodness.
Whether one believes in God or karma and rebirth, in both cases one can place one’s trust in a higher power or law that appears capable of explaining this fraught and brief life on earth. ~ Stephen Batchelor,#NFDB
850:While we may judge things as good or bad, karma doesn't. It's a simple case of like gets like, the ultimate balancing act, nothing more, nothing less. And if you're deteremined to fix every situation you deem as bad, or difficult, or somehow unsavory, then you rob the person of their own chance to fix it, learn from it, or even grow from it. Some things, no matter how painful, happen for a reason. A reason you or I may not be able to grasp at first sight, not without knowing a person's entire life story—their cumulative past. And to just barge in and interfere, no matter how well-intentioned, would be akin to robbing them of their journey. Something that's better not done. ~ Alyson Noel, #NFDB
851:The karmic philosophy appeals to me on a metaphorical level because even in ones lifetime it's obvious how often we must repeat our same mistakes, banging our heads against the same ole addictions and compulsions, generating the same old miserable and often catastrophic consequences, until we can finally stop and fix it. This is the supreme lesson of karma ( and also of western psychology, by the way)- take care of the problem now, or else you'll just have to suffer again later when you screw everything up the next time. And that repetition of suffering-that's hell. Moving out of that endless repetition to a new level of understanding-there's where you'll find heaven. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
852:The prevalent idea that karma is a superstitious or archaic belief probably stems from the simplified versions of the idea that emerged from old-world Asia. In poor conditions, among uneducated people, the Buddha’s teachings were usually delivered very simply. People in such circumstances tend to express their wish to create good karma by making ritual offerings to ordained members of the sangha, or by worshipping Buddha images, or by doing circumambulations of Buddhist shrines and reliquaries, or by feeding the poor, and so on. In a modern context, karma tends to be associated predominantly with this type of generalization, again invoking the primitive, superstitious image. ~ Traleg Kyabgon, #NFDB
853:In the end, the record companies have the power to control the quality that is served online. Online service has been problematic in that it actively or discreetly promotes trading and duplication of music. It is not offensive to me that the MP3-quaility sound is traded around. It is, in my opinion, the new radio and serves a great purpose: making music lovers away of the content tat is out there to buy. If the consumers want it, let tham take it, whatever quality they prefer. Ultimately, nothing can stop absolute quality from making a big comeback. The stage is well set. I believe in what I am trying to do and that good Karma will come from it.
It is just a matter of time. ~ Neil Young,#NFDB
854:Astrology is the study of man’s response to planetary stimuli. The stars have no conscious benevolence or animosity; they merely send forth positive and negative radiations. Of themselves, these do not help or harm humanity, but offer a lawful channel for the outward operation of cause-effect equilibriums which each man has set into motion in the past. “A child is born on that day and at that hour when the celestial rays are in mathematical harmony with his individual karma. His horoscope is a challenging portrait, revealing his unalterable past and its probable future results. But the natal chart can be rightly interpreted only by men of intuitive wisdom: these are few. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
855:At the level of second attention, however, this cycle is irrelevant. One doesn’t need to repeal the law of karma at all. Despite all the activity on the surface of life, a speck of awareness inside is not touched. The instant they wake up in the morning, a saint and a sinner are in the same place. They both feel themselves to be alive and aware. This place stands outside reward and punishment. It knows no duality; therefore in stage four your challenge is to find this place, hold on to it, and live there. When you have accomplished this task, duality is gone. You are free from all bondage of good or bad actions. In Christian terms, your soul is redeemed and returned to innocence. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
856:In Buddhism the term self has two meanings that must be differentiated in order to avoid confusion. One meaning of self is “person,” or “living being.” This is the being who loves and hates, who performs actions and accumulates good and bad karma, who experiences the fruits of those actions, who is reborn in cyclic existence, who cultivates spiritual paths, and so on. The other meaning of self occurs in the term selflessness, where it refers to a falsely imagined, overconcretized status of existence called “inherent existence.” The ignorance that adheres to such an exaggeration is indeed the source of ruination, the mother of all wrong attitudes—perhaps we could even say devilish. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
857:But then the subject turned to the spiritual life and Meg talked about her many visits to ashrams in India and her admiration for Swami Muktananda and Gurumayi. That got in the way, especially because he told her of his skepticism regarding the guru industry, and suggested she might profitably read Gita Mehta’s book Karma Cola. “Why are you so cynical?” she asked him, as if she genuinely wanted to know the answer, and he said that if you grew up in India it was easy to conclude that these people were fakes. “Yes, of course there are lots of charlatans,” she said, reasonably, “but can’t you discriminate?” He shook his head sadly. “No,” he said. “No, I can’t.” That was the end of their chat. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
858:The oil consecrates everything that is touched with it; it is his aspiration; all acts performed in accordance with that are holy. The scourge tortures him; the dagger wounds him; the chain binds him. It is by virtue of these three that his aspiration remains pure, and is able to consecrate all other things. He wears a crown to affirm his lordship, his divinity; a robe to symbolize silence, and a lamen to declare his work. The book of spells or conjurations is his magical record, his Karma. In the East is the Magick Fire, in which all burns up at last. We will now consider each of these matters in detail.
~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA, Book 4, Magick, Part II - Magick (elemental theory), Preliminary Marks,#NFDB
859:He remembered the pride-filled glow that had swamped Gyoko's face and he wondered again at the bewildering gullibility of people. How baffling it was that even the most cunning and clever people would frequently see only what they wanted to see, and would rarely look beyond the thinnest of facades. Or they would ignore reality, dismissing it as the facade. And then, when their whole world fell to pieces and they were on their knees slitting their bellies or cutting their throats, or cast out into the freezing world, they would tear their topknots or rend their clothes and bewail their karma, blaming gods or kami or luck or their lords or husbands or vassals -- anything or anything -- but never themselves. ~ James Clavell, #NFDB
860:Maybe there’s a heaven, like they say, a place where everything we’ve ever done is noted and recorded, weighed on big karma scales. Maybe not. Maybe this whole thing is just a giant experiment run by aliens who find out human hijinks amusing. Or maybe we’re an abandoned project started by a deity who checked out a long time ago, but we’re still hard-wired to believe, to try to make meaning out of the seemingly random. Maybe we’re all part of the same unconscious stew, dreaming the same dreams, hoping the same hopes, needing the same connection, trying to find it, missing, trying again—each of us playing our parts in the other’s plotlines, just one big ball of human yarn tangled up together. Maybe this is it. ~ Libba Bray, #NFDB
861:The Collectorship of Madna is the seventh post that he has held in eight years. He is quite philosophic about the law that governs the transfer of civil servants; he sees it as a sort of corollary to the law of karma, namely, that the whole of life passes through innumerable and fundamentally mystifying changes, and these changes are sought to be determined by our conduct, our deeds (otherwise, we would quite simply lose our marbles); only thus can we even pretend to satisfactorily explain the mystery of suffering, which is a subject that has troubled thoughtful souls all over the world since time immemorial. It is also a hypothesis that justifies the manifest social inequalities of the Hindu community. ~ Upamanyu Chatterjee, #NFDB
862:Why read on? Why pick up their book from the far wall where it has been thrown away in disgust and pain, and read on? Why submit to such cruelty, such bad karma, such bad plotting?
The reason is simple: these things happened. They happened countless times, just like this. The oceans are salt with our tears. No one can deny that these things happened.
And so there is no choice in the matter. They cannot escape the wheel of birth and death, not in the experience of it, or in the contemplation of it afterwards; and their anthologist, Old Red Ink himself, must tell their stories honestly, must deal in reality, or else the stories mean nothing. And it is crucial that the stories mean something. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson,#NFDB
863:According to the law of karma, every action has a result. If you stay in bed all day with the covers over your head, if you overeat for the millionth time in your life, if you get drunk, if you get stoned, you know that’s going to depress you and make you more discouraged, if it’s just this habitual thing that you think is going to make you feel better. The older you get, the more you know how it just makes you feel more wretched. The law of karma says, “Well, how do you want to feel tomorrow, next week, next year, five years from now, ten years from now?” It’s up to you how to use your life. It doesn’t mean that you have to be the best one at cheering up, or that your habitual tendencies never get the better of you. ~ Pema Ch dr n, #NFDB
864:"Where can you find anyone who steals because his karma is deep or his sins heavy? Stealing is the karma, stealing is the sin! If it weren't for stealing, that sin and karma couldn't exist. Whether you steal or whether you don't depends on the present state of your own mind, not on your past karma. And what I'm telling you now doesn't go only for stealing. Generally speaking, all delusions are just the same as stealing. Whether you're going to be deluded or you're not going to, all depends on the present state of your own mind. When you're deluded, you're an unenlightened being; when you're not deluded, you're a buddha. There's no special shortcut to being a buddha beyond this. Isn't it so? Everyone, realize this conclusively!" ~ Bankei, #NFDB
865:Do you know why you‟ve found me half-naked? Do you know what this is?"
I don‟t know, sir. What is this?”
“This is karma. This is every negative thing I‟ve done, coming back to take a big bite of my ass.”
The tightness in her throat eased. She strove to match the light tone his response invited.
“That is unfortunate. Particularly as, in my professional opinion, the consequences of your actions are worse than you imagine.”
“Why do you say that, Winters?”
“Because you are much more than half-naked, sir. And although I have many talents, protecting you from mystical kar mic forces is not one of them.”
He tilted his head, as if weighing that. “So chances are, I‟ll lose my shorts before we‟re
done. ~ Meljean Brook,#NFDB
866:When bad things happen to good people, we have a problem. We know consciously that life is unfair, but unconsciously we see the world through the lens of reciprocity. The downfall of an evil man (in our biased and moralistic assessment) is no puzzle: He had it coming to him. But when the victim was virtuous, we struggle to make sense of his tragedy. At an intuitive level, we all believe in karma, the Hindu notion that people reap what they sow. The psychologist Mel Lerner has demonstrated that we are so motivated to believe that people get what they deserve and deserve what they get that we often blame the victim of a tragedy, particularly when we can’t achieve justice by punishing a perpetrator or compensating the victim. ~ Jonathan Haidt, #NFDB
867:Positivity can be a negative," I tell her, "if it's used to diminish events that should be cause for concern. Saying 'bad things happen to good people' or "God doesn't give anyone more than they can handle', for instance, isn't necessarily helpful to the person to whom something bad happened--it is much more beneficial to those who wish to be dismissive- who don't really care to think about the why or how or who. And if we cease to see the real human part in events--if instead, we relegate human experiences to some sort of mystical concept like karma, destiny or everything happens for a reason, and consider more realistic views to be negative--then we diminish compassion and empathy, as well as the possibility of positive change. ~ Jane Devin, #NFDB
868:Our will, our volition, our karma, constitutes the essential core of the active part of mental experience. It is the most important, if not the only important, active part of consciousness. We generally think of will as being expressed in the behaviors we exhibit: whether we choose this path or that one, whether we make this decision or that. Even when will is viewed introspectively, we often conceptualize it in terms of an externally pursued goal. But I think the truly important manifestation of will, the one from which our decisions and behaviors flow, is the choice we make about the quality and direction of attentional focus. Mindful or unmindful, wise or unwise—no choice we make is more basic, or important, than this one. ~ Jeffrey M Schwartz, #NFDB
869:Okay, just so we're clear," Piper said, "I'll show you where Jason and I entered the maze, but I'm not doing the stereotypical Native American tracker thing. I don't know tracking. I'm not your guide."
We all readily agreed, as one does when delivered an ultimatum by a friend with strong opinions and poison darts.
"Also," she continued, "if any of you find the need for spiritual guidance on this quest, I am not here to provide that service. I'm not going to dispense bits of ancient Cherokee wisdom."
"Very well," I aid. "Though as a former prophecy god, I enjoy bits of spiritual wisdom."
"Then you'll have to ask the satyr," Piper said.
Grover cleared his throat. "Um, recycling is good karma?"
"There you go," Piper said. ~ Rick Riordan,#NFDB
870:Question: What if a negative feeling toward someone or a situation persists, despite my intention and effort to let it go? Answer: Sometimes one is more or less forced to surrender to a situation and presume that it’s karmic. With spiritual research, one finds out that it is indeed karmic. Let’s say you are paying off the karma of being mean to a lot of people! Now you get a chance to see what it’s like to have people be mean to you. Sometimes the only reasonable thing left to do is to surrender to karmic patterns. You don’t have to believe in karma as a religious doctrine in order to make this step. It’s simply accepting the basic law of human interactions that “what goes around comes around,” and most of us have not always been saints! ~ David R Hawkins, #NFDB
871:All action immediately sets into motion the law of reaction, which the ancients have called the law of karma, which is the factor employed by nature for the creation of the soul. The rejecting or ignoring of opportunity, falling under the law of indifference and inertia, fails to result in a reaction. This, in turn, results in the starving of the soul. Those who have ignored experience are called the "soulless creations," and are in the same position as those kingdoms which, like the angels, have not been given individual intelligence. [...] As one pole or the other slowly grows within the being, the atoms of the opposing substances are slowly crowded or forced out, or sloughed off, for lack of cohesion. ~ Manly P Hall, Magic: A Treatise on Esoteric Ethics, #NFDB
872:In the secular view, this material world is all there is. And so the meaning of life is to have the freedom to choose the life that makes you most happy. However, in that view of things, suffering can have no meaningful part. It is a complete interruption of your life story- it cannot be a meaningful part of the story. In this approach to life, suffering should be avoided at almost any cost, or minimized to the greatest degree possible. This means that when facing unavoidable and irreducible suffering, secular people must smuggle in resources from other views of life, having recourse to ideas of karma, or Buddhism, or Greek Stoicism, or Christianity, even though their beliefs about the nature of the universe do not line up with those resources. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
873:The magician was coming alive. The illusionist, the eternal pacifier and eflector of ridicule, the dancer on eggshells and creator of impossible karma was answering the call of the footlights. The Oliver of the rain-swept bus shelters, children's hospitals and Salvation Army hostels was performing for his life and Tiger's, while Tinatin cooked, and Yevgeny half-listened and counted his misfortunes in the flames, and Hoban and his fellow devils dreamed their sour mischief and pondered their dwindling options. And Oliver knew his audience. He empathized with its disarray, its stunned senses and confused allegiances. He knew how often in his own life, at its absolutely lowest moments, he would have given everything he had for one lousy conjurer with a stuffed raccoon. ~ John le Carr, #NFDB
874:That is exactly what nobody seems to grasp about this karma business. It’s not a simple matter of cause and effect, reward and punishment. It’s a question of what’s available. You see, as long as life for the majority of souls on this planet is just a long round of starvation, misery, torture, and early death—and believe me, outside this fortunate watershed that is an apt description of the state of affairs—as long as only a few live in comfort while the masses scrape along in want, then all us returning souls have to take our fair share of shifts among the hungry. You think this life you’ve lived was tough? Let me tell you, it was just R and R between the ones where you never get a solid meal two days running or you die before your first birthday from drinking bad water. ~ Starhawk, #NFDB
875:When I say maturity, I mean an inner integrity. And this inner integrity comes only when you stop making others responsible, when you stop saying that the other is creating your suffering, when you start realizing that you are the creator of your suffering. This is the first step towards maturity: I am responsible. Whatsoever is happening, it is my doing.
You feel sad. Is this your doing? You will feel very much disturbed, but if you can remain with this feeling, sooner or later you will be able to stop doing many things. This is what the theory of karma is all about. You are responsible. Don’t say society is responsible, don’t say that parents are responsible, don’t say the economic conditions are responsible, don’t throw the responsibility onto anybody. YOU are responsible. ~ Osho,#NFDB
876:Relationships fail because of trust issues, commitment issues and communication issues. Without communication there is no relationship. Without respect there is no LOVE. Without trust there is no reason to continue. Stay grounded to the one you love. Respect him or her to the utmost. Respect the relationship. If the relationship is healthy, then keep on keeping on and never let a Hurricane, Tornado, or Tsunami tear your house down. Life's to short for broken hearts. Life's to short for betrayal or back stabbing. Life's to short to live with the thoughts of "What if's". Life's to short to waste a perfectly good heart. Adhere to the truth, if not Karma has no deadline. She could strike whenever you're in a relationship or married, then you look back on years ago wondering "What if... ~ Antonio Logan, #NFDB
877:Rather than attaining nirvana, I see the aim of Buddhist practice to be the moment-to-moment flourishing of human life within the ethical framework of the eightfold path here on earth. Given what is known about the biological evolution of human beings, the emergence of self-awareness and language, the sublime complexity of the brain, and the embeddedness of such creatures in the fragile biosphere that envelops this planet, I cannot understand how after physical death there can be continuity of any personal consciousness or self, propelled by the unrelenting force of acts (karma) committed in this or previous lives. For many—perhaps most—of my coreligionists, this admission might lead them to ask, “Why, then, if you don’t believe such things, do you still call yourself a ‘Buddhist’? ~ Stephen Batchelor, #NFDB
878:1. Everyone is entitled to their opinion about the things they read (or watch, or listen to, or taste, or whatever). They’re also entitled to express them online.
2. Sometimes those opinions will be ones you don’t like.
3. Sometimes those opinions won’t be very nice.
4. The people expressing those may be (but are not always) assholes.
5. However, if your solution to this “problem” is to vex, annoy, threaten or harrass them, you are almost certainly a bigger asshole.
6. You may also be twelve.
7. You are not responsible for anyone else’s actions or karma, but you are responsible for your own.
8. So leave them alone and go about your own life."
[Bad Reviews: I Can Handle Them, and So Should You (Blog post, July 17, 2012)] ~ John Scalzi,#NFDB
879:The way Karma Ura sees it, a government is like a pilot guiding an airplane. In bad weather, it must rely on its instruments to navigate. But what if the instruments are faulty? The plane will certainly veer off course, even though the pilot is manipulating the controls properly. That, he says, is the state of the world today, with its dependence on gross national product as the only real measure of a nation’s progress. “Take education,” he says. “We are hooked on measuring enrollment, but we don’t look at the content. Or consider a nation like Japan. People live a long time, but what is the quality of their life past age sixty?” He has a point. We measure what is easiest to measure, not what really matters to most people’s lives—a disparity that Gross National Happiness seeks to correct. ~ Eric Weiner, #NFDB
880:If we look about us in life, we shall perceive as Job did, that the wicked seem to flourish and it is the just man who is stricken. This is part of the Divine Plan. The just man, having consecrated himself to the highest of his principles, is immediately confronted with karma and deluged with what seems to be adversity. In reality, this is not adversity, but the speeding up of evolution as the result of consecration to the spiritual life. More is expected of a man who is wise than of the man who is foolish. The older we grow, the more strength we have; and the more strength we have, the more sternly we are tested to prove that strength. But no man is tested beyond his capacity. Therefore, the Lord says to Satan that he may afflict Job, but that he may not take his life. ~ Manly P Hall, How to Understand Your Bible, #NFDB
881:I would have done anything for him. But these days, I don't want to do anything. I don't want to get drunk or go to a wild party or make out with random boys-not that I've ever wanted to. I don't want to watch chick flicks or eat ice cream or get a haircut or buy out half of the mall. I don't want cold, cruel revenge. I don't want to see him suffer when karma catches up with him and kick his ass. I don't even want to talk to him right now, simply because it would be awkward and pathetic and I wouldn't know what to say to him. Yes, there is self-control, preventing me from being stupid and acting like a desperate doofus in the manner most heartbroken people do. But there is also a weary numbness threatening to consume every inch of me: Isn't there a way for me to skip straight to the part where I'm fine again? ~ Marla Miniano, #NFDB
882:Nevertheless, critiques of karma often center on this notion of individual responsibility and suggest it produces an unsympathetic attitude toward others and leads to a dubious tendency to blame. The poor are blamed for being poor, and so on. Buddhism is said, falsely, to assign fault to individuals for all their circumstances and to deny agency. If we are poor, for instance, it might be thought, more or less automatically, that we will stay that way until our karmic debt runs out, and then, after we die, we may then be reborn in fortunate circumstances, becoming a wealthy entrepreneur perhaps. This type of thinking cannot be reconciled with Buddhism’s emphasis on the interconnectedness of all things though, which fully acknowledges the fertile complexity of influences on persons, including their environment. ~ Traleg Kyabgon, #NFDB
883:Shane’s dad stopped the van,” Claire said. “He took Monica as a hostage.”
For a second, neither one of them moved, and then Eve whooped and held up her hand for a high five. Claire just stared at her, and Eve compensated by clapping both hands over her head. “Yesssss!” she said, and did a totally geeky victory dance. “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer psycho!”
“Hey!” Claire yelled, and Eve froze in midcelebration. It was stupid, but Claire was angry; she knew Eve was right, knew she had no reason at all to think Monica was ever going to be anything but a gigantic pain in the ass, but… “Shane’s dad’s going to burn her if they go through with the execution. He has a blowtorch.”
The glee dropped out of Eve’s expression. “Oh,” she said. “Well…still. Not like she didn’t ask for it. Karma’s a bitch, and so am I. ~ Rachel Caine,#NFDB
884:Institutionalized Buddhism throughout Asia not only has a doctrinal commitment to rebirth but also has an economic and political one. In contrast to most Tibetan lamas, for whom the belief in the doctrine of rebirth is essential to the continuing authority of their institutions in exile, other Asian Buddhists in the West have felt freer to adapt their teachings to suit the needs of a secular and skeptical audience whose interest in the dharma is as a way of finding meaning here and now rather than after death. One will search in vain for any discussion of rebirth in the numerous writings of Thich Nhat Hanh, for example. Although he comes from a country (Vietnam) in which the belief is deeply rooted, he now seems to be moving toward a view that equates karma with some form of genetic inheritance and transmissioṇ ~ Stephen Batchelor, #NFDB
885:The awakened sages call a person wise when all his undertakings are free from anxiety about results; all his selfish desires have been consumed in the fire of knowledge. 20 The wise, ever satisfied, have abandoned all external supports. Their security is unaffected by the results of their action; even while acting, they really do nothing at all. 21 Free from expectations and from all sense of possession, with mind and body firmly controlled by the Self, they do not incur sin by the performance of physical action. 22 They live in freedom who have gone beyond the dualities of life. Competing with no one, they are alike in success and failure and content with whatever comes to them. 23 They are free, without selfish attachments; their minds are fixed in knowledge. They perform all work in the spirit of service, and their karma is dissolved. ~ Krishna Dwaipayana Vyasa, #NFDB
886:Karl Marx famously called religion 'the opiate of the masses'. Buddhism, particularly as it is popularly practiced, promises improvement through karma. Islam and Christianity promise eternal life to the faithful. And that is a powerful opiate, certainly, the hope of a better life to come. But there's a Sufi story that challenges the notion that people believe only because they need an opiate. Rabe'a al-Adiwiyah, a great woman saint of Sufism, was seen running through the streets of her hometown, Basra, carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When someone asked her what she was doing, she answered, 'I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but because He is God. ~ John Green, #NFDB
887:Anti-Conception
Could I unthink you,
little heart,
what would I do?
throw you out
with last night's garbage,
undo my own decisions,
my own flesh
& commit you to the void
again?
Fortunately,
it is not my problem.
You hold on, beating
like a little clock,
Swiss in your precision,
Japanese in your tenacity,
& already having
your own karma,
while I, with my halfhearted maternal urges,
my uncertainty that any creature
ever really creates
another (unless it be
herself) know you
as God's poem
& myself merely as publisher,
as midwife,
as impresario,
oh, even, if you will,
as loathèd producer
of your Grand Spectacle:
you are the star,
& like your humblest fan,
I wonder
(gazing at your image
on the screen)
who you really are.
10
~ Erica Jong,#NFDB
888:Dari semua tempat yang saya kunjungi dan orang-orang yang saya jumpai, ada satu yang selalu terngiang-ngiang: Karma Ura, cendekiawan Bhutan dan juga orang yang selamat dari kanker. "Tidak ada yang namanya kebahagiaan pribadi," katanya kepada saya. "Kebahagiaan seratus persen bersifat relasional." Saat itu saya tidak memaknainya secara harfiah. Saya kira dia melebih-lebihkan untuk memberi penekanan pada penjelasannya: bahwa hubungan kita dengan orang lain lebih penting dari yang kita kira.
Namun sekarang, saya menyadari bahwa yang dimaksud Karma itu sama persis dengan yang dia katakan. Kebahagiaan kita sepenuhnya dan benar-benar saling terkait dengan orang lain: keluarga dan teman serta tetangga dan wanita yang nyaris tidak Anda perhatikan yang membersihkan kantor Anda. Kebahagiaan bukanlah kata benda atau kata kerja. Dia adalah kata sambung. Jaringan penghubung. ~ Eric Weiner,#NFDB
889:You see, at the center of all religions is the idea of Karma. You know, what you put out comes back to you: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics; in physical laws every action is met by an equal or an opposite one. It's clear to me that Karma is at the very heart of the universe. I'm absolutely sure of it. And yet, along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that "as you reap, so you will sow" stuff. Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I've done a lot of stupid stuff. But I'd be in big trouble if Karma was going to finally be my judge. I'd be in deep s---. It doesn't excuse my mistakes, but I'm holding out for Grace. I'm holding out that Jesus took my sins onto the Cross, because I know who I am, and I hope I don't have to depend on my own religiosity ~ Bono, #NFDB
890:Satan is not a spirit of destruction. There is no essential evil in the universe. Our present form of the devil is merely derived from the Greek nature god Pan. As Goethe says, Mephistopheles, or Satan, "is part of the power that still works for good while ever scheming ill." Satan is really karma, but he is more than that. He is the temptation from which arises strength. When the Mysteries were celebrated in ancient Egypt, there was an evil spirit called Typhon or Set who brought about the death of the good Osiris. It is the red Set that has given us our concept of the devil; but Set was nothing but the material world, the ground of man's temptation, and also the environment in which he gains immortality through self-discipline. Therefore, Set, or Satan is divine opportunity; the world into which we come in ignorance but from which we depart in wisdom. ~ Manly P Hall, How to Understand Your Bible, #NFDB
891:The ignorant (uninformed about Atma and without faith) waste their lives. Through their disbelief they alienate themselves from the Self and thus from true unity with others. As miserable people, they cannot be happy either in this world or any world beyond.
People who really know Divinity, who have renounced attachment to the fruits of their work by offering it to the Divine, who have used the sword of knowledge to cut to pieces their doubts regarding the truth of their Atma — no bonds can hold these people. Though they are ever occupied with action, karma cannot taint them.
O Prince, your ignorance of your True Self Within is the cause of your present reluctance to act, just as the opposite of ignorance, Self-knowledge, would bring fearless action. So with the sword of wisdom sever the doubts in your heart. Arise, O best of men, take your stand. Be a warrior! ~ Krishna Dwaipayana Vyasa,#NFDB
892:I want to go out with you. On a date.”
“First of all, you don’t date. Remember? And you think I’m the kind of girl who goes out with a guy like you?”
Cedric shrugged. “Yes.” Ellie looked like she wanted to kick him in the balls so he stepped out of reach. “I mean, no. I think you are the kind of girl who would go out with a man who’s like me. Kind. Considerate. Not crazy at all. And I wasn’t lying, I was just confused. And I’m not a bastard either. Well, technically I am since I don’t have a father, but—”
“I must be getting some bad karma. Maybe from something I did in a past life.”
Cedric grinned. “Karma is why I met you.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Good karma. We had to meet.”
“Serendipity?”
Cedric nodded. “I’m John Cusack.”
“I will punch you if you tell me I’m Kate Beckinsale.”
“You’re a hundred times more beautiful than her. ~ Rich Amooi,#NFDB
893:No doubt it often happens that a child possesses qualities of his ancestors which were perhaps missing in his parents, or even two or three generations back; however, this is another heritage, a heritage which is known to us as such. I might express this by saying that a soul borrows a property from the spheres of the jinn, and a more concrete property from the physical world; and as it borrows this property, together with this transaction it takes upon itself the taxation and the obligations as well as the responsibilities which are attached to the property. Very often the property is not in proper repair, and damage has been done to it, and it falls to his lot to repair it; and if there be a mortgage on that property that becomes his due. Together with the property he becomes the owner of the records and the contracts of the property which he owns. In this is to be found the secret of what is called Karma. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, #NFDB
894:Karma has been a pop culture term for ages. But really, what the heck is it?
Karma is not an inviolate engine of cosmic punishment. Rather, it is a neutral sequence of acts, results, and consequences.
Receiving misfortune does not necessarily indicate that one has committed evil. But it is a sufficient indicator of something else.
And that something else can be anything, as long as it is a logical consequence of what has come before.
Consider: if you fall into a well, you are not a bad person who deserves to suffer—you are merely someone who took a wrong step. Or someone who had one drink too many. Or got a head rush due to poor circulation. Or forgot to wear your glasses. Or—
The reasons are plentiful, and all plausible. But the chain of cause and effect goes way, way back into the deepest hoariest recesses of your personal past.
So never rule out retribution. But never expect it. ~ Vera Nazarian,#NFDB
895:Instructions for freedom":
1. Life's metaphors are God's instructions.
2. You have just climbed up and above the roof, there is nothing between you and the Infinite; now, let go.
3. The day is ending, it's time for something that was beautiful to turn into something else that is beautiful. Now, let go.
4. Your wish for resolution was a prayer. You are being here is God's response, let go and watch the stars came out, in the inside and in the outside.
5. With all your heart ask for Grace and let go.
6. With all your heart forgive him, forgive yourself and let him go.
7. Let your intention be freedom from useless suffering then, let go.
8. Watch the heat of day pass into the cold night, let go.
9. When the Karma of a relationship is done, only Love remains. It's safe, let go.
10. When the past has past from you at last, let go.. then, climb down and begin the rest of your life with great joy. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,#NFDB
896:author class:Sri Aurobindo
Karma
(Radha's Complaint)
Love, but my words are vain as air!
In my sweet joyous youth, a heart untried,
Thou tookst me in Love's sudden snare,
Thou wouldst not let me in my home abide.
And now I have nought else to try,
But I will make my soul one strong desire
And into Ocean leaping die:
So shall my heart be cooled of all its fire.
Die and be born to life again
As Nanda's son, the joy of Braja's girls,
And I will make thee Radha then,
A laughing child's face set with lovely curls.
Then I will love thee and then leave;
Under the codome's boughs when thou goest by
Bound to the water morn or eve,
Lean on that tree fluting melodiously.
Thou shalt hear me and fall at sight
Under my charm; my voice shall wholly move
Thy simple girl's heart to delight;
Then shalt thou know the bitterness of love.
(From an old Bengali poem)
~ Sri Aurobindo, - Karma
,#NFDB
897:Laura and I both turned around and went upstairs, not looking at each other. We both went directly outside to the deck and shut the sliding doors tightly behind us. Then Laura threw back her head and gave a loud whoop that shook the leaves off the trees. “How did that happen?” she yelled. “Oh my God! Saved!” I sank into a chair and laughed weakly. “Laura, one of us has amazing karma for something like this to happen. Un-freaking-believable.” “I know. Is it too early to drink? I feel like cracking open a bottle of champagne.” “This is so good. So, at least for the next few years, we’re off the hook, Mom-wise. Call Frank, before those renters change their minds. “ “Yes. And I’ll call Hackettstown and let somebody else have that bed. Oh, Kate, I feel like such a burden has been lifted.” I got up and hugged her. “Me too.” Marie opened the sliding door and came onto the deck, grinning. “Are you girls celebrating out here?” “Marie, you are such a lifesaver,” I ~ Dee Ernst, #NFDB
898:To be able to receive the Divine Power and let act through you in the things of the outward life, there are three necessary conditions:
(i) Quietude, equality - not to be disturbed by anything that happens, to keep the mind still and firm, seeing the play of forces, but itself tranquil.
(ii) Absolute faith - faith that what is for the best will happen, but also that if one can make oneself a true instrument, the fruit will be that which one's will guided by the Divine Light sees as the thing to be done - kartavyam karma.
(iii) Receptivity - the power to receive the Divine Force and to feel its presence and the presence of the Mother in it and allow it to work, guiding one's sight and will and action. If this power and presence can be felt and this plasticity made the habit of the consciousness in action, - but plasticity to the Divine force alone without bringing in any foreign element, - the eventual result is sure. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#NFDB
899:The psychologist Jonathan Haidt says many people who don’t consciously believe in karma still believe deep down in some version of it, calling it whatever seems appropriate in their own culture. They see systems like welfare or affirmative action as disrupting the balance of the natural world. Slackers, they think, would get what they deserve if the government kept their noses out of it. Their bad karma would come around to crush them, but unnatural forces prevent it. Meanwhile, since these people play by the rules, pay taxes, and sacrifice hours of life for overtime pay, they assume it has to be for a reason. Their pursuit of the good life can’t be futile. The rich, they think, must deserve what they have. One day all the good karma they are generating will lift them even higher up in the social hierarchy to join the others who have what they deserve. The just-world fallacy tells them fairness is built into the system, and so they rage when the system artificially unbalances karmic justice. ~ David McRaney, #NFDB
900:What a beautifully whorish name I have—Feng Yue—Phoenix Moon. Can’t say my mother lacked foresight when she named me. Unfortunately, Xiao Feng Xian was the last celebrity prostitute. This is the 1970s, the modern world. They even made polygamy illegal a few years ago, after so many thousand of years. Can you believe that? What man would be happy with just one wife if they could afford more? Some girls thought it might bring us more business, but we have seen no evidence of that so far. The law has simply driven junior wives underground. They’ve become secret mistresses—less accepted, less recognized, less protected, children relegated to the shadows. The senior wives are now more suspicious of their men than ever, wondering what their mistresses are like, feeling more insecure. Nobody gains. Stupid. In any case, we don’t have the same good karma as our sisters from the dynasties. Phoenix is now a euphemism for chicken, which means hookers in Cantonese slang. Poets are extinct. We have become just chickens. ~ Jason Y Ng, #NFDB
901:What does and should unite us as Americans is our adherence to and respect for the U.S. Constitution—and that’s about it. Love of, belief in, and a willingness to defend freedom, liberty, and democracy: government by the consent of the governed. But as for metaphysical, spiritual, otherworldly, religious, or transcendental matters—is there a God? What happens after we die? Why are we here? How does karma operate? Who was Jesus? Where does chi reside? What is the Holy Ghost? How can we best mollify jinn?—the answers to such questions, whatever they may be, are not what define us as Americans, as citizens, or as human beings. And to suggest—as more and more politicians seem to be doing—that to be a good, decent American requires faith in a Creator, or to imply that Christian values are the only values, or to argue that our laws are given to us solely by God, or to constantly denigrate nonbelievers as somehow less-than-welcome partners in the American enterprise . . . that’s all, quite frankly, very un-American. ~ Phil Zuckerman, #NFDB
902:the Bhutanese scholar and cancer survivor. “There is no such thing as personal happiness,” he told me. “Happiness is one hundred percent relational.” At the time, I didn’t take him literally. I thought he was exaggerating to make his point: that our relationships with other people are more important than we think. But now I realize Karma meant exactly what he said. Our happiness is completely and utterly intertwined with other people: family and friends and neighbors and the woman you hardly notice who cleans your office. Happiness is not a noun or verb. It’s a conjunction. Connective tissue. Well, are we there yet? Have I found happiness? I still own an obscene number of bags and am prone to debilitating bouts of hypochondria. But I do experience happy moments. I’m learning, as W. H. Auden counseled, to “dance while you can.” He didn’t say dance well, and for that I am grateful. I’m not 100 percent happy. Closer to feevty-feevty, I’d say. All things considered, that’s not so bad. No, not bad at all. Waterford, Virginia, July 2007 ~ Eric Weiner, #NFDB
903:Only for a person who is living with duality there is good and bad karma. For a person who is thinking in terms of transcending life and death, good karma is as useless as bad. To him, karma is just karma; any classification does not matter. All karma is bad for a spiritual person. Good or bad, it’s bad for him. For that person who wants to transcend duality, become one with existence, there is no good and bad. All karma is a barrier, a burden for him. He wants to drop all burdens. It’s not like, “If you give me gold, I’m willing to carry even one hundred kilos, but if you give me one hundred kilos of garbage, I will not carry it.” That’s not the attitude. For a seeker it is, “I want to drop the load.” Whether it’s gold or garbage, both are heavy, but the other fools think carrying gold is great. Do you understand the difference, Nicholas? A man, who has become wise enough, sees that whether he carries gold or garbage, it is anyway burdensome. The other man is thinking gold will be better than garbage because right now he’s carrying garbage. ~ Sadhguru, #NFDB
904:As Stapp puts it, “For the quantum process to operate, a question must be addressed to Nature.” Formulating that question requires a choice about which aspect of nature is to be probed, about what sort of information one wishes to know. Critically, in quantum physics, this choice is free: in other words, no physical law prescribes which facet of nature is to be observed. The situation in Buddhist philosophy is quite analogous. Volition, or Karma, is the force that provides the causal efficacy that keeps the cosmos running. According to the Buddha’s timeless law of Dependent Origination, it is because of volition that consciousness keeps arising throughout endless world cycles. And it is certainly true that in Buddhist philosophy one’s choice is not determined by anything in the physical, material world. Volition is, instead, determined by such ineffable qualia as the state of one’s mind and the quality of one’s attention: wise or unwise, mindful or unmindful. So in both quantum physics and Buddhist philosophy, volition plays a special, unique role. ~ Jeffrey M Schwartz, #NFDB
905:Any apparent insurrection of bodily or cerebral cells towards Emperor Soul, manifesting as disease or depression, is due to no disloyalty among the humble citizens, but to past or present misuse by man of his individuality or free will, given to him simultaneous with a soul and revocable never. Identifying himself with a shallow ego, man takes for granted that it is he who thinks, wills, feels, digests meals and keeps himself alive, never admitting through reflection (only a little would suffice!) that in his ordinary life he is naught but a puppet of past actions (karma) and of nature or environment. Each man’s intellectual reactions, feelings, moods and habits are circumscribed by effects of past causes, whether of this or a prior life. Lofty above such influences, however, is his regal soul. Spurning the transitory truths and freedoms, the kriya yogi passes beyond all disillusionment into his unfettered Being. All scriptures declare man to be not a corruptible body, but a living soul; by kriya he is given a method to prove the scriptural truth. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
906:In succeeding chapters we will explore the emerging evidence that matter alone does not suffice to generate mind, but that, to the contrary, there exists a "mental force" that is not reducible to the material. Mental force, which is closely related to the ancient Buddhist concepts of mindfulness and karma, provides a basis for the effects of mind on matter that clinical neuroscience finds. What is new here is that a question with deep philosophical roots, as well as profound philosophic al and moral implications, can finally be addressed (if not yet fully solved) through science. If materialism can be challenged in the context of neuroscience, if stark physical reductionism can be replaced by an outlook in which the mind can exert causal control, then, for the first time since the scientific revolution, the scientific worldview will become compatible with such ideas as will-and, therefore, with morality and ethics. The emerging view of the mind, and of the mind-matter enigma, has the potential to imbue human thought and action with responsibility once again. ~ Jeffrey M Schwartz, #NFDB
907:What is the real object of modern education? Is it to cultivate and develop the mind in the right direction; to teach the disinherited and hapless people to carry with fortitude the burden of life (allotted them by Karma); to strengthen their will; to inculcate in them the love of one’s neighbor and the feeling of mutual interdependence and brotherhood; and thus to train and form the character for practical life? Not a bit of it. And yet, these are undeniably the objects of all true education. No one denies it; all your educationalists admit it, and talk very big indeed on the subject. But what is the practical result of their action? Every young man and boy, nay, every one of the younger generation of schoolmasters will answer: “The object of modern education is to pass examinations,” a system not to develop right emulation, but to generate and breed jealousy, envy, hatred almost, in young people for one another, and thus train them for a life of ferocious selfishness and struggle for honors and emoluments instead of kindly feeling. ~ H.P. Blavatsky, The Key to Theosophy p. 210, (1889), #NFDB
908:According to the law of karma, souls reincarnate in environments befitting their spiritual attainments. Good people (even those who have veered from the spiritual path) go, when they die, to the heaven of those who do good deeds. They dwell there for a number of years and then take birth again, this time into a home that is pure and prosperous. A few of them will be born into a family that is spiritually advanced, but such births are difficult to obtain. When this happens, the good environment draws out their latent spirituality and leads them rapidly toward liberation.
The ones born into the pure and prosperous houses have the opportunity at first to enjoy the relatively tame desires they held in their former bodies. But as soon as those pleasures are done they feel irresistibly drawn to spirituality by the force of the good habits they strove for in the previous life.
Even those who showed only a faint interest, merely inquiring about spiritual matters, progress further than the ones who merely follow the rites and ceremonies of their belief systems unthinkingly, and thus stall their true spiritual advancement. ~ Krishna Dwaipayana Vyasa,#NFDB
909:... ako otkriješ tajnu, postaješ deo tajne.
Ja sam ovog jutra opet lagala u snu. A laž ima miris.
Svak može da umre, ali svak ne može da se rodi. Oni najbolji ostaju nerođeni.
Poslednjih sedmica i moji snovi zaudaraju. Gusti kao kačamak i crni kao katran. A kroz njih teku ogromne količine vremena, kao reke ponornice, iako pri buđenju nisam starija no inače i ranije. Kao da postoje dva vremena u mom životu. Od jednog se ne stari nego se troši nešto drugo umesto tela. Karma? Jesu li naše telo i duša gorivo? Gorivo čega? Da li je vreme pogon na koji se kreće telo, a Večnost gorivo duše?
Jednina, tačka i sadašnji trenutak, eto od čega je sastavljen ceo tvoj mehanički svet i njegova računica.
U srcu ne postoji prostor, u duši ne postoji vreme...
SNOVI SE ZABORAVE ČIM PROĐEŠ KROZ NAJBLIŽA VRATA. OD NJIH TADA OSTAJE SAMO KOSTUR. ALI, KAKO ZABORAVITI JEZIK NA KOJEM SANJAŠ I S KOJIM SI ODRASTAO?
Ne znam da li znaš da se šume sele? Kada krenu, one polako i dugo putuju tražeći sebi bolje mesto. Najradije s jeseni polaze na put... Kao ptice. Ili kao čovek...
SNOVI NE STARE. ONI SU VEČNI. ONI SU JEDINI VEČITI DEO ČOVEČANSTVA... ~ Milorad Pavi,#NFDB
910:I am the father, mother, and grandfather of this universe. I am the one who dispenses the fruits of people’s actions, their karma. I am the one thing worth knowing, and I am the enabler of all knowing.
As water gets purified by filtering through earth, and other things get purified by being washed in water, mankind gets purified by contact with Me. I am the syllable Om, the very sound of Divinity. I am all the scriptures ever written.
I am the goal at the end of all paths. I am the landlord of all creation. I am the inner witness in every human. I am your only lasting shelter; all beings dwell in Me. I am your best friend who lives in your heart as your conscience. I am the beginning of creation, the well-wisher of it, and the dissolution of it. I am the storehouse into which all life returns when creation dissolves — and I am the everlasting, imperishable seed from which it again springs.
I give the heat of the sun. I let loose the food-giving rain, and I withhold it. I am both immortality and death (doled out based on the fruits of one’s actions). I am both being and nonbeing. In My visible form I am the cosmos; in My invisible form I am the germ that lies hidden. ~ Krishna Dwaipayana Vyasa,#NFDB
911:There are two Sanskrit words that are used for 'path': marga, which also carries the sense of 'way, method or means' and upaya, that by which one reaches one's aim. In reality, it must be the case that we are already who we really are. Who else could we be? It is the illusory ego that believes that we are in some way limited and that wants to become eternally happy. Whilst this state of affairs continues, the search is doomed to failure. Paths and practices are therefore needed not in order that we may find something new but in order that we may uncover what is already here now.
The reason why different paths are needed is that minds, bodies and egos function differently. All paths aim effectively to remove the obscuring effect of this ego. This can be done through the practices of devotion and surrender to a God, for example, in the case of bhakti yoga. It can also be achieved in simple day to day life of working, at whatever may be our particular job, by doing the work for its own sake and giving up any claim to the results, in the case of karma yoga. And it can be achieved by enquiry and reason, using the mind and intellect to appreciate the truth of the non-existence of the ego, in the case of jnana yoga. ~ Dennis Waite,#NFDB
912:Mahabharata states: “What we eat in this life, eats us in the life after death.” We must not forget the chain of karma: Compassion and non-cruelty toward animals are linked morally and spiritually to world peace. Killing an animal for food, even one that we raise ourselves or hunted, is a violent act, which we forget in consuming its flesh. Today, cruelty extends beyond the mass killing of animals to the systematic, anti-life, anti-humane treatment of animals, from the time they are born to the time they are “harvested,” as if they were a cash crop. Animals are deprived of their natural habitat and life cycle for the expediency of the meat industry. Individual killing of animals for food is the first step in the cruelty process. The profit-motivated nature of industrializing animals, as if they are inanimate objects and void of any rights, feelings, or soul is the next step in the expansion of cruelty. The way animals, chicken, and fish are treated today is at a level of cruelty that staggers the imagination. When eating these animals, we take the vibration of this cruelty and death into our consciousness, often without even thinking of what we are bringing into our own bodies and encouraging in our own environment. ~ Gabriel Cousens, #NFDB
913:The root being there, the fruition comes (in the form of) species, life, and experience of pleasure and pain. The roots, the causes, the Samskaras being there, they manifest and form the effects. The cause dying down becomes the effect; the effect getting subtler becomes the cause of the next effect. A tree bears a seed, which becomes the cause of another tree, and so on. All our works now are the effects of past Samskaras; again, these works becoming Samskaras will be the causes of future actions, and thus we go on. So this aphorism says that the cause being there, the fruit must come, in the form of species of beings: one will be a man, another an angel, another an animal, another a demon. Then there are different effects of Karma in life. One man lives fifty years, another a hundred, another dies in two years, and never attains maturity; all these differences in life are regulated by past Karma. One man is born, as it were, for pleasure; if he buries himself in a forest, pleasure will follow him there. Another man, wherever he goes, is followed by pain; everything becomes painful for him. It is the result of their own past. According to the philosophy of the Yogis, all virtuous actions bring pleasure, and all vicious actions bring pain. Any man who does wicked deeds is sure to reap their fruit in the form of pain. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
914:other cultures have provided its members with various answers to the question “What is the purpose of human life?” Some cultures have said it is to live a good life and so eventually escape the cycle of karma and reincarnation and be liberated into eternal bliss. Some have said it is enlightenment—the recognition of the oneness of all things and the attainment of tranquility. Others have said it is to live a life of virtue, of nobility and honor. There are those who teach that the ultimate purpose in life is to go to heaven to be with your loved ones and with God forever. The crucial commonality is this: In every one of these worldviews, suffering can, despite its painfulness, be an important means of actually achieving your purpose in life. It can play a pivotal role in propelling you toward all the most important goals. One could say that in each of these other cultures’ grand narratives—what human life is all about—suffering can be an important chapter or part of that story. But modern Western culture is different. In the secular view, this material world is all there is. And so the meaning of life is to have the freedom to choose the life that makes you most happy. However, in that view of things, suffering can have no meaningful part. It is a complete interruption of your life story—it cannot be a meaningful part of the story. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
915:After Daskalos returned to his armchair and was getting ready to continue our discussion I asked him whether the affliction of that man was due to karmic debts.
“ ‘All illnesses are due to Karma,’ Daskalos replied. ‘It is either the result of your own debts or the debts of others you love.’
“ ‘I can understand paying for one’s own Karma but what does it mean paying the Karma of someone you love?’ I asked.
“ ‘What do you think Christ meant,’ Daskalos said, ‘when he urged us to bear one another’s burdens?’
“ ‘Karma,’ Daskalos explained, ‘has to be paid off in one way or another. This is the universal law of balance. So when we love someone, we may assist him in paying part of his debt. But this,’ he said, ‘is possible only after that person has received his ‘lesson’ and therefore it would not be necessary to pay his debt in full. When most of the Karma has been paid off someone else can assume the remaining burden and relieve the subject from the pain. When we are willing to do that,’ Daskalos continued, ‘the Logos will assume nine-tenths of the remaining debt and we would actually assume only one-tenth. Thus the final debt that will have to be paid would be much less and the necessary pain would be considerably reduced. These are not arbitrary percentages,’ Daskalos insisted, ‘but part of the nature of things. ~ Kyriacos C Markides,#NFDB
916:is your treasure. It is precisely what is making you ask the question at this very moment. Everything is stored in this precious treasure-house of yours. It is there at your disposal, you can use it as you wish, nothing is lacking. You are the master of everything. Why, then, are you running away from yourself and seeking for things outside?" Upon hearing these words, Dae Ju attained enlighten- ment. 22. The Moon of Clear Mind One Sunday evening, after a Dharrna talk at the Providence Zen Center, a student asked Seung Sahn Soen-sa, "How can I get beyond just verbalizing the question 'What am I?' " Soen-sa said, "You want this question to grow. This mind is no good. This is attachment thinking. You must cut off this thinking, and only do hard training. It is not important for the question to grow. What is important is one moment of clear mind. Clear mind is before thinking. If you experience this mind, you have already attained enlightenment. If you experience this for a short t i m e - e v e n for one moment-this is enlightenment. All the rest of the time you may be think- ing, but you shouldn't worry about this thinking. It is just your karma. You must not be attached to this thinking. You must not force it to stop or force clear mind to grow. It will grow by itself, as your karma gradually disappears. "Clear mind is like the full moon in the sky. Sometimes ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
917:Looking back down the vale of the ages at the endless recurrence of their reincarnations, before they were forced to drink their vials of forgetting and all became obscure to them again, they could see no pattern at all to their efforts; if the gods had a plan, or even a set of procedures, if the long train of transmigrations was supposed to add up to anything, if it was not just mindless repetition, time itself nothing but a succession of chaoses, no one could discern it; and the story of their transmigrations, rather than being a narrative without death, as the first experiences of reincarnation perhaps seemed to suggest, had become instead a veritable charnel house. Why read on? Why pick up their book from the far wall where it has been thrown away in disgust and pain, and read on? Why submit to such cruelty, such bad karma, such bad plotting?
The reason is simple: these things happened. They happened countless times, just like this. The oceans are salt with our tears. No one can deny that these things happened.
And so there is no choice in the matter. They cannot escape the wheel of birth and death, not in the experience of it, or in the contemplation of it afterwards; and their anthologist, Old Red Ink himself, must tell their stories honestly, must deal in reality, or else the stories mean nothing. And it is crucial that the stories mean something. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson,#NFDB
918:One would begin, for example, by remarking that the Vedic doctrine is neither pantheistic" nor polytheistic, nor a worship of the powers of Nature except in the sense that Natura naturans est Deus and all her powers but the names of God’s acts; that karma is not ‘‘fate’’ except in the orthodox sense of the character and destiny that inhere in created things themselves, and rightly understood, determines their vocation; 5 that 'maya' is not ‘illusion", but rather the material measure and means essential to the manifestation of a quantitative and in this sense “material”, world of appearances, by which we may be either enlightened or deluded according to the degree of our own maturity; that the notion of a “reincarnation” in the popular sense of the return of deceased individuals to rebirth on this earth represents only a misunderstanding of the doctrines of heredity, transmigration and regeneration; and that the six darshanas the later Sanskrit “philosophy” are not so many mutually exclusive “systems'’ but, as their name implies, so many “points of view" which are no more mutually contradictory than are, let us say, botany and mathematics. We shall also deny in Hinduism the existence of anything unique and peculiar to itself, apart from the local colouring and social adaptations that must be expected under the sun where nothing can be known except in the mode of the knower. ~ Ananda K Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
919:Karma
We cannot choose our sorrows. One there was
Who, reverent of soul, and strong with trust,
Cried, 'God, though Thou shouldst bow me to the dust,
Yet will I praise thy everlasting laws.
Beggared, my faith would never halt or pause,
But sing Thy glory, feasting on a crust.
Only one boon, one precious boon I must
Demand of Thee, O opulent great Cause.
Let Love stay with me, constant to the end,
Though fame pass by and poverty pursue.'
With freighted hold her life ship onward sailed;
The world gave wealth, and pleasure, and a friend,
Unmarred by envy, and whose heart was true.
But ere the sun reached midday, Love had failed.
II
Then from the depths, in bitterness she cried,
'Hell is on earth, and heaven is but a dream;
And human life a troubled aimless stream;
And God is nowhere. Would God so deride
A loving creature's faith?' A voice replied,
'The stream flows onward to the Source Supreme,
Where things that ARE replace the things that SEEM,
And where the deeds of all past lives abide.
Once at thy door Love languished and was spurned.
Who sorrow plants, must garner sorrow's sheaf.
No prayers can change the seedling in the sod.
By thine own heart Love's anguish must be learned.
Pass on, and know, as one made wise by grief,
That in thyself dwells heaven and hell and God.'
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox,#NFDB
920:If Īshvara is held to be the cause of beings, You must now define for us his nature. If, by this, you simply mean the elements, No need to tire ourselves disputing names! 119. Yet earth and other elements are many, Impermanent, inert, without divinity. Trampled underfoot, they are impure, And thus they cannot be a God Omnipotent. 120. The Deity cannot be space—inert and unproductive. He cannot be the self, for this we have refuted. He’s inconceivable, they say—then likewise his creatorship. Is there any point, therefore, to such a claim? 121. What is it that he wishes to create? Has he made the self and all the elements? But are not self and elements and he himself eternal? And consciousness, we know, arises from its object. 122. Pain and pleasure have, from all time, sprung from karma, So tell us, what has his Divinity produced? And if there’s no beginning in the cause, How can there be beginnings in its fruits? 123. Why are creatures not created constantly, For Īshvara relies on nothing but himself? And if there’s nothing that he has not made, What remains on which he might depend? 124. If Īshvara depends, the cause of all Is but the meeting of conditions and not Īshvara. When these obtain, he cannot but create; When these are absent, he is powerless to make. 125. If Almighty God does not intend, But yet creates, another thing has forced him. If he wishes to create, he’s swayed by his desire. So even though Creator, what of his omnipotence? 126. ~ ntideva, #NFDB
921:Seeker: So what is social ego, Sadhguru? Sadhguru: Society has its own ego, isn’t it? For every small thing, the whole society gets upset. It need not be wrong. Suppose it’s summer in the United States. Everybody is hardly wearing anything or maybe they are in miniskirts. Let’s say you’re fully clothed. People will get upset: “What is she doing? Why is she all covered up?” Here in India, if you dress like that, they’ll all get upset. So this is one kind of ego; that is another kind of ego. It’s the social ego which is getting upset, and your karma is becoming part of the collective karma. I want you to really understand this with a certain depth. Your idea of good and bad has been taught to you. You have imbibed it from the social atmosphere in which you have lived. See, for example, a bandit tribe, like the Pindaris, who from a young age were trained to rob and kill, they even had gods who taught them skills and brought them success in their banditry. When the British army was let loose on them, they were shot and killed indiscriminately. They were completely bewildered, as in their perception they had not done anything wrong. The Pindari ego was just to be a good bandit. The same happened for the Native Americans also. Among some Native American tribes, unless you had killed a man in your life, you were not much of a man. They collected the scalp of the man and wore it around their neck. So what is right and wrong, what is good and bad, is all about how the social ego functions. ~ Sadhguru, #NFDB
922:THE FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS
I. Suffering does exist.
II. Suffering arises from "attachment" to desires.
III. Suffering ceases when "attachment" to desire ceases.
IV. Freedom from suffering is possible by practicing the eightfold path:
1. Right understanding (view).
2. Right intention (thought).
3. Right speach.
4. Right action.
5. Right livelihood.
6. Right effort.
7. Right mindfulness.
8. Rght meditation (concentration).
Buddha's fourfold consolation:
With a mind free from greed and unfriendliness, incorruptible, and purified, the noble disciple is already during this lifetime assure of a fourfold consolation:
“If there is another world (heaven), and a cause and effect (Karma) of good and bad actions, then it may be that, at the dissolution of the body, after death, I shall be reborn in a happy realm, a heavenly world.” Of this first consolation (s)he is assured.
“And if there is no other world, no reward and no punishment of good and bad actions, then I live at least here, in this world, an untroubled and happy life, free from hate and unfriendliness.” Of this second consolation (s)he is assured.
“And if bad things happen to bad people, but I do not do anything bad (or have unfriendliness against anyone), how can I, who am doing no bad things, meet with bad things?” Of this third consolation (s)he is assured.
“And if no bad things happen to bad people, then I know myself in both ways pure.” Of this fourth consolation (s)he is assured. ~ Gautama Buddha,#NFDB
923:The origin of the caste system, formulated by the great legislator Manu, was admirable. He saw clearly that men are distinguished by natural evolution into four great classes: those capable of offering service to society through their bodily labor (Sudras); those who serve through mentality, skill, agriculture, trade, commerce, business life in general (Vaisyas); those whose talents are administrative, executive, and protective-rulers and warriors (Kshatriyas); those of contemplative nature, spiritually inspired and inspiring (Brahmins). “Neither birth nor sacraments nor study nor ancestry can decide whether a person is twice-born (i.e., a Brahmin);” the Mahabharata declares, “character and conduct only can decide.” 281 Manu instructed society to show respect to its members insofar as they possessed wisdom, virtue, age, kinship or, lastly, wealth. Riches in Vedic India were always despised if they were hoarded or unavailable for charitable purposes. Ungenerous men of great wealth were assigned a low rank in society. Serious evils arose when the caste system became hardened through the centuries into a hereditary halter. Social reformers like Gandhi and the members of very numerous societies in India today are making slow but sure progress in restoring the ancient values of caste, based solely on natural qualification and not on birth. Every nation on earth has its own distinctive misery-producing karma to deal with and remove; India, too, with her versatile and invulnerable spirit, shall prove herself equal to the task of caste-reformation. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
924:Karma Yoga, the Path of Works; :::
The Path of Works aims at the dedication of every human activity to the supreme Will. It begins by the renunciation of all egoistic aim for our works, all pursuit of action for an interested aim or for the sake of a worldly result. By this renunciation it so purifies the mind and the will that we become easily conscious of the great universal Energy as the true doer of all our actions and the Lord of that Energy as their ruler and director with the individual as only a mask, an excuse, an instrument or, more positively, a conscious centre of action and phenomenal relation. The choice and direction of the act is more and more consciously left to this supreme Will and this universal Energy. To That our works as well as the results of our works are finally abandoned. The object is the release of the soul from its bondage to appearances and to the reaction of phenomenal activities. Karmayoga is used, like the other paths, to lead to liberation from phenomenal existence and a departure into the Supreme. But here too the exclusive result is not inevitable. The end of the path may be, equally, a perception of the divine in all energies, in all happenings, in all activities, and a free and unegoistic participation of the soul in the cosmic action. So followed it will lead to the elevation of all human will and activity to the divine level, its spiritualisation and the justification of the cosmic labour towards freedom, power and perfection in the human being.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Conditions of the Synthesis, The Systems of Yoga, 39, #index,#NFDB
925:The basic recurring theme in Hindu mythology is the creation of the world by the self-sacrifice of God—"sacrifice" in the original sense of "making sacred"—whereby God becomes the world which, in the end, becomes again God. This creative activity of the Divine is called lila, the play of God, and the world is seen as the stage of the divine play. Like most of Hindu mythology, the myth of lila has a strong magical flavour. Brahman is the great magician who transforms himself into the world and then performs this feat with his "magic creative power", which is the original meaning of maya in the Rig Veda. The word maya—one of the most important terms in Indian philosophy—has changed its meaning over the centuries. From the might, or power, of the divine actor and magician, it came to signify the psychological state of anybody under the spell of the magic play. As long as we confuse the myriad forms of the divine lila with reality, without perceiving the unity of Brahman underlying all these forms, we are under the spell of maya. (...) In the Hindu view of nature, then, all forms are relative, fluid and ever-changing maya, conjured up by the great magician of the divine play. The world of maya changes continuously, because the divine lila is a rhythmic, dynamic play. The dynamic force of the play is karma, important concept of Indian thought. Karma means "action". It is the active principle of the play, the total universe in action, where everything is dynamically connected with everything else. In the words of the Gita Karma is the force of creation, wherefrom all things have their life. ~ Fritjof Capra, #NFDB
926:The Nirmanakaya manifestation of Amitabha, I,
the Indian Scholar, the Lotus Born,
From the self-blossoming center of a lotus,
Came to this realm of existence through miraculous powers
To be the prince of the king of Oddiyana.
Then, I sustained the kingdom in accordance with Dharma.
Wandering throughout all directions of India,
I severed all spiritual doubts without exception.
Engaging in fearless activity in the eight burial grounds,
I achieved all supreme and common siddhis.
Then, according to the wishes of King Trisong Detsen
And by the power of previous prayers, I journeyed to Tibet.
By subduing the cruel gods, nagas, yakshas, rakshas,
and all spirits who harm beings,
The light of the teachings of secret mantra has been illuminated.
Then, when the time came to depart for the continent of Lanka,
I did so to provide refuge from the fear of rakshas
For all the inhabitants of this world, including Tibet.
I blessed Nirmanakaya emanations to be representatives of my body.
I made sacred treasures as representatives of my holy speech.
I poured enlightened wisdom into the hearts of those with fortunate karma.
Until samsara is emptied, for the benefit of sentient beings,
I will manifest unceasingly in whatever ways are necessary.
Through profound kindness, I have brought great benefit for all.
If you who are fortunate have the mind of aspiration,
May you pray so that blessings will be received.
All followers, believe in me with determination.
Samaya. ~ The Wrathful Compassion of Guru Dorje Drollo, Vajra Master Dudjom Yeshe Dorje, translated by Dungse Thinley Norbu Rinpoche,#NFDB
927:Buddha is the only prophet who said, "I do not care to know your various theories about God. What is the use of discussing all the subtle doctrines about the soul? Do good and be good. And this will take you to freedom and to whatever truth there is." He was, in the conduct of his life, absolutely without personal motives; and what man worked more than he? Show me in history one character who has soared so high above all. The whole human race has produced but one such character, such high philosophy, such wide sympathy. This great philosopher, preaching the highest philosophy, yet had the deepest sympathy for the lowest of animals, and never put forth any claims for himself. He is the ideal Karma-Yogi, acting entirely without motive, and the history of humanity shows him to have been the greatest man ever born; beyond compare the greatest combination of heart and brain that ever existed, the greatest soul-power that has even been manifested. He is the first great reformer the world has seen. He was the first who dared to say, "Believe not because some old manuscripts are produced, believe not because it is your national belief, because you have been made to believe it from your childhood; but reason it all out, and after you have analysed it, then, if you find that it will do good to one and all, believe it, live up to it, and help others to live up to it." He works best who works without any motive, neither for money, nor for fame, nor for anything else; and when a man can do that, he will be a Buddha, and out of him will come the power to work in such a manner as will transform the world. This man represents the very highest ideal of Karma-Yoga. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
928:It is attributed to Gautama, the Buddha, that he spoke of “desirelessness.” When he said “desirelessness,” he is not stupid to think that people can exist here without desire; he knows that without desire there is no existence. You being desireless means you have no identification with your desires; your desires are only about what is needed. You have no personal identity with the desires that you play with. Desires are just things that you play with. Without desire, there is no game at all, but now the desires are not about you anymore. It is just the way it’s needed for this moment, for this situation. Once that awareness is there – once you are desireless in that sense, there is no karmic bondage for that person. Whatever he does, even if he fights a war, there is no karma for him because he has no desire to do anything like that. It’s not coming out of his love for something or hate for something. It is just coming because simply, that’s the way. That is the whole Gita. See, Krishna is constantly talking about nishkarma – not performing any karma, but insisting that Arjuna should act. He is talking about the same desirelessness with a different language and a different connotation, but nevertheless it is the same thing. Here we are just talking about simply accepting. Just accepting everything is desirelessness, in a certain way. It does not mean you will become still and you will become incapable of activity or anything like that. It’s just that, once you are truly accepting what is there, you’re not identified with anything. Everything is there the way it is, do whatever you can do about it. That’s all there is. You can be deeply involved with everything, but still not be identified with it any more. ~ Sadhguru, #NFDB
929:To understand hardware and software (as applied to the human brain) perform the following meditation. Sit in a room where you will not be disturbed for a half hour and begin thinking, “I am sitting in this room doing this exercize because . . .“ and list as many of the “causes” as you can think of. For instance, you are doing this exercize because, obviously, you read about it in this book. Why did you buy this book? Did somebody recommend it? How did that person come into your life? If you just picked the book up in a store, why did you happen to be in just that store on just that day? Why do you read books of this sort — on psychology, consciousness, evolution etc.? How did you get interested in those fields? Who turned you on, and how long ago? What factors in your childhood inclined you to be interested in these subjects later? Why are you doing this exercize in this room and not elsewhere? Why did you buy or rent this house or apartment? Why are you in this city and not another? Why on this continent and not another? Why are you here at all — that is, how did your parents meet? Did they consciously decide to have a child, do you happen to know, or were you an accident? What cities were they born in? If in different cities, why did they move in space-time so that their paths would intersect? Why is this planet capable of supporting life, and why did it produce the kind of life that would dream up an exercize of this sort? Repeat this exercize a few days later, trying to ask and answer fifty questions you didn’t think of the first time. (Note that you cannot ever ask all possible questions.) Avoid all metaphysical speculations (e.g., karma, reincarnation, “destiny” etc.). The point of the exercize will be mind-blowing enough without introducing “occult” theories, and it will be more startling if you carefully avoid such overtly “mystical” speculations. ~ Robert Anton Wilson, #NFDB
930:Ascension
I have been down in the darkest waterDeep, deep down where no light could pierce;
Alone with the things that are bent on slaughter,
The mindless things that are cruel and fierce.
I have fought with fear in my wave-walled prison,
And begged for the beautiful boon of death;
But out of the billows my soul has risen
To glorify God with my latest breath.
There is no potion I have not tasted
Of all the bitters in life's large store;
And never a drop of the gall was wasted
That the lords of Karma saw fit to pour,
Though I cried as my Elder Brother before me,
'Father in heaven, let pass this cup!'
And the only response from the still skies o'er me
Was the brew held close for my lips to sup.
Yet I have grown strong on the gall Elysian,
And a courage has come that all things dares;
And I have been given an inner vision
Of the wonderful world where my dear one fares;
And I have had word from the great HereafterA marvellous message that throbs with truth,
And mournful weeping has changed to laughter,
And grief has changed into the joy of youth.
Oh! there was a time when I supped sweet potions,
And lightly uttered profound belief,
Before I went down in the swirling oceans
And fought with madness and doubt and grief.
Now I am climbing the Hills of Knowledge,
And I speak unfearing, and say 'I know,'
Though it be not to church, or to book, or college,
But to God Himself that my debt I owe.
90
For the ceaseless prayer of a soul is heeded,
When the prayer asks only for light and faith;
And the faith and the light and the knowledge needed
Shall gild with glory the path to death.
Oh! heart of the world by sorrow shaken,
Hear ye the message I have to give:
The seal from the lips of the dead is taken,
And they can say to you, 'Lo! we live.'
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox,#NFDB
931:I never got to take you to the prom. You went with Henry Featherstone. And you wore a peach-colored dress.”
“How could you possibly know that?” Callie asked.
“Because I saw you walk in with him.”
“You didn’t know I was alive in high school,” Callie scoffed.
“You had algebra first period, across the hall from my trig class. You ate a sack lunch with the same three girls every day, Lou Ann, Becky and Robbie Sue. You spent your free period in the library reading Hemingway and Steinbeck. And you went straight home after school without doing any extracurricular activities, except on Thursdays. For some reason, on Thursdays you showed up at football practice. Why was that, Callie?”
Callie was confused. How could Trace possibly know so much about her activities in high school? They hadn’t even met until she showed up at the University of Texas campus. “I don’t understand,” she said.
“You haven’t answered my question. Why did you come to football practice on Thursdays?”
“Because that was the day I did the grocery shopping, and I didn’t have to be home until later.”
“Why were you there, Calllie?”
Callie stared into his eyes, afraid to admit the truth. But what difference could it possibly make now? She swallowed hard and said, “I was there to see you.”
He gave a sigh of satisfaction. “I hoped that was it. But I never knew for sure.”
Callie’s brow furrowed. “You wanted me to notice you?”
“I noticed you. Couldn’t you feel my eyes on you? Didn’t you ever sense the force of my boyish lust? I had it bad for you my senior year. I couldn’t walk past you in the hall without needing to hold my books in my lap when I saw down in the next class.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
Trace chuckled. “I wish I were.”
“Then it wasn’t an accident, our meeting like that at UT?”
“That’s the miracle of it,” Trace said. “It was entirely by accident. Fate. Kisma. Karma. Whatever you want to call it. ~ Joan Johnston,#NFDB
932:For a considerable portion of humanity today, it is possible and indeed likely that one's neighbor, one's colleague, or one's employer will have a different mother tongue, eat different food, and follow a different religion than oneself. It is a matter of great urgency, therefore, that we find ways to cooperate with one another in a spirit of mutual acceptance and respect.
In such a world, I feel, it is vital for us to find genuinely sustainable and universal approach to ethics, inner values, and personal integrity-an approach that can transcend religious, cultural, and racial differences and appeal to people at a sustainable, universal approach is what I call the project of secular ethics.
All religions, therefore, to some extent, ground the cultivation of inner values and ethical awareness in some kind of metaphysical (that is, not empirically demonstrable) understanding of the world and of life after death. And just as the doctrine of divine judgment underlies ethical teachings in many theistic religions, so too does the doctrine of karma and future lives in non-theistic religions.
As I see it, spirituality has two dimensions. The first dimension, that of basic spiritual well-being-by which I mean inner mental and emotional strength and balance-does not depend on religion but comes from our innate human nature as beings with a natural disposition toward compassion, kindness, and caring for others. The second dimension is what may be considered religion-based spirituality, which is acquired from our upbringing and culture and is tied to particular beliefs and practices. The difference between the two is something like the difference between water and tea.
On this understanding, ethics consists less of rules to be obeyed than of principles for inner self-regulation to promote those aspects of our nature which we recognize as conducive to our own well-being and that of others.
It is by moving beyond narrow self-interest that we find meaning, purpose, and satisfaction in life. ~ Dalai Lama XIV,#NFDB
933:English version by Garma C. C. Chang
Obeisance to the perfect Marpa.
I am the Yogi who perceives the Ultimate Truth.
In the Origin of the Unborn, I first gain assurance;
On the Path of Non-extinction, slowly
I perfect my power;
With meaningful symbols and words
Flowing from my great compassion,
I now sing this song
From the absolute realm of Dharma Essence.
Because your sinful Karma has created
Dense blindness and impenetrable obstruction,
You cannot understand the meaning
Of Ultimate Truth.
Listen, therefore, to the Expedient Truth.
In their spotless, ancient Sutras,
All the Buddhas in the past, repeatedly
Admonished with the eternal Truth of Karma --
That every sentient being is one's kinsman.
This is eternal Truth which never fails.
Listen closely to the teaching of Compassion.
I, the Yogi who developed by his practices,
Know that outer hindrances are but a shadow-show,
And the phantasmal world
A magic play of mind unborn.
By looking inward into the mind is seen
Mind-nature -- without substance, intrinsically void.
Through meditation in solitude, the grace
Of the Succession Gurus and the teaching
Of the great Naropa are attained.
The inner truth of the Buddha
Should be the object of meditation.
By the gracious instruction of my Guru,
Is the abstruse inner meaning of Tantra understood.
Through the practice of Arising and
Perfecting Yoga,
Is the Vital Power engendered
And the inner reason for the microcosm realized.
Thus in the outer world I do not fear
The illusory obstacles.
To the Great Divine Lineage I belong,
With innumerable yogis great as all Space.
When in one's own mind one ponders
On the original state of Mind,
Illusory thoughts of themselves dissolve
Into the Realm of Dharmadhatu.
Neither afflicter nor afflicted can be seen.
Exhaustive study of the Sutras
Teaches us no more than this.
~ Jetsun Milarepa, The Song of Perfect Assurance (to the Demons)
,#NFDB
934:One way to get a life and keep it is to put energy into being an S&M (success and money) queen. I first heard this term in Karen Salmansohn’s fabulous book The 30-Day Plan to Whip Your Career Into Submission. Here’s how to do it: be a star at work. I don’t care if you flip burgers at McDonald’s or run a Fortune 500 company. Do everything with totality and excellence. Show up on time, all the time. Do what you say you will do. Contribute ideas. Take care of the people around you. Solve problems. Be an agent for change. Invest in being the best in your industry or the best in the world!
If you’ve been thinking about changing professions, that’s even more reason to be a star at your current job. Operating with excellence now will get you back up to speed mentally and energetically so you can hit the ground running in your new position. It will also create good karma. When and if you finally do leave, your current employers will be happy to support you with a great reference and often leave an open door for additional work in the future.
If you’re an entrepreneur, look at ways to enhance your business. Is there a new product or service you’ve wanted to offer? How can you create raving fans by making your customer service sparkle? How can you reach more people with your product or service? Can you impact thousands or even millions more?
Let’s not forget the M in S&M. Getting a life and keeping it includes having strong financial health as well. This area is crucial because many women delay taking charge of their financial lives as they believe (or have been culturally conditioned to believe) that a man will come along and take care of it for them. This is a setup for disaster. You are an intelligent and capable woman. If you want to fully unleash your irresistibility, invest in your financial health now and don’t stop once you get involved in a relationship.
If money management is a challenge for you, I highly recommend my favorite financial coach: David Bach. He is the bestselling author of many books, including The Automatic Millionaire, Smart Women Finish Rich, and Smart Couples Finish Rich. His advice is clear-cut and straightforward, and, most important, it works. ~ Marie Forleo,#NFDB
935:12 Many uninformed persons speak of yoga as Hatha Yoga or consider yoga to be “magic,” dark mysterious rites for attaining spectacular powers. When scholars, however, speak of yoga they mean the system expounded in Yoga Sutras (also known as Patanjali’s Aphorisms): Raja (“royal”) Yoga. The treatise embodies philosophic concepts of such grandeur as to have inspired commentaries by some of India’s greatest thinkers, including the illumined master Sadasivendra. Like the other five orthodox (Vedas-based) philosophical systems, Yoga Sutras considers the “magic” of moral purity (the “ten commandments” of yama and niyama) to be the indispensable preliminary for sound philosophical investigation. This personal demand, not insisted on in the West, has bestowed lasting vitality on the six Indian disciplines. The cosmic order (rita) that upholds the universe is not different from the moral order that rules man’s destiny. He who is unwilling to observe the universal moral precepts is not seriously determined to pursue truth. Section III of Yoga Sutras mentions various yogic miraculous powers (vibhutis and siddhis). True knowledge is always power. The path of yoga is divided into four stages, each with its vibhuti expression. Achieving a certain power, the yogi knows that he has successfully passed the tests of one of the four stages. Emergence of the characteristic powers is evidence of the scientific structure of the yoga system, wherein delusive imaginations about one’s “spiritual progress” are banished; proof is required! Patanjali warns the devotee that unity with Spirit should be the sole goal, not the possession of vibhutis — the merely incidental flowers along the sacred path. May the Eternal Giver be sought, not His phenomenal gifts! God does not reveal Himself to a seeker who is satisfied with any lesser attainment. The striving yogi is therefore careful not to exercise his phenomenal powers, lest they arouse false pride and distract him from entering the ultimate state of Kaivalya. When the yogi has reached his Infinite Goal, he exercises the vibhutis, or refrains from exercising them, just as he pleases. All his actions, miraculous or otherwise, are then performed without karmic involvement. The iron filings of karma are attracted only where a magnet of the personal ego still exists. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
936:The honey bee, a little tiger, is not addicted to the taste of sugar; his nature is to extract the juice from the sweet lotus flower! Dakinis, above, below, and on earth, unimpeded by closeness and distance, will surely extract the blissful essence when the yogins bound by pledges gather. The sun, the king of illumination, is not inflated by self-importance; by the karma of sentient beings, it shines resplendent in the sky. When the sun perfect in skill and wisdom dawns in the sky of the illuminated mind, without conceit, you beautify and crown the beings of all three realms. The smiling faces of the radiant moon are not addicted to hide and seek; by its relations with the sun, the moon takes waning and waxing forms. Though my gurus, embodiment of all refuge, are free of all fluctuation and of faults, through their flux-ridden karma the disciples perceive that the guru's three secrets display all kinds of effulgence. Constellations of stars adorning the sky are not competing in a race of speed; due to the force of energy's pull, the twelve planets move clockwise with ease. Guru, deity, and dakini -- my refuge -- though not partial toward the faithful, unfailingly you appear to guard those with fortunate karma blessed. The white clouds hovering above on high are not so light that they arise from nowhere; it is the meeting of moisture and heat that makes the patches of mist in the sky. Those striving for good karma are not greedy in self-interest; by the meeting of good conditions they become unrivaled as they rise higher. The clear expanse of the autumn sky is not engaged in the act of cleansing; yet being devoid of all obscuration, its pure vision bejewels the eyes. The groundless sphere of all phenomena is not created fresh by a discursive mind; yet when the face of ever-presence is known, all concreteness spontaneously fades away. Rainbows radiating colors freely are not obsessed by attractive costumes; by the force of dependent conditions, they appear distinct and clearly. This vivid appearance of the external world, though not a self-projected image, through the play of fluctuating thought and mind, appears as paintings of real things. [1585.jpg] -- from Songs of Spiritual Experience: Tibetan Buddhist Poems of Insight & Awakening, Translated by Thupten Jinpa / Translated by Jas Elsner
~ Kelsang Gyatso, Little Tiger
,#NFDB
937:Now, using her limited artistic skills, she drew a picture of the earth and colored the ocean blue and the land green. “Who can tell me where we come from?” The assignment had come to Amisha after she and Ravi had a discussion with the boys about karma and the universe’s determination of their place. Jay had asked, in his innocence, what crime Ravi had committed in his previous life to be born an untouchable in this one. Amisha started to scold, but Ravi had assured her it was fine, and yet neither had the answer as to why one was born into his station in life. “God?” one student answered. “Evolution. We came from apes,” another answered. “And how do we live our life?” Amisha saw their confusion and tried to explain. “Once we are born, are we still controlled by the person or event that made us? Are we puppets?” The students shook their heads no. “Then how do we make our decisions?” “Our hearts.” Neema’s answer was tentative, sounding more like a question. Amisha nodded her approval, offering encouragement. “Our gut,” a boy in the front added. “What feels right.” “Our soul?” Amisha asked the boy. At his nod, she said, “Excellent—all of you.” Amisha made sure the class was focused before continuing. “The heart and soul work on emotions. They don’t always stop to think about what is right or wrong, only what they want and need. So where do they get their direction?” “From the brain.” The answer came from the back of the room. “Correct. Our minds guide us toward what is acceptable for us to create, protect, or destroy. And where does the brain get its intellect?” Amisha searched the room for an answer. At first the class was quiet, the children glancing at one another to see if anyone had the answer. Finally, a student near the front answered, “From what we learn or have been taught. By knowledge?” “Excellent. But even with our brains, heart, and soul guiding us, can we do anything we want? Do we have the freedom to make our own choices?” When the class murmured no, she asked, “Why not?” “Our parents,” a student threw out, making everyone laugh. “The Raj,” a girl in the front whispered. “Rules,” Neema said. Thrilled that the students were interested, Amisha said, “I want all of you to write about creating something you want, destroying something you don’t need, and protecting what is vital. But you must explain how your heart, your soul, and your mind feel about each event. ~ Sejal Badani, #NFDB
938:Karmic Cause and Effect It is very important to contemplate the connection between our mental states and our actions. Our karmic patterns are formed and sustained by the intentional actions of the “three gates” of body, speech, and mind—everything we do, say, or think with volitional intention. Our actions and reactions form the cause and effect of action (Skt. karma; Tib. las) that in turn determines the kinds of experiences we have. As such, our mind has the potential to transport us to elevated states of existence or to plunge us into demeaning states of confusion and anguish. Our actions are not like footprints left on water; they leave imprints in our minds, the consequences of which will invariably manifest unless we can somehow nullify them. As the thirteenth Karmapa, Dudul Dorje (1733–97) states: In the empty dwelling place of confusion, Desire is unchanging, marked on the mind Like an etching on rock.13 The thoughts and emotions we experience and the attitudes and beliefs we hold all help to mold our character and dispositions and the kind of people we become. Conditioned existence is characterized by delusions, defilements, confusions, and disturbances of all kinds. We have to ask ourselves why we experience so much pain, while our pleasures are so ephemeral and transient. The answer is that these are the karmic fruits of our negative actions (Skt. papa-karma; Tib. sdig pa’i las). Jamgön Kongtrül says: The result of wholesome action is happiness; the result of unwholesome action is suffering, and nothing else. These results are not interchangeable: when you plant buckwheat, you get buckwheat; when you plant barley, you get barley.14 This cycle of cause and effect continues relentlessly, unless we embark on a virtuous spiritual path and learn to reverse this process by performing wholesome actions (Skt. kusala-karma; Tib. dge ba’i las). It is our intentions that determine whether an action is wholesome or unwholesome, and therefore it is our intentions that will dictate the quality of our future experiences. We have to think of karmic cause and effect in the following terms: “My current suffering is due to the negative actions, attitudes, thoughts, and emotions I performed in the past, and whatever I think, say, and do now will determine what I experience and become in the future. So from now on, I will contemplate the truth of karma, and pursue my spiritual practices with enthusiasm and positive intentions. ~ Traleg Kyabgon, #NFDB
939:Mandana Misra was a great scholar and authority on the Vedas and Mimasa. He led a householder’s life (grihastha), with his scholar-philosopher wife, Ubhaya Bharati, in the town of Mahishi, in what is present-day northern Bihar. Husband and wife would have great debates on the veracity of the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Gita and other philosophical works. Scholars from all over Bharatavarsha came to debate and understand the Shastras with them. It is said that even the parrots in Mandana’s home debated the divinity, or its lack, in the Vedas and Upanishads. Mandana was a staunch believer in rituals. One day, while he was performing Pitru Karma (rituals for deceased ancestors), Adi Shankaracharya arrived at his home and demanded a debate on Advaita. Mandana was angry at the rude intrusion and asked the Acharya whether he was not aware, as a Brahmin, that it was inauspicious to come to another Brahmin’s home uninvited when Pitru Karma was being done? In reply, Adi Shankara asked Mandana whether he was sure of the value of such rituals. This enraged Mandana and the other Brahmins present. Thus began one of the most celebrated debates in Hindu thought. It raged for weeks between the two great scholars. As the only other person of equal intellect to Shankara and Mandana was Mandana’s wife, Ubhaya Bharati, she was appointed the adjudicator. Among other things, Shankara convinced Mandana that the rituals for the dead had little value to the dead. Mandana became Adi Shankara’s disciple (and later the first Shankaracharya of the Sringeri Math in Karnataka). When the priest related this story to me, I was shocked. He was not giving me the answer I had expected. Annoyed, I asked him what he meant by the story if Adi Shankara himself said such rituals were of no use to the dead. The priest replied, “Son, the story has not ended.” And he continued... A few years later, Adi Shankara was compiling the rituals for the dead, to standardize them for people across Bharatavarsha. Mandana, upset with his Guru’s action, asked Adi Shankara why he was involved with such a useless thing. After all, the Guru had convinced him of the uselessness of such rituals (Lord Krishna also mentions the inferiority of Vedic sacrifice to other paths, in the Gita. Pitru karma has no vedic base either). Why then was the Jagad Guru taking such a retrograde step? Adi Shankaracharya smiled at his disciple and answered, “The rituals are not for the dead but for the loved ones left behind. ~ Anand Neelakantan, #NFDB
940:Some foolish men declare that creator made the world. The doctrine that the world was created is ill advised and should be rejected. If God created the world, where was he before the creation? If you say he was transcendent then and needed no support, where is he now? How could God have made this world without any raw material? If you say that he made this first, and then the world, you are faced with an endless regression. If you declare that this raw material arose naturally you fall into another fallacy, For the whole universe might thus have been its own creator, and have arisen quite naturally. If God created the world by an act of his own will, without any raw material, then it is just his will and nothing else — and who will believe this silly nonsense? If he is ever perfect and complete, how could the will to create have arisen in him? If, on the other hand, he is not perfect, he could no more create the universe than a potter could. If he is form-less, action-less and all-embracing, how could he have created the world? Such a soul, devoid of all morality, would have no desire to create anything. If he is perfect, he does not strive for the three aims of man, so what advantage would he gain by creating the universe? If you say that he created to no purpose because it was his nature to do so, then God is pointless. If he created in some kind of sport, it was the sport of a foolish child, leading to trouble. If he created because of the karma of embodied beings [acquired in a previous creation] He is not the Almighty Lord, but subordinate to something else. If out of love for living beings and need of them he made the world, why did he not take creation wholly blissful free from misfortune? If he were transcendent he would not create, for he would be free: Nor if involved in transmigration, for then he would not be almighty. Thus the doctrine that the world was created by God makes no sense at all, And God commits great sin in slaying the children whom he himself created. If you say that he slays only to destroy evil beings, why did he create such beings in the first place? Good men should combat the believer in divine creation, maddened by an evil doctrine. Know that the world is uncreated, as time itself is, without beginning or end, and is based on the principles, life and rest. Uncreated and indestructible, it endures under the compulsion of its own nature. ~ Jinasena (9th Century) in the Mahāpurāna, as translated in Primal Myths (1979) by Barbara Sproul, #NFDB
941:What is important is that you get your house in order at each stage of the journey so that you can proceed. “If some day it be given to you to pass into the inner temple, you must leave no enemies behind.”—de Lubicz For example, if you never got on well with one of your parents and you have left that parent behind on your journey in such a way that the thought of that parent arouses anger or frustration or self-pity or any emotion . . . you are still attached. You are still stuck. And you must get that relationship straight before you can finish your work. And what, specifically, does “getting it straight” mean? Well, it means re-perceiving that parent, or whoever it may be, with total compassion . . . seeing him as a being of the spirit, just like you, who happens to be your parent . . . and who happens to have this or that characteristic, and who happens to be at a certain stage of his evolutionary journey. You must see that all beings are just beings . . . and that all the wrappings of personality and role and body are the coverings. Your attachments are only to the coverings, and as long as you are attached to someone else’s covering you are stuck, and you keep them stuck, in that attachment. Only when you can see the essence, can see God, in each human being do you free yourself and those about you. It’s hard work when you have spent years building a fixed model of who someone else is to abandon it, but until that model is superceded by a compassionate model, you are still stuck. In India they say that in order to proceed with one’s work one needs one’s parents’ blessings. Even if the parent has died, you must in your heart and mind, re-perceive that relationship until it becomes, like every one of your current relationships, one of light. If the person is still alive you may, when you have proceeded far enough, revisit and bring the relationship into the present. For, if you can keep the visit totally in the present, you will be free and finished. The parent may or may not be . . . but that is his karmic predicament. And if you have been truly in the present, and if you find a place in which you can share even a brief eternal moment . . . this is all it takes to get the blessing of your parent! It obviously doesn’t demand that the parent say, “I bless you.” Rather it means that he hears you as a fellow being, and honors the divine spark within you. And even a moment in the Here and Now . . . a single second shared in the eternal present . . . in love . . . is all that is required to free you both, if you are ready to be freed. From then on, it’s your own individual karma that determines how long you can maintain that high moment. ~ Ram Dass, #NFDB
942:Kanya looks away. "You deserve it. It's your kamma. Your death will be painful."
"Karma? Did you say karma?" The doctor leans closer, brown eyes rolling, tongue lolling. "And what sort of karma is it that ties your entire country to me, to my rotting broken body? What sort of karma is it that behooves you to keep me, of all people, alive?" He grins. "I think a great deal about your karma. Perhaps it's your pride, your hubris that is being repaid, that forces you to lap seedstock from my hand. Or perhaps you're the vehicle of my enlightenment and salvation. Who knows? Perhaps I'll be reborn at the right hand of Buddha thanks to the kindnesses I do for you."
"That's not the way it works."
The doctor shrugs. "I don't care. Just give me another like Kip to fuck. Throw me another of your sickened lost souls. Throw me a windup. I don't care. I'll take what flesh you throw me. Just don't bother me. I'm beyond worrying about your rotting country now."
He tosses the papers into the pool. They scatter across the water. Kanya gasps, horrified, and nearly lunges after them before steeling herself and forcing herself to draw back. She will not allow Gibbons to bait her. This is the way of the calorie man. Always manipulating. Always testing. She forces herself to look away from the parchment slowly soaking in the pool and turn her eyes to him.
Gibbons smiles slightly. "Well? Are you going to swim for them or not?" He nods at Kip. "My little nymph will help you. I'd enjoy seeing you two little nymphs frolicking together."
Kanya shakes her head. "Get them out yourself."
"I always like it when an upright person such as yourself comes before me. A woman with pure convictions." He leans forward, eyes narrowed. "Someone with real qualifications to judge my work."
"You were a killer."
"I advanced my field. It wasn't my business what they did with my research. You have a spring gun. It's not the manufacturer's fault that you are likely unreliable. That you may at any time kill the wrong person. I built the tools of life. If people use them for their own ends, then that is their karma, not mine."
"AgriGen paid you well to think so."
"AgriGen paid me well to make them rich. My thoughts are my own." He studies Kanya. "I suppose you have a clean conscience. One of those upright Ministry officers. As pure as your uniform. As clean as sterilizer can make you." He leans forward. "Tell me, do you take bribes?"
Kanya opens her mouth to retort, but words fail her. She can almost feel Jaidee drifting close. Listening. Her skin prickles. She forces himself not to look over her shoulder.
Gibbons smiles. "Of course you do. All of your kind are the same. Corrupt from top to bottom. ~ Paolo Bacigalupi,#NFDB
943:It is in the legitimation of death that the transcending potency of symbolic universes manifests itself most clearly, and the fundamental terror-assuaging character of the ultimate legitimations of the paramount reality of everyday life is revealed. The primacy of the social objectivations of everyday life can retain its subjective plausibility only if it is constantly protected against terror. On the level of meaning, the institutional order represents a shield against terror. To be anomic, therefore, means to be deprived of this shield and to be exposed, alone, to the onslaught of nightmare. While the horror of aloneness is probably already given in the constitutional sociality of man, it manifests itself on the level of meaning in man’s incapacity to sustain a meaningful existence in isolation from the nomic constructions of society. The symbolic universe shelters the individual from ultimate terror by bestowing ultimate legitimation upon the protective structures of the institutional order.75 Very much the same may be said about the social (as against the just discussed individual) significance of symbolic universes. They are sheltering canopies over the institutional order as well as over individual biography. They also provide the delimitation of social reality; that is, they set the limits of what is relevant in terms of social interaction. One extreme possibility of this, sometimes approximated in primitive societies, is the definition of everything as social reality; even inorganic matter is dealt with in social terms. A narrower, and more common, delimitation includes only the organic or animal worlds. The symbolic universe assigns ranks to various phenomena in a hierarchy of being, defining the range of the social within this hierarchy.76 Needless to say, such ranks are also assigned to different types of men, and it frequently happens that broad categories of such types (sometimes everyone outside the collectivity in question) are defined as other than or less than human. This is commonly expressed linguistically (in the extreme case, with the name of the collectivity being equivalent to the term “human”). This is not too rare, even in civilized societies. For example, the symbolic universe of traditional India assigned a status to the outcastes that was closer to that of animals than to the human status of the upper castes (an operation ultimately legitimated in the theory of karma-samsara, which embraced all beings, human or otherwise), and as recently as the Spanish conquests in America it was possible for the Spaniards to conceive of the Indians as belonging to a different species (this operation being legitimated in a less comprehensive manner by a theory that “proved” that the Indians could not be descended from Adam and Eve). The ~ Peter L Berger, #NFDB
944:on purifying ego and desire :::
The elimination of all egoistic activity and of its foundation, the egoistic consciousness, is clearly the key to the consummation we desire. And since in the path of works action is the knot we have first to loosen, we must endeavour to loosen it where it is centrally tied, in desire and in ego; for otherwise we shall cut only stray strands and not the heart of our bondage.These are the two knots of our subjection to this ignorant and divided Nature, desire and ego-sense. And of these two desire has its native home in the emotions and sensations and instincts and from there affects thought and volition; ego-sense lives indeed in these movements, but it casts its deep roots also in the thinking mind and its will and it is there that it becomes fully self conscious. These are the twin obscure powers of the obsessing world-wide Ignorance that we have to enlighten and eliminate.
In the field of action desire takes many forms, but the most powerful of all is the vital selfs craving or seeking after the fruit of our works. The fruit we covet may be a reward of internal pleasure; it may be the accomplishment of some preferred idea or some cherished will or the satisfaction of the egoistic emotions, or else the pride of success of our highest hopes and ambitions. Or it may be an external reward, a recompense entirely material, -wealth, position, honour, victory, good fortune or any other fulfilment of vital or physical desire. But all alike are lures by which egoism holds us. Always these satisfactions delude us with the sense of mastery and the idea of freedom, while really we are harnessed and guided or ridden and whipped by some gross or subtle, some noble or ignoble, figure of the blind Desire that drives the world. Therefore the first rule of action laid down by the Gita is to do the work that should be done without any desire for the fruit, niskama karma. ...
The test it lays down is an absolute equality of the mind and the heart to all results, to all reactions, to all happenings. If good fortune and ill fortune, if respect and insult, if reputation and obloquy, if victory and defeat, if pleasant event and sorrowful event leave us not only unshaken but untouched, free in the emotions, free in the nervous reactions, free in the mental view, not responding with the least disturbance or vibration in any spot of the nature, then we have the absolute liberation to which the Gita points us, but not otherwise. The tiniest reaction is a proof that the discipline is imperfect and that some part of us accepts ignorance and bondage as its law and clings still to the old nature. Our self-conquest is only partially accomplished; it is still imperfect or unreal in some stretch or part or smallest spot of the ground of our nature. And that little pebble of imperfection may throw down the whole achievement of the Yoga
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, Self-Surrender in Works - The Way of the Gita, [102],#NFDB
945:ultimately, most of us would choose a rich and meaningful life over an empty, happy one, if such a thing is even possible. “Misery serves a purpose,” says psychologist David Myers. He’s right. Misery alerts us to dangers. It’s what spurs our imagination. As Iceland proves, misery has its own tasty appeal. A headline on the BBC’s website caught my eye the other day. It read: “Dirt Exposure Boosts Happiness.” Researchers at Bristol University in Britain treated lung-cancer patients with “friendly” bacteria found in soil, otherwise known as dirt. The patients reported feeling happier and had an improved quality of life. The research, while far from conclusive, points to an essential truth: We thrive on messiness. “The good life . . . cannot be mere indulgence. It must contain a measure of grit and truth,” observed geographer Yi-Fu Tuan. Tuan is the great unheralded geographer of our time and a man whose writing has accompanied me throughout my journeys. He called one chapter of his autobiography “Salvation by Geography.” The title is tongue-in-cheek, but only slightly, for geography can be our salvation. We are shaped by our environment and, if you take this Taoist belief one step further, you might say we are our environment. Out there. In here. No difference. Viewed that way, life seems a lot less lonely. The word “utopia” has two meanings. It means both “good place” and “nowhere.” That’s the way it should be. The happiest places, I think, are the ones that reside just this side of paradise. The perfect person would be insufferable to live with; likewise, we wouldn’t want to live in the perfect place, either. “A lifetime of happiness! No man could bear it: It would be hell on Earth,” wrote George Bernard Shaw, in his play Man and Superman. Ruut Veenhoven, keeper of the database, got it right when he said: “Happiness requires livable conditions, but not paradise.” We humans are imminently adaptable. We survived an Ice Age. We can survive anything. We find happiness in a variety of places and, as the residents of frumpy Slough demonstrated, places can change. Any atlas of bliss must be etched in pencil. My passport is tucked into my desk drawer again. I am relearning the pleasures of home. The simple joys of waking up in the same bed each morning. The pleasant realization that familiarity breeds contentment and not only contempt. Every now and then, though, my travels resurface and in unexpected ways. My iPod crashed the other day. I lost my entire music collection, nearly two thousand songs. In the past, I would have gone through the roof with rage. This time, though, my anger dissipated like a summer thunderstorm and, to my surprise, I found the Thai words mai pen lai on my lips. Never mind. Let it go. I am more aware of the corrosive nature of envy and try my best to squelch it before it grows. I don’t take my failures quite so hard anymore. I see beauty in a dark winter sky. I can recognize a genuine smile from twenty yards. I have a newfound appreciation for fresh fruits and vegetables. Of all the places I visited, of all the people I met, one keeps coming back to me again and again: Karma Ura, ~ Eric Weiner, #NFDB
946:Something happened to you before you were born, and this is what it was:
STAGE ONE: THE CHIKHAI
The events of the 49-day Bardo period are divided into three major stages, the Chikhai, the Chonyid, and the Sidpa (in that order). Immediately following physical death, the soul enters the Chikhai, which is simply the state of the immaculate and luminous Dharmakaya, the ultimate Consciousness, the BrahmanAtman. This ultimate state is given, as a gift, to all individuals: they are plunged straight into ultimate reality and exist as the ultimate Dharmakaya. "At this moment," says the Bardo Thotrol, "the first glimpsing of the Bardo of the Clear Light of Reality, which is the Infallible Mind of the Dharmakaya, is experienced by all sentient beings.''110 Or, to put it a different way, the Thotrol tells us that "Thine own consciousness, shining, void, and inseparable from the Great Body of Radiance, hath no birth, nor death, and is the Immutable Light-Buddha Amitabha. Knowing this is sufficient. Recognizing the voidness of thine own intellect to be Buddhahood ... is to keep thyself in the Divine Mind."110 In short, immediately following physical death, the soul is absorbed in and as the ultimate-causal body (if we may treat them together).
Interspersed with this brief summary of the Bardo Thotrol, I will add my commentaries on involution and on the nature of the Atman project in involution. And we begin by noting that at the start of the Bardo experience, the soul is elevated to the utter heights of Being, to the ultimate state of Oneness-that is, he starts his Bardo career at the top. But, at the top is usually not where he remains, and the Thotrol tells us why. In Evans-Wentz's words, "In the realm of the Clear Light [the highest Chikhai stage] the mentality of a person . . . momentarily enjoys a condition of balance, of perfect equilibrium, and of [ultimate] oneness. Owing to unfamiliarity with such a state, which is an ecstatic state of non-ego, of [causal] consciousness, the . . . average human being lacks the power to function in it; karmic propensities becloud the consciousness-principle with thoughts of personality, of individualized being, of dualism, and, losing equilibrium, the consciousness-principle falls away from the Clear Light."
The soul falls away from the ultimate Oneness because "karmic propensities cloud consciousness"-"karmic propensities'' means seeking, grasping, desiring; means, in fact, Eros. And as this Erosseeking develops, the state of perfect Oneness starts to "break down" (illusorily). Or, from a different angle, because the individual cannot stand the intensity of pure Oneness ("owing to unfamiliarity with such a state"), he contracts away from it, tries to ''dilute it," tries to extricate himself from Perfect Intensity in Atman. Contracting in the face of infinity, he turns instead to forms of seeking, desire, karma, and grasping, trying to "search out" a state of equilibrium. Contraction and Eros-these karmic propensities couple and conspire to drive the soul away from pure consciousness and downwards into multiplicity, into less intense and less real states of being. ~ Ken Wilber, The Atman Project,#NFDB
947:Pater Noster
Our Father
who art in heaven
stay there
and we’ll stay down here
in the mess you have left for us,
this bright and hideous confusion, the only
heaven there is or ever was and the only hell,
so intertwined they are almost indivisible,
here amongst the corruption and murder and the nevertheless
invincible glory,
the assassinations and the lying, the grief and the
daily amazement, the poverty and affluence, the anger and
ignorance, the cruelty and unexpected
gentleness, sun in the park and bird-flight
and the cool breeze from the harbour
and the papers and the air-waves full of death and repetition
we’ll stay here
where the nations clash in their incomprehensible military psychosis,
letting their own people starve
while the guns and the makers of guns, the ravenous makers
devour and devour,
here where twenty-two humans killed in an ambush is
international news but the slaughter of one hundred
million animals each day to feed their slaughterers goes unmentioned
like the guilty secret it is that the whole
civilization rides upon
(you a slaughterer, me a slaughterer, she, he, all of us, yet the very
mention is blasphemy)
and the moon too rises, strange and beautiful over everything,
sometimes white-silver, sometimes yellow as butter (and red, that
astonishing red, and people gathered on the street corners
gazing upward, searching for syllables and giving them up, taking their
silence home like a secret longing, some of them citing you, that
waste of mind, that emptiness [this no prayer after all, but rhetoric, a frame, a
conversation with an empty box…])
here where the slugs
gather about the dog’s bowl while the dog
14
sleeps in his nest on the armchair
and the spiders on the balcony and in the
corner of the bedroom
weave their miraculous webs – out in the park catching the rain or the night’s
dew, glistening
where two out of five
are so blind there’s no seeing,
so lost in themselves there’s no
finding any way out
or anything but themselves
(and I, a poet, no excusing…) and we are all of us, all
numbed by the narcotics of our culture, the news and the misinformation, the
art and the music, the opera, the jazz, the movies, the stories and
gossip and vicarious living distracting each one of us from the
horrors and our place in them (and if you think this strange
in a love poem think again, love
so uncontainable the tax on it is anger, outrage, speaking: the
deal of it, the contract…)
here with the flood of work and the tumult and kaleidoscope of days,
the darma and the karma, the maya and the greater illusions,
the shouting right now from the fight in the laneway
and the garlic shoots appearing amongst the parsley
here where I sleep so soundly some nights and others
lie awake long into the early morning
thinking about such things, the inexplicable and unorderable tides of them
and her sleeping beside me, her calm
inbreath and exhalation
the only rod and staff and
explanation I
know now, or need.
~ David Brooks,#NFDB
948:Talk 26
...
D.: Taking the first part first, how is the mind to be eliminated or relative consciousness transcended?
M.: The mind is by nature restless. Begin liberating it from its restlessness; give it peace; make it free from distractions; train it to look inward; make this a habit. This is done by ignoring the external world and removing the obstacles to peace of mind.
D.: How is restlessness removed from the mind?
M.: External contacts - contacts with objects other than itself - make the mind restless. Loss of interest in non-Self, (vairagya) is the first step. Then the habits of introspection and concentration follow. They are characterised by control of external senses, internal faculties, etc. (sama, dama, etc.) ending in samadhi (undistracted mind).
Talk 27.
D.: How are they practised?
M.: An examination of the ephemeral nature of external phenomena leads to vairagya. Hence enquiry (vichara) is the first and foremost step to be taken. When vichara continues automatically, it results in a contempt for wealth, fame, ease, pleasure, etc. The 'I' thought becomes clearer for inspection. The source of 'I' is the Heart - the final goal. If, however, the aspirant is not temperamentally suited to Vichara Marga (to the introspective analytical method), he must develop bhakti (devotion) to an ideal - may be God, Guru, humanity in general, ethical laws, or even the idea of beauty. When one of these takes possession of the individual, other attachments grow weaker, i.e., dispassion (vairagya) develops. Attachment for the ideal simultaneously grows and finally holds the field. Thus ekagrata (concentration) grows simultaneously and imperceptibly - with or without visions and direct aids.
In the absence of enquiry and devotion, the natural sedative pranayama (breath regulation) may be tried. This is known as Yoga Marga. If life is imperilled the whole interest centres round the one point, the saving of life. If the breath is held the mind cannot afford to (and does not) jump at its pets - external objects. Thus there is rest for the mind so long as the breath is held. All attention being turned on breath or its regulation, other interests are lost. Again, passions are attended with irregular breathing, whereas calm and happiness are attended with slow and regular breathing. Paroxysm of joy is in fact as painful as one of pain, and both are accompanied by ruffled breaths. Real peace is happiness. Pleasures do not form happiness. The mind improves by practice and becomes finer just as the razor's edge is sharpened by stropping. The mind is then better able to tackle internal or external problems. If an aspirant be unsuited temperamentally for the first two methods and circumstantially (on account of age) for the third method, he must try the Karma Marga (doing good deeds, for example, social service). His nobler instincts become more evident and he derives impersonal pleasure. His smaller self is less assertive and has a chance of expanding its good side. The man becomes duly equipped for one of the three aforesaid paths. His intuition may also develop directly by this single method. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, Sri Ramanasramam,#NFDB
949:Cool, Fragrant Lotus Feet
Cool, fragrant lotus feet
with anklets tinkling sweet,
gold girdle, flower-soft garment
setting off the comely hips,
pot-belly and big, heavy tusk,
elephant-face with the bright red mark,
five hands, the goad, the noose,
blue body dwelling in the heart,
pendulous jaws, four mighty shoulders,
three eyes and the three required marks,
two ears, the gold crown gleaming,
the breast aglow with the triple thread,
O Being, bright and beautiful!
Wish-yielding elephant, born of the
Master of Mystery in Mount Kailasa,
mouse-rider, fond of the three famed fruits,
desiring to make me yours this instant,
you like a mother have appeared before me
and cut the delusion of unending births.
You have come and entered my heart,
imprinting clear the five prime letters,
set foot in the world in the form of a guru,
declared the final truth is this, gladly,
graciously shown the way of life unfading.
With that unfailing weapon, your glance,
you have put an end to my heinous sins,
poured in my ear uncloying precepts,
laid bare for me the clarity
of ever-fresh awareness,
sweetly given me your sweet grace
for firm control of the senses five,
taught how to still the organs of action;
snapped my two-fold karma and dispelled
my darkness, giving, out of grace,
a place for me in all four states;
dissolved the illusion of triple filth,
taught me how to shut the five
sense gates of the nine-door temple,
fixed me firm in the six yogic centers,
stilled my speech, taught me
the writ of ida and pingala,
shown me at last the head of sushumna.
To the tongue of the serpent that sinks and soars
you have brought the force sustaining the three
bright spheres of sun, moon and fire the mantra unspoken asleep in the snake and explicitly uttered it;
imparted the skill of raising by breath
the raging flame of muladhara;
explained the secret of immortality,
the sun's movement and the charm
of the moon; the water lily's friend,
the sixteen states of the prasada mantra;
revealed to me in thoughtful wisdom
the six-faced form and the meanings four;
disclosed to me the subtle body
and the eight separate modes of being;
the orifice of Brahman opened,
giving me miraculous powers,
by your sweet grace, and mukti, too;
revealed my Self to me and by your grace
swept away accumulated karma,
stilled my mind in tranquil calm
beyond speech and thought;
clarified my intellect, plunged me
in bliss which is the common ground
of light and darkness.
Boundless beatitude you have given me,
ended all affliction, shown the way of grace:
Siva eternal at the core of sound,
Sivalinga within the heart,
atom within atom, vast beyond all vastness,
sweetness hid in the hardened node.
You have steadied me clear in human form
all besmeared with holy ashes;
added me to the congregation
of your servants true and trusty;
made me experience in my heart
the inmost meaning of the five letters;
restored my real state to me;
and rule me now, O Master of Wisdom,
Vinayaka. Your feet alone,
O Master of Wisdom, Vinayaka, your feet alone, are my sole refuge.
~ Avvaiyar,#NFDB
950:One of the positive side-effects of maintaining a very high degree of awareness of death is that it will prepare the individual to such an extent that, when the individual actually faces death, he or she will be in a better position to maintain his or her presence of mind. Especially in Tantric Buddhism, it is considered that the state of mind which one experiences at the point of death is extremely subtle and, because of the subtlety of the level of that consciousness, it also has a great power and impact upon one’s mental continuum. In Tantric practices we find a lot of emphasis placed on reflections upon the process of death, so that the individual at the time of death not only retains his or her presence of mind, but also is in a position to utilize that subtle state of consciousness effectively towards the realization of the path. From the Tantric perspective, the entire process of existence is explained in terms of the three stages known as ‘death’, the ‘intermediate state’ and ‘rebirth’. All of these three stages of existence are seen as states or manifestations of the consciousness and the energies that accompany or propel the consciousness, so that the intermediate state and rebirth are nothing other than various levels of the subtle consciousness and energy. An example of such fluctuating states can be found in our daily existence, when during the 24-hour day we go through a cycle of deep sleep, the waking period and the dream state. Our daily existence is in fact characterized by these three stages. As death becomes something familiar to you, as you have some knowledge of its processes and can recognize its external and internal indications, you are prepared for it. According to my own experience, I still have no confidence that at the moment of death I will really implement all these practices for which I have prepared. I have no guarantee! Sometimes when I think about death I get some kind of excitement. Instead of fear, I have a feeling of curiosity and this makes it much easier for me to accept death. Of course, my only burden if I die today is, ‘Oh, what will happen to Tibet? What about Tibetan culture? What about the six million Tibetan people’s rights?’ This is my main concern. Otherwise, I feel almost no fear of death. In my daily practice of prayer I visualize eight different deity yogas and eight different deaths. Perhaps when death comes all my preparation may fail. I hope not! I think these practices are mentally very helpful in dealing with death. Even if there is no next life, there is some benefit if they relieve fear. And because there is less fear, one can be more fully prepared. If you are fully prepared then, at the moment of death, you can retain your peace of mind. I think at the time of death a peaceful mind is essential no matter what you believe in, whether it is Buddhism or some other religion. At the moment of death, the individual should not seek to develop anger, hatred and so on. I think even non-believers see that it is better to pass away in a peaceful manner, it is much happier. Also, for those who believe in heaven or some other concept, it is also best to pass away peacefully with the thought of one’s own God or belief in higher forces. For Buddhists and also other ancient Indian traditions, which accept the rebirth or karma theory, naturally at the time of death a virtuous state of mind is beneficial. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
951:There was one monk who never spoke up. His name was Vappa, and he seemed the most insecure about Gautama coming back to life. When he was taken aside and told that he would be enlightened, Vappa greeted the news with doubt. “If what you tell me is true, I would feel something, and I don’t,” he said. “When you dig a well, there is no sign of water until you reach it, only rocks and dirt to move out of the way. You have removed enough; soon the pure water will flow,” said Buddha. But instead of being reassured, Vappa threw himself on the ground, weeping and grasping Buddha’s feet. “It will never happen,” he moaned. “Don’t fill me with false hope.” “I’m not offering hope,” said Buddha. “Your karma brought you to me, along with the other four. I can see that you will soon be awake.” “Then why do I have so many impure thoughts?” asked Vappa, who was prickly and prone to outbursts of rage, so much so that the other monks were intimidated by him. “Don’t trust your thoughts,” said Buddha. “You can’t think yourself awake.” “I have stolen food when I was famished, and there were times when I stole away from my brothers and went to women,” said Vappa. “Don’t trust your actions. They belong to the body,” said Buddha. “Your body can’t wake you up.” Vappa remained miserable, his expression hardening the more Buddha spoke. “I should go away from here. You say there is no war between good and evil, but I feel it inside. I feel how good you are, and it only makes me feel worse.” Vappa’s anguish was so genuine that Buddha felt a twinge of temptation. He could reach out and take Vappa’s guilt from his shoulders with a touch of the hand. But making Vappa happy wasn’t the same as setting him free, and Buddha knew he couldn’t touch every person on earth. He said, “I can see that you are at war inside, Vappa. You must believe me when I say that you’ll never win.” Vappa hung his head lower. “I know that. So I must go?” “No, you misunderstand me,” Buddha said gently. “No one has ever won the war. Good opposes evil the way the summer sun opposes winter cold, the way light opposes darkness. They are built into the eternal scheme of Nature.” “But you won. You are good; I feel it,” said Vappa. “What you feel is the being I have inside, just as you have it,” said Buddha. “I did not conquer evil or embrace good. I detached myself from both.” “How?” “It wasn’t difficult. Once I admitted to myself that I would never become completely good or free from sin, something changed inside. I was no longer distracted by the war; my attention could go somewhere else. It went beyond my body, and I saw who I really am. I am not a warrior. I am not a prisoner of desire. Those things come and go. I asked myself: Who is watching the war? Who do I return to when pain is over, or when pleasure is over? Who is content simply to be? You too have felt the peace of simply being. Wake up to that, and you will join me in being free.” This lesson had an immense effect on Vappa, who made it his mission for the rest of his life to seek out the most miserable and hopeless people in society. He was convinced that Buddha had revealed a truth that every person could recognize: suffering is a fixed part of life. Fleeing from pain and running toward pleasure would never change that fact. Yet most people spent their whole lives avoiding pain and pursuing pleasure. To them, this was only natural, but in reality they were becoming deeply involved in a war they could never win. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
952:Each purpose, each mission, is meant to be fully lived to the point where it becomes empty, boring, and useless. Then it should be discarded. This is a sign of growth, but you may mistake it for a sign of failure. For instance, you may take on a business project, work at it for several years, and then suddenly find yourself totally disinterested. You know that if you stayed with it for another few years you would reap much greater financial reward than if you left the project now. But the project no longer calls you. You no longer feel interested in the project. You have developed skills over the last few years working on the project, but it hasn’t yet come to fruition. You may wonder, now that you have the skills, should you stick with it and bring the project to fruition, even though the work feels empty to you? Well, maybe you should stick with it. Maybe you are bailing out too soon, afraid of success or failure, or just too lazy to persevere. This is one possibility. Ask your close men friends if they feel you are simply losing steam, wimping out, or afraid to bring your project to completion. If they feel you are bailing out too soon, stick with it. However, there is also the possibility that you have completed your karma in this area. It is possible that this was one layer of purpose, which you have now fulfilled, on the way to another layer of purpose, closer to your deepest purpose. Among the signs of fulfilling or completing a layer of purpose are these: 1. You suddenly have no interest whatsoever in a project or mission that, just previously, motivated you highly. 2. You feel surprisingly free of any regrets whatsoever, for starting the project or for ending it. 3. Even though you may not have the slightest idea of what you are going to do next, you feel clear, unconfused, and, especially, unburdened. 4. You feel an increase in energy at the prospect of ceasing your involvement with the project. 5. The project seems almost silly, like collecting shoelaces or wallpapering your house with gas station receipts. Sure, you could do it, but why would you want to? If you experience these signs, it is probably time to stop working on this project. You must end your involvement impeccably, however, making sure there are no loose ends and that you do not burden anybody’s life by stopping your involvement. This might take some time, but it is important that this layer of your purpose ends cleanly and does not create any new karma, or obligation, that will burden you or others in the future. The next layer of your unfolding purpose may make itself clear immediately. More often, however, it does not. After completing one layer of purpose, you might not know what to do with your life. You know that the old project is over for you, but you are not sure of what is next. At this point, you must wait for a vision. There is no way to rush this process. You may need to get an intermediary job to hold you over until the next layer of purpose makes itself clear. Or, perhaps you have enough money to simply wait. But in any case, it is important to open yourself to a vision of what is next. You stay open to a vision of your deeper purpose by not filling your time with distractions. Don’t watch TV or play computer games. Don’t go out drinking beer with your friends every night or start dating a bunch of women. Simply wait. You may wish to go on a retreat in a remote area and be by yourself. Whatever it is you decide to do, consciously keep yourself open and available to receiving a vision of what is next. It will come. ~ David Deida, #NFDB
953:What distinguishes us above all from Muslim-born or converted individuals—“psychologically”, one could say—is that our mind is a priori centered on universal metaphysics (Advaita Vedānta, Shahādah, Risālat al-Ahadiyah) and the universal path of the divine Name (japa-yoga, nembutsu, dhikr, prayer of the heart); it is because of these two factors that we are in a traditional form, which in fact—though not in principle—is Islam. The universal orthodoxy emanating from these two sources of authority determines our interpretation of the sharī'ah and Islam in general, somewhat as the moon influences the oceans without being located on the terrestrial globe; in the absence of the moon, the motions of the sea would be inconceivable and “illegitimate”, so to speak. What universal metaphysics says has decisive authority for us, as does the “onomatological” science connected to it, a fact that once earned us the reproach of “de-Islamicizing Islam”; it is not so much a matter of the conscious application of principles formulated outside of Islamism by metaphysical traditions from Asia as of inspirations in conformity with these principles; in a situation such as ours, the spiritual authority—or the soul that is its vehicle—becomes like a point of intersection for all the rays of truth, whatever their origin.
One must always take account of the following: in principle the universal authority of the metaphysical and initiatic traditions of Asia, whose point of view reflects the nature of things more or less directly, takes precedence—when such an alternative exists—over the generally more “theological” authority of the monotheistic religions; I say “when such an alternative exists”, for obviously it sometimes happens, in esoterism as in essential symbolism, that there is no such alternative; no one can deny, however, that in Semitic doctrines the formulations and rules are usually determined by considerations of dogmatic, moral, and social opportuneness. But this cannot apply to pure Islam, that is, to the authority of its essential doctrine and fundamental symbolism; the Shahādah cannot but mean that “the world is false and Brahma is true” and that “you are That” (tat tvam asi), or that “I am Brahma” (aham Brahmāsmi); it is a pure expression of both the unreality of the world and the supreme identity; in the same way, the other “pillars of Islam” (arqān al-Dīn), as well as such fundamental rules as dietary and artistic prohibitions, obviously constitute supports of intellection and realization, which universal metaphysics—or the “Unanimous Tradition”—can illuminate but not abolish, as far as we are concerned. When universal wisdom states that the invocation contains and replaces all other rites, this is of decisive authority against those who would make the sharī'ah or sunnah into a kind of exclusive karma-yoga, and it even allows us to draw conclusions by analogy (qiyās, ijtihād) that most Shariites would find illicit; or again, should a given Muslim master require us to introduce every dhikr with an ablution and two raka'āt, the universal—and “antiformalist”—authority of japa-yoga would take precedence over the authority of this master, at least in our case. On the other hand, should a Hindu or Buddhist master give the order to practice japa before an image, it goes without saying that it is the authority of Islamic symbolism that would take precedence for us quite apart from any question of universality, because forms are forms, and some of them are essential and thereby rejoin the universality of the spirit.
(28 January 1956) ~ Frithjof Schuon,#NFDB
954:The "kindness of giving you a body" means that, at first, our bodies are not fully matured nor are our pleasant complexions. We started in the mother's womb as just an oval spot and oblong lump, and from there we developed through the vital essence of the mother's blood and flesh. We grew through the vital essence of her food while she endured embarrassment, pain, and suffering. After we were born, from a small worm until we were fully grown, she developed our body.
The "kindness of undergoing hardships for you" means that, at first, we were not wearing any clothes with all their ornamentation, did not possess any wealth, and did not bring any provisions. We just came with a mouth and stomach-empty-handed, without any material things.
When we came to this place where we knew no one, she gave food when we were hungry, she gave drink when we were thirsty, she gave clothes when we were cold, she gave wealth when we had nothing. Also, she did not just give us things she did not need. Rather, she has given us what she did not dare use for herself, things she did not dare eat, drink, or wear for herself, things she did not dare employ for the happiness of this life, things she did not dare use for her next life's wealth. In brief, without looking for happiness in this life or next, she nurtured her child.
She did not obtain these things easily or with pleasure. She collected them by creating various negative karmas, by sufferings and hardships, and gave them all to the child. For example, creating negative karma: she fed the child through various nonvirtuous actions like fishing, butchering, and so forth. For example, suffering: to give to the child, she accumulated wealth by working at a business or farm and so forth, wearing frost for shoes, wearing stars as a hat, riding on the horse of her legs, her hem like a whip, giving her legs to the dogs and her face to the people.
Furthermore, she loved the unknown one much more than her father, mother, and teachers who were very kind to her. She watched the child with eyes of love, and kept it warm in soft cloth. She dandled the child in her ten fingers, and lifted it up in the sky. She called to it in a loving, pleasant voice, saying, "Joyful one, you who delight Mommy. Lu, lu, you happy one," and so forth.
The "kindness of giving you life" means that, at first, we were not capable of eating with our mouth and hands nor were we capable of enduring all the different hardships. We were like feeble insects without strength; we were just silly and could not think anything. Again, without rejection, the mother served us, put us on her lap, protected us from fire and water, held us away from precipices, dispelled all harmful things, and performed rituals. Out of fear for our death or fear for our health, she did divinations and consulted astrologers. Through many ritual ceremonies and many other different things, in inconceivable ways, she protected the life of her child.
The "kindness of showing you the world" means that, at first, we did not come here knowing various things, seeing broadly, and being talented. We could only cry and move our legs and hands. Other than that, we knew nothing. The mother taught us how to eat when we did not know how. She taught us how to wear clothes when we did not know how. She taught us how to walk when we did not know how. She taught us how to talk when we did not know how to say "Mama," or "Hi," and so forth. She taught us various skills, creative arts, and so forth. She tried to make us equal when we were unequal, and tried to make the uneven even for us.
Not only have we had a mother in this lifetime, but from beginningless samsara she served as a mother countless times. ~ Gampopa,#NFDB
955:Wake up the note! the song that had its birth Far off, where worldly taint could never reach, In mountain caves and glades of forest deep, Whose calm no sigh for lust or wealth or fame Could ever dare to break; where rolled the stream Of knowledge, truth, and bliss that follows both. Sing high that note, Sannyasin bold! Say -- "Om Tat Sat, Om!" Strike off thy fetters! Bonds that bind thee down, Of shining gold, or darker, baser ore; Love, hate -- good, bad -- and all the dual throng, Know, slave is slave, caressed or whipped, not free; For fetters, though of gold, are not less strong to bind; Then off with them, Sannyasin bold! Say -- "Om Tat Sat, Om!" Let darkness go; the will-o'-the-wisp that leads With blinking light to pile more gloom on gloom. This thirst for life, for ever quench; it drags From birth to death, and death to birth, the soul. He conquers all who conquers self. Know this And never yield, Sannyasin bold! Say -- "Om Tat Sat, Om!" "Who sows must reap," they say, "and cause must bring The sure effect; good, good; bad, bad; and none Escape the law. But whoso wears a form Must wear the chain." Too true; but far beyond Both name and form is Atman, ever free. Know thou art That, Sannyasin bold! Say -- "Om Tat Sat, Om! " They know not truth who dream such vacant dreams As father, mother, children, wife, and friend. The sexless Self! whose father He? whose child? Whose friend, whose foe is He who is but One? The Self is all in all, none else exists; And thou art That, Sannyasin bold! Say -- "Om Tat Sat, Om!" There is but One -- The Free -- The Knower -- Self! Without a name, without a form or stain. In Him is Maya dreaming all this dream. The witness, He appears as nature, soul. Know thou art That, Sannyasin bold! Say -- "Om Tat Sat, Om!" Where seekest thou? That freedom, friend, this world Nor that can give. In books and temples vain Thy search. Thine only is the hand that holds The rope that drags thee on. Then cease lament, Let go thy hold, Sannyasin bold! Say -- "Om Tat Sat, Om!" Say, "Peace to all: From me no danger be To aught that lives. In those that dwell on high. In those that lowly creep, I am the Self in all! All life both here and there, do I renounce, All heavens and earths and hells, all hopes and fears." Thus cut thy bonds, Sannyasin bold! Say -- "Om Tat Sat, Om!" Heed then no more how body lives or goes, Its task is done. Let Karma float it down; Let one put garlands on, another kick This frame; say naught. No praise or blame can be Where praiser praised, and blamer blamed are one. Thus be thou calm, Sannyasin bold! Say -- "Om Tat Sat, Om!" Truth never comes where lust and fame and greed Of gain reside. No man who thinks of woman As his wife can ever perfect be; Nor he who owns the least of things, nor he Whom anger chains, can ever pass thro' Maya's gates. So, give these up, Sannyasin bold! Say -- "Om Tat Sat, Om!" Have thou no home. What home can hold thee, friend? The sky thy roof, the grass thy bed; and food What chance may bring, well cooked or ill, judge not. No food or drink can taint that noble Self Which knows Itself. Like rolling river free Thou ever be, Sannyasin bold! Say -- "Om Tat Sat, Om!" Few only know the truth. The rest will hate And laugh at thee, great one; but pay no heed. Go thou, the free, from place to place, and help Them out of darkness, Maya's veil. Without The fear of pain or search for pleasure, go Beyond them both, Sannyasin bold! Say -- "Om Tat Sat, Om!" Thus, day by day, till Karma's powers spent Release the soul for ever. No more is birth, Nor I, nor thou, nor God, nor man. The "I" Has All become, the All is "I" and Bliss. Know thou art That, Sannyasin bold! Say -- "Om Tat Sat, Om!"
~ Swami Vivekananda, Song of the Sanyasin
,#NFDB
956:Homage to the Adamantine Mind! Dharma king, you who have realized the essence; you who expound the way of being, out of compassion: king Buddha Samdrup, I bow to you in my heart, pray listen to me. Through your kind and skillful means, by a habit long formed, and as a fruit of long practice in this life, I have realized the nature of ever-presence. When the secret of appearance is revealed, everything arises in a tone of voidness, undefined by the marks of identity. Like a sky that is nothing but an image. When the secret of thoughts is revealed, though active, they are but mind's sport, naked reflections of transcendent mind unsullied by deliberation and correction. When the secret of recollection is revealed, every memory is but an illumination of self-knowledge in the ever-present state, untainted by ego consciousness. When the secret of illusions is revealed, they seem nothing but the primordial state, appearing in the visual field of rikpa, untouched by the dualism of mind and things. When the secret of abiding is revealed, you are in the state of self-cognition, however long you remain, free of elaboration, the expanse unstained by laxity and torpor. When the secret of mobility is revealed, however much you move, you remain within clear light, unstained by distraction, excitement, and so on, a true self-recognizer. When the secret of samsara is revealed, however often one may circle, the cycles are illusion unaffected by joy and pain. This is the realization of Buddha's four bodies. When the secret of peace is revealed, however tranquil one's attainments, they are but an image; this is the natural pure space, free of the signs of being and nonbeing. When the secret of birth is revealed, however one's reborn, it's but an emanation; meditation's vision of pure self-generation free of clinging and apprehensions. When the secret of death is revealed, however often one may die, it's but the vision of the ultimate, the stages of completion perfect, free of any karmic deeds. When the secret of bliss is revealed, its intensity cannot be bettered; this is the state of spontaneous bliss, free of all traces of contamination. When the secret of luminosity is revealed, however bright, it's but an empty form -- mother image of the void in space, free of every multiplicity. When the secret of emptiness is revealed, though empty, it is the unsurpassed, devoid of every contingent stain, and free from every deception. When the secret of the view is revealed, however much one looks and sees, the world remains beyond thought and word -- the expanse beyond dichotomies. When the secret of meditation is revealed, however much one meditates, it's but a state -- undistracted, and in natural restfulness, free of exertion and constraint. When the secret of action is revealed, whatever one does are the six perfections -- spontaneous, free, and to the point, uncolored by strictures and moral codes. When the secret of fruition is revealed, achievements are but the cognition of mind as dharmakaya, the mind itself free of hope and fear. This is the profound innermost secret; guru's blessings have entered my heart; naked nonduality dawns within; the secret of samsara and nirvana is revealed! I have beheld the face of the ordinary mind; I have arrived at the view that is free of extremes; even if the Buddha came in person now, I have no queries that require his advice! This song on the view of voidness expounding the nature of the being of all, spoken in words inspired by conviction, was sung in a voice echoing itself, unobstructed, in between meditation sessions. [1585.jpg] -- from Songs of Spiritual Experience: Tibetan Buddhist Poems of Insight & Awakening, Translated by Thupten Jinpa / Translated by Jas Elsner
~ Karma Trinley, A Song on the View of Voidness
,#NFDB
957:STAGE TWO: THE CHONYID
The Chonyid is the period of the appearance of the peaceful and wrathful deities-that is to say, the subtle realm, the Sambhogakaya. When the Clear Light of the causal realm is resisted and contracted against, then that Reality is transformed into the primordial seed forms of the peaceful deities (ishtadevas of the subtle sphere), and these in turn, if resisted and denied, are transformed into the wrathful deities.
The peaceful deities appear first: through seven successive substages, there appear various forms of the tathagatas, dakinis, and vidyadharas, all accompanied by the most dazzlingly brilliant colors and aweinspiring suprahuman sounds. One after another, the divine visions, lights, and subtle luminous sounds cascade through awareness. They are presented, given, to the individual openly, freely, fully, and completely: visions of God in almost painful intensity and brilliance.
How the individual handles these divine visions and sounds (nada) is of the utmost significance, because each divine scenario is accompanied by a much less intense vision, by a region of relative dullness and blunted illuminations. These concomitant dull and blunted visions represent the first glimmerings of the world of samsara, of the six realms of egoic grasping, of the dim world of duality and fragmentation and primitive forms of low-level unity.
According to the Thotrol. most individuals simply recoil in the face of these divine illuminations- they contract into less intense and more manageable forms of experience. Fleeing divine illumination, they glide towards the fragmented-and thus less intense-realm of duality and multiplicity. But it's not just that they recoil against divinity-it is that they are attracted to the lower realms, drawn to them, and find satisfaction in them. The Thotrol says they are actually "attracted to the impure lights." As we have put it, these lower realms are substitute gratifications. The individual thinks that they are just what he wants, these lower realms of denseness. But just because these realms are indeed dimmer and less intense, they eventually prove to be worlds without bliss, without illumination, shot through with pain and suffering. How ironic: as a substitute for God, individuals create and latch onto Hell, known as samsara, maya, dismay. In Christian theology it is said that the flames of Hell are God's love (Agape) denied.
Thus the message is repeated over and over again in the Chonyid stage: abide in the lights of the Five Wisdoms and subtle tathagatas, look not at the duller lights of samsara. of the six realms, of safe illusions and egoic dullness. As but one example:
Thereupon, because of the power of bad karma, the glorious blue light of the Wisdom of the Dharmadhatu will produce in thee fear and terror, and thou wilt wish to flee from it. Thou wilt begat a fondness for the dull white light of the devas [one of the lower realms].
At this stage, thou must not be awed by the divine blue light which will appear shining, dazzling, and glorious; and be not startled by it. That is the light of the Tathagata called the Light of the Wisdom of the Dharmadhatu.
Be not fond of the dull white light of the devas. Be not attached to it; be not weak. If thou be attached to it, thou wilt wander into the abodes of the devas and be drawn into the whirl of the Six Lokas.
The point is this: ''If thou are frightened by the pure radiances of Wisdom and attracted by the impure lights of the Six Lokas [lower realms], then thou wilt assume a body in any of the Six Lokas and suffer samsaric miseries; and thou wilt never be emancipated from the Ocean of Samsara, wherein thou wilt be whirled round and round and made to taste the sufferings thereof."
But here is what is happening: in effect, we are seeing the primal and original form of the Atman project in its negative and contracting aspects. In this second stage (the Chonyid), there is already some sort of boundary in awareness, there is already some sort of subject-object duality superimposed upon the original Wholeness and Oneness of the Chikhai Dharmakaya. So now there is boundary-and wherever there is boundary, there is the Atman project. ~ Ken Wilber, The Atman Project, 129,#NFDB
958:64 Arts
1. Geet vidya: art of singing.
2. Vadya vidya: art of playing on musical instruments.
3. Nritya vidya: art of dancing.
4. Natya vidya: art of theatricals.
5. Alekhya vidya: art of painting.
6. Viseshakacchedya vidya: art of painting the face and body with color
7. Tandulakusumabalivikara: art of preparing offerings from rice and flowers.
8. Pushpastarana: art of making a covering of flowers for a bed.
9. Dasanavasanangaraga: art of applying preparations for cleansing the teeth, cloths and painting the body.
10. Manibhumikakarma: art of making the groundwork of jewels.
11. Aayyaracana: art of covering the bed.
12. Udakavadya: art of playing on music in water.
13. Udakaghata: art of splashing with water.
14. Citrayoga: art of practically applying an admixture of colors.
15. Malyagrathanavikalpa: art of designing a preparation of wreaths.
16. Sekharapidayojana: art of practically setting the coronet on the head.
17. Nepathyayoga: art of practically dressing in the tiring room.
18. Karnapatrabhanga: art of decorating the tragus of the ear.
19. Sugandhayukti: art of practical application of aromatics.
20. Bhushanayojana: art of applying or setting ornaments.
21. Aindrajala: art of juggling.
22. Kaucumara: a kind of art.
23. Hastalaghava: art of sleight of hand.
24. Citrasakapupabhakshyavikarakriya: art of preparing varieties of delicious food.
25. Panakarasaragasavayojana: art of practically preparing palatable drinks and tinging draughts with red color.
26. Sucivayakarma: art of needleworks and weaving.
27. Sutrakrida: art of playing with thread.
28. Vinadamurakavadya: art of playing on lute and small drum.
29. Prahelika: art of making and solving riddles.
30. Durvacakayoga: art of practicing language difficult to be answered by others.
31. Pustakavacana: art of reciting books.
32. Natikakhyayikadarsana: art of enacting short plays and anecdotes.
33. Kavyasamasyapurana: art of solving enigmatic verses.
34. Pattikavetrabanavikalpa: art of designing preparation of shield, cane and arrows.
35. Tarkukarma: art of spinning by spindle.
36. Takshana: art of carpentry.
37. Vastuvidya: art of engineering.
38. Raupyaratnapariksha: art of testing silver and jewels.
39. Dhatuvada: art of metallurgy.
40. Maniraga jnana: art of tinging jewels.
41. Akara jnana: art of mineralogy.
42. Vrikshayurvedayoga: art of practicing medicine or medical treatment, by herbs.
43. Meshakukkutalavakayuddhavidhi: art of knowing the mode of fighting of lambs, cocks and birds.
44. Sukasarikapralapana: art of maintaining or knowing conversation between male and female cockatoos.
45. Utsadana: art of healing or cleaning a person with perfumes.
46. Kesamarjanakausala: art of combing hair.
47. Aksharamushtikakathana: art of talking with fingers.
48. Dharanamatrika: art of the use of amulets.
49. Desabhashajnana: art of knowing provincial dialects.
50. Nirmitijnana: art of knowing prediction by heavenly voice.
51. Yantramatrika: art of mechanics.
52. Mlecchitakutarkavikalpa: art of fabricating barbarous or foreign sophistry.
53. Samvacya: art of conversation.
54. Manasi kavyakriya: art of composing verse
55. Kriyavikalpa: art of designing a literary work or a medical remedy.
56. Chalitakayoga: art of practicing as a builder of shrines called after him.
57. Abhidhanakoshacchandojnana: art of the use of lexicography and meters.
58. Vastragopana: art of concealment of cloths.
59. Dyutavisesha: art of knowing specific gambling.
60. Akarshakrida: art of playing with dice or magnet.
61. Balakakridanaka: art of using children's toys.
62. Vainayiki vidya: art of enforcing discipline.
63. Vaijayiki vidya: art of gaining victory.
64. Vaitaliki vidya: art of awakening master with music at dawn.
~ Nik Douglas and Penny Slinger, Sexual Secrets,#NFDB
358 Integral Yoga
41 Yoga
27 Occultism
7 Poetry
6 Buddhism
5 Theosophy
4 Philosophy
4 Hinduism
2 Psychology
1 Thelema
1 Science
1 Integral Theory
1 Christianity
365 Sri Aurobindo
31 Nolini Kanta Gupta
26 The Mother
23 Satprem
22 Sri Ramakrishna
17 A B Purani
15 Aleister Crowley
11 Swami Vivekananda
8 Swami Krishnananda
6 Sri Ramana Maharshi
5 Bokar Rinpoche
4 Thubten Chodron
4 Rudolf Steiner
4 Franz Bardon
4 Aldous Huxley
3 Patanjali
3 Nirodbaran
3 Carl Jung
3 Alice Bailey
2 Mahendranath Gupta
2 Dadu Dayal
232 Record of Yoga
25 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
22 The Synthesis Of Yoga
21 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
18 Essays On The Gita
17 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
13 The Life Divine
11 Talks
10 Letters On Yoga II
8 The Study and Practice of Yoga
8 Liber ABA
8 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
7 Letters On Yoga IV
6 The Secret Doctrine
6 Magick Without Tears
6 Agenda Vol 01
5 Tara - The Feminine Divine
5 Isha Upanishad
5 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
5 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
5 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
4 Vedic and Philological Studies
4 The Perennial Philosophy
4 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
4 Letters On Yoga III
4 How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator
4 Bhakti-Yoga
4 Agenda Vol 03
3 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
3 The Practice of Magical Evocation
3 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
3 Raja-Yoga
3 Patanjali Yoga Sutras
3 Essays Divine And Human
3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
3 A Treatise on Cosmic Fire
2 The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma
2 Theosophy
2 The Lotus Sutra
2 The Human Cycle
2 Questions And Answers 1956
2 Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
2 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
2 Agenda Vol 12
2 Agenda Vol 02
00.03 - Upanishadic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
One is an ideal in and of the world, the other is an ideal transcending the world. The Path of the Fathers (Pityna) enjoins the right accomplishing of the dharma of Lifeit is the path of works, of Karma; it is the line of progressive evolution that, man follows through the experience of life after life on earth. The Path of the Gods (Devayna) runs above life's evolutionary course; it lifts man out of the terrestrial cycle and places him in a superior consciousness it is the path of knowledge, of Vidya.4 The Path of the Fathers is the soul's southern or inferior orbit (dakiyana, aparrdha); the Path of the Gods is the northern or superior orbit (uttaryaa, parrdha)The former is also called the Lunar Path and the latter the Solar Path.5 For the moon represents the mind,6 and is therefore, an emblem that befits man so long as he is a mental being and pursues a dharma that is limited by the mind; the sun, on the other hand, is the knowledge and consciousness that is beyond the mindit is the eye of the Gods.7
Man has two aspects or natures; he dwells in two worlds. The first is the manifest world the world of the body, the life and the mind. The body has flowered into the mind through the life. The body gives the basis or the material, the life gives power and energy and the mind the directing knowledge. This triune world forms the humanity of man. But there is another aspect hidden behind this apparent nature, there is another world where man dwells in his submerged, larger and higher consciousness. To that his soul the Purusha in his heart only has access. It is the world where man's nature is transmuted into another triune realitySat, Chit and Ananda.
--
Karma pitloka vidyay devoloka (jayy)Brihadaranyaka, 1.5.16.
Devalokddityam... pitlokccandramBrihadaranyaka, VI. 2.15.16.
0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Sri Ramakrishna, on the other hand, though fully aware, like his guru, that the world is an illusory appearance, instead of slighting maya, like an orthodox monist, acknowledged its power in the relative life. He was all love and reverence for maya, perceiving in it a mysterious and majestic expression of Divinity. To him maya itself was God, for everything was God. It was one of the faces of Brahman. What he had realized on the heights of the transcendental plane, he also found here below, everywhere about him, under the mysterious garb of names and forms. And this garb was a perfectly transparent sheath, through which he recognized the glory of the Divine Immanence. Maya, the mighty weaver of the garb, is none other than Kali, the Divine Mother. She is the primordial Divine Energy, Sakti, and She can no more be distinguished from the Supreme Brahman than can the power of burning be distinguished from fire. She projects the world and again withdraws it. She spins it as the spider spins its web. She is the Mother of the Universe, identical with the Brahman of Vedanta, and with the Atman of Yoga. As eternal Lawgiver, She makes and unmakes laws; it is by Her imperious will that Karma yields its fruit. She ensnares men with illusion and again releases them from bondage with a look of Her benign eyes. She is the supreme Mistress of the cosmic play, and all objects, animate and inanimate, dance by Her will. Even those who realize the Absolute in nirvikalpa samadhi are under Her jurisdiction as long as they still live on the relative plane.
Thus, after nirvikalpa samadhi, Sri Ramakrishna realized maya in an altogether new role. The binding aspect of Kali vanished from before his vision. She no longer obscured his understanding. The world became the glorious manifestation of the Divine Mother. Maya became Brahman. The Transcendental Itself broke through the Immanent. Sri Ramakrishna discovered that maya operates in the relative world in two ways, and he termed these "avidyamaya" and "vidyamaya". Avidyamaya represents the dark forces of creation: sensuous desires, evil passions, greed, lust, cruelty, and so on. It sustains the world system on the lower planes. It is responsible for the round of man's birth and death. It must be fought and vanquished. But vidyamaya is the higher force of creation: the spiritual virtues, the enlightening qualities, kindness, purity, love, devotion. Vidyamaya elevates man to the higher planes of consciousness. With the help of vidyamaya the devotee rids himself of avidyamaya; he then becomes mayatita, free of maya. The two aspects of maya are the two forces of creation, the two powers of Kali; and She stands beyond them both. She is like the effulgent sun, bringing into existence and shining through and standing behind the clouds of different colours and shapes, conjuring up wonderful forms in the blue autumn heaven.
0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
in their injunction, "Fry your seeds". Act so as to balance your past Karma,
and create no new, so that, as it were, the books are balanced. WHile you have
--
weight of the Karma of the Infinite is with him.
Therefore is he glad indeed; for he hath finished THE
0.03 - III - The Evening Sittings, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Sri Aurobindo was never a social man in the current sense of the term and definitely he was not a man of the crowd. This was due to his grave temperament, not to any feeling of superiority or to repulsion for men. At Baroda there was an Officers' Club which was patronised by the Maharajah and though Sri Aurobindo enrolled himself as a member he hardly went to the Club even on special occasions. He rather liked a small congenial circle of friends and spent most of his evenings with them whenever he was free and not occupied with his studies or other works. After Baroda when he went to Calcutta there was hardly any time in the storm and stress of revolutionary politics to permit him to lead a 'social life'. What little time he could spare from his incessant activities was spent in the house of Raja Subodh Mallick or at the Grey Street house. In the Karmayogin office he used to sit after the office hours till late chatting with a few persons or trying automatic writing. Strange dictations used to be received sometimes: one of them was the following: "Moni [Suresh Chakravarty] will bomb Sir Edward Grey when he will come as the Viceroy of India." In later years at Pondicherry there used to be a joke that Sir Edward took such a fright at the prospect of Moni's bombing him that he never came to India!
After Sri Aurobindo had come to Pondicherry from Chandernagore, he entered upon an intense period of Sadhana and for a few months he refused to receive anyone. After a time he used to sit down to talk in the evening and on some days tried automatic writing. Yogic Sadhan, a small book, was the result. In 1913 Sri Aurobindo moved to Rue Franois Martin No. 41 where he used to receive visitors at fixed times. This was generally in the morning between 9 and 10.30.
01.03 - Yoga and the Ordinary Life, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is not helpful to abandon the ordinary life before the being is ready for the full spiritual life. To do so means to precipitate a struggle between the different elements and exasperate it to a point of intensity which the nature is not ready to bear. The vital elements in you have partly to be met by the discipline and experience of life, while keeping the spiritual aim in view and trying to govern life by it progressively in the spirit of Karmayoga.
The best way to prepare oneself for the spiritual life when one has to live in the ordinary occupations and surroundings is to cultivate an entire equality and detachment and the samata of the Gita with the faith that the Divine is there and the Divine Will at work in all things even though at present under the conditions of a world of Ignorance. Beyond this are the Light and Ananda towards which life is working, but the best way for their advent and foundation in the individual being and nature is to grow in this spiritual equality. That would also solve your difficulty about things unpleasant and disagreeable. All unpleasantness should be faced with this spirit of samata.
01.04 - Sri Aurobindos Gita, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Supreme Spirit, Purushottama, who holds in himself the dual reality of Brahman and the world, is the master of action who acts but in actionlessness, the Lord in whom and through whom the universes and their creatures live and move and have their being. Karmayoga is union in mind and soul and body with the Lord of action in the execution of his cosmic purpose. And this union is effected through a transformation of the human nature, through the revelation of the Divine Prakriti and its descent upon and possession of the inferior human vehicle.
Arrived so far, we now find, if we look back, a change in the whole perspective. Karma and even Karmayoga, which hitherto seemed to be the pivot of the Gita's teaching, retire somewhat into the background and present a diminished stature and value. The centre of gravity has shifted to the conception of the Divine Nature, to the Lord's own status, to the consciousness above the three Gunas, to absolute consecration of each limb of man's humanity to the Supreme Purusha for his descent and incarnation and play in and upon this human world.
The higher secret of the Gita lies really in the later chapters, the earlier chapters being a preparation and passage to it orpartial and practical application. This has to be pointed out, since there is a notion current which seeks to limit the Gita's effective teaching to the earlier part, neglecting or even discarding the later portion.
0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
"There are these three powers: (1) The Cosmic Law, of Karma or what else; (2) the
Divine Compassion acting on as many as it can reach through the nets of the Law and
0 1958-11-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
But now I KNOWbefore I did not know. The other morning I saw, and I was told very clearly that it was a Karma1 to be worked out; so then I told you, but at the time I didnt know what it was.
And I saw that with the new Power, the supramental power That is something absolutely new It used to be thought that nothing had the power to eliminate the consequences of Karma and that only by exhausting it through a series of actions could its consequences be transformed exhausted, eliminated. But I KNOW that with the supramental power it can be done without following all the steps of the process.
In any event, one point is clear: it is something that happened in India, and the origin of the Karma and the remedy of the Karma go together. And it has to do with this initiation you received in Rameswaram.2
So the difficulty and the victory go together. Its very interesting.
--
Karma: positive (or negative) consequences of actions performed in past lives (every action is endowed with a self-perpetuating dynamism).
A temple-island in southern India where Satprem became a sannyasi.
0 1958-11-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
My immediate impression was that you were being put in direct contact with this this sort of Fatality that here they call Karma, which is the consequence yes, something that must be exhausted, something that remains in the consciousness.
This is how it works: the psychic being passes from one life to another, but there are cases in which the psychic incarnates in order to to work out2 to pass through a certain experience, to learn a certain thing, to develop a certain thing through a certain experience. And so in this life, in the life where the experience is to be made, it can happen (there may be more than one reason) that the soul does not come down accurately in the place it should have, some shift or other may occur, a set of contrary circumstancesthis happens sometimesand then the incarnation miscarries entirely and the soul leaves. But in other cases, the soul is simply placed in the impossibility of doing exactly what it wants and it finds itself swept away by unfortunate circumstances. Not only unfortunate from an objective standpoint, but unfortunate for its own development, and then that creates in it the necessity to begin the experience all over again, and in much more difficult conditions.
And ifit can happenif the second attempt also miscarries, if the conditions make the experience the soul is seeking still more difficult for example, if one is in a body with an inadequate will or some distortion in the thought, or an egoism too too hardened, and it ends in suicide, it is dreadful. I have seen this many times, it creates a dreadful Karma that can be repeated for lifetimes on end before the soul can conquer it and manage to do what it wants. And each time, the conditions become more difficult, each time it requires a still greater effort. And people who know this say, You cannot get out! In fact, it is this kind of desire to escape which pushes you into more foolish things3 that result in a still greater accumulation of difficulty. There are momentsmoments and circumstanceswhen no one is there to help you, and then things become so horrible, the circumstances become so abominable.
But if the soul has had but ONE call, but ONE contact with the Grace, then in your next life you are put in the conditions, once, whereby EVERYTHING can be swept away at one stroke. And at this present moment on earth, you cannot imagine the number of people I have met that is, the number of soulswho had reached out towards this possibility with such an intensity and they have all found themselves on my path.
--
But because it is Karma, one must, one must DO something oneself. Karma is the construction of the ego; the ego MUST DO something, everything cannot be done for it. This is it, THIS is the thing: Karma is the result of the egos actions, and only when the ego abdicates is the Karma dissolved. One can help it along, one can assist it, give it strength, bestow courage upon it, but the ego must then make use of it.
(silence)
So this is what I saw for you: that the crystallization of this Karma occurred during a life in India in which you were put in the presence of the possibility of liberation and I dont know the details; I dont know the material facts at all. So far, I know nothing, I have only had a vision. I saw you there, as I told you, taller than you are now, in an Indian body, north Indian, for it was not dark but fair. But there was a HARDNESS in the being, the hardness born of a kind of despair mixed with rebellion, incomprehension and an ego that resists. That is all I know. The image was of you backed up against a bronze door: BACKED UP against it. I didnt see what had caused it. As I told you, something interrupted me, so I was unable to follow it.
The other indication is what I told you the other day. When you thought of leaving to join Swami, I immediately saw a stream of light: Ah, the road is opening up! So I said, It is good. And while you were away in Ceylon, I followed you from day to day. You called much more than the second time, when you were in the Himalayas; and with the physical hardships you were undergoing, I was very, very close to you I constantly felt what was happening.
--
But when you returned the second time, from the Himalayas, you didnt have the same flame as when you returned the first time. And I understood that this kind of difficult Karma still clung to you, that it had not been dissolved. I had hoped that your contact with the mountains but in a true solitude (I dont mean that your body had to be all alone, but there should not have been all kinds of outer, superficial things) Anyway, it didnt happen. So it means that the time had not come.
But when here the difficulties returned and because of their obstinacy, their appearance of an inevitable fatality I concluded that it was a Karma, although I knew it with certainty only now.
But I always had a presentiment of the true thing: that only a VERY COURAGEOUS act of self-giving could efface the thingnot courageous or difficult from the material point of view, not that There is a certain zone of the vital in you, a mentalized vital but still very material, which is very much under the influence of circumstances and which very much believes in the effectiveness of outer measuresthis is what is resisting.
--
Generally, when the hour has come for a Karma to be overcome and absorbed in the Grace, the image or the knowledge or the experience of the exact facts that are the origin of the Karma come to me, and I can then perform the cleansing action.
For the time being, it is not yet there.
--
Yes, thats it (silence) That is the knot of Karma: that sensation, that perception, that is the knot of Karma.
My perception is that I have something to do, I dont know what, and only afterwards
0 1958-11-27 - Intermediaries and Immediacy, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
(Concerning the disciple's Karma and the tantric discipline that he is following to dissolve this Karma, Mother wonders why She herself had not been able to dissolve it directly and why it was necessary to resort to intermediaries)
I am used to seeing the process or the working of things more from a spiritual point of view, something more universal, whereas this needs to be seen from a detailed, occult point of view.
--
And when I studied this, when I looked at this science of processes, of intermediaries, suddenly I clearly understood the working of Karma, which I had not understood before. I had worked and intervened quite often to change someones Karma, but sometimes I had to wait, without exactly knowing why the result was not immediate. I simply used to wait without worrying about the reasons for this slowness or delay. Thats how it was. And generally it ended, as I said, with the exact vision of the Karmas source, its initial cause; and scarcely would I have this vision when the Power would come, and the thing would be dissolved. But I didnt bother about finding out why it was like that.
One day I had mentioned this to X1 when he was showing me or describing to me the different movements of the pujas, the procedure, the process of the puja. I said to him, Oh, I see! For the action to be immediate, for the result to be immediate, one must acknowledge, for example, the role or the participation of certain spirits or certain forces and enter into a friendly relationship or collaboration with these forces in order to obtain an immediate result, is it not so? Then he told me, Yes, otherwise it leaves an indefinite time to the play of the forces, and you dont know when you will get the result of your puja.
0 1959-01-14, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I am taking advantage of this situation to work. I have chosen the articles for the Bulletin. They are as follows: 1) Message. 2) To keep silent. 3) Can there be intermediary states between man and super-man? 4) The Anti-Divine. 5) What is the role of the spirit? 6) Karma (I have touched this one up to make it less personal). 7) The Worship of the Supreme in Matter. Now I would like to prepare the first twelve Aphorisms3 for printing. But as you have not yet revised the last two, I am sending them to you. Could you do them when you have finished what you are doing for the Bulletin? It is not urgent, take your time. Do not disturb your real work for this in any way. For, in my eyes, this work of inner liberation is much more important.
You will find in this letter a little money. I thought you might need it for your stamps, etc.
0 1960-11-05, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I am convinced that at heart Karma is simply all the things we havent used in the true way that we drag along behind us If totally and clearly we have learned the lesson which each event or each circumstance ought to have brought, then its finished, its utility is gone and it dissolves.
Its an interesting experience to follow and observe.
0 1960-11-26, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
But immediately, the following dayDarshan dayas the thing developed (you see, something was working inside), I could again turn my attention to the people who were there. And oddly enough, just when you came, there was suddenly a kind of little shock, like an electric shock, and a spark leapt out. And at that moment the Power acted for perhaps a split second You see, there has been this bad Karma, this old formation around you for a very long time, and it hadnt I recall telling you several years ago, I shall be able to cure such cases as yours only when the Supramental descends. And this feeling of incapacity, of something resisting, was still present, still aliveof not having the right power to dominate it. But just as you went by, for a second, there was this flash of like a spark when two electric wires touch. It was a golden spark, a resplendent lightzzzt! And it leapt out. Ah! I thought; its good.
That was it.
0 1961-04-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The Ideal of the Karmayogin, Cent. Ed., Vol. III p. 354
Satprem had assumed that this state of consciousness was accessible only through a kind of trance or samadhi and that when Mother said one had to be capable of 'maintaining this state,' she meant that one should be capable of bringing it back here, into the waking consciousness. However, Mother rectified: 'It is a state with no "here" or "there". I have had this experience in the waking consciousness and both perceptions (the true and the false) were simultaneous.'
0 1961-06-02, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When one does not repeat ones past mistakes, the divine power, the power of the divine Grace, abolishes their consequences their Karmain the being. But as long as mistakes are repeated nothing can be abolished, because one re-creates them at every minute. When a person has made a serious error, say, a serious mistake (it can be serious or not, but we are concerned primarily with the serious ones), such mistakes have their consequences in life, a Karma which has to be exhausted. The divine Grace, if you call upon it, has the power to abolish that Karma, to cut short the consequences but the Grace can only do this when you, within yourself, dont begin all over again, when the mistake committed is not renewed. The past can be completely purified and abolished, on condition that one does not keep making it into a perpetual present.
I have said it there in one sentence, but I didnt want people to believe that they can continue making the same stupid blunder indefinitely and have the Grace indefinitely annul all the consequences.1 It isnt like that! The past can be cleansed to the point where it has no effect of any kind on the future, but only on condition that you stop the wrong vibration in yourself, that you dont reproduce the same vibration indefinitely.
0 1962-02-03, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(A visitor has written to Mother about her difficulties, saying she is the victim of a "collective Karma.")
Those Karma stories.
I often wonder, very often, whether it helps people to know their Karma. I dont think it does.
I mean, if they themselves discover the experiences they had in their past life, then its part of a whole inner, psychic awakening, and very useful. But if some guru or other comes along and tells you, Here, this was your Karma. I dont think its useful, to put it mildly!
If you discover the line of a former life on your own, thats different; its part of an inner, psychic awakening, and its very good. But I dont think its helpful when someone sees something and comes and tells you, You know, you have been this, you have done that. I feel it makes things worse instead of betterit puts you back in touch with things you were in the process of eliminating.
--
This woman a collective Karma! What rubbishabsolute humbug.
It may be true for some people, but not for her. If I hadnt seen her I might have been intrigued and tried to find out, but. A collective Karma. Of course, there are all the links you have with people youve known in past lives; in that sense, yes, there is a collective Karma! But really, people use such big words and big ideas for things that are actually quite natural.
Yet I found it helpful to have some understanding of what happened in my other lives.
--
Because before you were told about your Karma, I had already seen certain things about you and was trying to set you freenot from the thing itself, but from the tendency that remained in your nature. That, yes.
But Sujata, for example, was completely, COMPLETELY free of the whole (what shall I say?) what could be called the unhappy aspect of her Karmacompletely free. For I know the people around me and what they carry with them very well, and there was nothingjust one thing remained, the one part that was rather constructive, so I had left that totally intact. And when the events of her past life were revealed to her, I took the greatest care to destroy the revelation as it was being given. And I did it ruthlessly. You see, it was like dumping a load of mud on someone completely unsullied, and I didnt let it happen (I couldnt stop what entered through her physical brain, but inwardly I utterly annihilated it). The only thing I left untouched was the constructive part of the bond that had existed between you two, and so when she met you, she. Thats all I left, because it was good, pure, lovelyit was good. But all the rest. And you saw how strongly I protested when I was told she had committed suicide. No, no, no! I said; even if somebody with perfect knowledge were to tell me so, Id still say NO.
She is untainted by all thatpure and I wont stand for someone pure to be soiled. She was so much my child that after her death everything was carefully cleansed, arranged, put back in place, organized, purified. So she returned unblemished and pure, and I dont want her soiled.
You see, a grace is actually working to drive those Karmas away sometimes far, far away and its no good to call them back.
I have had dozens of similar examples.
0 1962-07-21, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The peculiarity of this yoga is that until there is siddhi above the foundation does not become perfect. Those who have been following my course had kept many of the old samskaras; some of them have dropped away, but others still remain. There was the samskara of Sannyasa, even the wish to create an Aravinda Math [Sri Aurobindo monastery]. Now the intellect has recognized that Sannyasa is not what is wanted, but the stamp of the old idea has not yet been effaced from the prana [breath, life energy]. And so there was next this talk of remaining in the midst of the world, as a man of worldly activities and yet a man of renunciation. The necessity of renouncing desire has been understood, but the harmony of renunciation of desire with enjoyment of Ananda has not been rightly seized by the mind. And they took up my Yoga because it was very natural to the Bengali temperament, not so much from the side of Knowledge as from the side of Bhakti and Karma [Works]. A little knowledge has come in, but the greater part has escaped; the mist of sentimentalism has not been dissipated, the groove of the sattwic bhava [religious fervor] has not been broken. There is still the ego. I am not in haste, I allow each to develop according to his nature. I do not want to fashion all in the same mould. That which is fundamental will indeed be one in all, but it will express itself in many forms. Everybody grows, forms from within. I do not want to build from outside. The basis is there, the rest will come.
What I am aiming at is not a society like the present rooted in division. What I have in view is a Samgha [community] founded in the spirit and in the image of its oneness. It is with this idea that the name Deva Samgha has been given the commune of those who want the divine life is the Deva Samgha. Such a Samgha will have to be established in one place at first and then spread all over the country. But if any shadow of egoism falls over this endeavor, then the Samgha will change into a sect. The idea may very naturally creep in that such and such a body is the one true Samgha of the future, the one and only centre, that all else must be its circumference, and that those outside its limits are not of the fold or even if they are, have gone astray, because they think differently.
0 1962-07-25, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It is the individual consciousness. Aspiration is almost always an expression of the psychic being the part of us thats organized around the divine center, the small divine flame deep within human beings. You see, this divine flame exists inside each human being, and little by little, through all the incarnations and Karma and so on, a being takes shape around it, which Thon called the psychic being. And when the psychic being reaches its full development, it becomes a kind of bodily or at any rate individual raiment of the soul. The soul is a portion of the Supreme the jiva is the Supreme in individual form. And since there is only one Supreme, there is only one jiva, but with millions of individual forms. This jiva begins as a divine sparkimmutable, eternal and infinite too (infinite in possibility rather than dimension). And through all the incarnations, whatever has received and responded to the divine Influence progressively crystallizes around the jiva, which becomes more and more conscious as well as more and more organized. Ultimately it becomes a completely conscious individual being, master of itself and moved exclusively by the divine Will. That is to say, an individual expression of the Supreme. This is what we call the psychic being.
Generally speaking, those who practice yoga have either a fully developed, independent psychic being which has taken birth again to do the Divines work, or else a psychic being in its last incarnation wanting to complete its development and realize itself.
0 1962-08-08, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Superficially, it [the bodys characteristic of attracting ordeals] could be called a sort of Karma, but thats not what it is. Its actually like one of the pivotsnot a central one, but one of the pivots of the bodys invisible action, of its consciousness. And it is expressed by attracting certain circumstances. A whole range of things having to do with the physical body has thus become very clear and precise to meand thats what the body was made for: to go full speed ahead.
Intellectually, I dont at all believe in taking others misfortunes upon oneself thats childish. But certain vibrations in the world must be accepted, exhausted and transformed. Inwardly, thats the work I have been doing all my lifeconsciously, gloriously. But now its on a purely physical level, independent of all the realities of other worlds: its in the body, you see. And this has given me a key, one of the necessary keys to the Work.
--
I have had other similar experienceson Durgas day, for instance, when Sri Aurobindo was still here (you know, thats the day when Durga masters an asura; she doesnt kill him, she masters him). Well, each year one particular type of thing was undermined (and my experiences were never mental: the experience would suddenly come, and AFTERWARDS I would realize it was Durgas day), and each time I used to tell Sri Aurobindo, Looktoday this (or that) thing has been cut off at the roots. Thats how it works with the adverse forcesyes, like something being uprooted from the world. Whatever has already spread out keeps going and follows its Karma, but the SOURCE is dried up. Thats also what happened (it was in 1904, I believe) when the Asura of Consciousness and Darkness made his surrender and was converted; he told me, I have millions and millions of emanations, and these will keep on living, but their source has now run dry.4 How much time will it take to exhaust it all? We cant say, but the source has dried up and that is something extremely important. In 1920, that terror was trying to spread all over the world and to become really catastrophic; and then in my inner vision I could see that a whole movement had dried up at its source. This means that little by little, little by little, little by little the Karma is being exhausted.
The same goes for these little physical movements. Things dont seem to be initiated any more, I mean theyre no longer being generated. But everything thats already present in the world has to be exhausted.
--
To change a Karma, to stop a Karma, to withdraw a certain number of vibrations from circulation, as it were, requires yet another movement, another movement altogether and that Power isnt yet at hand. Thats what will yield visible, tangible results. The other movement has very tangible and concrete results, but theyre invisible (to human observation, that is, which is much too limited and superficial). But it obviously does have results. That vision of terror clearly diverted the course of events that nations were being pushed into. But only someone with inner vision can see it.
(silence)
0 1963-10-19, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yesterday (this is an example I give you, but in all three domains its similar), yesterday it was a question of money. The question of money, for more than twelve years, has been a problemgrowing increasingly acute because the expenses are increasing fantastically while the income is decreasing! (laughing) So the two things together make the problem very acute. It results in things to be paid but no money, which means that the cashier (the poor cashier, it does him a lot of good from the yogic viewpoint: he has acquired a calm that he never had before! But still he is the one who has to stand the greatest tension), the cashier spends money and I cannot reimburse him. Very well. And then its not for me to run about, look for money, arrange things, discuss with people, of course, that wouldnt be proper (!), and those who do it for me have in them a rather sizable amount of tamas, which I cannot yet shake up. Anyway, yesterday they proposed something absurd to me (I dont want to go into the details, it doesnt matter), but their proposal was absurd and put me in a totally unacceptable situation. In other words, it might have brought a legal action against me, I might have been summoned before the court, anyway, all kinds of inadmissible thingsnot that I care personally, but theyre inadmissible. When they proposed their idea to me, I looked and saw it was silly; I was very quiet, when, suddenly, there came into me a Power (I told you it happens now and then) like this (massive gesture). When it comes, you feel as though you could destroydestroy everything with it you see, its too awesome for the present state of the earth. So I answered very quietly that it was unacceptable, I said why, and I returned the paper. Then something COMPELLED me to add: If I am here, it is not because of any necessity or obligation; it is not a necessity from the past, not a Karma, not any obligation, any attraction, any attachment, but only, solely and absolutely because of the Lords Grace. I am here because He keeps me here, and when He no longer keeps me here, when He considers I am not to stay any longer, I wont stay. And I added (I was speaking in English), As for me (as for me [gesture upward] that is, not this [gesture to the body]), as for Me, I consider that the world isnt ready: its way of responding inwardly and outwardly, even visibly in those around me, proves that the world isnt ready something must happen for it to be ready. Or else it will take QUITE SOME TIME for it to be prepared. Its all the same to me: whether it is ready or not makes no difference. And everything could collapse, Icouldntcareless. And with what force I said that! My arm rose, my fist banged on the tablemon petit, I thought I was going to break everything!
I was watching the scene, thinking, Why the devil am I made to do this?! These people are, apparently, quite devoted, quite surrendered and intimate enough not to be afraid. (I dont know what effect it had on them, but it must have had some effect.) As soon as it was over, I started working again, looking into affairs and so on. Afterwards, once I was alone, I wondered, Why did that come into me? And in the evening, I had the solution to the situation: its here (Mother takes an envelope on the table). I didnt even look at it (Mother opens the envelope and looks at the amount of a check).
0 1965-12-10, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Truly, even materially and even in the present state of the world, nothing is impossible. All that is needed is the Lords Sanction (sanction in the English sense of the word). And it was He who wanted it, it was He who willed it. I, who cant remain standing for more than ten minutes without my head whirling, stayed there half an hour MOTIONLESS: I didnt feel anything, I was quite beyond all Karmas! It took half an hour for everything to come to a stop, and it was clearly a momentary effect, meaning that it could have lasted one hour, two hours, I dont know, but with the inner vibrations of his being (lack of faith and so on) it could only be momentary.
But it happened. And it wasnt through an imposition: it was through a relaxation, with the Force descending like a mass, brrf! Tremendous, mon petit! Two or three times there was a loosening [in the doctor], then it resumed: it was as if driven out of the brain, and it came back into the brain; I drove it out and back it came. And the last time, there was a relaxation. Then I said, Thank You, Lord, I thank You.
0 1966-12-07, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
"There are these three powers [governing life on earth]: (1) The Cosmic Law, of Karma or what else; (2) the Divine Compassion acting on as many as it can reach through the nets of the Law and giving them their chance; (3) the Divine Grace which acts more incalculably but also more irresistibly than the others."
(Sri Aurobindo)
0 1968-03-23, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Satprem read Mother the end of the Playground Talk of June 3, 1953, about Karma: "In all religions, when people said that [the consequences of Karma were strict] and gave such absolute rules, as for me, I think it was to take the place of Nature and pull people's strings.... So then they panic, they get terrified...they should just go to the next floor up. What should be given them is the key to open the door. The staircase has a door, and it needs a key. The key is a sufficiently sincere aspiration or a sufficiently intense prayer.... In both there is a magic power, one must know how to use it.... Some detest prayer (if they went to the bottom of their hearts, they would see it's out of pride). And there are those who have no aspiration, who try but can't aspire that's because they don't have the flame of will, they don't have the flame of humility. Both are needed: to change one's Karma, one must have a very great humility and a very great will.")
When did I say that?
0 1970-06-17, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All these good people lament and wonder that unaccountably they and other good people are visited with such meaningless sufferings and misfortunes. But are they really visited with them by an outside Power or by a mechanical Law of Karma? Is it not possible that the soul itselfnot the outward mind, but the spirit withinhas accepted and chosen these things as part of its development in order to get through the necessary experience at a rapid rate,
Its wonderful, just whats going on!
0 1971-05-12, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Theyre creating a terrible Karma for themselves!
Yes, theyre heaping troubles on their own head.
0 1971-11-24, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(In another letter, Sri Aurobindo replies to a journalist who wanted to bring out, 27 years later, an article on The Ideal of the Karmayogin. This book is made up of a series of political articles written by Sri Aurobindo between 1909 and 1910 when he was leading the struggle against the British.)
Yes, I have seen it, but I dont think it can be published in its present form as it prolongs the political Aurobindo of that time into the Sri Aurobindo of the present time. You even assert that I have thoroughly revised the book and these articles are an index of my latest views on the burning problems of the day and there has been no change in my views in 27 years (which would surely be proof of a rather unprogressive mind). How do you get all that? My spiritual consciousness and knowledge at that time was as nothing to what it is nowhow would the change leave my view of politics and life unmodified altogether?
02.01 - The World War, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In fact, however, there is no insurmountable disparity between spirituality and "worldliness", between meditation and the most "terrible work"ghore Karmani: the Gita has definitively proved the truth of the fact millenniums ago. War has not been the monopoly of warriors alone: it will not be much of an exaggeration to say that Avatars, the incarnations of the Divine, have done little else besides that. And what of the Divine Mother herself? The main work of an Avatar is often to subdue the evil-doers, those that follow and pull others to follow the Wrong Path. And the Divine Mother, she who harbours in her bosom the supreme Truth and Consciousness and Bliss, is in one of her essential aspects, the slayer of the Demon, of the Asura.
Now, it is precisely with the Asura that we have to deal in the present war. This is not like other warsit is not a war of one country with another, of one group of Imperialists with another, nor is it merely the fierce endeavour of a particular race or nation for world-domination: it is something more than all that. This war has a deeper, a more solemn, almost a grim significance. Some thinkers in Europe, not the mere political leaders, but those who lead in thought and ideas and ideals, to whom something of the inner world is revealed, have realised the true nature of the present struggle and have expressed it in no uncertain terms. Here is what Jules Romains, one of the foremost thinkers and litterateurs of contemporary France, says:
--
Those that have stood against this Dark Force and its over-shadowing menaceeven though perhaps not wholly by choice or free-will, but mostly compelled by circumstancesyet, because of the stand they have taken, now bear the fate of the world on their shoulders, carry the whole future of humanity in their march. It is of course agreed that to have stood against the Asura does not mean that one has become sura, divine or godlike; but to be able to remain human, human instruments of the Divine, however frail, is sufficient for the purpose, that ensures safety from the great calamity. The rule of life of the Asura implies the end of progress, the arrest of all evolution; it means even a reversal for man. The Asura is a fixed type of being. He does not change, his is a hardened mould, a settled immutable form of a particular consciousness, a definite pattern of qualities and activitiesguna Karma. Asura-nature means a fundamental ego-centricism, violent and concentrated self-will. Change is possible for the human being; he can go downward, but he can move upward too, if he chooses. In the Puranas a distinction has been made between the domain of enjoyment and the domain of action. Man is the domain of action par excellence; by him and through him evolve new and fresh lines of activity and impulsion. The domain of enjoyment, on the other hand, is where we reap the fruits of our past Karma; it is the result of an accumulated drive of all that we have done, of all the movements we have initiated and carried out. It is a status of being where there is only enjoyment, not of becoming where there can be development and new creation. It is a condition of gestation, as it were; there is no new Karma, no initiative or change in the stuff of the consciousness. The Asuras are bhogamaya purusha, beings of enjoyment; their domain is a cumulus of enjoyings. They cannot strike out a fresh line of activity, put forth a new mode of energy that can work out a growth or transformation of nature. Their consciousness is an immutable entity. The Asuras do not mend, they can only end. Man can certainly acquire or imbibe Asuric force or Asura-like qualities and impulsions; externally he can often act very much like the Asura; and yet there is a difference. Along with the dross that soils and obscures human nature, there is something more, a clarity that opens to a higher light, an inner core of noble metal which does not submit to any inferior influence. There is this something More in man which always inspires and enables him to break away from the Asuric nature. Moreover, though there may be an outer resemblance between the Asuric qualities of man and the Asuric qualities of the Asura, there is an intrinsic different, a difference in tone and temper, in rhythm and vibration, proceeding as they do, from different sources. However cruel, hard, selfish, egocentric man may be, he knows, he admitsat times, if hot always, at heart, if not openly, subconsciously, if not wholly consciously that such is not the ideal way, that these qualities are not qualifications, they are unworthy elements and have to be discarded. But the Asura is ruthless, because he regards ruthlessness as the right thing, as the perfect thing, it is an integral part of his swabhava and swadharma, his law of being and his highest good. Violence is the ornament of his character.
The outrages committed by Spain in America, the oppression of the Christians by Imperial Rome, the brutal treatment of Christians by Christians themselves (the inquisition, that is to say) or the misdeeds of Imperialists generally were wrong and, in many cases, even inhuman and unpardonable. But when we compare with what Nazi Germany has done in Poland or wants to do throughout the world, we find that there is a difference between the two not only in degree, but in kind.One is an instance of the weakness of man, of his flesh being frail; the other illustrates the might of the Asura, his very spirit is unwilling. One is undivine; the other antidivine, positively hostile. They who cannot discern this difference are colour-blind: there are eyes to which all deeper shades of colour are black and all lighter shades white.
03.06 - Here or Otherwhere, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
But is not The Gita's solution somewhat different? Sri Krishna urges Arjuna to be in the very thick of a deadly fight, not a theoretical or abstract combat, but take a hand in the direst man-slaughter, to do the deed (even like Macbeth) but yogically. Yes, The Gita's position seems to be thatto accept all life integrally, to undertake all necessary work (kartavyam Karma) and turn them Godward. The Gita seeks to do it in its own way which consists of two major principles: (1) to do the work, whatever it may be, unattachedwithout any desire for the fruit, simply as a thing that has to be done, and (2) to do it as a sacrifice, as an offering to the supreme Master of works.
The question naturally turns upon the nature and the kind of workwhe ther there is a choice and selection in it. Gita speaks indeed of all works, ktsna- Karmakt, but does that really mean any and every work that an ignorant man, an ordinary man steeped in the three Gunas does or can do? It cannot be so. For, although all activity, all energy has its source and impetus in the higher consciousness of the Divine, it assumes on the lower ranges indirect, diverted or even perverted formulations and expressions, not because of the inherent falsity of these so-called inferior strata, the instruments, but because of their temporary impurity and obscurity. There are evidently activities and impulsions born exclusively of desire, of attachment and egoism. There are habits of the body, urges of the vital, notions of the mind, there are individual and social functions that have no place in the spiritual scheme, they have to be rigorously eschewed and eliminated. Has not the Gita said, this is desire, this is passion born of the quality of Rajas? . . . There is not much meaning in trying to do these works unattached or to turn them towards the Divine. When you are unattached, when you turn to the Divine, these 'Simply drop away of themselves. Yes, there are social duties and activities and relations that inevitably dissolve and disappear as you move into the life divine. Some are perhaps tolerated for a period, some are occasions for the consciousness to battle and surmount, grow strong and pass beyond. You have to learn to go beyond and new-create your environment.
03.10 - Hamlet: A Crisis of the Evolving Soul, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Shakespeare himself records, in two other of his major dramas, the mystery of two such stages preceding the one he deals with in Hamlet: one in Macbeth and the other in King Lear. Indeed these three mighty creations form a triology with the Karma of the human soul at different crises as its theme. King Lear represents human consciousness low down in the scale of evolution, almost at its starta nature primitive and barbarian. We seem to go back into a prehistoric world, a paleolithic age the domain of utter ignorance, of vulgar greed and hunger, where one sees the rank play of a raw and crude and aboriginal nature. Man is here simply the eater, a true brother of the rest of the animal kind, one in blood with the tiger and the wolf. He is the sheer biological or vital being the Rakshasainto whom the light of the Mind has not yet descended, at least not to the extent of effecting an appreciable change in his original and primitive texture. It is a world ruled by the mode of tamas. 1
In Macbeth we move up one step farther; human consciousness attains here a higher level. Something of the mental being enters into the purely vital creature: instead of the Eater, the man with the mere stomach, we have here the Ruler, the Tyrant, the human being with its will and its arms that execute the will: the dominating motive is no longer hunger and greed and cruelty for cruelty's sake, but power and position and lordship, and the driving force, not blind passion and dark furysheer unconsciousness but deliberate resolution, foreseeing calculation and steady purposiveness; the Rakshasa gives place to the Asura. The Asura is the incarnation of conscious egotism, the will to dominate, to be the sole master and monarch; he is the self-aggrandising vaulting ambition. He does not seek to possess things for their own sake, not so much to enjoy them as to hold them as symbols of his royalty, of his personal worth and majesty. In Macbeth we have the world of the Asuraa creation of the mode of rajas.
05.02 - Gods Labour, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A great mystery of existence, its central rub is the presence of Evil. All spiritual, generally all human endeavour has to face and answer this Sphinx. As he answers, so will be his fate. He cannot rise up even if he wishes, earth cannot progress even when there is the occasion, because of this besetting obstacle. It has many names and many forms. It is Sin or Satan in Christianity; Buddhism calls it Mara. In India it is generally known as Maya. Grief and sorrow, weakness and want, disease and death are its external and ubiquitous forms. It is a force of gravitation, as graphically named by a modern Christian mystic, that pulls man down, fixes him upon earth with its iron law of mortality, never allowing him to mount high and soar in the spiritual heavens. It has also been called the Wheel of Karma or the cycle of Ignorance. And the aim of all spiritual seekers has been to rise out of itsome-how, by force of tapasy, energy of concentrated will or divine Gracego through or by-pass and escape into the Beyond. This is the path of ascent I referred to at the outset. In this view it is taken for granted that this creation is transient and empty of happinessanityam asukham (Gita)it is anatta, empty of self or consciousness (Buddha) and it will be always so. The only way to deal with it, the way of the wise, is to discard it and pass over.
Sri Aurobindo's view is different. He says Evil can be and has to be conquered here itself, here upon this earth and in this body-the ancients also said, ihaiva tairjitah, they have conquered even here, prkariravimokat, before leaving the body. You have to face Evil full-square and conquer it, conquer it not in the sense that you simply rise above it so that it no longer touches you, but that you remain where you are in the very field of Evil and drive it out from there completely, erase and annihilate it where it was reigning supreme. Hence God has to come down from his heaven and dwell here upon earth and among men and in the conditions of mortality, show thus by his living and labour that this earthly earth can be transformed into a heavenly earth and this human body into a "body divine".
05.12 - The Soul and its Journey, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The passage between death and the arrival at final rest in the psychic world is a most difficult and dangerous ordeal for the human being. He has left the protection of the body and has not yet found the refuge in the psychic: he is obsessed and pulled back by his past the desires, the hungers, the attractions and repulsions, the plans unfulfilled, problematic schemesall haunt him still, things done, things not done crowd around him and fetter his forward march. Not only his own Karma, but the Karma of others too pursues him: all persons with whom he has had relation, who think of him now, pity him, mourn for him, lament his absence, raise so many hurdles and obstacles in his path, oblige him to turn and look back. Again, there are forces and personalities in the intermediate worlds with whom the poor disembodied creature has now to come in contact, and not unoften he feels like one unskinned and all his nerves on edge open helplessly to rough and painful impacts.
Indeed, although it may sound somewhat strange and wonderful, nevertheless it is literally true that the body is the fortress par excellence for the individual being: it is not merely an ugly dirty clothing that has to be cast off so that one may go straight to the enjoyment of the beatitude of Paradise; on the contrary, it is, as it were, an armour, a steel-frame that protects the subtle body against the attacks or harsh and cruel touches of other worlds and their beings. Once outside the body, there is every danger for the individual to go astray and be hurt, unless he is guided and protected by a guardian angel, as Dante has had Virgil as his Maestro. We may note here that the passage of Dante from Hell through Purgatory to Heaven across their various levels is almost an exact image of what happens to a soul after death. The highest Heaven where Dante meets Beatrice may be considered as the psychic world and Beatrice herself the Divine Grace that bathes, illumines and comforts the psychic being.
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An easy and quick passage to the place of rest, that is what the being needs and asks for after death. This is determined by one's Karma in life and the last wish and prayer at the moment of death for the force of consciousness at this critical moment acts not only upon the character of the passage but also upon the character even of the next birth. Apart from one's own merit, one can be helped by others also who are still upon earth and who claim to be his friends and relatives and wellwishers not in the way they think they do at present, that is to say, by grieving and lamenting or even by performing rites and ceremonies, these often retard rather than accelerate the passage, but by an inner detachment and calm prayer and goodwill: oftener perhaps to forget the departed is the best way to help him. A truly conscious help can be given only by one who has the requisite occult power and spiritual realisation the Guru, for example.
III
05.31 - Divine Intervention, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
What we have named Intervention is also known popularly as Providence. It is the element of the incalculable and the unforeseen in Nature. Nature, in one respect, seems to be a closed circle: it is a rigid mechanism and its movements are very definite and absolutely fixed admitting of no change or variation whatsoever. That was the idea which governed our earlier scientists when they spoke or the Law of Nature. Law of Nature was to them, in the great Sophoclean phrase, something indelible and inviolable, immemorially the same which no man or god dare alter or disobey. Laplace, one of the pioneers of the scientific outlook, said, in fact, that he could very well imagine a mathematician recording and calculating all the forces that act and react in the world and from the present position of things foretell the time and place of each and every event in the cosmic field. The idea of Karma, or Kismet, is a parallel conception in the domain of human nature and character. The chain reaction of cause and effect" is rigorous and absolute, follows a single line of movement and possesses a rigidly predetermined disposition. The principle is equally applicable either to a phenomenon of the physical world or to that of man's inner consciousness.
But we have arrived today at a stage when this old-world view has perforce to be discarded. We can no longer take Laplace seriously: for scientists themselves have established as a fact in physical Nature the indeterminacy of her movements, the impossibility of foretelling a laLaplace, not because of any deficiency in the human instrument but because of the very nature of things. Science is of course at a loss to explain the why or even the how of this indeterminacy. We say, however, that it is nothing but the intrusion of another, a different kind of force in the field of the forces actually at play. That force comes from a higher, a subtler level. Things and forces move in their ordinary round, according to the normal laws, bound ,within their present frame: but always there drops in from elsewhere an unknown element, a force or energy or impulse of another quality, which causes a shift of emphasis in the actual, brings about a change unaccountable and unforeseen. This is what is called miracle: the imposition of a higher law, a generic law governing subtler forms and forces upon an inferior and grosser sphere. And the higher or subtler the plane from which the new force descends the plane can be anything between the one nearest to the material, the subtle physical or ethereal, and the one nearest to the other extreme, the spiritual the greater will be the change in nature, quality and extent in the lower order. Such miracles, interventions, providential happenings are not rare. They are always occurring, only they do not attract attention. For it is these phenomena that are the real causes of all progresscosmic as well as individual. Evolution is based upon this truth of Nature.
05.34 - Light, more Light, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A blinded misdirected mind, if it wakes up at any time and looks about for the truth sincerelywe insist upon the conditioncan recognise it, learn to trace it by certain indications it always leaves behind in the consciousness. A touch of the truth, a step towards it will be always accompanied by a sense of relief, of peace, of a serene happiness and unconditional freedom. These things are felt not as something gross and superficial affecting your outer life and situation, but pertaining to the depth of your being, concerning your inmost fibreit is nothing else but just the sense of light, as if you are at last out of the dark. A right movement brings you that feeling; and whenever you have that feeling you know that there has been the right movement. On the contrary, with a wrong movement you are ill at ease. You may say that a hardened criminal is never ill at ease; perhaps, but only after a great deal of hardening. The criminal was not always a criminal I am speaking of a human being, not a born hostilehe must have started some-where the downward incline. The distinction of the right and the wrong must have been presented to his consciousness and the choice was freely his. Afterwards one gets bound to one's Karma and its chain.
Anyway, we are concerned particularly with one who asks for the truth and reality, the aspirant who is ready for the discipline. To the aspiring soul, to one who sincerely wishes to see the truth, it has been said, the truth unveils its body. The unveiling is gradual: the perception of the reality grows, the sensibility becomes refined, the vision clearer and clearer. The first step, as in all things, is the most decisive. For once all on a sudden, probably when you are off your guard, you know, in a flash, as it were, here is the right thing to do or the right thing you have done or even the wrong you have not done. You have thus secured the clue: and it is up to you now to pursue the clue.
06.10 - Fatigue and Work, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This does not mean, however, that there is no work natural to you, for which you have a special aptitude, in and through which your soul, the Divine, can express itself fully and wholly in a special manner. But what is that work? The kartavyam Karma the work that demands to be donederiving from your swadharmayour self-nature? Evidently, it is not that of your superficial nature, which the mind chooses, the vital prefers and the body finds convenient. To come by your true or soul work, you have to pass through a considerable discipline, a rigorous training.
You cannot throw off this work and that at random declaring they are not the work fit for you or jump at anything that your fancy favours. Indeed, you cannot give up anything, cast out anything, simply because it is unpleasant or not sufficiently pleasant. The more violently you try to shake off a thing, the more it will try to stick to you. Instead of that, you must know how to let a thing drop of itself, quietly, automatically and definitively. That is the only way of getting rid of an unwanted or an unnecessary thing. Before all, be sincere to yourself: that is to say, try to follow the highest light and aspiration in you each moment, and be faithful to that and that alone. Never allow yourself to be shaken or moved by the likes and dislikes of your mind or heart or body. Do even what goes against the grain of your body or heart or mind, if it is presented to you as the thing to be done; do it as calmly, dispassionately and as perfectly as it is possible for you to do and leave the rest to your higher destiny. If you belong all to your soul, if you are obedient to the Divine alone, then as this consciousness and poise grow clearer and steadier in you, you will find things that are not consonant with it dropping off from you quietly and without any effort or reaction from you, like autumn leaves from branches that supply the sap no more. Your work is changed, your circumstances are changed, your relation with things and per-sons are changed automatically and inevitably in accordance with the need and demand of your soul-consciousness.
07.10 - Diseases and Accidents, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
If you look at the thing in an ordinary way, you do not notice it. But the fact is there. You must be very careful about your associations. An unfortunate association may prove disastrous to you. The Karma of others may fall upon you, unless you have the inner knowledge, the vision and the necessary power. If you see a person with something like a dark whirl around avoid him at all cost. The moral of it all is that it is very useful to look into things a little more deeply than to observe the surface only.
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08.28 - Prayer and Aspiration, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In all religions people who declared that the consequences of Karma are rigorous and who gave these absolute rules, must have done so, I believe, to put themselves in place of Nature, to pull the strings that move ordinary men. For these rules are mental constructions, more or less sincere perhaps, cutting things into bits and telling you: "Do this, do that; it is not this, it is that." People are confused, frightened, they do not know what to do at the end.
What they must do is to get to an upper floor. And they must be given the key to open the door. The key is (1) a sufficiently sincere aspiration, or (2) a sufficiently intense prayer. I said or, but it may not be so; there are people who like the one and there are people who prefer the other. But in both magic power and one must know to use them.
There are some who detest prayers. If they entered d their heart, they would see that it is pride, even worse than that vanity. There are people who have no aspiration, they try but they are not able to aspire. They are not able to aspire, because they have not the flame of the will, nor have they the flame of humility. Both are necessary. To change one's Karma one needs a great humility and a great will-power.
The Divine Grace counteracts the Karma wholly; the Grace melts Karma, as the sun melts butter. If you have an aspiration sincere enough, or a prayer intense enough you can bring down into you something that will change everything.
II
10.01 - A Dream, #Writings In Bengali and Sanskrit, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A poor man was sitting in a dark hut thinking of his miseries and of the injustice and wrongs that could be found in this world of Gods making. Out of abhimna he began to mutter to himself, As men do not want to cast a slur on Gods name, they put the blame on Karma. If my misfortunes are really due to the sins committed in my previous birth and if I was so great a sinner, then currents of evil thoughts should still be passing through my mind. Can the mind of such a wicked person get cleansed so soon? And what about that Tinkari Sheel who has such colossal wealth and commands so many people! If there is anything like the fruits of Karma, then surely he must have been a famous saint and sadhu in his previous life; but I see no trace of that at all in his present birth. I dont think a bigger rogue existsone so cruel and crooked. All these tales about Karma are just clever inventions of God to console mans mind. Shyamsundar1 is very tricky; luckily he does not reveal himself to me, otherwise I would teach him such a lesson that he would stop playing these tricks.
As soon as he finished muttering, the man saw that his dark room was flooded with a dazzling light. After a while the luminous waves faded and he found in front of him a charming boy of a dusky complexion standing with a lamp in his hand, and smiling sweetly without saying a word. Noticing the musical anklets round his feet and the peacock plume, the man understood that Shyamsundar had revealed himself. At first he was at a loss what to do; for a moment he thought of bowing at his feet, but looking at the boys smiling face no longer felt like making his obeisance. At last he burst out with the words, Hullo, Keshta,2 what makes you come here? The boy replied with a smile, Well, didnt you call me? Just now you had the desire to whip me! That is why I am surrendering myself to you. Come along, whip me. The man was now even more confounded than before, but not with any repentance for the desire to whip the Divine: the idea of punishing instead of patting such a sweet youngster did not appeal to him. The boy spoke again, You see, Harimohon, those who, instead of fearing me, treat me as a friend, scold me out of affection and want to play with me, I love very much. I have created this world for my play only; I am always on the lookout for a suitable playmate. But, brother, I find no one. All are angry with me, make demands on me, want boons from me; they want honour, liberation, devotionnobody wants me. I give whatever they ask for. What am I to do? I have to please them; otherwise they will tear me to pieces. You too, I find, want something from me. You are vexed and want to whip some one. In order to satisfy that desire you have called me. Here I am, ready to be whipped. ye yath m prapadyante3, I accept whatever people offer me. But before you beat me, if you wish to know my ways, I shall explain them to you. Are you willing? Harimohon replied, Are you capable of that? I see that you can talk a good deal, but how am I to believe that a mere child like you can teach me something? The boy smiled again and said, Come, see whether I can or not.
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In the meantime someone took Harimohon on a swift visit to the other world. He saw the hells and heavens of the Hindus, those of the Christians, the Muslims and the Greeks, and also many other hells and heavens. Then he found himself sitting once more in his own hut, on the same old torn and dirty mattress with Shyamsundar in front of him. The boy remarked, It is quite late in the night; now if I dont return home I shall get a scolding, everybody will start beating me. Let me therefore be brief. The hells and the heavens you have visited are nothing but a dream-world, a creation of your mind. After death man goes to hell or heaven and somewhere works out the tendencies that existed in him during his last birth. In your previous birth you were only virtuous, love found no way into your heart; you loved neither God nor man. After leaving your body you had to work out your old trend of nature, and so lived in imagination among middle-class people in a world of dreams; and as you went on leading that life you ceased to like it any more. You became restless and came away from there only to live in a hell made of dust; finally you enjoyed the fruits of your virtues and, having exhausted them, took birth again. In that life, except for your formal alms-giving and your soulless superficial dealings, you never cared to relieve anyones wantstherefore you have so many wants in this life. And the reason why you are still going on with this soulless virtue is that you cannot exhaust the Karma of virtues and vices in the world of dream, it has to be worked out in this world. On the other hand, Tinkari was charity itself in his past life and so, blessed by thousands of people, he has in this life become a millionaire and knows no poverty; but as he was not completely purified in his nature, his unsatisfied desires have to feed on vice. Do you follow now the system of Karma? There is no reward or punishment, but evil creates evil, and good creates good. This is Natures law. Vice is evil, it produces misery; virtue is good, it leads to happiness. This procedure is meant for purification of nature, for the removal of evil. You see, Harimohon, this earth is only a minute part of my world of infinite variety, but even then you take birth here in order to get rid of evil by the help of Karma. When you are liberated from the hold of virtue and vice and enter the realm of Love, then only you are freed of this activity. In your next birth you too will get free. I shall send you my dear sister, Power, along with Knowledge, her companion; but on one condition,you should be my playmate, and must not ask for liberation. Are you ready to accept it? Harimohon replied, Well, Keshta, you have hypnotised me! I intensely feel like taking you on my lap and caressing you, as if I had no other desire in this life!
The boy laughed and asked, Did you follow what I said, Harimohon? Yes, I did, he replied, then thought for a while and said, O Keshta, again you are deceiving me. You never gave the reason why you created evil! So saying, he caught hold of the boys hand. But the boy, setting himself free, rebuked Harimohon, Be off! Do you want to get out of me all my secrets in an hours time? Suddenly the boy blew out the lamp and said with a chuckle, Well, Harimohon, you have forgotten all about lashing me! Out of that fear I did not even sit on your lap, lest, angry with your outward miseries, you should teach me a lesson! I do not trust you any more. Harimohon stretched his arms forward, but the boy moved farther and said, No Harimohon, I reserve that bliss for your next birth. Good-bye. So saying, the boy disappeared into the dark night. Listening to the chime of Sri Krishnas musical anklets, Harimohon woke up gently. Then he began thinking, What sort of dream is this! I saw hell, I saw heaven, I called the Divine rude names, taking him to be a mere stripling, I even scolded him. How awful! But now I am feeling very peaceful. Then Harimohon began recollecting the charming image of the dusky-complexioned boy, and went on murmuring from time to time, How beautiful! How beautiful!
1.00a - Introduction, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
About your problems; what I have to do is to try to teach you to think clearly. You will be immensely stimulated by having all the useless trimmings stripped from your thinking apparatus. For instance, I don't think you know the first principles of logic. You apparently take up a more or less Christian attitude, but at the same time you like very much the idea of Karma. You cannot have both.
The question about money does not arise. This old and very good rule (which I have always kept) was really pertinent to the time when there were actual secrets. But I have published openly all the secrets. All I can do is to train you in a perfectly exoteric way. My suggestion about the weekly letter was intended to exclude this question, as you would be getting full commercial value for anything paid.
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Those chapters of The Book of Lies quoted in my last letter*[H1] do throw some light onto this Abyss of self-contradiction; and there is meaning much deeper than the contrast between the Will with a capital W, and desire, want, or velleity. The main point seems to be that in aspiring to Power one is limited by the True Will. If you use force, violating your own nature either from lack of understanding or from petulant whim, one is merely wasting energy; things go back to normal as soon as the stress is removed. This is one small case of the big Equation "Free Will = Necessity" (Fate, Destiny, or Karma: it's all much the same idea). One is most rigidly bound by the causal chain that has dragged one to where one is; but it is one's own self that has forged the links.
Please refrain from the obvious retort: "Then, in the long run, you can't possibly go wrong: so it doesn't matter what you do." Perfectly true, of course! (There is no single grain of dust that shall not attain to Buddhahood:" with some such words did the debauched old reprobate seek to console himself when Time began to take its revenge.) But the answer is simple enough: you happen to be the kind of being that thinks it does matter what course you steer; or, still more haughtily, you enjoy the pleasure of sailing.
1.00b - DIVISION B - THE PERSONALITY RAY AND FIRE BY FRICTION, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
III. The personality ray and Karma.
I. THE WORK OF THE THREE RAYS
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III. THE PERSONALITY RAY AND Karma
It might be wise here to recapitulate a little so that in the refreshing of the memory may come the basis of further knowledge. We dealt first with the three fires of the system, macrocosmic and microcosmic, and having laid down certain hypotheses we passed to the consideration of the first of the fires, that which is inherent in matter. Having studied it somewhat in its threefold manifestation in the various parts of the system, including man, we took up the matter of the personality Ray and its relationship to this third fire. We must recall here that all that has been dealt with has been in relation to matter, and for the whole of this first section this thought must be borne carefully in mind.
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At this point in the treatise we are confining our attention to the Ray of Active Matter, or to that latent heat in substance which underlies its activity and is the cause of its motion. If we think with sincerity and with clarity we will see how closely therefore the Lipika Lords or the Lords of Karma are associated with this work. Three of Them are closely connected with Karma as it concerns one or other of the three great Rays, or the three FIRES, while the fourth Lipika Lord synthesizes the work of his three Brothers and attends to the uniform blending and merging of the three fires. On our planet, the Earth, They find Their points of contact through the three "Buddhas of Activity," [xxx]30 (the correspondence should be noted here) and the fourth Kumara, the Lord of the World. Therefore, we arrive at the realisation that the personality Ray, in its relation to the fire of matter, is directly influenced and adjusted in its working by one of the Buddhas of Activity.
[75]
The Karma [xxxi]31, [xxxii]32, [xxxiii]33 of matter itself is an abstruse subject and has as yet scarcely been hinted at. It is nevertheless indissolubly mixed up with the Karma of the individual. It involves a control of the evolution of the monadic essence, the elemental essence and of the atomic matter of the plane; it is concerned with the development of the four spirillae, with their activity, with their attachment to forms when atomic, and with the development of the inner latent heat and its gradual fiery increase until we have within the atom a repetition of what is seen within the causal body: the destruction of the periphery of the atom by the means of burning. It deals with the subject of the building of matter into form by the interaction of the two rays, the Divine and the Primordial, producing thereby that fire by friction which tends to life and fusing.
The Karma of form is likewise a vast subject, too [76] involved for average comprehension but a factor of real importance which should not be overlooked in connection with the evolution of a world, a synthesis of worlds, or of a system when viewed from higher levels. Everything is, in its totality, the result of action taken by cosmic Essences and Entities in earlier solar systems, which is working out through the individual atoms, and through those congeries of atoms which we call forms. The effect of the personality Ray upon the internal fires is therefore, in effect, the result of the influence of the planetary Logos of whatever ray is implicated, as He works out that portion of Karma which falls to His share in any one cycle, greater or lesser. He thus brings about and eventually transmutes, the effects of causes which He set in motion earlier in relation to His six Brothers, the other planetary Logoi. We get an illustrative parallel in the effect which one individual will have upon another in worldly contact, in moulding and influencing, in stimulating or retarding. We have to remember that all fundamental influence and effects are felt on the astral plane and work thence through the etheric to the dense physical thereby bringing matter under its sphere of influence, yet not itself originating on the physical plane.
[77]
1.00c - DIVISION C - THE ETHERIC BODY AND PRANA, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
Here we touch upon a hidden mystery, of which the solution lies revealed for those who seek, in the fact that human beings and certain groups of devas are no longer found upon the Moon. Man has not ceased to exist upon the Moon because it is dead and cannot therefore support his life, but the Moon is dead because man and these deva groups have been removed from off its surface and from its sphere of influence. [xli]41 Man and the devas act on every planet as intermediaries, or as transmitting agencies. Where they are not found, then certain great activities become impossible, and disintegration sets in. The reason for this removal lies in the cosmic Law of Cause and Effect, or cosmic Karma, and in the composite, yet individual, history of that one of the Heavenly Men Whose body, the Moon or any other dead planet at any time happened to be.
3. The prana of forms.
--
We might here note a fact of interest, though of a mystery insoluble as yet to most of us, and that is, that these destructions by fire are part of the tests by fire of an initiation of that one of the Heavenly Men Whose Karma is bound up with our earth.
Each destruction of a portion of the web results in a greater facility of exit, and is in reality (when seen from the higher planes) a step forward and an expansion. A repetition of this takes place likewise in the system at the stated cycles.
--
c. Microcosmic static disorders, or a consideration of the etheric body in connection with its work of providing a ring-pass-not from the purely physical to the astral. As has been said, both here and in the books of H. P. B., the ring-pass-not [l]48a is that confining barrier which acts as a separator or a division between a system and that which is external to that system. This, as may well be seen, has its interesting correlations when the subject is viewed (as we must consistently endeavour to view it) from the point of view of a human being, a planet and a system, remembering always that in dealing with the [111] etheric body we are dealing with physical matter. This must ever be borne carefully in mind. Therefore, one paramount factor will be found in all groups and formations, and this is the fact that the ring-pass-not acts only as a hindrance to that which is of small attainment in evolution, but forms no barrier to the more progressed. The whole question depends upon two things, which are the Karma of the man, the planetary Logos, and the solar Logos, and the dominance of the spiritual indwelling entity over its vehicle.
IV. MACROCOSMIC AND MICROCOSMIC ETHERS
--
The solar Logos likewise does the same during stated cycles, which are not the cycles succeeding those which we term solar pralaya, but lesser cycles succeeding the 'days of Brahma' or periods of lesser activity, periodically viewed. All these are governed by Karma, and just as the true Man himself applies the law of Karma to his vehicles, and in his tiny system is the correspondence to that fourth group of karmic entities whom we call the Lipika Lords; He applies the law to his threefold lower nature. The fourth group of extra-cosmic Entities Who have Their place subsidiary to the three cosmic Logoi Who are the threefold sumtotal of the logoic nature, can pass the bounds of the solar ring-pass-not in Their stated cycles. This is a profound mystery and its complexity is increased by the recollection that the fourth Creative Hierarchy of human Monads, and the Lipika Lords in Their three groups (the first [112] group, the second, and the four Maharajahs, making the totality of the threefold karmic rulers who stand between the solar Logos and the seven planetary Logoi), are more closely allied than the other Hierarchies, and their destinies are intimately interwoven.
A further link in this chain which is offered for consideration lies in the fact that the four rays of mind (which concern the Karma of the four planetary Logoi) in their totality hold in their keeping the present evolutionary process for Man, viewing him as the Thinker. These four, with the karmic four, work in the closest co-operation. Therefore, we have the following groups interacting:
First. The four Maharajahs, the lesser Lipika Lords, [li]49 who apply past Karma and work it out in the present.
Second. The four Lipikas of the second group, referred to by H. P. B. as occupied in applying future Karma, and wielding the future destiny of the races. The work of the first group of four cosmic Lipika Lords is occult and is only revealed somewhat at the fourth Initiation (and even then but slightly) so it will not be touched upon here.
Third. The fourth Creative Hierarchy of human Monads, held by a fourfold karmic law under the guidance of the Lipikas.
--
d. By the transmutation of the violet into the blue. This we cannot enlarge on. We simply make the statement, and leave its working out to those students whose Karma permits and whose intuition suffices.
e. By the withdrawal of the life, the form should gradually dissipate. The reflex action here is interesting to note, for the greater Builders and Devas who are the [133] active agents during manifestation, and who hold the form in coherent shape, transmuting, applying and circulating the pranic emanations, likewise lose their attraction to the matter of the form, and turn their attention elsewhere. On the path of out-breathing (whether human, planetary or logoic) these building devas (on the same Ray as the unit desiring manifestation, or on a complementary Ray) are attracted by his will and desire, and perform their office of construction. On the path of in-breathing (whether human, planetary or logoic) they are no longer attracted, and the form begins to dissipate. They withdraw their interest and the forces (likewise entities) who are the agents of destruction, carry on their necessary work of breaking up the form; they scatter itas it is occultly expressedto "The four winds of Heaven," or to the regions of the four breaths,a fourfold separation and distribution. A hint is here given for careful consideration.
1.00e - DIVISION E - MOTION ON THE PHYSICAL AND ASTRAL PLANES, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
Students should here bear carefully in mind that we are not referring here to points in space; we are simply making this distinction and employing words in order to make an abstruse idea more comprehensible. From the point of view of the totality of the rays and planes there is no north, south, east nor west. But at this point comes a correspondence and a point of real interest, though also of complexity. By means of this very interaction, the work of the four Maharajahs or Lords of Karma, is made possible; the quaternary and all sumtotals of four can be seen as one of the basic combinations of matter, produced by the dual revolutions of planes and rays.
The seven planes, likewise atoms, rotate on their own axis, and conform to that which is required of all atomic lives.
--
In connection with this there is a fundamental point that must never be forgotten: these seven Heavenly Men might be considered as being in physical incarnation through the medium of a physical planet, and herein lies the mystery of planetary evolution. Herein lies the mystery of our planet, the most mysterious of all the planets. Just as the Karma of individuals differs, so differs the Karma of the various Logoi, and the Karma of our planetary Logos has been a heavy one, and veiled in the mystery of personality at this time.
Again, according as the centres are active or inactive, so the manifestation differs likewise, and the study which opens up is of vast and abstruse interest in connection with the solar system.
10.13 - Go Through, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Indeed not only love but all human impulses and urges are to be dealt with in the same way. The Gita furnishes a beautiful and crucial example. The Gita teaches man to go through the field of activity and not to reject or avoid it. The whole of the Gita is an ideal lesson in the technique of going through. The Gita says, do not renounce work but dedicate itnot Karmatyga but Karmanysa. What does this dedication mean? The first step in the process of dedication is desirelessnessto do work without desire. It is usually thought that desire is the source and origin of work. If you have no desire, you have no need or impulse to work. But this is a very superficial view of things. The impulse for work springs from elsewhere, from a deeper and impersonal source. The true spirit in which you should work is, as the Gita enjoins, to do a work because it is a thing to be done, not because you desire it. So naturally you do not hanker for the fruit of your action. First then, no attachment to the action itself, then no attachment to the fruit that it brings. This can be done only when you are unselfish. Not only unselfishness but you have to go a step farther, to selflessness. So then there are these three stages in the process of dedication or purification. First to work without desire, without attachment to the result of the work. Then you will be able to see that you are an instrument only, the work is being done through you. At the beginning you are a desireless, unselfish doer of works, next you see yourself as a detached witness of your action and finally you see that the action happening in you is Nature working in you, Nature the instrument of the Divine. Finally yourself is no longer there, it is the Divine alone that is and acts.
What has been said of works is true of all activities in man, his thoughts, feelings, impulses, physical acts. It is the process of going through and meeting the reality beyond, which hides, encloses itself with all its envelopes or coverings which you pass through.
1.01f - Introduction, #The Lotus Sutra, #Anonymous, #Various
Resulting from the Karma of each sentient being.
Through this light of the Buddha
1.01 - Foreward, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
and the division made by the Pandits distinguishing the section of works, Karmakanda, and the section of Knowledge,
Jnanakanda, identifying the former with the hymns and the latter
1.01 - Historical Survey, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
(Gilgolim), the doctrine of Divine Retri bution ( Sod ha Gimol), or, to use a more preferable Oriental term, Karma, and a peculiar type of Christology.
Next in succession was the School of Segovia and its disciples, among whom was one Todras Abulafia, a physi- cian and financier occupying an important and most dis- tinguished position in the Court of Sancho IV, King of
1.01 - Isha Upanishad, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
3 Shankara reads the line, "Thus in thee - it is not otherwise than thus - action cleaves not, a man." He interprets Karman.i in the first line in the sense of Vedic sacrifices which are permitted to the ignorant as a means of escaping from evil actions and their results and attaining to heaven, but the second Karma in exactly the opposite sense, "evil action". The verse, he tells us, represents a concession to the ignorant; the enlightened soul abandons works and the world and goes to the forest. The whole expression and construction in this rendering become forced and unnatural. The rendering I give seems to me the simple and straightforward sense of the Upanishad.
4 We have two readings, asurya, sunless, and asurya, Titanic or undivine. The third verse is, in the thought structure of the Upanishad, the starting-point for the final movement in the last four verses. Its suggestions are there taken up and worked out. The prayer to the Sun refers back in thought to the sunless worlds and their blind gloom, which are recalled in the ninth and twelfth verses. The sun and his rays are intimately connected in other Upanishads also with the worlds of Light and their natural opposite is the dark and sunless, not the Titanic worlds.
1.01 - Prayer, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
Bhakti-Yoga is a real, genuine search after the Lord, a search beginning, continuing, and ending in love. One single moment of the madness of extreme love to God brings us eternal freedom. "Bhakti", says Nrada in his explanation of the Bhakti-aphorisms, "is intense love to God"; "When a man gets it, he loves all, hates none; he becomes satisfied for ever"; "This love cannot be reduced to any earthly benefit", because so long as worldly desires last, that kind of love does not come; "Bhakti is greater than Karma, greater than Yoga, because these are intended for an object in view, while Bhakti is its own fruition, its own means and its own end."
Bhakti has been the one constant theme of our sages. Apart from the special writers on Bhakti, such as Shndilya or Narada, the great commentators on the Vysa-Sutras, evidently advocates of knowledge (Jnna), have also something very suggestive to say about love. Even when the commentator is anxious to explain many, if not all, of the texts so as to make them import a sort of dry knowledge, the Sutras, in the chapter on worship especially, do not lend themselves to be easily manipulated in that fashion.
--
"From Brahm to a clump of grass, all things that live in the world are slaves of birth and death caused by Karma; therefore they cannot be helpful as objects of meditation, because they are all in ignorance and subject to change." In commenting on the word Anurakti used by Shandilya, the commentator Svapneshvara says that it means Anu, after, and Rakti, attachment; i.e. the attachment which comes after the knowledge of the nature and glory of God; else a blind attachment to any one, e.g. to wife or children, would be Bhakti. We plainly see, therefore, that Bhakti is a series or succession of mental efforts at religious realisation beginning with ordinary worship and ending in a supreme intensity of love for Ishvara.
next chapter: 1.02 - The Philosophy of Ishvara
1.01 - Tara the Divine, #Tara - The Feminine Divine, #unset, #Zen
In 1958, I had to go to Tsurphu, the Karmapa's seat in
the Lhasa area. It was there that I studied when I was
13 to 16 years old. The Karmapa7 asked me to come
back to accomplish the traditional three-year retreat on
--
many presents for the Karmapa, offerings for rituals,
and all that was necessary for my three-year stay. In
--
To obey the Karmapa, it was indispensable that we
go to Tsurphu however dangerous it might be. Who
1.01 - The Cycle of Society, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Karma.
The Indian names of the golden age are Satya, the Age of the Truth, and Krita, the Age when the law of the Truth is accomplished.
1.01 - The Ideal of the Karmayogin, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
object:1.01 - The Ideal of the Karmayogin
author class:Sri Aurobindo
--
The Ideal of the Karmayogin
NATION is building in India today before the eyes of the world so swiftly, so palpably that all can watch the process and those who have sympathy and intuition distinguish the forces at work, the materials in use, the lines of the divine architecture. This nation is not a new race raw from the workshop of Nature or created by modern circumstances.
--
This is the faith in which the Karmayogin puts its hand to the work and will persist in it, refusing to be discouraged by difficulties however immense and apparently insuperable. We believe that God is with us and in that faith we shall conquer. We believe that humanity needs us and it is the love and service of humanity, of our country, of the race, of our
Essays from the Karmayogin
religion that will purify our heart and inspire our action in the struggle.
--
To understand the heart of this dharma, to experience it as a truth, to feel the high emotions to which it rises and to express and execute it in life is what we understand by Karmayoga. We believe that it is to make the yoga the ideal of human life that
India rises today; by the yoga she will get the strength to realise her freedom, unity and greatness, by the yoga she will keep the strength to preserve it. It is a spiritual revolution we foresee and the material is only its shadow and reflex.
--
The Ideal of the Karmayogin
European education, European machinery, European organisation and equipment we should reproduce in ourselves European prosperity, energy and progress. We of the twentieth century reject the aims, ideals and methods of the Anglicised nineteenth precisely because we accept its experience. We refuse to make an idol of the present; we look before and after, backward to the mighty history of our race, forward to the grandiose destiny for which that history has prepared it.
--
Essays from the Karmayogin
free in heart can we become socially and politically great and free.
--
Bible or the Koran; but its real, most authoritative scripture is in the heart in which the Eternal has His dwelling. It is in our inner spiritual experiences that we shall find the proof and source of the world's Scriptures, the law of knowledge, love and conduct, the basis and inspiration of Karmayoga.
Our aim will therefore be to help in building up India for the sake of humanity - this is the spirit of the Nationalism which we profess and follow. We say to humanity, "The time has come when you must take the great step and rise out of a material existence into the higher, deeper and wider life towards which humanity moves. The problems which have troubled mankind
The Ideal of the Karmayogin
can only be solved by conquering the kingdom within, not by harnessing the forces of Nature to the service of comfort and luxury, but by mastering the forces of the intellect and the spirit, by vindicating the freedom of man within as well as without and by conquering from within external Nature. For that work the resurgence of Asia is necessary, therefore Asia rises. For that work the freedom and greatness of India is essential, therefore she claims her destined freedom and greatness, and it is to the interest of all humanity, not excluding England, that she should wholly establish her claim."
--
We must know our past and recover it for the purposes of our future. Our business is to realise ourselves first and to mould everything to the law of India's eternal life and nature. It will therefore be the object of the Karmayogin to read the heart of our religion, our society, our philosophy, politics, literature, art, jurisprudence, science, thought, everything that was and is ours, so that we may be able to say to ourselves and our nation, 'This is our dharma.' We shall review European civilisation entirely from the standpoint of Indian thought and knowledge and seek to throw off from us the dominating stamp of the Occident; what we have to take from the West we shall take as Indians.
And the dharma once discovered we shall strive our utmost not only to profess but to live, in our individual actions, in our social life, in our political endeavours."
--
Essays from the Karmayogin
Aryan character, the Aryan life. Recover the Vedanta, the Gita, the Yoga. Recover them not only in intellect or sentiment but in your lives. Live them and you will be great and strong, mighty, invincible and fearless. Neither life nor death will have any terrors for you. Difficulty and impossibility will vanish from your vocabularies. For it is in the spirit that strength is eternal and you must win back the kingdom of yourselves, the inner Swaraj, before you can win back your outer empire. There the Mother dwells and She waits for worship that She may give strength. Believe in Her, serve Her, lose your wills in Hers, your egoism in the greater ego of the country, your separate selfishness in the service of humanity. Recover the source of all strength in yourselves and all else will be added to you, social soundness, intellectual preeminence, political freedom, the mastery of human thought, the hegemony of the world."
1.01 - Who is Tara, #How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator, #Thubten Chodron, #unset
attachment, and the Karma that causes cyclic existence and cognitive obscurations the subtle stains or predispositions of afictions on the mind and
the appearance of inherent existence that they cause. Any Buddha has totally
1.02.1 - The Inhabiting Godhead - Life and Action, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
The chain of Karma only binds the movement of Nature
and not the soul which, by knowing itself, ceases even to appear
1.02.3.1 - The Lord, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
does not compel Purusha. Na Karma lipyate nare.
The Manishi takes his stand in the possibilities. He has
--
in that realm, - the iron chain of Karma, the rule of mechanical
necessity, the despotism of an inexplicable Law.
1.025 - Sadhana - Intensifying a Lighted Flame, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
The meritorious deeds that we performed in previous lives, the good Karmas of our past produce a force called 'apurva' in Mimamsa parlance. The good Karmas of the past are present in the mind even now as a kind of prarabdha, and when the prarabdha is of a sattvic nature, it permits the rise of a novel type of asking by the soul, which is called spiritual aspiration. It is this peculiar context - which is inscrutable, of course, to anyone's mind which brings a person in contact with a Guru. How we come in contact with a Guru cannot be understood. It is worked up by mysterious forces from within that are associated with the good deeds of our past lives, etc., and which permit good actions in this present birth. Such forces make it possible for us to think divine thoughts and to take the initial step in the practice of yoga. It is this initial step, as mentioned, which is capable of generating a peculiar potency, enough to carry us forward to the next step. Like the chain reaction of an atomic bomb burst, every step is automatically an urge towards another step.
The more we practise sadhana, the stronger we become and the greater is our capacity to understand, to enlarge our perspective of thinking and to contact reality in deeper profundity. Many factors operate in spiritual practice. The good deeds that we did in the past is one factor. The other factors are the associations that we have established in society with wise people in this present birth, the practical experience that we gain by living in this world, the initiation that we receive from the Guru, and the wisdom that we acquire from the Guru. Finally, the most mysterious, of course, is the grace of God Himself, which is perennially operating, perpetually working, and infinitely and most abundantly contri buting to the onward march of the soul towards its goal.
1.028 - Bringing About Whole-Souled Dedication, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
The condition mentioned in the sutra of Patanjali is: sa tu drghakla nairantarya satkra sevita dhabhmi (I.14). A very, very affectionate attitude towards this practice is one condition. We cannot have a greater love for anything in this world than we have for this practice. In fact, this practice is like a parent to us it will take care of us, protect us and provide us with everything that we need. This practice of yoga should be continued until the point of realisation, without asking for immediate results. Karmanyevdhikraste m phaleu kadcana(B.G. II.47), says Bhagavan Sri Krishna in the Bhagavadgita. Our duty is to act according to the discipline prescribed, and not to expect results. The results will follow in the long run, in due course of time.
The practice should not only be continued for a protracted period, but it also should be unremitting. There should be no break in the practice this is another condition. Some people say, "For twenty-five years I have been meditating." But we have not been meditating continuously, without break, throughout all the twenty-five years. We have been missing link after link every now and then, so there has been a disconnection in the practice. It is something like having our lunch today, and missing it for two days, and then having it again on the third or fourth day, and then not having it for five or six days. Then, naturally, the intake of the diet will not have any kind of salutary effect upon the body. So the practice should be not only continuing for years and years until realisation ensues, but also it should be unremitting ceaseless. Every day it should be taken up, and at the same time each day.
1.02 - Karmayoga, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
object:1.02 - Karmayoga
author class:Sri Aurobindo
--
E HAVE spoken of Karmayoga as the application of
Vedanta and Yoga to life. To many who take their knowledge of Hinduism secondh and this may seem a doubtful definition. It is ordinarily supposed by "practical" minds that Vedanta as a guide to life and Yoga as a method of spiritual communion are dangerous things which lead men away from action to abstraction. We leave aside those who regard all such beliefs as mysticism, self-delusion or imposture; but even those who reverence and believe in the high things of Hinduism have the impression that one must remove oneself from a full human activity in order to live the spiritual life. Yet the spiritual life finds its most potent expression in the man who lives the ordinary life of men in the strength of the Yoga and under the law of the Vedanta. It is by such a union of the inner life and the outer that mankind will eventually be lifted up and become mighty and divine. It is a delusion to suppose that Vedanta contains no inspiration to life, no rule of conduct, and is purely metaphysical and quietistic. On the contrary, the highest morality of which humanity is capable finds its one perfect basis and justification in the teachings of the Upanishads and the Gita. The characteristic doctrines of the Gita are nothing if they are not a law of life, a dharma, and even the most transcendental aspirations of the
--
Essays from the Karmayogin
mountain-peaks above the common level, they have attracted all eyes and fixed this withdrawal as the highest and most commanding Hindu ideal. It is for this reason that Sri Krishna laid so much stress on the perfect Yogin's cleaving to life and human activity even after his need of them was over, lest the people, following, as they always do, the example of their best, turn away from their dharma and bastard confusion reign. The ideal
--
Essays from the Karmayogin
man who has not strength or faith or love developed or latent in his nature, and any one of these is a sufficient staff for the Yogin.
1.02 - Karma Yoga, #Amrita Gita, #Swami Sivananda Saraswati, #Hinduism
object:1.02 - Karma Yoga
class:chapter
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2. Karma Yoga is the Yoga of selfless action, without agency and expectation of fruits.
3. Karma Yoga removes the impurities of the mind. It is a potent purifier of the heart.
4. Karma Yoga prepares the mind for the reception of Divine Light, Divine Grace, and Divine Knowledge.
5. See God in every face. Behold the Lord in all creatures.
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19. Cultivate amiable, loving, social nature, generosity, catholic nature. Kill selfishness. Control the senses, practise self-restraint, tolerance, sympathy and mercy. These are the qualifications of a Karma Yogi.
20. Bear insult, injury, harsh words, criticism, heat and cold.
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27. There are three kinds of Karma, viz., Sanchita, Prarabdha and Agami or Kriyamana.
28. Sanchita is the accumulated storehouse of actions of previous births. Prarabdha is that part of Karma which has given rise to your present birth. Agami is current action.
29. Sanchita is destroyed by Brahma-Jnana. You will have to enjoy the Prarabdha. Agami has no binding force as there is no agency or egoism in the sage.
--
THUS ENDS Karma YOGA
1.02 - SADHANA PADA, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
kleshamoolah Karmashayo
drishtadrishtajanmavedaniyah
--
Some Karma we have worked out already, some we are
working out now in the present, and some is waiting to bear
--
should be directed towards the control of that Karma which
has not yet borne fruit. That is meant in the previous
1.02 - Skillful Means, #The Lotus Sutra, #Anonymous, #Various
And the good and bad Karma
Of their previous lives,
1.02 - Taras Tantra, #Tara - The Feminine Divine, #unset, #Zen
Meaning), a tantric text written by the Third Karmapa.
ORIGIN OF THE TARA TANTRA
--
one's own Karma and inner development. Such a
practitioner cannot prove to others that he or she
1.036 - The Rise of Obstacles in Yoga Practice, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
By a persistent, insistent practice of deep concentration on a given reality, ekatattva abhyasah, there is an automatic exhaustion of the potentialities of individuality inside, because we do not go on adding to the Karmas by further binding action. There is only a burning up of what is already there, and once the store of Karmas, even in a hidden form, is exhausted by experience, there is no further bondage because we have not added any further Karma to the already existing store. How these obstacles cease and Karmas are exhausted is a miracle by itself.
Adepts in yoga tell us that there is a gradual exhaustion of Karma and a slow diminution of the intensity of obstacles; but others are of the opinion that there can be a sudden end to all this. It is something like the theories of creation whether God created the world item by item, step by step, gradually, stage by stage, or by a fiat, at one stroke. Is it krama srishti, or yugapat srishti? 'Yugapat' means God willed, 'Let there be light,' and there was light; 'Let there be trees,' and there were trees; 'Let there be man,' and there was man. Is it like that? Or, was there an evolutionary process, gradually manifesting form after form? There are two theories of creation, and they are not contradictory both are correct. Likewise, both these views held by yogic adepts are correct. It is possible that obstacles may cease gradually, step by step, by the diminution of their intensity, or there can be a sudden burning up of everything and an instantaneous illumination. Individual logic or human understanding cannot probe into these mysteries. We have only to accept what comes, and to do our duty in the form of the practice prescribed. But, one thing is certain that whatever be the way in which the obstacles cease, they must cease, one day or the other.
Enemies in the form of external forces become friendly at a particular stage. At one time it may appear to us that the whole world is our enemy that nobody wants us, and everything is against us. Everything that we do is thrown out of order by the forces outside us, and there is no success. And then it is that we get fed up with the world, become disgusted with everything, and it appears that nobody is cooperating with us anywhere and that everybody is trying to upset what we have done. This is one stage wherein we will have this type of experience and such feelings; but it will not be a permanent condition, because the world is not an enemy, ultimately.
1.037 - Preventing the Fall in Yoga, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
It is not the intention of the practice of yoga to set up reactions, but they automatically happen on account of there being certain obstructing elements within us which get stirred up automatically due to the cleansing process that is going on in the practice of yoga. They are not really enemies working, but are the impurities that are leaving. When the impurities are driven out of the personality within, they look like violent opposing elements putting on various types of faces - sometimes pleasant, sometimes unpleasant, sometimes unintelligible, sometimes very inscrutable because we have within us, potentially, infinite latencies of past Karma, impressions of previous deeds, frustrated desires, and so on and so forth, all of which have to come out one day or the other if the field is to be clean. This cleaning is done by yoga.
Then, we have what are known as the obstacles or the impediments. Though there can be endless types of obstacles in the practice of yoga, Patanjali mentions a few leading obstacles which have to be taken care of by a student, with the guidance of a competent master, because when these obstacles come, they do not come in the form of obstacles. A shrewd enemy always comes like a friend, for if we openly come as an enemy we will not succeed because the other party will know what we are. Ravana always comes as a sannyasin in order that he may succeed. If he comes as Ravana himself, nothing will happen; everybody will understand what is coming. So these peculiar reactions, called impediments, do not come openly as impediments, and we will not know that they are the consequences of our practice. We will attribute these experiences to some other persons or conditions outside us, and will not be able to understand that they are caused by certain internal practices of our own.
1.03 - Bloodstream Sermon, #The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma, #Bodhidharma, #Buddhism
are all useless. Invoking buddhas results in good Karma, reciting
sutras results in a good memory; keeping precepts results in a
--
don't practice nonsense. A buddha is free of Karma,27 free of cause
and effect. To say he attains anything at all is to slander a buddha.
--
Still others commit all sorts of evil deeds, claiming Karma
doesn't exist. They erroneously maintain that since everything is
--
realization and suffers no Karma. It has no strength or form. It's
like space. You can't possess it and you can't lose it. Its movements
--
River of Samsara.29 No Karma can restrain this real body. But this
mind is subtle and hard to see. It's not the same as the sensual
--
unaware of it. And because of this you suffer Karma in vain.
Wherever you find delight, you find bondage. But once you awaken
--
Karma can't hold him. No matter what kind of Karma, a buddha
transforms it. Heaven and hell39 are nothing to him. But the aware
--
They can't be restrained by Karma or overcome by devils.
Once mortals see their nature, all attachments end. Awareness
--
you put an end to Karma and nurture your awareness, any attach
ments that remain will come to an end. Understanding comes
--
trapped by cause and effect. Such is a mortal's Karma: no escape
from birth and death. By doing the opposite of what he intended,
--
What keeps them from believing is the heaviness of their Karma.
They're like blind people who don't believe there's such a thing as
--
heaviness of their Karma, such fools can't believe and can't get free.
People who see that their mind is the buddha don't need to
--
But butchers create Karma
by slaughtering
--
creating Karma. Regardless of what we do, our Karma has no hold
on us. Through endless kalpas without beginning, it's only because
--
person creates Karma, he keeps passing through birth and death.
But once a person realizes his original nature, he stops creating
--
him from his Karma, regardless of whether or not he's a butcher.
But once he sees his nature, all doubts vanish. Even a butcher's
1.03 - Invocation of Tara, #Tara - The Feminine Divine, #unset, #Zen
- In the north, Karma Tara, black, with a sword on the
lotus
--
Question: It is said that the law of Karma is infallible, that
we must necessarily experience the result of our acts.
--
Answer: Individual Karmas are varied and of different
kinds. Some Karmas may not be modified. In this case,
if we carry the Karma for such a painful event to
occur, it will occur. If, on the contrary, we do not have
the Karma for such a happy circumstance to manifest,
it will not manifest. The prayer will hardly be able to
--
When we say that the law of Karma is infallible, it
means that a cause will necessarily produce its effect
--
devotion and prayer, as well as regret of past negative acts, are factors that can modify Karma. There are
- 78 -
--
purification to change Karma. Besides putting into
work such factors, Karma effectively produces its
effects in an infallible way.
1.03 - Meeting the Master - Meeting with others, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Sri Aurobindo: The word 'egoism' is used in a very limited sense in English, it means anything for the self. That which is not done for the self is regarded as unegoistic. But that is not so in Yoga. One can do all unselfish actions and have full egoism in him. He will have the egoism of the doer. Nishkama Karma means first desirelessness. You have to first establish that condition in which good or bad desires are absent. You must realise that it is the Power of God, His Shakti, that does the work in reality. All work, good and bad, in you and in the world, is Her work.
G: If a man takes up that attitude he may go on indiscriminately doing good or bad actions and say that God is doing them.
--
What is your idea of Kartavyam Karma?
Athavale: It is my duty in life.
Sri Aurobindo: Kartavyam Karma does not mean duty. Duty is a western notion. It is a wrong interpretation of the text of the Gita. It means: that which should be done, that which is ordained.
It is possible to know the Kartavyam Karma in that sense, if one can rise to something beyond Mind. You spoke of The Yoga and Its Objects. It was written at a time when my Sadhana had not reached its perfection. It marks a certain stage of my development. But it is not complete. I am not following the idea that is in it.
At present what I am doing is the Supramental Yoga. Man, as constituted at present, is a very imperfect manifestation of the Divine he is very crude. It is so because man is living in an envelope of ignorance in Mind, Life and Body so that he is not conscious of the Reality that is beyond Mind. The Supramental Power is above the Mind. What I am trying to do at present is to call down the Higher Power to govern Mind, Life and Body. The object of this Yoga is not the service of humanity, or the ordinary perfection of man but the evolution of the Supramental Power in the cyclic evolution of the Spirit in the material universe. What one has to do is to rend the veil the thick veil that divides the Mind from the Supermind. That work a man cannot do by himself.
--
He should, after giving up this practice, make his mind strong by Karma Yoga. It will require him to give up his desires and his ego. He can do his actions in the spirit of devotion, offering them all as a sacrifice to God. He can thus practise dedication of all his actions to God and try to see Him in all men and in all happenings. That would be his meditation.
At present he cannot take up this Yoga because this is a Yoga of self-surrender in which he has to open himself to a Higher Power. But as he has already opened himself to other spirits such a passive state would not be good for him. All sorts of spirits would come and try to take possession of his being. So it is not safe for him to take up this Yoga, apart from other considerations.
1.03 - PERSONALITY, SANCTITY, DIVINE INCARNATION, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
When a man lacks discrimination, his will wanders in all directions, after innumerable aims. Those who lack discrimination may quote the letter of the scripture; but they are really denying its inner truth. They are full of worldly desires and hungry for the rewards of heaven. They use beautiful figures of speech; they teach elaborate rituals, which are supposed to obtain pleasure and power for those who practice them. But, actually, they understand nothing except the law of Karma that chains men to rebirth.
Those whose discrimination is stolen away by such talk grow deeply attached to pleasure and power. And so they are unable to develop that one-pointed concentration of the will, which leads a man to absorption in God.
1.03 - Self-Surrender in Works - The Way of The Gita, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This total consecration and surrender and this resultant entire transformation and free transmission make up the whole fundamental means and the ultimate aim of an integral Karmayoga.
Even for those whose first natural movement is a consecration, a surrender and a resultant entire transformation of the thinking mind and its knowledge, or a total consecration, surrender and transformation of the heart and its emotions, the consecration of works is a needed element in that change. Otherwise, although they may find God in other-life, they will not be able to fulfil the Divine in life; life for them will be a meaningless undivine inconsequence. Not for them the true victory that shall be the key to the riddle of our terrestrial existence; their love will not be the absolute love triumphant over self, their knowledge will not be the total consciousness and the all-embracing knowledge. It is possible, indeed, to begin with knowledge or Godward emotion solely or with both together and to leave works for the final movement of the Yoga. But there is then this disadvantage that we may tend to live too exclusively within, subtilised in subjective experience, shut off in our isolated inner parts; there we may get incrusted in our spiritual seclusion and find it difficult later on to pour ourselves triumphantly outwards and apply to life our gains in the higher Nature. When we turn to add this external kingdom also to our inner conquests, we shall find ourselves too much accustomed to an activity purely subjective and ineffective on the material plane. There will be an immense difficulty in transforming the outer life and the body.
--
The greatest gospel of spiritual works ever yet given to the race, the most perfect system of Karmayoga known to man in the past, is to be found in the Bhagavad Gita. In that famous episode of the Mahabharata the great basic lines of Karmayoga are laid down for all time with an incomparable mastery and the infallible eye of an assured experience. It is true that the path alone, as the ancients saw it, is worked out fully: the perfect fulfilment, the highest secret1 is hinted rather than developed; it is kept back as an unexpressed part of a supreme mystery. There are obvious reasons for this reticence; for the fulfilment is in any case a matter for experience and no teaching can express it. It cannot be described in a way that can really be understood by a mind that has not the effulgent transmuting experience. And for the soul that has passed the shining portals and stands in the blaze of the inner light, all mental and verbal description is as poor as it is superfluous, inadequate and an impertinence. All divine consummations have perforce to be figured by us in the inapt and deceptive terms of a language which was made to fit the normal experience of mental man; so expressed, they can be rightly understood only by those who already know, and, knowing, are able to give these poor external terms a changed, inner and transfigured sense. As the Vedic Rishis insisted in the beginning, the words of the supreme wisdom are expressive only to those who are already of the wise. The Gita at its cryptic close may seem by its silence to stop short of that solution for which we are seeking; it pauses at the borders of the highest spiritual mind and does not cross them into the splendours of the supramental Light. And yet its secret of dynamic, and not only static, identity with the inner Presence, its highest mystery of absolute surrender to the Divine Guide, Lord and Inhabitant of our nature, is the central secret. This surrender is the indispensable means of the supramental change and, again, it is through the supramental change that the dynamic identity becomes possible.
1 rahasyam uttamam.
What then are the lines of Karmayoga laid down by the Gita? Its key principle, its spiritual method, can be summed up as the union of two largest and highest states or powers of consciousness, equality and oneness. The kernel of its method is an unreserved acceptance of the Divine in our life as in our inner self and spirit. An inner renunciation of personal desire leads to equality, accomplishes our total surrender to the Divine, supports a delivery from dividing ego which brings us oneness.
But this must be a oneness in dynamic force and not only in static peace or inactive beatitude. The Gita promises us freedom for the spirit even in the midst of works and the full energies of Nature, if we accept subjection of our whole being to that which is higher than the separating and limiting ego. It proposes an integral dynamic activity founded on a still passivity; a largest possible action irrevocably based on an immobile calm is its secret, - free expression out of a supreme inward silence.
--
3 It is not indispensable for the Karmayoga to accept implicitly all the philosophy of the Gita. We may regard it, if we like, as a statement of psychological experience useful as a practical basis for the Yoga; here it is perfectly valid and in entire consonance with a high and wide experience. For this reason I have thought it well to state it here, as far as possible in the language of modern thought, omitting all that belongs to metaphysics rather than to psychology.
* *
--
Or it may be an external reward, a recompense entirely material,- wealth, position, honour, victory, good fortune or any other fulfilment of vital or physical desire. But all alike are lures by which egoism holds us. Always these satisfactions delude us with the sense of mastery and the idea of freedom, while really we are harnessed and guided or ridden and whipped by some gross or subtle, some noble or ignoble, figure of the blind Desire that drives the world. Therefore the first rule of action laid down by the Gita is to do the work that should be done without any desire for the fruit, nis.kama Karma.
A simple rule in appearance, and yet how difficult to carry out with anything like an absolute sincerity and liberating entireness! In the greater part of our action we use the principle very little if at all, and then even mostly as a sort of counterpoise to the normal principle of desire and to mitigate the extreme action of that tyrant impulse. At best, we are satisfied if we arrive at a modified and disciplined egoism not too shocking to our moral sense, not too brutally offensive to others. And to our partial self-discipline we give various names and forms; we habituate ourselves by practice to the sense of duty, to a firm fidelity to principle, a stoical fortitude or a religious resignation, a quiet or an ecstatic submission to God's will. But it is not these things that the Gita intends, useful though they are in their place; it aims at something absolute, unmitigated, uncompromising, a turn, an attitude that will change the whole poise of the soul.
--
Equality, renunciation of all desire for the fruit of our works, action done as a sacrifice to the supreme Lord of our nature and of all nature, - these are the three first Godward approaches in the Gita's way of Karmayoga.
1.03 - Tara, Liberator from the Eight Dangers, #How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator, #Thubten Chodron, #unset
enables our species to continue to prosper, and creates positive Karma that
brings us prosperity in the future. In addition, it is an essential trait of an
--
Where, conditioned by the propelling winds of Karma,
We are tossed in the waves of birth, aging, sickness, and death:
--
or for the negative Karma we have created under their inuence. We may also
imagine Taras radiant green light lling the universe and all the beings
1.03 - THE GRAND OPTION, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
ognize the Eastern concept of Karma in this monstrous form?
What we call civilization is weaving its web around us with a terri-
1.03 - The House Of The Lord, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
Many fantastic tales were abroad about his outer life, gaining ground and credit because of his living in seclusion. Some people believed that he neither ate nor slept, but remained absorbed in Samadhi. Others had heard that he could keep his body suspended in the air. Some there were who, like Arjuna, wanted genuinely to know how he spoke, how he sat and walked. The Mother had, at one time, discouraged us from dwelling upon these external aspects for fear that people's minds would be deflected from the Reality. After all it is not what a man appears to be which is most important. And we can affirm that all Sri Aurobindo's actions welled from the Divine Consciousness that he embodied: they were yukta Karma. But how to demonstrate this? By having a practical knowledge of his day-to-day activity? Well, he who sees, sees!
Let us then begin from the very break of day. The sun's rays came in by the eastern window; he was awake and the exercises started in bed, prescribed by Manilal. By 6.30 a.m. he sat up to receive the Mother who on her way to the Balcony Darshan visited him to have his darshan. Sri Aurobindo gave us definite instructions to wake him up before the Mother's arrival. On the other hand, the Mother wanted us not to disturb his sleep. So at times we found ourselves in a quandary. Champaklal's devotional nature would not interrupt his sweet nap after the exercises, while I, when alone, would try by all sorts of devices to wake him up. Sometimes he himself would wake up only to learn that the Mother had come and gone! Then she would come back after the darshan and begin her day with his blessings, just as we did after her darshan. This was followed by his reading The Hindu. Between 9.00 a.m. and 10.00 a.m. the Mother came to comb his hair, apply a lotion and plait it. Most often she finished some business during this period. When a sadhak translated the Mother's Prayers and Meditations into English and wanted her approval, she had it read out before Sri Aurobindo and both of them made the necessary changes. She sometimes talked of private matters, and when her voice sank low, we took the hint and withdrew discreetly. She believed more in subtle methods than in open expressions. The gesture, the look, the smile, the fugitive glance, the silence, a thousand are her ways of communication to the soul! After the Mother had left, there started the routine of washing the face and mouth. Here a small detail calls for mention by its unusualness. When he had finished using Neem paste for his teeth and the mouth-wash (Vademecum), he massaged his gums with a little bit of Oriental Balm.
1.03 - The Two Negations 2 - The Refusal of the Ascetic, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
17:It is this revolt of Spirit against Matter that for two thousand years, since Buddhism disturbed the balance of the old Aryan world, has dominated increasingly the Indian mind. Not that the sense of the cosmic illusion is the whole of Indian thought; there are other philosophical statements, other religious aspirations. Nor has some attempt at an adjustment between the two terms been wanting even from the most extreme philosophies. But all have lived in the shadow of the great Refusal and the final end of life for all is the garb of the ascetic. The general conception of existence has been permeated with the Buddhistic theory of the chain of Karma and with the consequent antinomy of bondage and liberation, bondage by birth, liberation by cessation from birth. Therefore all voices are joined in one great consensus that not in this world of the dualities can there be our kingdom of heaven, but beyond, whether in the joys of the eternal Vrindavan4 or the high beatitude of Brahmaloka,5 beyond all manifestations in some ineffable Nirvana6 or where all separate experience is lost in the featureless unity of the indefinable Existence. And through many centuries a great army of shining witnesses, saints and teachers, names sacred to Indian memory and dominant in Indian imagination, have borne always the same witness and swelled always the same lofty and distant appeal, - renunciation the sole path of knowledge, acceptation of physical life the act of the ignorant, cessation from birth the right use of human birth, the call of the Spirit, the recoil from Matter.
18:For an age out of sympathy with the ascetic spirit - and throughout all the rest of the world the hour of the Anchorite may seem to have passed or to be passing - it is easy to attribute this great trend to the failing of vital energy in an ancient race tired out by its burden, its once vast share in the common advance, exhausted by its many-sided contri bution to the sum of human effort and human knowledge. But we have seen that it corresponds to a truth of existence, a state of conscious realisation which stands at the very summit of our possibility. In practice also the ascetic spirit is an indispensable element in human perfection and even its separate affirmation cannot be avoided so long as the race has not at the other end liberated its intellect and its vital habits from subjection to an always insistent animalism.
1.03 - To Layman Ishii, #Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin, #unset, #Zen
"There was a servant in ancient China who worked in the kitchen of a temple in the far western regions of the country. The temple was filled with monks engaged in the rigors of training. All the time the servant wasn't engaged in his main job preparing meals for the brotherhood, he spent doing zazen. One day, he suddenly entered a profound samadhi, and since he showed no sign of coming out of it, the head priest of the temple directed the senior monk in charge of the training hall to keep an eye on him. When the servant finally got up from his zazen cushion three days later, he had penetrated the heart and marrow of the Dharma, and had attained an ability to clearly see the Karma of his previous lives. He went to the head priest and began setting forth the realization he had attained, but before he had finished, the head priest suddenly put his hands over his ears. 'Stop! Stop!' he said.
'The rest is something I have yet to experience. If you explain it to me, I'm afraid it might obstruct my own entrance into enlightenment.'
1.03 - YIBHOOTI PADA, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
sopakraman nirupakraman cha Karma tatsanyamad
aparantajnanam,arishtebhyo va
--
When the Yogi makes a Samyama on his own Karma, upon
those impressions in his mind which are now working, and
1.04 - KAI VALYA PADA, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
The theory of Karma is that we suffer for our good or bad
deeds, and the whole scope of philosophy is to approach the
--
soul, and then, with the same breath, they preach this Karma.
A good deed brings such a result, and a bad deed such a result,
--
actions of that man, and the Karma produced by those actions,
will not bind him, because he did not desire them. He just
--
Suppose I have made the three kinds of Karma, good, bad,
and mixed; and suppose I die and become a god in heaven; the
--
becomes of my past unworked Karmas, which produce as
their effect the desire to eat and drink? Where would these
--
of environment we can check these desires. Only that Karma
which is suited to and fitted for the environments will come
--
check to control even Karma itself.
9. f^ldElVbKdl:
1.04 - The Core of the Teaching, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But at the present day, since in fact the modern mind began to recognise and deal at all with the Gita, the tendency is to subordinate its elements of knowledge and devotion, to take advantage of its continual insistence on action and to find in it a scripture of the Karmayoga, a Light leading us on the path of action, a Gospel of Works. Undoubtedly, the Gita is a Gospel of Works, but of works which culminate in knowledge, that is, in spiritual realisation and quietude, and of works motived by devotion, that is, a conscious surrender of one's whole self first into the hands and then into the being of the Supreme, and not at all of works as they are understood by the modern mind, not at all an action dictated by egoistic and altruistic, by personal,
The Core of the Teaching
--
The Gita can only be understood, like any other great work of the kind, by studying it in its entirety and as a developing argument. But the modern interpreters, starting from the great writer Bankim Chandra Chatterji who first gave to the Gita this new sense of a Gospel of Duty, have laid an almost exclusive stress on the first three or four chapters and in those on the idea of equality, on the expression kartavyam Karma, the work that is to be done, which they render by duty, and on the phrase "Thou hast a right to action, but none to the fruits of action" which is now popularly quoted as the great word, mahavakya, of the
Gita. The rest of the eighteen chapters with their high philosophy are given a secondary importance, except indeed the great vision in the eleventh. This is natural enough for the modern mind which is, or has been till yesterday, inclined to be impatient of
--
The first step is Karmayoga, the selfless sacrifice of works, and here the Gita's insistence is on action. The second is
Jnanayoga, the self-realisation and knowledge of the true nature of the self and the world; and here the insistence is on knowledge; but the sacrifice of works continues and the path of
1.04 - The Gods of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
(14) The Veda proper is Karmakanda, not jnanakanda; its aim is not moksha, but divine fulfilment in this life & the next. Therefore the Vedic Rishis accepted plenty & fullness of physical, vital & mental being, power & joy as the pratistha or foundation of immortality & did not reject it as an obstacle to salvation.1
(15) The world being one in all its parts every being in it contains the universe in himself. Especially do the great gods contain all the others & their activities in themselves, so that Agni, Varuna, Indra, all of them are in reality one sole-existent deity in many forms. Man too is He, but he has to fulfil himself here as man, yet divine (that being his vrata & dharma) through the puissant means provided for him [by] the Veda.
1.04 - The Praise, #Tara - The Feminine Divine, #unset, #Zen
BLOOD-DRINIGNG SPIRITS: Karma
LOCAL DEITIES: conflicting emotions
1.04 - Wake-Up Sermon, #The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma, #Bodhidharma, #Buddhism
good Karma and bad Karma, heaven and hell. When no thought
arises, there's no good Karma or bad Karma, no heaven or hell.
The body neither exists nor doesn't exist. Hence existence as
--
Individuals create Karma; Karma doesn't create individuals.
They create Karma in this life and receive their reward in the next.
They never escape. Only someone who's perfect creates no Karma
in this life and receives no reward. The sutras say, "W ho creates no
--
create Karma, but you can't create a person. When you create
Karma, you're reborn along with your Karma. W hen you don't
create Karma, you vanish along with your Karma. Hence, with
Karma dependent on the individual and the individual dependent
on Karma, if an individual doesn't create Karma, Karma has no hold
on him. In the same manner, "A person can enlarge the Way. The
--
Mortals keep creating Karma and mistakenly insist that there's
no retri bution. But can they deny suffering? Can they deny that
--
the next state of mind reaps nothing. Don't misconceive Karma.
The sutras say, "Despite believing in buddhas, people who
1.052 - Yoga Practice - A Series of Positive Steps, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
The famous exhortation on moderation in the sixth chapter of the Bhagavadgita is to the point. Yukthra-vihrasya yukta-ceasya Karmasu, yukta-svapnvabodhasya yogo bhavati dukhah (B.G. VI.17): The pain-destroying yoga comes to that person who is moderate in every manner. Ntyanatas tu yogosti (B.G. VI.16): Yoga does not come to one who eats too much, enjoys too much, or indulges in the senses too much. Na caikntam ananata (B.G. VI.16):One who is excessively austere also is far from yoga. Na cti svapnalasya jgrato naiva crjuna (B.G. VI.16): One who is excessively torpid and lethargic and given to overindulgence in sleeping is far from yoga, but one who remains excessively awake to the torture of the body and the mind is also far from yoga.
Therefore, the wisdom of the practice consists in a correct understanding of the necessities under the given circumstances. These necessities go on changing from time to time and are not a set standard. We cannot say that todays necessity may also be tomorrows necessity. Just now, when it is hot and sultry, I may require a glass of cold water, but it does not mean that I should go on drinking cold water always, because the climatic conditions may not require it.
1.05 - Buddhism and Women, #Tara - The Feminine Divine, #unset, #Zen
15th Karmapa Khakyab Dorje's spouse. I met her
when I was studying in Tsurpu, the Karmapa's
monastery, not far from Lhassa. The 15th Karmapa
had already passed away. I must have been 13 or 14
--
the 15th Karmapa, she showed me much affection,
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1.05 - Some Results of Initiation, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
direct knowledge of his higher self. He learns how his higher self is connected with exalted spiritual beings and forms with them a united whole. He sees how the lower self originates in a higher world, and it is revealed to him how his higher nature outlasts his lower. He can now distinguish the imperishable in himself from the perishable; that is, he learns through personal insight to understand the doctrine of the incarnation of the higher self in the lower. It will become plain to him that he is part of a great spiritual complex and that his qualities and destiny are due to this connection. He learns to recognize the law of his life, his Karma. He realizes that his lower self, constituting his present existence, is only one of the forms which his higher being can adopt. He discerns the possibility of working down from his higher self in his lower self, so that he may perfect himself ever more and more. Now, too, he can comprehend the great differences between human beings in regard to their level of perfection. He becomes aware that there are others above him who have already traversed the stages which still lie before him, and he realizes that the teachings and deeds of such men
p. 187
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These, then, are the gifts which the student owes to his development at this stage: insight into his higher self; insight into the doctrine of the incarnation of this higher being in a lower; insight into the laws by which life in the physical world is regulated according to its spiritual connections, that is, the law of Karma; and finally, insight into the existence of the great initiates.
Thus it is said of a student who has reached this stage, that all doubt has vanished from him. His former faith, based on reason and sound thoughts, is now replaced by knowledge and insight which nothing can undermine. The various religions have presented, in their ceremonies, sacraments, and rites, externally
1.05 - True and False Subjectivism, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is necessary, if we are not to deceive ourselves, to note that even in this field what Germany has done is to systematise certain strong actual tendencies and principles of international action to the exclusion of all that either professed to resist or did actually modify them. If a sacred egoism and the expression did not come from Teutonic lipsis to govern international relations, then it is difficult to deny the force of the German position. The theory of inferior and decadent races was loudly proclaimed by other than German thinkers and has governed, with whatever assuaging scruples, the general practice of military domination and commercial exploitation of the weak by the strong; all that Germany has done is to attempt to give it a wider extension and more rigorous execution and apply it to European as well as to Asiatic and African peoples. Even the severity or brutality of her military methods or of her ways of colonial or internal political repression, taken at their worst, for much once stated against her has been proved and admitted to be deliberate lies manufactured by her enemies, was only a crystallising of certain recent tendencies towards the revival of ancient and mediaeval hardheartedness in the race. The use and even the justification of massacre and atrocious cruelty in war on the ground of military exigency and in the course of commercial exploitation or in the repression of revolt and disorder has been quite recently witnessed in the other continents, to say nothing of certain outskirts of Europe.9 From one point of view, it is well that terrible examples of the utmost logic of these things should be prominently forced on the attention of mankind; for by showing the evil stripped of all veils the choice between good and evil instead of a halting between the two will be forced on the human conscience. Woe to the race if it blinds its conscience and buttresses up its animal egoism with the old justifications; for the gods have shown that Karma is not a jest.
But the whole root of the German error lies in its mistaking life and the body for the self. It has been said that this gospel is simply a reversion to the ancient barbarism of the religion of Odin; but this is not the truth. It is a new and a modern gospel born of the application of a metaphysical logic to the conclusions of materialistic Science, of a philosophic subjectivism to the objective pragmatic positivism of recent thought. Just as Germany applied the individualistic position to the realisation of her communal subjective existence, so she applied the materialistic and vitalistic thought of recent times and equipped it with a subjective philosophy. Thus she arrived at a bastard creed, an objective subjectivism which is miles apart from the true goal of a subjective age. To show the error it is necessary to see wherein lies the true individuality of man and of the nation. It lies not in its physical, economic, even its cultural life which are only means and adjuncts, but in something deeper whose roots are not in the ego, but in a Self one in difference which relates the good of each, on a footing of equality and not of strife and domination, to the good of the rest of the world.
1.05 - War And Politics, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
We may remind ourselves of Talthybius's mission to Troy in Sri Aurobindo's epic poem Ilion: Achilles made an offer by which Troy would be saved and the honour of the Greeks would be preserved, a harmonising offer, but it was rejected. Similarly, Duraiswamy went with India's soul in his "frail" hands and brought it back, downhearted, rewarded with ungracious remarks for the gratuitous advice. Sri Aurobindo even sent a telegram to Rajagopalachari and Dr. Munje urging them to accept the Proposals. Dr. Indra Sen writes, "We met the members individually and the sense of the reactions were more or less to this effect: Sri Aurobindo has created difficulties for us by his message to Cripps. He doesn't know the actual situation, we are in it, we know' better... and so on." Cripps flew back a disappointed man but with the consolation and gratified recognition that at least one great man had welcomed the idea. When the rejection was announced, Sri Aurobindo said in a quiet tone, "I knew it would fail." We at once pounced on it and asked him, "Why did you then send Duraiswamy at all?" "For a bit of niskama Karma,"[3]was his calm reply, without any bitterness or resentment. The full spirit of the kind of "disinterested work" he meant comes out in an early letter of his (December 1933), which refers to his spiritual work: "I am sure of the results of my work. But even if I still saw the chance that it might come to nothing (which is impossible), I would go on unperturbed, because I would still have done to the best of my power the work that I had to do, and what is so done always counts in the economy of the universe."
After the War, the Labour Government of U.K. sent a Cabinet Mission to India in 1946 for fresh talks. Asked to give his views on the mission by Amrita Bazar Patrika, a leading daily in the country, Sri Aurobindo said:
1.06 - The Greatness of the Individual, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is not as the slow process of Time that Sri Krishna manifests himself; it is as the Zeitgeist consummating in a moment the work carefully prepared for decades that He appears to Arjuna. All have been moving inevitably towards the catastrophe of Kurukshetra. Men did not know it: those who would have done everything possible to avert the calamity, helped its coming by their action or inaction; those who had a glimpse of it strove in vain to stop the wheels of Fate; Sri Krishna himself as the nikma Karmayogin who does his duty without regard to results, went on that hopeless embassy to Hastinapura; but the Zeitgeist overbore all. It was only afterwards that men saw how like rivers speeding towards the sea, like moths winging towards the lighted flame all that splendid, powerful and arrogant Indian world with its clans of Kings and its weapons and its chariots and its gigantic armies were rushing towards the open mouths of the destroyer to be lost in His mighty jaws, to be mangled between His gnashing teeth. In the ll of the Eternal there are movements that are terrible as well as movements that are sweet and beautiful. The dance of Brindaban is not complete without the death-dance of Kurukshetra; for each is a part of that great harmonic movement of the world which progresses from discord to accord, from hatred and strife to love and brotherhood, from evil to the fulfilment of the evolution by the transformation of suffering and sin into beauty, bliss and good, ivam, ntam, uddham, nandam.
Who could resist the purpose of the Zeitgeist? There were strong men in India then by the hundred, great philosophers and Yogins, subtle statesmen, leaders of men, kings of thought and action, the efflorescence of a mighty intellectual civilisation at its height. A little turning to the right instead of to the left on the part of a few of these would, it might seem, have averted the whole catastrophe. So Arjuna thought when he flung aside his bow. He was the whole hope of the Pandavas and without him their victory must seem a mere dream and to fight an act of madness. Yet it is to him that the Zeitgeist proclaims the utter helplessness of the mightiest and the sure fulfilment of Gods decree. Even without thee all they shall not be, the men of war who stand arrayed in the opposing squadrons. For these men are only alive in the body; in that which stands behind and fulfils itself they are dead men. Whom God protects who shall slay? Whom God has slain who shall protect? The man who slays is only the occasion, the instrument by which the thing done behind the veil becomes the thing done on this side of it. That which was true of the great slaying at Kurukshetra is true of all things that are done in this world, of all the creation, destruction and preservation that make up the ll.
1.07 - A Song of Longing for Tara, the Infallible, #How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator, #Thubten Chodron, #unset
In terms of how Karma works, if we practice the Dharma, the Buddhas
and bodhisattvas have a reason to manifest and remain in our world, and our
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but teaching it anywayis a great way to create lots of negative Karma.
Teaching without comprehension is dangerous, for we can easily lead others
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connections with others that is, collective positive Karma. Thats why joining together in a group is worthwhile, and why continuing to go to a center
whether or not a teacher is there is important.
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ethical discipline because whatever happens comes down to Karma. But once
in a while, part of me doubted: Am I missing something? Everybody else is
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is taking refuge in the Three Jewels and observing Karma. In other words, if
we dont take refuge in the Three Jewels and observe Karma, even if the Buddha holds our hand when we die, he cant do anything because we havent
created the causes for goodness. Real refuge comes down to our own practice. Its not about asking others to protect our reputation, worldly power,
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seeds on our mindstream. These actions, or Karma, inuence which body we
take in our next life, where we are reborn, and what we will experience in
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mindstream and our mental habits. We develop habits and create Karma in
the process of trying to procure and protect our possessions, money, reputation, loved ones, and comforts. The karmic seeds from those actions come
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when we remember that we cant take them with us when we die, that we create a ton of negative Karma trying to get them when were alive, and that
were very seldom satised with them even when we have them, then thinking that they are the purpose of our life is an illusion, isnt it?
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To develop concentration, living in ethical discipline is necessary. Purication to clear the gross obstacles from our mind the gross negative Karmasand accumulation of positive potential through practices such as
generosity are important. The purpose of the seven-limb prayer and the mandala offering is to purify negativities and accumulate positive potential. For
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help us create positive Karma, teach us, or prevent us from acting destructively. They do not have an agenda, I am now teaching you this so you better learn it, since such expectations just lead to suffering. Yet, because their
entire intention is to benet, whatever they do becomes of benet.
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mind that has conviction in Karma, is conscientious, and respects the vows.
We dont keep vows with an attitude that sees them as a tax we have to pay
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beings controlled by afictions and Karma, just as we are. They made mistakes, but they did what they could to care for us given their capabilities and
their personal situation. Instead of wishing they had done more for us, lets
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under the control of ignorance, the afictions, and Karma. Stopping this
doesnt mean that we become immortal, but we do overcome painful death
1.07 - Note on the word Go, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The next passage to which I shall turn is the eighth verse of the eighth hymn, also to Indra, in which occurs the expression , a passage which when taken in the plain and ordinary sense of the epithets sheds a great light on the nature of Mahi. Sunrita means really true and is opposed to anrita, false for in the early Aryan speech su and s would equally signify, well, good, very; and the euphonic n is of a very ancient type of sandhioriginally, it was probably no more than a strong anuswartraces of which can still be found in Tamil; in the case of su this n euphonic seems to have been dropped after the movement of the literary Aryan tongue towards the modern principle of Sandhi,a movement the imperfect progress of which we see in the Vedas; but by that time the form an, composed of privative a and the euphonic n, had become a recognised alternative form to a and the omission of the n would have left the meaning of words very ambiguous; therefore n was preserved in the negative form, omitted from the affirmative where its omission caused no inconvenience,for to write gni instead of anagni would be confusing, but to write svagni instead of sunagni would create no confusion. In the pair sunrita and anrita it is probable that the usage had become so confirmed, so much of an almost technical phraseology, that confirmed habit prevailed over new rule. The second meaning of the word is auspicious, derived from the idea good or beneficent in its regular action. The Vedic scholars give a third sense, quick, active; but this is probably due to confusion with an originally distinct word derived from the root , to move on rapidly, to be strong, swift, active from which we have to dance, & strong and a number of other derivatives, for although ri means to go, it does not appear that rita was used in the sense of motion or swiftness. In any case our choice (apart from unnecessary ingenuities) lies here between auspicious and true. If we take Mahi in the sense of earth, the first is its simplest & most natural significance.We shall have then to translate the earth auspicious (or might it mean true in the sense observing the law of the seasons), wide-watered, full of cows becomes like a ripe branch to the giver. This gives a clear connected sense, although gross and pedestrian and open to the objection that it has no natural and inevitable connection with the preceding verses. My objection is that sunrita and gomati seem to me to have in the Veda a different and deeper sense and that the whole passage becomes not only ennobled in sense, but clearer & more connected in sense if we give them that deeper significance. Gomatir ushasah in Kutsas hymn to the Dawn is certainly the luminous dawns; Saraswati in the third hymn who as chodayitri sunritanam chetanti sumatinam shines pervading all the actions of the understanding, certainly does so because she is the impeller to high truths, the awakener to right thoughts, clear perceptions and not because she is the impeller of things auspiciousa phrase which would have no sense or appropriateness to the context. Mahi is one of the three goddesses Ila, Saraswati and Mahi who are described as tisro devir mayobhuvah, the three goddesses born of delight or Ananda, and her companions being goddesses of knowledge, children of Mahas, she also must be a goddess of knowledge, not the earth; the word mahi also bears the sense of knowledge, intellect, and Mahas undoubtedly refers in many passages to the vijnana or supra-rational level of consciousness, the fourth Vyahriti of the Taittiriya Upanishad. What then prevents us from taking Mahi, here as there, in the sense of the goddess of suprarational knowledge or, if taken objectively, the world of Mahat? Nothing, except a tradition born in classical times when mahi was the earth and the new Nature-worship theory. In this sense I shall take it. I translate the line For thus Mahi the true, manifest in action, luminous becomes like a ripe branch to the giveror, again in better English, For thus Mahi the perfect in truth, manifesting herself in action, full of illumination, becomes as a ripe branch to the giver. For the Yogin again the sense is clear. All things are contained in the Mahat, derived from the Mahat, depend on theMahat, but we here in the movement of the alpam, have not our desire, are blinded & confined, enjoy an imperfect, erroneous & usually baffled & futile activity. It is only when we regain the movement of the Mahat, the large & uncontracted consciousness that comes from rising to the infinite,it is only then that we escape from this limitation. She is perfect in truth, full of illumination; error and ignorance disappear; she manifests herself virapshi in a wide & various activity; our activities are enlarged, our desires are fulfilled. The connection with the preceding stanzas becomes clear. The Vritras, the great obstructors & upholders of limitation, are slain by the help of Indra, by the result of the yajnartham Karma, by alliance with the armed gods in mighty internal battle; Indra, the god within our mental force, manifests himself as supreme and full of the nature of ideal truth from which his greatness weaponed with the vajra, vidyut or electric principle, derives (mahitwam astu vajrine). The mind, instinct with amrita, is then full of equality, samata; it drinks in the flood of activity of all kinds as the sea takes in the rivers. For the condition then results in which the ideal consciousness Mahi is like a ripe branch to the giver, when all powers & expansions of being at once (without obstacle as the Vritras are slain) become active in consciousness as masterful and effective knowledge or awareness (chit). This is the process prayed for by the poet. The whole hymn becomes a consecutive & intelligible whole, a single thought worked out logically & coherently and relating with perfect accuracy of ensemble & detail to one of the commonest experiences of Yogic fulfilment. In both these passages the faithful adherence to the intimations of language, Vedantic idea & Yogic experience have shed a flood of light, illuminating the obscurity of the Vedas, bringing coherence into the incoherence of the naturalistic explanation, close & strict logic, great depth of meaning with great simplicity of expression, and, as I shall show when I take up the final interpretation of the separate hymns, a rational meaning & reason of existence in that particular place for each word & phrase and a faultless & inevitable connection with what goes before & with what goes after. It is worth noticing that by the naturalistic interpretation one can indeed generally make out a meaning, often a clear or fluent sense for the separate verses of the Veda, but the ensemble of the hymn has almost always about it an air bizarre, artificial, incoherent, almost purposeless, frequently illogical and self-contradictoryas in Max Mullers translation of the 39th hymn, Kanwas to the Maruts,never straightforward, self-assured & easy. One would expect in these primitive writers,if they are primitive,crudeness of belief perhaps, but still plainness of expression and a simple development of thought. One finds instead everything tortuous, rugged, gnarled, obscure, great emptiness with great pretentiousness of mind, a labour of diction & development which seems to be striving towards great things & effecting a nullity. The Vedic singers, in the modern version, have nothing to say and do not know how to say it. I sacrifice, you drink, you are fine fellows, dont hurt me or let others hurt me, hurt my enemies, make me safe & comfortablethis is practically all that the ten Mandalas have to say to the gods & it is astonishing that they should be utterly at a loss how to say it intelligibly. A system which yields such results must have at its root some radical falsity, some cardinal error.
I pass now to a third passage, also instructive, also full of that depth and fine knowledge of the movements of the higher consciousness which every Yogin must find in the Veda. It is in the 9th hymn of the Mandala and forms the seventh verse of that hymn. Sam gomad Indra vajavad asme prithu sravo brihat, visvayur dhehi akshitam. The only crucial question in this verse is the signification of sravas.With our modern ideas the sentence seems to us to demand that sravas should be translated here fame. Sravas is undoubtedly the same word as the Greek xo (originally xFo); it means a thing heard, rumour, report, & thence fame. If we take it in that sense, we shall have to translate Arrange for us, O universal life, a luminous and solid, wide & great fame unimpaired. I dismiss at once the idea that go & vaja can here signify cattle and food or wealth. A herded & fooded or wealthy fame to express a fame for wealth of cattle & food is a forceful turn of expression we might expect to find in Aeschylus or in Shakespeare; but I should hesitate, except in case of clear necessity, to admit it in the Veda or in any Sanscrit style of composition; for such expressions have always been alien to the Indian intellect. Our stylistic vagaries have been of another kind. But is luminous & solid fame much better? I shall suggest another meaning for sravas which will give as usual a deeper sense to the whole passage without our needing to depart by a hairs breadth from the etymological significance of the words. Sruti in Sanscrit is a technical term, originally, for the means by which Vedic knowledge is acquired, inspiration in the suprarational mind; srutam is the knowledge of Veda. Similarly, we have in Vedic Sanscrit the forms srut and sravas. I take srut to mean inspired knowledge in the act of reception, sravas the thing acquired by the reception, inspired knowledge. Gomad immediately assumes its usual meaning illuminated, full of illumination. Vaja I take throughout the Veda as a technical Vedic expression for that substantiality of being-consciousness which is the basis of all special manifestation of being & power, all utayah & vibhutayahit means by etymology extended being in force, va or v to exist or move in extension and the vocable j which always gives the idea of force or brilliance or decisiveness in action or manifestation or contact. I shall accept no meaning which is inconsistent with this fundamental significance. Moreover the tendency of the old commentators to make all possible words, vaja, ritam etc mean sacrifice or food, must be rejected,although a justification in etymology might always be made out for the effort. Vaja means substance in being, substance, plenty, strength, solidity, steadfastness. Here it obviously means full of substance, just as gomad full of luminousness,not in the sense arthavat, but with another & psychological connotation. I translate then, O Indra, life of all, order for us an inspired knowledge full of illumination & substance, wide & great and unimpaired. Anyone acquainted with Yoga will at once be struck by the peculiar & exact appropriateness of all these epithets; they will admit him at once by sympathy into the very heart of Madhuchchhandas experience & unite him in soul with that ancient son of Visvamitra. When Mahas, the supra-rational principle, begins with some clearness to work in Yoga, not on its own level, not swe dame, but in the mind, it works at first through the principle of Srutinot Smriti or Drishti, but this Sruti is feeble & limited in its range, it is not prithu; broken & scattered in its working even when the range is wide, not unlimited in continuity, not brihat; not pouring in a flood of light, not gomat, but coming as a flash in the darkness, often with a pale glimmer like the first feebleness of dawn; not supported by a strong steady force & foundation of being, Sat, in manifestation, not vajavad, but working without foundation, in a void, like secondh and glimpses of Sat in nothingness, in vacuum, in Asat; and, therefore, easily impaired, easily lost hold of, easily stolen by the Panis or the Vritras. All these defects Madhuchchhanda has noticed in his own experience; his prayer is for an inspired knowledge which shall be full & free & perfect, not marred even in a small degree by these deficiencies.
1.07 - The Process of Evolution, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Sayama is unseasonable and would be fruitless when a force, quality or tendency is in its infancy or vigour, before it has had the enjoyment and full activity which is its due. When once a thing is born it must have its youth, growth, enjoyment, life and final decay and death; when once an impetus has been given by Prakriti to her creation, she insists that the velocity shall spend itself by natural exhaustion before it shall cease. To arrest the growth or speed unseasonably by force is nigraha, which can be effective for a time but not in perpetuity. It is said in the Gita that all things are ruled by their nature, to their nature they return and nigraha or repression is fruitless. What happens then is that the thing untimely slain by violence is not really dead, but withdraws for a time into the Prakriti which sent it forth, gathers an immense force and returns with extraordinary violence ravening for the rightful enjoyment which it was denied. We see this in the attempts we make to get rid of our evil saskras or associations when we first tread the path of Yoga. If anger is a powerful element in our nature, we may put it down for a time by sheer force and call it self-control, but eventually unsatisfied Nature will get the better of us and the passion return upon us with astonishing force at an unexpected moment. There are only two ways by which we can effectively get the better of the passion which seeks to enslave us. One is by substitution, replacing it whenever it rises by the opposite quality, anger by thoughts of forgiveness, love or forbearance, lust by meditation on purity, pride by thoughts of humility and our own defects or nothingness; this is the method of Rajayoga, but it is a difficult, slow and uncertain method; for both the ancient traditions and the modern experience of Yoga show that men who had attained for long years the highest self-mastery have been suddenly surprised by a violent return of the thing they thought dead or for ever subject. Still this substitution, slow though it be, is one of the commonest methods of Nature and it is largely by this means, often unconsciously or half-consciously used, that the character of a man changes and develops from life to life or even in the bounds of a single lifetime. It does not destroy things in their seed and the seed which is not reduced to ashes by Yoga is always capable of sprouting again and growing into the complete and mighty tree. The second method is to give bhoga or enjoyment to the passion so as to get rid of it quickly. When it is satiated and surfeited by excessive enjoyment, it becomes weak and spent and a reaction ensues which establishes for a time the opposite force, tendency or quality. If that moment is seized by the Yogin for nigraha, the nigraha so repeated at every suitable opportunity becomes so far effective as to reduce the strength and vitality of the vtti sufficiently for the application of the final sayama. This method of enjoyment and reaction is also a favourite and universal method of Nature, but it is never complete in itself and, if applied to permanent forces or qualities, tends to establish a see-saw of opposite tendencies, extremely useful to the operations of Prakriti but from the point of view of self-mastery useless and inconclusive. It is only when this method is followed up by the use of sayama that it becomes effective. The Yogin regards the vtti merely as a play of Nature with which he is not concerned and of which he is merely the spectator; the anger, lust or pride is not his, it is the universal Mothers and she works it and stills it for her own purposes. When, however, the vtti is strong, mastering and unspent, this attitude cannot be maintained in sincerity and to try to hold it intellectually without sincerely feeling it is mithycra, false discipline or hypocrisy. It is only when it is somewhat exhausted by repeated enjoyment and coercion that Prakriti or Nature at the comm and of the soul or Purusha can really deal with her own creation. She deals with it first by vairgya in its crudest form of disgust, but this is too violent a feeling to be permanent; yet it leaves its mark behind in a deep-seated wish to be rid of its cause, which survives the return and temporary reign of the passion. Afterwards its return is viewed with impatience but without any acute feeling of intolerance. Finally supreme indifference or udsnat is gained and the final going out of the tendency by the ordinary process of Nature is watched in the true spirit of the sayam who has the knowledge that he is the witnessing soul and has only to dissociate himself from a phenomenon for it to cease. The highest stage leads either to mukti in the form of laya or disappearance, the vtti vanishing altogether and for good, or else to another kind of freedom when the soul knows that it is Gods ll and leaves it to Him whether He shall throw out the tendency or use it for His own purposes. This is the attitude of the Karmayogin who puts himself in Gods hands and does work for His sake only, knowing that it is Gods force that works in him. The result of that attitude of self-surrender is that the Lord of all takes charge and according to the promise of the Gita delivers His servant and lover from all sin and evil, the vttis working in the bodily machine without affecting the soul and working only when He raises them up for His purposes. This is nirliptat, the state of absolute freedom within the ll.
The law is the same for the mass as for the individual. The process of human evolution has been seen by the eye of inspired observation to be that of working out the tiger and the ape. The forces of cruelty, lust, mischievous destruction, pain-giving, folly, brutality, ignorance were once rampant in humanity, they had full enjoyment; then by the growth of religion and philosophy they began in periods of satiety such as the beginning of the Christian era in Europe to be partly replaced, partly put under control. As is the law of such things, they have always reverted again with greater or less virulence and sought with more or less success to re-establish themselves. Finally in the nineteenth century it seemed for a time as if some of these forces had, for a time at least, exhausted themselves and the hour for sayama and gradual dismissal from the evolution had really arrived. Such hopes always recur and in the end they are likely to bring about their own fulfilment, but before that happens another recoil is inevitable. We see plenty of signs of it in the reeling back into the beast which is in progress in Europe and America behind the fair outside of Science, progress, civilisation and humanitarianism, and we are likely to see more signs of it in the era that is coming upon us. A similar law holds in politics and society. The political evolution of the human race follows certain lines of which the most recent formula has been given in the watchwords of the French Revolution, freedom, equality and brotherhood. But the forces of the old world, the forces of despotism, the forces of traditional privilege and selfish exploitation, the forces of unfraternal strife and passionate self-regarding competition are always struggling to reseat themselves on the thrones of the earth. A determined movement of reaction is evident in many parts of the world and nowhere perhaps more than in England which was once one of the self-styled champions of progress and liberty. The attempt to go back to the old spirit is one of those necessary returns without which it cannot be so utterly exhausted as to be blotted out from the evolution. It rises only to be defeated and crushed again. On the other hand the force of the democratic tendency is not a force which is spent but one which has not yet arrived, not a force which has had the greater part of its enjoyment but one which is still vigorous, unsatisfied and eager for fulfilment. Every attempt to coerce it in the past reacted eventually on the coercing force and brought back the democratic spirit fierce, hungry and unsatisfied, joining to its fair motto of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity the terrible addition or Death. It is not likely that the immediate future of the democratic tendency will satisfy the utmost dreams of the lover of liberty who seeks an anarchist freedom, or of the lover of equality who tries to establish a socialistic dead level, or of the lover of fraternity who dreams of a world-embracing communism. But some harmonisation of this great ideal is undoubtedly the immediate future of the human race. On the old forces of despotism, inequality and unbridled competition, after they have been once more overthrown, a process of gradual sayama will be performed by which what has remained of them will be regarded as the disappearing vestiges of a dead reality and without any further violent coercion be transformed slowly and steadily out of existence.
1.07 - The Psychic Center, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
When all this external machinery dissolves, it retains only the essence of its experiences, the personality's broad tendencies which constitute the first embryo of a psychic personality behind the frontal being;86 it takes with it certain consequences from the life just lived, for each of our actions has a dynamism that tends to perpetuate itself (what is called Karma in India); certain imprints will translate in another life 86
The psychic personality, or true personality, expresses each person's unique destiny (perhaps we should say his unique angle) beneath his cultural, social, and religious layers. Thus, a person might be successively a navigator, a musician, a revolutionary, a Christian, a Moslem, and an atheist; yet through each life he would express the same angle of love, say, or of conquering energy, or joy, or purity, which would impart a unique nuance to everything he undertook. From lifetime to lifetime this particular angle would become more prominent, refined, and extensive.
1.080 - Pratyahara - The Return of Energy, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
It was already mentioned on an earlier occasion that this melancholy mood is a great obstacle in yoga. Duhkha daurmanasya are the two things mentioned sorrow or grief, and dejection of spirit on account of not having gained mastery, or not having achieved anything. This should not come, because not even an adept can know what mastery he has gained, where he is standing, and what are the obstacles preventing him from achievement. Nothing will be known even to an expert. Even such a person will be kept in the dark; such is the mysterious realm that we are treading and walking through. But, the great watchword of this practice is: never be diffident. We should never condemn ourselves or be dispirited in our practice. It may be that for months together we may not achieve concentration, which is also possible due to the working of certain Karmas. Even then, one should be tirelessly pursuing it.
There is a story in which it is told that Robert Bruce saw a spider falling down many times climbing up and falling down and climbing up. Robert Bruce was defeated in a war. He was sitting in a cave somewhere, crying. He did not know what to do. Then he saw a spider climbing up the wall and falling down again it went up and again it fell down. A hundred times it fell, and finally it got up and caught the point to which it wanted to rise. Then he said, This is what I have to do now. I should not keep crying here. So, he went up with the regiment that he had and the forces available, and launched a frontal attack once again, and won victory in the war. The moral of the story is that we should not be melancholy, dispirited or lost in our conscious efforts, because the so-called defeatist feeling that we have in our practice is due to the operation of certain obstructing Karmas. Otherwise, what can be the explanation for our defeat in spite of our effort to the best of our ability?
We have been struggling for days and nights, for months and years and we are getting nothing. How is it possible? The reason is that there is some very strong impediment, like a thick wall standing in front of us, on account of some tamasic or rajasic Karma of the past lives. All our time is spent in breaking through this wall. The achievement is something quite different that will come later on. So why should we weep that we have achieved nothing? We have achieved; we have pierced through the wall. It is like Bharatpur Fort which the British wanted to break and could not, due to the thickness of the wall. Somehow or other, after tremendous effort, they made a hole and went in. We can imagine what indefatigable effort and what kind of persistence was required in breaking through the fort. Otherwise, one would give up and go back. It was impossible to break in because the wall was too thick fifty feet thick and made of mud. One could not break it by any kind of bullet such was Bharatpur Fort. They did not succeed, but they were very persistent. Somehow or other they made a hole and went in, and the fort was captured.
Likewise, the first days effort need not necessarily bring illumination because of the great efforts that are necessary to break through the fort of the veil of ignorance and Karma, which is itself sufficient and weighty. Even if we spend three-fourths of our life in this work only, it should not be regarded as a kind of defeat. Often it so happens that the major part of our life is spent only in cleansing and in breaking through this veil. Once this negative work of cleansing and breaking is effected, then the positive achievement will take place in a trice. How much time do we require to see the brilliance of the sun? We have only to remove the cataract veil that is covering our eyes and immediately we see the sun shining. The effort is to remove this veil. Hence, this vashyata, or the mastery over the senses which the sutra speaks of, is gained with very hard effort, and no sadhaka can afford to lose heart in the attempt. It is declared in the scriptures on yoga that the only thing that works, and succeeds, in this noble endeavour is persistence. If we go on persistently doing a thing again and again, whether we succeed or not we will succeed eventually.
1.08 - Attendants, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
Dr. Satyendra is an unassuming and nice person, did his part of the job in a quiet and steady way. He was cleaning, for a time, the windows and furniture in Sri Aurobindo's room. Ready to serve but never pushing and not over eager, he kept a closeness and happy relation with all. He used to express very often that he was more of a retiring nature and more intent on personal realisation through Bhakti. Karmayoga did not suit his temperament very well. Whatever might be his particular bent, we saw that he did his own work like a Karmayogi, in a genuine spirit of service to the Master whom he always addressed as Sir. His talks with Sri Aurobindo showed his sense of humour, his insight into philosophy, politics and mysticism. Sri Aurobindo seemed to like his company, his quiet devotion, in spite of his constantly grumbling against the integral Yoga and the Supermind. While cleaning the Master's nails as he lay in bed, he would start his old unvarying tale about the necessity of the personal touch, his close contact with his former guru. Sri Aurobindo would listen quietly to his nostalgic monologue. There must be some expression of love, was his constant burden, to which Sri Aurobindo once replied that unity of consciousness is the root and love is its fine flower. A shrewd observer of human and divine nature, it was he who made the pertinent remark that in this Yoga only two persons have achieved complete surrender: the Mother to Sri Aurobindo and Sri Aurobindo to the Mother! As an example he related this story: Sri Aurobindo was lying in bed one day, and the ceiling-fan was revolving at full speed. Satyendra felt that he wanted something, so he approached the Master and asked, "Are you looking for something, Sir?" "Oh, no.... Is Nirod there?" "No, Sir. But can I do anything?" he asked. "I was wondering if the speed of the fan could be reduced," he replied. "I can do it, Sir." "Oh, can you?" he asked. Sri Aurobindo enquired about me because I was given charge of the fan by the Mother, and he would not violate the rule. As for the reduction of the speed, that too was in deference to the wishes of the Mother, for once on entering Sri Aurobindo's room, she saw the fan turning at full speed and remarked, "Oh, what a storm!" To give another instance: when we wanted to move the table-fan a bit nearer him, he said, "No, Mother has kept it there." This is how we learnt submission and obedience not only in big matters, but even in small trivialities.
The Mother told Satyendra recently on his birthday that Sri Aurobindo had come to her on the eve of his interview with her and said that he had taken good care of Sri Aurobindo's body. What a touching recognition from Sri Aurobindo! Even after leaving the body, the Guru remembers a kind act, some help rendered to him by his disciple! What a Divine Magnanimity! We know also that all those who had served him during his accident period have had their reward in some form or other, in the material and spiritual life.
1.08 - Karma, the Law of Cause and Effect, #Initiation Into Hermetics, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
object:1.08 - Karma, the Law of Cause and Effect
class:chapter
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An immutable law, which has its aspect just in the akasa principle, is the law of cause and effect. Each cause sets free a corresponding effect. This law works everywhere as the most sublime rule. Consequently every deed proceeds from a cause or is followed by any result. Therefore we should not only accept Karma as a rule for our good actions, as the oriental philosophy puts it, but its signification reaches farther and is a very deep one. Instinctively all men have the feeling that something good can bring good results only and again all the evil must end up with evil or, in the words of a proverb, Whatsoever a man sows, that shall he reap. Everybody is bound to know this law and to respect it. This law of cause and effect governs the elemental principles, too. I have no intention to enter into details of this law, which could be expressed in a few words, as they are quite clear so that every reasonable man will understand them. Subject to this law of cause and effect is also the law of evolution or development. Thus development is an aspect of the Karma law.
1.08 - The Gods of the Veda - The Secret of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But in the last century a new scholarship has invaded the country, the scholarship of aggressive & victorious Europe, which for the first time denies the intimate connection and the substantial identity of the Vedas & the later Scriptures. We ourselves have made distinctions of Jnanakanda & Karmakanda, Sruti & Smriti, but we have never doubted that all these are branches of a single stock. But our new Western Pandits & authorities tell us that we are in error. All of us from ancient Yajnavalkya to the modern Vaidika have been making a huge millennial mistake. European scholarship applying for the first time the test of a correct philology to these obscure writings has corrected the mistake. It has discovered that the Vedas are of an entirely different character from the rest of our Hindu development. For our development has been Pantheistic or transcendental, philosophical, mystic, devotional, sombre, secretive, centred in the giant names of the Indian Trinity, disengaging itself from sacrifice, moving towards asceticism. The Vedas are naturalistic, realistic, ritualistic, semi-barbarous, a sacrificial worship of material Nature-powers, henotheistic at their highest, Pagan, joyous and self-indulgent. Brahma & Shiva do not exist for the Veda; Vishnu & Rudra are minor, younger & unimportant deities. Many more discoveries of a startling nature, but now familiar to the most ignorant, have been successfully imposed on our intellects. The Vedas, it seems, were not revealed to great & ancient Rishis, but composed by the priests of a small invading Aryan race of agriculturists & warriors, akin to the Greeks & Persians, who encamped, some fifteen hundred years before Christ, in the Panjab.
With the acceptance of these modern opinions Hinduism ought by this time to have been as dead among educated men as the religion of the Greeks & Romans. It should at best have become a religio Pagana, a superstition of ignorant villagers. Itis, on the contrary, stronger & more alive, fecund & creative than it had been for the previous three centuries. To a certain extent this unexpected result may be traced to the high opinion in which even European opinion has been compelled to hold the Vedanta philosophy, the Bhagavat Gita and some of the speculationsas the Europeans think themor, as we hold, the revealed truths of the Upanishads. But although intellectually we are accustomed in obedience to Western criticism to base ourselves on the Upanishads & Gita and put aside Purana and Veda as mere mythology & mere ritual, yet in practice we live by the religion of the Puranas & Tantras even more profoundly & intimately than we live by & realise the truths of the Upanishads. In heart & soul we still worship Krishna and Kali and believe in the truth of their existence. Nevertheless this divorce between the heart & the intellect, this illicit compromise between faith & reason cannot be enduring. If Purana & Veda cannot be rehabilitated, it is yet possible that our religion driven out of the soul into the intellect may wither away into the dry intellectuality of European philosophy or the dead formality & lifeless clarity of European Theism. It behoves us therefore to test our faith by a careful examination into the meaning of Purana & Veda and into the foundation of that truth which our intellect seeks to deny [but] our living spiritual experience continues to find in their conceptions. We must discover why it is that while our intellects accept only the truth of Vedanta, our spiritual experiences confirm equally or even more powerfully the truth of Purana. A revival of Hindu intellectual faith in the totality of the spiritual aspects of our religion, whether Vedic, Vedantic, Tantric or Puranic, I believe to be an inevitable movement of the near future.
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The precise meaning of the words has first to be settled. Charshani is taken in the Veda to be, like krishti, a word equivalent to manushya, men. The entire correctness of the rendering may well be doubted. The gods, no doubt, can be described as upholders of men, but there are passages & uses in which the application of this significance becomes difficult. For Indra, like Agni, is called vivacharshani. Can this expression mean the Universal Man? Is Indra, like Agni, Vaivnara, in the sense of being present in all human beings? If so, the subjective capacity of Indra is indeed proved by a single epithet. But Vaivnara really means the Universal Existence or Force, from a sense of the root an which we have in anila, anala, Latin anima or else, if the combination be viv-nara, then from the Vedic sense of nara, strong, swift or bright. And what canwemake of such an expression as charshanipr?We must therefore follow our usual course & ask how charshani came to mean a human being. The root charsh or chrish is formed from the primary root char or chri (a lost form whose original presence is, however, necessary in the history of Sanscrit speech), as krish from kri. Now kri means to do, char means to do, work, practise or perform. The form krish was evidently used in the sense of action which required a prolonged or laborious effort; in the same way as the root Ar it came to mean to plough; it came to mean also to overcome or to drag or pull. From this sense of action or labour alone can krishti have been extended in significance to the idea, man; originally it must have been used like kru or keru to mean a doer, worker, and, from its form, have been capable also of meaning action. I suggest that charshani had really the same meaning & something of the same development. The other sense given to the word, swift, moving, cannot easily have led to the idea of man; strength, doing, thinking are the characteristics behind the human idea in the older languages. Charshani-dhrit applied to the Visvadevas or dhartr charshannm to Mitra & Varuna will mean the upholders of actions or activities; vivacharshani, applied to Indra or Agni, will mean the lord of all actions; charshanipr will mean filling the actions. That Indra in this sense is vivacharshani can be at once determined from two passages occurring early in the Veda,I.9.2 in Madhuchchhandas hymn to Indra, mandim Indrya mandine chakrim vivni chakraye, delight-giving for Indra the enjoyer, effective of action for the doer of all actions, where vivni chakri is a perfect equivalent to vivacharshani, and I.11.4 in another hymn to Indra, Indro vivasya Karmano dhart, Indra the upholder of every action, where we have the exact idea of charshandhrit, vivacharshani & dhartr charshannm. The Visvadevas are the upholders of all our activities.
In the eighth rik, usr iva swasarni offers us an almost insoluble difficulty. Usr means, ordinarily, either rays or cows or mornings; swasaram is a Vedic word of unfixed significance. Sayana renders, hastening like sunbeams to the days, a rendering which has neither sense nor appropriateness; emending it slightly we get hastening like dawns or mornings to the days, a beautiful & picturesque, though difficult image but one, unhappily, which has no appropriateness to the context. If we can suppose the lost root swas to have meant, to lie, sleep, rest, like the simpler form sas (cf sanj to cling & swanj to embrace), we may translate, hastening like kine to their stalls; but this also is not appropriate to the Visvadevas hastening to the Soma offering not for rest, but for enjoyment & action. I believe the real meaning to be, hastening like lovers to their paramours; but the philological reasoning by which I arrive at these meanings for usra & swasaram is so remote & conjectural, that I cannot lay any stress on the suggestion. Aptur is a less difficult word. If it is a compound, ap+tur, it must mean swift or forceful in effecting or producing; but it may also be formed by the addition of a suffix tur in an adjectival sense to the root ap, to do, bring about, effect, produce or obtain.
1.08 - The Supreme Will, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
1:IN THE light of this progressive manifestation of the Spirit, first apparently bound in the Ignorance, then free in the power and wisdom of the Infinite, we can better understand the great and crowning injunction of the Gita to the Karmayogin, "Abandoning all dharmas, all principles and laws and rules of conduct, take refuge in me alone." All standards and rules are temporary constructions founded upon the needs of the ego in its transition from Matter to Spirit. These makeshifts have a relative imperativeness so long as we rest satisfied in the stages of transition, content with the physical and vital life, attached to the mental movement, or even fixed in the ranges of the mental plane that are touched by the spiritual lustres. But beyond is the unwalled wideness of a supramental infinite consciousness and there all temporary structures cease. It is not possible to enter utterly into the spiritual truth of the Eternal and Infinite if we have not the faith and courage to trust ourselves into the hands of the Lord of all things and the Friend of all creatures and leave utterly behind us our mental limits and measures. At one moment we must plunge without hesitation, reserve, fear or scruple into the ocean of the free, the infinite, the Absolute. After the Law, Liberty; after the personal, after the general, after the universal standards there is something greater, the impersonal plasticity, the divine freedom, the transcendent force and the supernal impulse. After the strait path of the ascent the wide plateaus on the summit.
2:There are three stages of the ascent, - at the bottom the bodily life enslaved to the pressure of necessity and desire, in the middle the mental, higher emotional and psychic rule that feels after greater interests, aspirations, experiences, at the summits first a deeper psychic and spiritual state and then a supramental eternal consciousness in which all our aspirations and seekings discover their own intimate significance. In the bodily life first desire and need and then the practical good of the individual and the society are the governing consideration, the dominant force. In the mental life ideas and ideals rule, ideas that are halflights wearing the garb of Truth, ideals formed by the mind as a result of a growing but still imperfect intuition and experience. Whenever the mental life prevails and the bodily diminishes its brute insistence, man the mental being feels pushed by the urge of mental Nature to mould in the sense of the idea or the ideal the life of the individual, and in the end even the vaguer more complex life of the society is forced to undergo this subtle process. In the spiritual life, or when a higher power than Mind has manifested and taken possession of the nature, these limited motive-forces recede, dwindle, tend to disappear. The spiritual or supramental Self, the Divine Being, the supreme and immanent Reality, must be alone the Lord within us and shape freely our final development according to the highest, widest, most integral expression possible of the law of our nature. In the end that nature acts in the perfect Truth and its spontaneous freedom; for it obeys only the luminous power of the Eternal. The individual has nothing further to gain, no desire to fulfil; he has become a portion of the impersonality or the universal personality of the Eternal. No other object than the manifestation and play of the Divine Spirit in life and the maintenance and conduct of the world in its march towards the divine goal can move him to action. Mental ideas, opinions, constructions are his no more; for his mind has fallen into silence, it is only a channel for the Light and Truth of the divine knowledge. Ideals are too narrow for the vastness of his spirit; it is the ocean of the Infinite that flows through him and moves him for ever.
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4:The social law, that second term of our progress, is a means to which the ego is subjected in order that it may learn discipline by subordination to a wider collective ego. This law may be quite empty of any moral content and may express only the needs or the practical good of the society as each society conceives it. Or it may express those needs and that good, but modified and coloured and supplemented by a higher moral or ideal law. It is binding on the developing but not yet perfectly developed individual in the shape of social duty, family obligation, communal or national demand, so long as it is not in conflict with his growing sense of the higher Right. But the sadhaka of the Karmayoga will abandon this also to the Lord of works. After he has made this surrender, his social impulses and judgments will, like his desires, only be used for their exhaustion or, it may be, so far as they are still necessary for a time to enable him to identify his lower mental nature with mankind in general or with any grouping of mankind in its works and hopes and aspirations. But after that brief time is over, they will be withdrawn and a divine government will alone abide. He will be identified with the Divine and with others only through the divine consciousness and not through the mental nature.
5:For, even after he is free, the sadhaka will be in the world and to be in the world is to remain in works. But to remain in works without desire is to act for the good of the world in general or for the kind or the race or for some new creation to be evolved on the earth or some work imposed by the Divine Will within him. And this must be done either in the framework provided by the environment or the grouping in which he is born or placed or else in one which is chosen or created for him by a divine direction. Therefore in our perfection there must be nothing left in the mental being which conflicts with or prevents our sympathy and free self-identification with the kind, the group or whatever collective expression of the Divine he is meant to lead, help or serve. But in the end it must become a free selfidentification through identity with the Divine and not a mental bond or moral tie of union or a vital association dominated by any kind of personal, social, national, communal or credal egoism. If any social law is obeyed, it will not be from physical necessity or from the sense of personal or general interest or for expediency or because of the pressure of the environment or from any sense of duty, but solely for the sake of the Lord of works and because it is felt or known to be the Divine Will that the social law or rule or relation as it stands can still be kept as a figure of the inner life and the minds of men must not be disturbed by its infringement. If, on the other hand, the social law, rule or relation is disregarded, that too will not be for the indulgence of desire, personal will or personal opinion, but because a greater rule is felt that expresses the law of the Spirit or because it is known that there must be in the march of the divine All-Will a movement towards the changing, exceeding or abolition of existing laws and forms for the sake of a freer larger life necessary to the world's progress.
6:There is still left the moral law or the ideal and these, even to many who think themselves free, appear for ever sacred and intangible. But the sadhaka, his gaze turned always to the heights, will abandon them to Him whom all ideals seek imperfectly and fragmentarily to express; all moral qualities are only a poor and rigid travesty of his spontaneous and illimitable perfection. The bondage to sin and evil passes away with the passing of nervous desire; for it belongs to the quality of vital passion, impulsion or drive of propensity in us (rajogun.a) and is extinguished with the transformation of that mode of Nature. But neither must the aspirant remain subject to the gilded or golden chain of a conventional or a habitual or a mentally ordered or even a high or clear sattwic virtue. That will be replaced by something profounder and more essential than the minor inadequate thing that men call virtue. The original sense of the word was manhood and this is a much larger and deeper thing than the moral mind and its structures. The culmination of Karmayoga is a yet higher and deeper state that may perhaps be called "soulhood", - for the soul is greater than the man; a free soulhood spontaneously welling out in works of a supreme Truth and Love will replace human virtue. But this supreme Truth cannot be forced to inhabit the petty edifices of the practical reason or even confined in the more dignified constructions of the larger ideative reason that imposes its representations as if they were pure truth on the limited human intelligence. This supreme Love will not necessarily be consistent, much less will it be synonymous, with the partial and feeble, ignorant and emotion-ridden movements of human attraction, sympathy and pity. The petty law cannot bind the vaster movement; the mind's partial attainment cannot dictate its terms to the soul's supreme fulfilment.
7:At first, the higher Love and Truth will fulfil its movement in the sadhaka according to the essential law or way of his own nature. For that is the special aspect of the divine Nature, the particular power of the supreme Shakti, out of which his soul has emerged into the Play, not limited indeed by the forms of this law or way, for the soul is infinite. But still its stuff of nature bears that stamp, evolves fluently along those lines or turns around the spiral curves of that dominating influence. He will manifest the divine Truth-movement according to the temperament of the sage or the lion-like fighter or the lover and enjoyer or the worker and servant or in any combination of essential attributes (gunas) that may constitute the form given to his being by its own inner urge. It is this self-nature playing freely in his acts which men will see in him and not a conduct cut, chalked out, artificially regulated, by any lesser rule or by any law from outside.
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9:The total surrender, then, of all our actions to a supreme and universal Will, an unconditioned and standardless surrender of all works to the government of something eternal within us which will replace the ordinary working of the ego-nature, is the way and end of Karmayoga. But what is this divine supreme Will and how can it be recognised by our deluded instruments and our blind prisoned intelligence?
10:Ordinarily, we conceive of ourselves as a separate "I" in the universe that governs a separate body and mental and moral nature, chooses in full liberty its own self-determined actions and is independent and therefore sole master of its works and responsible. It is not easy for the ordinary mind, the mind that has not thought nor looked deeply into its own constitution and constituents, it is difficult even for minds that have thought but have no spiritual vision and experience, to imagine how there can be anything else in us truer, deeper and more powerful than this apparent "I" and its empire. But the very first step towards self-knowledge as towards the true knowledge of phenomena is to get behind the apparent truth of things and find the real but masked, essential and dynamic truth which their appearances cover.
1.08 - Worship of Substitutes and Images, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
Now worshipping Ishvara and Him alone is Bhakti; the worship of anything else Deva, or Pitri, or any other being cannot be Bhakti. The various kinds of worship of the various Devas are all to be included in ritualistic Karma, which gives to the worshipper only a particular result in the form of some celestial enjoyment, but can neither give rise to Bhakti nor lead to Mukti. One thing, therefore, has to be carefully borne in mind. If, as it may happen in some cases, the highly philosophic ideal, the supreme Brahman, is dragged down by Pratika-worship to the level of the Pratika, and the Pratika itself is taken to be the Atman of the worshipper or his Antarymin (Inner Ruler), the worshipper gets entirely misled, as no Pratika can really be the Atman of the worshipper.
But where Brahman Himself is the object of worship, and the Pratika stands only as a substitute or a suggestion thereof, that is to say, where, through the Pratika the omnipresent Brahman is worshipped the Pratika itself being idealised into the cause of all, Brahman the worship is positively beneficial; nay, it is absolutely necessary for all mankind until they have all got beyond the primary or preparatory state of the mind in regard to worship. When, therefore, any gods or other beings are worshipped in and for themselves, such worship is only a ritualistic Karma; and as a Vidy (science) it gives us only the fruit belonging to that particular Vidya; but when the Devas or any other beings are looked upon as Brahman and worshipped, the result obtained is the same as by the worshipping of Ishvara. This explains how, in many cases, both in the Shrutis and the Smritis, a god, or a sage, or some other extraordinary being is taken up and lifted, as it were, out of his own nature and idealised into Brahman, and is then worshipped. Says the Advaitin, "Is not everything Brahman when the name and the form have been removed from it?" "Is not He, the Lord, the innermost Self of every one?" says the Vishishtdvaitin.
"The fruition of even the worship of Adityas etc. Brahman Himself bestows, because He is the Ruler of all." Says Shankara in his Brahma-Sutra-Bhsya
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The same ideas apply to the worship of the Pratimas as to that of the Pratikas; that is to say, if the image stands for a god or a saint, the worship is not the result of Bhakti, and does not lead lo liberation; but if it stands for the one God, the worship thereof will bring both Bhakti and Mukti. Of the principal religions of the world we see Vedantism, Buddhism, and certain forms of Christianity freely using images; only two religions, Mohammedanism and Protestantism, refuse such help. Yet the Mohammedans use the grave of their saints and martyrs almost in the place of images; and the Protestants, in rejecting all concrete helps to religion, are drifting away every year farther and farther from spirituality till at present there is scarcely any difference between the advanced Protestants and the followers of August Comte, or agnostics who preach ethics alone. Again, in Christianity and Mohammedanism whatever exists of image worship is made to fall under that category in which the Pratika or the Pratima is worshipped in itself, but not as a "help to the vision" (Drishtisaukaryam) of God; therefore it is at best only of the nature of ritualistic Karmas and cannot produce either Bhakti or Mukti. In this form of image-worship, the allegiance of the soul is given to other things than Ishvara, and, therefore, such use of images, or graves, or temples, or tombs, is real idolatry; it is in itself neither sinful nor wicked it is a rite a Karma, and worshippers must and will get the fruit thereof.
next chapter: 1.09 - The Chosen Ideal
1.099 - The Entry of the Eternal into the Individual, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
The sutra tells us that a transformation of oneself into a new state, jatyantara parinama, is brought about spontaneously by an increased amount of natural power entering into ones system due to the removal of the impediments. The impediments are our prarabdha Karma, the Karmas with which we are born, which determine the nature of our present existence in this bodily form. They have a particular direction of action, and due to the force with which the prarabdha works, the force of nature is set aside. When the rajasic and tamasic prarabdha gets diminished and sattvic prarabdha begins to operate, natural forces enter us.
Thus, by the increase of sattva in us, we allow the powers of nature to enter us. It is the rajas that is predominant in ourselves which cuts off nature from our individual lives. The principal function of rajoguna is separation differentiating one from the other, not allowing in the cooperation of one with the other, and creating a dissimilarity of character and difference in function. Due to the intensity of the action of rajas, there is this division of properties and a separation of individualities, so that there has been the perception and experience of a dividedness of life, while this is really not there. For nature, taken in its completeness, there is no division. It is one total, a comprehensive completeness in which there is no distinction of the subject on one side and the object on the other side. The distinction has been created by certain artificial factors, and these are the operations of the gunas. By diminishing the intensity of the action of rajas through intense concentration of mind, we become more and more approximate to the original condition of prakriti. The integrating powers of nature begin to act when sattva rises in us. On the other hand, if the rajas is to be predominant, the disintegrating factors start operating.
1.09 - Equality and the Annihilation of Ego, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
4:The renunciation of attachment to the work and its fruit is the beginning of a wide movement towards an absolute equality in the mind and soul which must become all-enveloping if we are to be perfect in the spirit. For the worship of the Master of works demands a clear recognition and glad acknowledgment of him in ourselves, in all things and in all happenings. Equality is the sign of this adoration; it is the soul's ground on which true sacrifice and worship can be done. The Lord is there equally in all beings, we have to make no essential distinctions between ourselves and others, the wise and the ignorant, friend and enemy, man and animal, the saint and the sinner. We must hate none, despise none, be repelled by none; for in all we have to see the One disguised or manifested at his pleasure. He is a little revealed in one or more revealed in another or concealed and wholly distorted in others according to his will and his knowledge of what is best for that which he intends to become in form in them and to do in works in their nature. All is ourself, one self that has taken many shapes. Hatred and disliking and scorn and repulsion, clinging and attachment and preference are natural, necessary, inevitable at a certain stage: they attend upon or they help to make and maintain Nature's choice in us. But to the Karmayogin they are a survival, a stumbling-block, a process of the Ignorance and, as he progresses, they fall away from his nature. The child-soul needs them for its growth; but they drop from an adult in the divine culture. In the God-nature to which we have to rise there can be an adamantine, even a destructive severity but not hatred, a divine irony but not scorn, a calm, clear-seeing and forceful rejection but not repulsion and dislike. Even what we have to destroy, we must not abhor or fail to recognise as a disguised and temporary movement of the Eternal.
5:And since all things are the one Self in its manifestation, we shall have equality of soul towards the ugly and the beautiful, the maimed and the perfect, the noble and the vulgar, the pleasant and the unpleasant, the good and the evil. Here also there will be no hatred, scorn and repulsion, but instead the equal eye that sees all things in their real character and their appointed place. For we shall know that all things express or disguise, develop or distort, as best they can or with whatever defect they must, under the circumstances intended for them, in the way possible to the immediate status or function or evolution of their nature, some truth or fact, some energy or potential of the Divine necessary by its presence in the progressive manifestation both to the whole of the present sum of things and for the perfection of the ultimate result. That truth is what we must seek and discover behind the transitory expression; undeterred by appearances, by the deficiencies or the disfigurements of the expression, we can then worship the Divine for ever unsullied, pure, beautiful and perfect behind his masks. All indeed has to be changed, not ugliness accepted but divine beauty, not imperfection taken as our resting-place but perfection striven after, the supreme good made the universal aim and not evil. But what we do has to be done with a spiritual understanding and knowledge, and it is a divine good, beauty, perfection, pleasure that has to be followed after, not the human standards of these things. If we have not equality, it is a sign that we are still pursued by the Ignorance, we shall truly understand nothing and it is more than likely that we shall destroy the old imperfection only to create another: for we are substituting the appreciations of our human mind and desire-soul for the divine values.
1.09 - Taras Ultimate Nature, #How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator, #Thubten Chodron, #unset
being under the control of afictionsespecially ignorance and Karma.
Cyclic existence is repeatedly taking rebirth under the force of afictions
and Karma. Propelled by ignorance, we are born again and again without
choice. We were born with a body that becomes old, gets sick, and dies, and
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or Karma, leave seedstraces of energyin our mindstream. When these
seeds meet the proper conditions, they ripen, bringing more unsatisfactory
experiences. We react to these new experiences with attachment and hostility, thus creating more Karma. This is why its called cyclic existence. Under
the inuence of ignorance, our afictions motivate actions that create experiences, and those experiences become the setting in which more disturbing
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All Buddhists and non-Buddhists who believe in Karma and its result are
challenged to explain how karmic seeds go from one life to another. In general, most non-Buddhists assert some kind of soul, atman, or unchanging self
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the connection between the person who created the Karma and the person
who experiences the result.
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Instead, it asserts that the mere self carries the Karma. We may wonder:
The mere I exists by being merely labeled, so how can it carry the karmic
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basis of designation, the aggregates. That mere I is what carries the Karma.
Furthermore, karmic seeds exist by being merely labeled. Inherently existent karmic seeds also cannot be found when sought by means of ultimate
1.09 - The Guardian of the Threshold, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
law of Karma. These powers will now partly release thee from their constraining influence; and henceforth must thou accomplish for thyself a part of the work which hitherto they performed for thee. Destiny struck thee many a hard blow in the past. Thou knewest not why. Each blow was the consequence of a harmful deed in a bygone lie. Thou foundest joy and gladness, and thou didst take them as they came. They, too, were the fruits of former deeds. Thy character shows many a beautiful side, and many an ugly flaw. Thou hast thyself to thank for both, for they are the result of thy previous experiences and thoughts. These were till now unknown to thee; their effects alone were made manifest. The karmic powers, however, beheld all thy deeds in former lives, and all thy most secret thoughts and feelings, and determined accordingly thy present self and thy present mode of life. But now all the good and evil sides of thy bygone lives shall be revealed to thee. Hitherto they were interwoven with thine own being; they were in thee and thou couldst not see them, even as thou canst not behold thine own brain with physical eyes. But now they become released from thee; they detach themselves from thy personality.
p. 234
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in thee, in accordance with my appearance, that power and capacity thanks to which thou couldst labor in a new earth life at the beautifying of my form, for thy welfare and progress. It was I, too, whose imperfection ever and again constrained the powers of destiny to lead thee back to a new incarnation upon earth. I was present at the hour of thy death, and it was on my account that the Lords of Karma ordained thy reincarnation. And it is only by thus unconsciously transforming me to complete perfection in ever recurring earthly lives that thou couldst have escaped the powers of death and passed over into immortality united with me.
"Visible do I thus stand before thee today, just as I shave ever stood invisible beside thee in the hour of death. When thou shalt have crossed my Threshold, thou wilt enter those realms to which thou hast hitherto only had access after physical death. Thou dost now enter them with full knowledge, and henceforth as thou wanderest outwardly visible upon the earth thou wilt at the same time wander in the kingdom of death, that is, in the kingdom of life eternal. I am indeed the Angel of Death; but I am at the same time the
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into shape, animating it with the still unredeemed Karma of the individual. Such physical phenomena are no longer necessary for those sufficiently prepared for the higher sight; and besides this, anyone who sees, without adequate preparation, his unredeemed Karma appear before his eyes as a living creature would run the risk of straying into evil byways. Bulwer Lytton's Zanoni contains in novel form a description of the Guardian of the Threshold.)
What is here indicated in narrative form must not be understood in the sense of an allegory, but as an experience of the highest possible reality befalling the esoteric student.
1.09 - The Pure Existent, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
7:But is this a true record? May it not be that Time and Space so disappear merely because the existence we are regarding is a fiction of the intellect, a fantastic Nihil created by speech, which we strive to erect into a conceptual reality? We regard again that Existence-in-itself and we say, No. There is something behind the phenomenon not only infinite but indefinable. Of no phenomenon, of no totality of phenomena can we say that absolutely it is. Even if we reduce all phenomena to one fundamental, universal irreducible phenomenon of movement or energy, we get only an indefinable phenomenon. The very conception of movement carries with it the potentiality of repose and betrays itself as an activity of some existence; the very idea of energy in action carries with it the idea of energy abstaining from action; and an absolute energy not in action is simply and purely absolute existence. We have only these two alternatives, either an indefinable pure existence or an indefinable energy in action and, if the latter alone is true, without any stable base or cause, then the energy is a result and phenomenon generated by the action, the movement which alone is. We have then no Existence, or we have the Nihil of the Buddhists with existence as only an attribute of an eternal phenomenon, of Action, of Karma, of Movement. This, asserts the pure reason, leaves my perceptions unsatisfied, contradicts my fundamental seeing, and therefore cannot be. For it brings us to a last abruptly ceasing stair of an ascent which leaves the whole staircase without support, suspended in the Void.
8:If this indefinable, infinite, timeless, spaceless Existence is, it is necessarily a pure absolute. It cannot be summed up in any quantity or quantities, it cannot be composed of any quality or combination of qualities. It is not an aggregate of forms or a formal substratum of forms. If all forms, quantities, qualities were to disappear, this would remain. Existence without quantity, without quality, without form is not only conceivable, but it is the one thing we can conceive behind these phenomena.
11.02 - The Golden Life-line, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
That is a way, an effective way, for dissolving life, but we seek, as we have said, not dissolution or disintegration but integration Integration into a higher integer, a greater reality. The lower chain dissolved, we have to find a new status beyond the dissolution. That is perhaps what the Upanishad indicated when it said: one has to traverse death through Ignorance (perception of ignorance) and then through Knowledge (perception of the Knowledge) to attain immortality. Buddha has led us across death, now we have to reach immortality. There is a higher line of Karma and a lower line running parallel, as I said, to each other the lower (the iron chain) leads from death to death, the higher (the golden one) leads from life to life and from light to light.
The transference from the lower chain to the higher is to be effected by the consciousness of nothingness (Shunyam) being filled or impregnated with the new consciousness of Immortality; for the units of the normal or ignorant consciousness are themselves not wholly or essentially ignorant and mortal. They have in them what Buddha did not see or recognise the immortal soul or selfas the Vedic Rishis said: that which is immortal in the mortal. What is mortal in the apparently mortal unit is the covering that hides the immortal nucleus. This covering is made of, as we know, the mental, the vital and the physical beings. These perish, that is to say, change; but that does not affect the immortal being within. Thus the consciousness is to be drawn away or detached from the covering and hitched on to the unchanging reality within. That forms the golden link of the chain of immortality of the Supreme Light. The transference from the lower chain is to be effected through the consciousness of the luminous immortal divine unit. It is the Divine in man, familiarly called 'antaryamin.'
1.107 - The Bestowal of a Divine Gift, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
The exhaustion of a Karma is effected by various ways, and these samskaras or vrittis that come up confronting the yogin are nothing but the powers of Karma, forces of Karma the potencies, or apurvas, of previous Karmas which have not yet been undergone by experience. Some of the Karmas have to be undergone by direct experience, as they cannot be opposed. It is not that everything must be opposed; that cannot succeed. Certain things have to be undergone by direct experience, whether they are pleasurable or miserable. They can be either way. When they are very powerful there is no other go than to bear the brunt of the onslaught, and then they diminish in their intensity. It is at that time that we have to practise this method of the recession of the effect into the cause not when the flood is upon the head. Only when it subsides can we can try to exercise our discrimination as to what has happened.
The bringing of the effect into the cause means the diverting of the mind from the gross to the subtler phases of this situation that has arisen in the form of the vrittis coming up to the consciousness. It is ultimately a lack of grasp of the idea of the goal of yoga that brings about this unfortunate circumstance. One cannot keep this grasp always, because who can be in a meditative mood all twenty-four hours? No human being can. That which will save us at the times when we are not meditating is the impression created in the mind by the power of the meditation which we have been practising at other times. If the meditation has been strong, protracted, practised for a long period, the atmosphere that this practice creates in the mind will ward off, to a large extent, the invasion of these vrittis in terms of their satisfaction. Otherwise, who will help us when we are not in a state of meditation? Nobody can guard us all twenty-four hours. How can we keep the police with us wherever we go? Such a thing is impossible. And it is at that time when we are unguarded, which is of course common in anyones life, that these samskaras will come up.
1.10 - Concentration - Its Practice, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
The roots, the causes, the Samskaras being there, they manifest and form the effects. The cause dying down becomes the effect; the effect getting subtler becomes the cause of the next effect. A tree bears a seed, which becomes the cause of another tree, and so on. All our works now are the effects of past Samskaras; again, these works becoming Samskaras will be the causes of future actions, and thus we go on. So this aphorism says that the cause being there, the fruit must come, in the form of species of beings: one will be a man, another an angel, another an animal, another a demon. Then there are different effects of Karma in life. One man lives fifty years, another a hundred, another dies in two years, and never attains maturity; all these differences in life are regulated by past Karma. One man is born, as it were, for pleasure; if he buries himself in a forest, pleasure will follow him there. Another man, wherever he goes, is followed by pain; everything becomes painful for him. It is the result of their own past. According to the philosophy of the Yogis, all virtuous actions bring pleasure, and all vicious actions bring pain. Any man who does wicked deeds is sure to reap their fruit in the form of pain.
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Some Karma we have worked out already, some we are working out now in the present, and some are waiting to bear fruit in the future. The first kind is past and gone. The second we will have to work out, and it is only that which is waiting to bear fruit in the future that we can conquer and control, towards which end all our forces should be directed. This is what Patanjali means when he says that Samskaras are to be controlled by resolving them into their causal state (II. l0).
1.10 - Fate and Free-Will, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The first is the answer of the devout and submissive mind in its dependence on God, but, unless we adopt a Calvinistic fatalism, the admission of the guiding and overriding will of God does not exclude the permission of freedom to the individual. The second is the answer of the scientist; Heredity determines our Nature, the laws of Nature limit our action, cause and effect compel the course of our development, and, if it be urged that we may determine effects by creating causes, the answer is that our own actions are determined by previous causes over which we have no control and our action itself is a necessary response to a stimulus from outside. The third is the answer of the Buddhist and of post-Buddhistic Hinduism. It is our fate, it is written on our forehead, when our Karma is exhausted, then alone our calamities will pass from us;this is the spirit of tamasic inaction justifying itself by a misreading of the theory of Karma.
If we go back to the true Hindu teaching independent of Buddhistic influence, we shall find that it gives us a reconciliation of the dispute by a view of mans psychology in which both Fate and Free-will are recognised. The difference between Buddhism and Hinduism is that to the former the human soul is nothing, to the latter it is everything. The whole universe exists in the spirit, by the spirit, for the spirit; all we do, think and feel is for the spirit. Nature depends upon the Atman, all its movement, play, action is for the Atman.
There is no Fate except insistent causality which is only another name for Law, and Law itself is only an instrument in the hands of Nature for the satisfaction of the spirit. Law is nothing but a mode or rule of action; it is called in our philosophy not Law but Dharma, holding together, it is that by which the action of the universe, the action of its parts, the action of the individual is held together. This action in the universal, the parts, the individuals is called Karma, work, action, energy in play, and the definition of Dharma or Law is action as decided by the nature of the thing in which action takes place,svabhva-niyata Karma. Each separate existence, each individual has a swabhava or nature and acts according to it, each group, species or mass of individuals has a swabhava or nature and acts according to it, and the universe also has its swabhava or nature and acts according to it. Mankind is a group of individuals and every man acts according to his human nature, that is his law of being as distinct from animals, trees or other groups of individuals. Each man has a distinct nature of his own and that is his law of being which ought to guide him as an individual. But beyond and above these minor laws is the great dharma of the universe which provides that certain previous Karma or action must lead to certain new Karma or results.
The whole of causality may be defined as previous action leading to subsequent action, Karma and Karmaphal. The Hindu theory is that thought and feeling, as well as actual speech or deeds, are part of Karma and create effects, and we do not accept the European sentiment that outward expression of thought and feeling in speech or deed is more important than the thought or feeling itself. This outward expression is only part of the thing expressed and its results are only part of the Karmaphal. The previous Karma has not one kind of result but many. In the first place, a certain habit of thought or feeling produces certain actions and speech or certain habits of action and speech in this life, which materialise in the next as good fortune or evil fortune. Again, it produces by its action for the good or ill of others a necessity of happiness or sorrow for ourselves in another birth. It produces, moreover, a tendency to persistence of that habit of thought or feeling in future lives, which involves the persistence of the good fortune or evil fortune, happiness or sorrow. Or, acting on different lines, it produces a revolt or reaction and replacement by opposite habits which in their turn necessitate opposite results for good or evil. This is the chain of Karma, the bondage of works, which is the Hindu Fate and from which the Hindus seek salvation.
If, however, there is no escape from the Law, if Nature is supreme and inexorable, there can be no salvation; freedom becomes a chimaera, bondage eternal. There can be no escape, unless there is something within us which is free and lord, superior to Nature. This entity the Hindu teaching finds in the spirit ever free and blissful which is one in essence and in reality with the Supreme Soul of the Universe. The spirit does not act, it is Nature that contains the action. If the spirit acted, it would be bound by its action The thing that acts is Prakriti, Nature, which determines the Swabhava of things and is the source and condition of Law or dharma. The soul or Purusha holds up the swabhava, watches and enjoys the action and its fruit, sanctions the law or dharma. It is the king, Lord or Ishwara without whose consent nothing can be done by Prakriti. But the king is above the law and free.
1.10 - The descendants of the daughters of Daksa married to the Rsis, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
giras, Smriti, bore daughters named Sinivālī, Kuhu, Rākā, and Anumati (phases of the moon[3]). Anasūyā, the wife of Atri, was the mother of three sinless sons, Soma (the moon), Durvāsas, and the ascetic Dattātreya[4]. Pulastya had, by Prīti, a son called in a former birth, or in the Svāyambhuva Manvantara, Dattoli, who is now known as the sage Agastya[5]. Kṣamā, the wife of the patriarch Pulaha, was the mother of three sons, Karmasa, Arvarīvat, and Sahiṣṇu[6]. The wife of Kratu, Sannati, brought forth the sixty thousand Bālakhilyas, pigmy sages, no bigger than a joint of the thumb, chaste, pious, resplendent as the rays of the sun[7]. Vaśiṣṭha had seven sons by his wife Urjjā, Rajas, Gātra, Ūrddhabāhu, Savana, Anagha, Sutapas, and Śukra, the seven pure sages[8]. The Agni named Abhimānī, who is the eldest born of
Brahmā, had, by Svāhā, three sons of surpassing brilliancy, Pāvaka, Pavamāna, and Śuci, who drinks up water: they had forty-five sons, who, with the original son of Brahmā and his three descendants, constitute the forty-nine fires[9]. The progenitors (Pitris), who, as I have mentioned, were created by Brahmā, were the Agniṣvāttas and Varhiṣads; the former being devoid of, and the latter possessed of, fires[10]. By them, Swadhā had two daughters, Menā and Dhāranī, who were both acquainted with theological truth, and both addicted to religious meditation; both accomplished in perfect wisdom, and adorned with all estimable qualities[11]. Thus has been explained the progeny of the daughters of Dakṣa[12]. He who with faith recapitulates the account, shall never want offspring.
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[6]: The Bhāgavata reads Karmaśreṣṭha, Varīyas, and Sahiṣṇu. The Vāyu and Li
ga have Kardama and Ambarīṣa in place of the two first, and add Vanakapīvat and a daughter, Pīvarī, married to Vedaśiras (see note 1). Kardama married Śruti (note 4), and had by her Sa
1.10 - The Methods and the Means, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
These two explanations are apparently conflicting, yet both are true and necessary. The manipulating and controlling of what may be called the finer body, viz the mood, are no doubt higher functions than the controlling of the grosser body of flesh. But the control of the grosser is absolutely necessary to enable one to arrive at the control of the finer. The beginner, therefore, must pay particular attention to all such dietetic rules as have come down from the line of his accredited teachers; but the extravagant, meaningless fanaticism, which has driven religion entirely to the kitchen, as may be noticed in the case of many of our sects, without any hope of the noble truth of that religion ever coming out to the sunlight of spirituality, is a peculiar sort of pure and simple materialism. It is neither Jnna, nor Bhakti, nor Karma; it is a special kind of lunacy, and those who pin their souls to it are more likely to go to lunatic asylums than to Brahmaloka. So it stands to reason that discrimination in the choice of food is necessary for the attainment of this higher state of mental composition which cannot be easily obtained otherwise.
Controlling the passions is the next thing to be attended to. To restrain the Indriyas (organs) from going towards the objects of the senses, to control them and bring them under the guidance of the will, is the very central virtue in religious culture. Then comes the practice of self-restraint and self-denial.
1.10 - The Secret of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
When was this traditional honour first lost or at least tarnished and the ancient Scripture relegated to the inferior position it occupies in the thought of Shankaracharya? I presume there can be little doubt that the chief agent in this work of destruction was the power of Buddhism. The preachings of Gautama and his followers worked against Vedic knowledge by a double process. First, by entirely denying the authority of the Veda, laying a violent stress on its ritualistic character and destroying the general practice of formal sacrifice, it brought the study of the Veda into disrepute as a means of attaining the highest good while at the same time it destroyed the necessity of that study for ritualistic purposes which had hitherto kept alive the old Vedic studies; secondly, in a less direct fashion, by substituting for a time at least the vernacular tongues for the old simple Sanscrit as the more common & popular means of religious propaganda and by giving them a literary position and repute, it made a general return to the old generality of the Vedic studies practically impossible. For the Vedas were written in an ancient form of the literary tongue the real secret of which had already been to a great extent lost even to the learned; such knowledge of it as remained, subsisted with difficulty by means of a laborious memorising and a traditional scholarship, conservative indeed but still slowly diminishing and replacing more & more real knowledge by uncertainty, disputed significance and the continuously increasing ingenuities of the ritualist, the grammarian and the sectarian polemical disputant. When after the fall of the Buddhistic Mauryas, feeble successors of the great Asoka, first under Pushyamitra and his son and afterwards under the Guptas, Hinduism revived, a return to the old forms of the creed and the old Vedic scholarship was no longer possible. The old pre-Buddhistic Sanscrit was, to all appearance, a simple, vigorous, living language understood though not spoken by the more intelligent of the common people just as the literary language of Bengal, the language of Bankim Chandra, is understood by every intelligent Bengali, although in speech more contracted forms and a very different vocabulary are in use. But the new Sanscrit of the revival tended to be more & more a learned, scholarly, polished and rhetorical tongue, certainly one of the most smooth, stately & grandiose ever used by human lips, but needing a special & difficult education to understand its grammar, its rhetoric, its rolling compounds and its long flowing sentences. The archaic language of the Vedas ceased to be the common study even of the learned and was only mastered, one is constrained to believe with less & less efficiency, by a small number of scholars. An education in which it took seven years to master the grammar of the language, became inevitably the grave of all true Vedic knowledge. Veda ceased to be the pivot of the Hindu religion, and its place was taken by the only religious compositions which were modern enough in language and simple enough in style to be popular, the Puranas. Moreover, the conception of Veda popularised by Buddhism, Sanscrit as the more common & popular means of religious propaganda and by giving them a literary position and repute, it made a general return to the old generality of the Vedic studies practically impossible. For the Vedas were written in an ancient form of the literary tongue the real secret of which had already been to a great extent lost even to the learned; such knowledge of it as remained, subsisted with difficulty by means of a laborious memorising and a traditional scholarship, conservative indeed but still slowly diminishing and replacing more & more real knowledge by uncertainty, disputed significance and the continuously increasing ingenuities of the ritualist, the grammarian and the sectarian polemical disputant. When after the fall of the Buddhistic Mauryas, feeble successors of the great Asoka, first under Pushyamitra and his son and afterwards under the Guptas, Hinduism revived, a return to the old forms of the creed and the old Vedic scholarship was no longer possible. The old pre-Buddhistic Sanscrit was, to all appearance, a simple, vigorous, living language understood though not spoken by the more intelligent of the common people just as the literary language of Bengal, the language of Bankim Chandra, is understood by every intelligent Bengali, although in speech more contracted forms and a very different vocabulary are in use. But the new Sanscrit of the revival tended to be more & more a learned, scholarly, polished and rhetorical tongue, certainly one of the most smooth, stately & grandiose ever used by human lips, but needing a special & difficult education to understand its grammar, its rhetoric, its rolling compounds and its long flowing sentences. The archaic language of the Vedas ceased to be the common study even of the learned and was only mastered, one is constrained to believe with less & less efficiency, by a small number of scholars. An education in which it took seven years to master the grammar of the language, became inevitably the grave of all true Vedic knowledge. Veda ceased to be the pivot of the Hindu religion, and its place was taken by the only religious compositions which were modern enough in language and simple enough in style to be popular, the Puranas. Moreover, the conception of Veda popularised by Buddhism, a Scripture of ritual and of animal sacrifice, persisted in the popular mind even after the decline of Buddhism and the revival of great philosophies ostensibly based on Vedic authority. It was under the dominance of this ritualistic conception that Sayana wrote his great commentary which has ever since been to the Indian Pundit the one decisive authority on the sense of Veda. The four Vedas have definitely taken a subordinate place as Karmakanda, books of ritual; and to the Upanishads alone, in spite of occasional appeals to the text of the earlier Scriptures, is reserved that aspect of spiritual knowledge & teaching which alone justifies the application to any human composition of the great name of Veda.
But in spite of this great downfall the ancient tradition, the ancient sanctity survived. The people knew not what Veda might be; but the old idea remained fixed that Veda is always the fountain of Hinduism, the standard of orthodoxy, the repository of a sacred knowledge; not even the loftiest philosopher or the most ritualistic scholar could divest himself entirely of this deeply ingrained & instinctive conception. To complete the degradation of Veda, to consummate the paradox of its history, a new element had to appear, a new form of intelligence undominated by the ancient tradition & the mediaeval method to take possession of Vedic interpretation. European scholarship which regards human civilisation as a recent progression starting yesterday with the Fiji islander and ending today with Haeckel and Rockefeller, conceiving ancient culture as necessarily primitive culture and primitive culture as necessarily half-savage culture, has turned the light of its Comparative Philology & Comparative Mythology on the Veda. The result we all know. Not only all vestige of sanctity, but all pretension to any kind of spiritual knowledge or experience disappears from the Veda. The old Rishis are revealed to us as a race of ignorant and lusty barbarians who drank & enjoyed and fought, gathered riches & procreated children, sacrificed and praised the Powers of Nature as if they were powerful men & women, and had no higher hope or idea. The only idea they had of religion beyond an occasional sense of sin and a perpetual preoccupation with a ritual barbarously encumbered with a mass of meaningless ceremonial details, was a mythology composed of the phenomena of dawn, night, rain, sunshine and harvest and the facts of astronomy converted into a wildly confused & incoherent mass of allegorical images and personifications. Nor, with the European interpretation, can we be proud of our early forefa thers as poets and singers. The versification of the Vedic hymns is indeed noble and melodious,though the incorrect method of writing them established by the old Indian scholars, often conceals their harmonious construction,but no other praise can be given. The Nibelungenlied, the Icelandic Sagas, the Kalewala, the Homeric poems, were written in the dawn of civilisation by semi-barbarous races, by poets not superior in culture to the Vedic Rishis; yet though their poetical value varies, the nations that possess them, need not be ashamed of their ancient heritage. The same cannot be said of the Vedic poems presented to us by European scholarship. Never surely was there even among savages such a mass of tawdry, glittering, confused & purposeless imagery; never such an inane & useless burden of epithets; never such slipshod & incompetent writing; never such a strange & almost insane incoherence of thought & style; never such a bald poverty of substance. The attempt of patriotic Indian scholars to make something respectable out of the Veda, is futile. If the modern interpretation stands, the Vedas are no doubt of high interest & value to the philologist, the anthropologist & the historian; but poetically and spiritually they are null and worthless. Its reputation for spiritual knowledge & deep religious wealth, is the most imposing & baseless hoax that has ever been worked upon the imagination of a whole people throughout many millenniums.
Is this, then, the last word about the Veda? Or, and this is the idea I write to suggest, is it not rather the culmination of a long increasing & ever progressing error? The theory this book is written to enunciate & support is simply this, that our forefa thers of early Vedantic times understood the Veda, to which they were after all much nearer than ourselves, far better than Sayana, far better than Roth & Max Muller, that they were, to a great extent, in possession of the real truth about the Veda, that that truth was indeed a deep spiritual truth, Karmakanda as well as jnanakanda of the Veda contains an ancient knowledge, a profound, complex & well-ordered psychology & philosophy, strange indeed to our modern conception, expressed indeed in language still stranger & remoter from our modern use of language, but not therefore either untrue or unintelligible, and that this knowledge is the real foundation of our later religious developments, & Veda, not only by historical continuity, but in real truth & substance is the parent & bedrock of all later Hinduism, of Vedanta, Sankhya, Nyaya, Yoga, of Vaishnavism & Shaivism&Shaktism, of Tantra&Purana, even, in a remoter fashion, of Buddhism & the later unorthodox religions. From this quarry all have hewn their materials or from this far-off source drawn unknowingly their waters; from some hidden seed in the Veda they have burgeoned into their wealth of branchings & foliage. The ritualism of Sayana is an error based on a false preconception popularised by the Buddhists & streng thened by the writers of the Darshanas,on the theory that the Karma of the Veda was only an outward ritual & ceremony; the naturalism of the modern scholars is an error based on a false preconception encouraged by the previous misconceptions of Sayana,on the theory of the Vedas [as] not only an ancient but a primitive document, the production of semi-barbarians. The Vedantic writers of the Upanishads had alone the real key to the secret of the Vedas; not indeed that they possessed the full knowledge of a dialect even then too ancient to be well understood, but they had the knowledge of the Vedic Rishis, possessed their psychology, & many of their general ideas, even many of their particular terms & symbols. That key, less & less available to their successors owing to the difficulty of the knowledge itself & of the language in which it was couched and to the immense growth of outward ritualism, was finally lost to the schools in the great debacle of Vedism induced by the intellectual revolutions of the centuries which immediately preceded the Christian era.
It is therefore a Vedantic or even what would nowadays be termed a theosophic interpretation of the Veda which in this book I propose to establish. My suggestion is that the gods of the Rigveda were indeed, as the European scholars have seen, masters of the Nature-Powers, but not, as they erroneously theorise, either exclusively or even mainly masters of the visible & physical Nature-Powers. They presided over and in their nature & movement were also & more predominantly mental Nature-Powers, vital Nature-Powers, even supra-mental Nature-Powers. The religion of the Vedic Rishis I suppose on this hypothesis to have been a sort of practical & concrete Brahmavada founded on the three principles of complex existence, isotheism of the gods and parallelism of their functions on all the planes of that complex existence; the secret of their ideas, language & ritual I suppose to rest in an elaborate habit of symbolism & double meaning which tends to phrase & typify all mental phenomena in physical and concrete figures. While the European scholars suppose the Rishis to have been simple-minded barbarians capable only of a gross & obvious personification of forces, only of a confused, barbarous and primitive system of astronomical allegories and animistic metaphors, I suppose them to have been men of daring and observant minds, using a bold and vigorous if sometimes fanciful system of images to express an elaborate practical psychology and self-observation in which what we moderns regard as abstract experiences & ideas were rather perceived with the vividness of physical experiences & images & so expressed in the picturesque terms of a great primitive philosophy. Their outward sacrifice & ritual I suppose to have been partly the symbols & partly the means of material expression for certain psychological processes, the first foundations of our Hindu system of Yoga, by which they believed themselves able to attain inward & outward mastery, knowledge, joy and extended life & being.
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But the ritualistic interpretation of the Rigveda does not stand on the authority of Sayana alone. It is justified by Shankaracharyas rigid division of Karmakanda and jnanakanda and by a long tradition dating back to the propaganda of Buddha which found in the Vedic hymns a great system of ceremonial or effective sacrifice and little or nothing more. Even the Brahmanas in their great mass & minuteness seem to bear unwavering testimony to the pure ritualism of the Veda. But the Brahmanas are in their nature rubrics of directions to the priests for the right performance of the outward Vedic sacrifice,that system of symbolic & effective offerings to the gods of Soma-wine, clarified butter or consecrated animals in which the complex religion of the Veda embodied itself for material worship,rubrics accompanied by speculative explanations of old ill-understood details & the popular myths & traditions that had sprung up from obscure allusions in the hymns. Whatever we may think of the Brahmanas, they merely affirm the side of outward ritualism which had grown in a huge & cumbrous mass round the first simple rites of the Vedic Rishis; they do not exclude the existence of deeper meanings & higher purposes in the ancient Scripture. Not only so, but they practically affirm them by including in the Aranyakas compositions of a wholly different spirit & purpose, the Upanishads, compositions professedly intended to bring out the spiritual gist and drift of the earlier Veda. It is clear therefore that to the knowledge or belief of the men of those times the Vedas had a double aspect, an aspect of outward and effective ritual, believed also to be symbolical,for the Brahmanas are continually striving to find a mystic symbolism in the most obvious details of the sacrifice, and an aspect of highest & divine truth hidden behind these symbols. The Upanishads themselves have always been known as Vedanta. This word is nowadays often used & spoken of as if it meant the end of Veda, in the sense that here historically the religious development commenced in the Rigveda culminated; but obviously it means the culmination of Veda in a very different sense, the ultimate and highest knowledge & fulfilment towards which the practices & strivings of the Vedic Rishis mounted, extricated from the voluminous mass of the Vedic poems and presented according to the inner realisation of great Rishis like Yajnavalkya & Janaka in a more modern style and language. It is used much in the sense in which Madhuchchhandas, son of Viswamitra, says of Indra, Ath te antamnm vidyma sumatnm, Then may we know something of thy ultimate right thinkings, meaning obviously not the latest, but the supreme truths, the ultimate realisations. Undoubtedly, this was what the authors of the Upanishads themselves saw in their work, statements of supreme truth of Veda, truth therefore contained in the ancient mantras. In this belief they appeal always to Vedic authority and quote the language of Veda either to justify their own statements of thought or to express that thought itself in the old solemn and sacred language. And with regard to this there are spoken these Riks.
In what light did these ancient thinkers understand the Vedic gods? As material Nature Powers called only to give worldly wealth to their worshippers? Certainly, the Vedic gods are in the Vedanta also accredited with material functions. In the Kena Upanishad Agnis power & glory is to burn, Vayus to seize & bear away. But these are not their only functions. In the same Upanishad, in the same apologue, told as a Vedantic parable, Indra, Agni & Vayu, especially Indra, are declared to be the greatest of the gods because they came nearest into contact with the Brahman. Indra, although unable to recognise the Brahman directly, learned of his identity from Uma daughter of the snowy mountains. Certainly, the sense of the parable is not that Dawn told the Sky who Brahman was or that material Sky, Fire & Wind are best able to come into contact with the Supreme Existence. It is clear & it is recognised by all the commentators, that in the Upanishads the gods are masters not only of material functions in the outer physical world but also of mental, vital and physical functions in the intelligent living creature. This will be directly evident from the passage describing the creation of the gods by the One & Supreme Being in the Aitareya Upanishad & the subsequent movement by which they enter in the body of man and take up the control of his activities. In the same Upanishad it is even hinted that Indra is in his secret being the Eternal Lord himself, for Idandra is his secret name; nor should we forget that this piece of mysticism is founded on the hymns of the Veda itself which speak of the secret names of the gods. Shankaracharya recognised this truth so perfectly that he uses the gods and the senses as equivalent terms in his great commentary. Finally in the Isha Upanishad,itself a part of the White Yajur Veda and a work, as I have shown elsewhere, full of the most lofty & deep Vedantic truth, in which the eternal problems of human existence are briefly proposed and masterfully solved,we find Surya and Agni prayed to & invoked with as much solemnity & reverence as in the Rigveda and indeed in language borrowed from the Rigveda, not as the material Sun and material Fire, but as the master of divine God-revealing knowledge & the master of divine purifying force of knowledge, and not to drive away the terrors of night from a trembling savage nor to burn the offered cake & the dripping ghee in a barbarian ritual, but to reveal the ultimate truth to the eyes of the Seer and to raise the immortal part in us that lives before & after the body is ashes to the supreme felicity of the perfected & sinless soul. Even subsequently we have seen that the Gita speaks of the Vedas as having the supreme for their subject of knowledge, and if later thinkers put it aside as Karmakanda, yet they too, though drawing chiefly on the Upanishads, appealed occasionally to the texts of the hymns as authorities for the Brahmavidya. This could not have been if they were merely a ritual hymnology. We see therefore that the real Hindu tradition contains nothing excluding the interpretation which I put upon the Rigveda. On one side the current notion, caused by the immense overgrowth of ritualism in the millennium previous to the Christian era and the violence of the subsequent revolt against it, has been fixed in our minds by Buddhistic ideas as a result of the most formidable & damaging attack which the ancient Vedic religion had ever to endure. On the other side, the Vedantic sense of Veda is supported by the highest authorities we have, the Gita & the Upanishads, & evidenced even by the tradition that seems to deny or at least belittle it. True orthodoxy therefore demands not that we should regard the Veda as a ritualist hymn book, but that we should seek in it for the substance or at least the foundation of that sublime Brahmavidya which is formally placed before us in the Upanishads, regarding it as the revelation of the deepest truth of the world & man revealed to illuminated Seers by the Eternal Ruler of the Universe.
Modern thought & scholarship stands on a different foundation. It proceeds by inference, imagination and conjecture to novel theories of old subjects and regards itself as rational, not traditional. It professes to rebuild lost worlds out of their disjected fragments. By reason, then, and without regard to ancient authority the modern account of the Veda should be judged. The European scholars suppose that the mysticism of the Upanishads was neither founded upon nor, in the main, developed from the substance of the Vedas, but came into being as part of a great movement away from the naturalistic materialism of the early half-savage hymns. Unable to accept a barbarous mummery of ritual and incantation as the highest truth & highest good, yet compelled by religious tradition to regard the ancient hymns as sacred, the early thinkers, it is thought, began to seek an escape from this impasse by reading mystic & esoteric meanings into the simple text of the sacrificial bards; so by speculations sometimes entirely sublime, sometimes grievously silly & childish, they developed Vedanta. This theory, simple, trenchant and attractive, supported to the European mind by parallels from the history of Western religions, is neither so convincing nor, on a broad survey of the facts, so conclusive as it at first appears. It is certainly inconsistent with what the old Vedantic thinkers themselves knew and thought about the tradition of the Veda. From the Brahmanas as well as from the Upanishads it is evident that the Veda came down to the men of those days in a double aspect, as the heart of a great body of effective ritual, but also as the repository of a deep and sacred knowledge, Veda and not merely worship. This idea of a philosophic or theosophic purport in the hymns was not created by the early Hindu mystics, it was inherited by them. Their attitude to the ritual even when it was performed mechanically without the possession of this knowledge was far from hostile; but as ritual, they held it to be inferior in force and value, avaram Karma, a lower kind of works and not the highest good; only when performed with possession of the knowledge could it lead to its ultimate results, to Vedanta. By that, says the Chhandogya Upanishad, both perform Karma, both he who knows this so and he who knows not. Yet the Ignorance and the Knowledge are different things and only what one does with the knowledge,with faith, with the Upanishad,that has the greater potency. And in the closing section of its second chapter, a passage which sounds merely like ritualistic jargon when one has not the secret of Vedic symbolism but when that secret has once been revealed to us becomes full of meaning and interest, the Upanishad starts by saying The Brahmavadins say, The morning offering to the Vasus, the afternoon offering to the Rudras and the evening offering to the Adityas and all the gods,where then is the world of the Yajamana? (that is to say, what is the spiritual efficacy beyond this material life of the three different sacrifices & why, to what purpose, is the first offered to the Vasus, the second to the Rudras, the third to the Adityas?) He who knows this not, how should he perform (effectively) ,therefore knowing let him perform. There was at any rate the tradition that these things, the sacrifice, the god of the sacrifice, the world or future state of the sacrificer had a deep significance and were not mere ritual arranged superstitiously for material ends. But this deeper significance, this inner Vedic knowledge was difficult and esoteric, not known easily in its profundity and subtlety even by the majority of the Brahmavadins themselves; hence the searching, the mutual questionings, the record of famous discussions that occupy so much space in the Upanishadsdiscussions which, we shall see, are not intellectual debates but comparisons of illuminated knowledge & spiritual experience.
If this traditionlet us call it mystic or esoteric for want of a less abused wordwas already formed at the time of the Brahmanas and Upanishads, when and how did it originally arise? Two possibilities present themselves. The tradition may have grown up gradually in the period between the Vedic hymns and the exegetical writings or else the esoteric sense may have already existed in the Veda itself and descended in a stream of tradition to the later mystics, developing, modifying itself, substituting new terms for oldas is the way of traditions. The former is, practically, the European theory.We are told that this spiritual revolution, this movement away from ritual Nature-worship to Brahmavada, begun in the seed in the later Vedic hymns, is found in a more developed state in the Upanishads & culminated in Buddha. In these writings and in the Brahmanas some record can be found of the speculations by which the development was managed. If it prove to be so, if these ancient writings are really the result of progressive intellectual speculation departing from crude & imperfect beginnings of philosophic thought, the European theory justifies itself to the reason and can no longer easily be disputed. But is this the true character of the Upanishads? It seems to me that in most of their dealings with our religions and our philosophical literature European scholars have erred by imposing their own familiar ideas and the limits of their own mentality on the history of an alien mentality and an alien development. Nowhere has this error been more evident than in the failure to realise the true nature of the Upanishads. In India we have never developed, but only affirmed thought by philosophical speculation, because we have never attached to the mere intellectual idea the amazingly exaggerated value which Europe has attached to it, but regarded it only as a test of the logical value to be attached to particular intellectual statements of truth. That is not truth to us which is merely well & justly thought out & can be justified by ratiocinative argument; only that is truth which has been lived & seen in the inner experience. We meditate not to get ideas, but in order to experience, to realise. When we speak of the Jnani, the knower, we do not mean a competent and logical thinker full of wise or of brilliant ideas, but a soul which has seen and lived & spoken in himself with the living truth. Ratiocination is freely used by the later philosophers, but only for the justification against opponents of the ideas already formed by their own meditation or the meditation of others, Rishis, gurus, ancient Vedantins; it is not itself a sufficient means towards the discovery of truth, but at best a help. The ideas of our great thinkers are not mere intellectual statements or even happy or great intuitions; they are based upon spiritual experiences formalised by the intellect into a philosophy. Shankaras passionate advocacy of the idea of Maya as an explanation of life was not merely the ardour of a great metaphysician enamoured of a beautiful idea or a perfect theory of life, but the passion of a man with a deep & vast spiritual experience which he believed to be the sole means of human salvation. Therefore philosophy in India, instead of tending as in Europe to ignore or combat religion, has always been itself deeply religious. In Europe Buddha and Shankara would have become the heads of metaphysical schools & ranked with Kant or Hegel or Nietzsche1 as strong intellectual influences; in India they became, inevitably, the founders of great religious sects, immense moral & spiritual forces;inevitably because Europe has made thought its highest & noblest aim, while India seeks not after thought but soul-vision and inner experience and even in the realm of ideas believes that they can & ought to be seen & lived inwardly rather than merely thought and allowed indirectly to influence outward action. This has been the mentality of our race for ages.Was the mentality of our Vedic forefa thers entirely different from our own? Was it, as Western scholars seem to insist, a European mentality, the mentality of incursive Western savages, (it is Sergis estimate of the Aryans), changed afterwards by the contact with the cultured & reflective Dravidians into something new and strange, rationality changing to mysticism, materialism to a metaphysical spirituality? If so, the change had already been effected when the Upanishads were written. We speak of the discussions in the Upanishads; but in all truth the twelve Upanishads contain not a single genuine discussion. Only once in that not inconsiderable mass of literature, is there something of the nature of logical argument brought to the support of a philosophical truth. The nature of debate or logical reasoning is absent from the mentality of the Upanishadic thinkers. The grand question they always asked each other was not What hast thou thought out in this matter? or What are thy reasonings & conclusions? but What dost thou know? What hast thou seen in thyself? The Vedantic like the Vedic Rishi is a drashta & srota, not a manota, a kavi, not a manishi. There is question, there is answer; but solely for the comparison of inner knowledge & experience; never for ratiocinative argument, for disputation, for the battles of the logician. Always, knowledge, spiritual vision, experience are what is demanded; and often a questioner is turned back because he is not yet prepared in soul to realise the knowledge of the master. For all knowledge is within us and needs only to be awakened by the fit touch which opens the eyes of the soul or by the powerful revealing word.We find throughout the Vedic era always the same method, always the same theory of knowledge; they persist indeed in India to the present day and later habits of metaphysical debate unknown to the Vedic Brahmavadins have never been able to dethrone them from their primaeval supremacy. Let a man present never so finely reasoned a system of metaphysical philosophy, few will turn to hear, none leave his labour to receive, but let a man say as in the old Vedantic times I have experienced, my soul has seen, & hundreds in India will yet leave all to share in this new light of the eternal Truth.
1.10 - The Yoga of the Intelligent Will, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
I have declared to you the poise of a self-liberating intelligence in Sankhya, says the divine Teacher to Arjuna. I will now declare to you another poise in Yoga. You are shrinking from the results of your works, you desire other results and turn from your right path in life because it does not lead you to them. But this idea of works and their result, desire of result as the motive, the work as a means for the satisfaction of desire, is the bondage of the ignorant who know not what works are, nor their true source, nor their real operation, nor their high utility. My Yoga will free you from all bondage of the soul to its works, Karmabandham prahasyasi. You are afraid of many things, afraid of sin, afraid of suffering, afraid of hell and punishment, afraid of God, afraid of this world, afraid of the hereafter, afraid of yourself. What is it that you are not afraid of at this moment, you the Aryan fighter, the world's chief hero? But this is the great fear which besieges humanity, its fear of sin and suffering now and hereafter, its fear in a world of whose true nature it is ignorant, of a God whose true being also it has not seen and
The Yoga of the Intelligent Will
1.11 - Delight of Existence - The Problem, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
7:Sachchidananda, it may be reasoned, is God, is a conscious Being who is the author of existence; how then can God have created a world in which He inflicts suffering on His creatures, sanctions pain, permits evil? God being All-Good, who created pain and evil? If we say that pain is a trial and an ordeal, we do not solve the moral problem, we arrive at an immoral or nonmoral God, - an excellent world-mechanist perhaps, a cunning psychologist, but not a God of Good and of Love whom we can worship, only a God of Might to whose law we must submit or whose caprice we may hope to propitiate. For one who invents torture as a means of test or ordeal, stands convicted either of deliberate cruelty or of moral insensibility and, if a moral being at all, is inferior to the highest instinct of his own creatures. And if to escape this moral difficulty, we say that pain is an inevitable result and natural punishment of moral evil, - an explanation which will not even square with the facts of life unless we admit the theory of Karma and rebirth by which the soul suffers now for antenatal sins in other bodies, - we still do not escape the very root of the ethical problem, - who created or why or whence was created that moral evil which entails the punishment of pain and suffering? And seeing that moral evil is in reality a form of mental disease or ignorance, who or what created this law or inevitable connection which punishes a mental disease or act of ignorance by a recoil so terrible, by tortures often so extreme and monstrous? The inexorable law of Karma is irreconcilable with a supreme moral and personal Deity, and therefore the clear logic of Buddha denied the existence of any free and all-governing personal God; all personality he declared to be a creation of ignorance and subject to Karma.
8:In truth, the difficulty thus sharply presented arises only if we assume the existence of an extra-cosmic personal God, not Himself the universe, one who has created good and evil, pain and suffering for His creatures, but Himself stands above and unaffected by them, watching, ruling, doing His will with a suffering and struggling world or, if not doing His will, if allowing the world to be driven by an inexorable law, unhelped by Him or inefficiently helped, then not God, not omnipotent, not allgood and all-loving. On no theory of an extra-cosmic moral God, can evil and suffering be explained, - the creation of evil and suffering, - except by an unsatisfactory subterfuge which avoids the question at issue instead of answering it or a plain or implied Manicheanism which practically annuls the Godhead in attempting to justify its ways or excuse its works. But such a God is not the Vedantic Sachchidananda. Sachchidananda of the Vedanta is one existence without a second; all that is, is He. If then evil and suffering exist, it is He that bears the evil and suffering in the creature in whom He has embodied Himself. The problem then changes entirely. The question is no longer how came God to create for His creatures a suffering and evil of which He is Himself incapable and therefore immune, but how came the sole and infinite Existence-Consciousness-Bliss to admit into itself that which is not bliss, that which seems to be its positive negation.
1.11 - Powers, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
23. Karma is of two kinds soon to be fructified and late to be fructified. By making Samyana on these, or by the signs called Arishta, portents, the Yogis know the exact time of separation from their bodies.
When a Yogi makes a Samyama on his own Karma, upon those impressions in his mind which are now working, and those which are just waiting to work, he knows exactly by those that are waiting when his body will fall. He knows when he will die, at what hour, even at what minute. The Hindus think very much of that knowledge or consciousness of the nearness of death, because it is taught in the Gita that the thoughts at the moment of departure are great powers in determining the next life.
1.11 - The Kalki Avatar, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
itself; for as it sows, so shall it reap the fruit of its Karma. 69
Mothersriaurobindo: the Kalki Avatar
1.11 - The Master of the Work, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The elimination of this form of ego leads straight towards the true instrumental action which Is the essence of a perfect Karmayoga. For while we cherish the instrumental ego, we may pretend to ourselves that we are conscious instruments of the Divine, but in reality we are trying to make of the Divine shakti an instrument of our own desires or our egoistic purpose. And even if the ego is subjected but not eliminated, we may indeed be engines of the divine Work, but we shall be imperfect tools and deflect or impair the working by our mental errors, our vital distortions or the obstinate incapacities of our physical nature. If this ego disappears, then we can truly become, not only pure instruments consciously consenting to every turn of the divine Hand that moves us, but aware of our true nature, conscious portions of the one Eternal and Infinite put out in herself for her works by the supreme shakti.
There is another greater step to be taken after the surrender of our instrumental ego to the Divine shakti. It is not enough to know her as the one Cosmic Force that moves us and all creatures on the planes of mind, life and Matter; for this is the lower Nature and, although the Divine Knowledge, Light, Power are there concealed and at work in the Ignorance and can break partly its veil and manifest something of their true character or descend from above and uplift these inferior workings, yet, even if we realise the One ill a spiritualised mind, a spiritualised life-movement, a spiritualised body-consciousness, an imperfection remains in the dynamic parts. There is a stumbling response to the Supreme Power, a veil over the face of the Divine, a constant mixture of the Ignorance. It is only when we open to the Divine shakti in the truth of her force which transcends this lower prakriti that we can be perfect instruments of her power and knowledge.
Not only liberation but perfection must be the aim of the Karmayoga. The Divine works through our nature and according to our nature; if our nature is imperfect, the work also will be imperfect, mixed, inadequate. Even it may be marred by gross errors, falsehoods, moral weaknesses, diverting influences. The work of the Divine will be done in us even then, but according to our weakness, not according to the strength and purity of its source. If ours were not an integral Yoga, if we sought only the liberation of the self within us or the motionless existence of Purusha separated from prakriti, this dynamic imperfection might not matter. Calm, untroubled, not depressed, not elated, refusing to accept the perfection or imperfection, fault or merit, sin or virtue as ours, perceiving that it is the modes of Nature working in the field of her modes that make this mixture, we could withdraw into the silence of the spirit and, pure, untouched, witness only the workings of prakriti. But in an integral realisation this can only be a step on the way, not our last resting-place. For we aim at the divine realisation not only in the immobility of the Spirit, but also in the movement of Nature. And this cannot be altogether until we can feel the presence and power of the Divine in every step, motion, figure of our activities, in every turn of our will, in every thought, feeling and impulse. No doubt, we can feel that in a sense even in the nature of the Ignorance, but it is the divine Power and Presence in a disguise, a diminution, an inferior figure. Ours is a greater demand, that our nature shall be a power of the Divine in the Truth of the Divine, in the Light, in the force of the eternal self-conscient Will, in the wideness of the sempiternal Knowledge.
After the removal of the veil of ego, the removal of the veil of Nature and her inferior modes that govern our mind, life and body. As soon as the limits of the ego begin to fade, we see how that veil is constituted and detect the action of cosmic Nature in us, and in or behind cosmic Nature we sense the presence of the cosmic Self and the dynamisms of the world-pervading Ishwara. The Master of the instrument stands behind all this working, and even within the working there is his touch and the drive of a great guiding or disposing Influence. It is no longer ego or ego-force that we serve; we obey the World-Master and his evolutionary impulse. At each step we say in the language of the Sanskrit verse, "Even as I am appointed by Thee seated in my heart, so, 0 Lord, I act." But still this action may be of two very different kinds, one only illumined, the other transformed and uplifted into a greater supernature. For we may keep on in the way of action upheld and followed by our nature when by her and her illusion of egoism we were "turned as if mounted on a machine," but now with a perfect understanding of the mechanism and its utilisation for his world purposes by the Master of works whom we feel behind it. This is indeed as far as even many great Yogis have reached on the levels of spiritualised mind; but it need not be so always, for there is a greater supramental possibility. It is possible to rise beyond spiritualised mind and to act spontaneously in the living presence of the original divine Truth-Force of the Supreme Mother Our motion one with her motion and merged in it, our will one with her will, our energy absolved
1.11 - WITH THE DEVOTEES AT DAKSHINEWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Law of Karma
HAZRA: "But it is very difficult to understand that. Take the case of the sadhu of Bhukailas. How people tortured him and; in a way, killed him! They had found him in samadhi. First they buried him, then they put him under water, and then they branded him with a hot iron. Thus they brought him back to consciousness of the world. But in the end the sadhu died as a result of these tortures. He undoubtedly suffered at the hands of men, though, as you say, he died by the will of God."
MASTER: "Man must reap the fruit of his own Karma. But as far as the death of that holy man is concerned, it was brought about by the will of God. The kavirajs prepare makaradhvaja in a bottle. The bottle is covered with clay and heated in the fire. The gold inside the bottle melts and combines with the other ingredients, and the medicine is made. Then the physicians break the bottle carefully and take out the medicine. When the medicine is made, what difference does it make whether the bottle is preserved or broken? So people think that the holy man was killed. But perhaps his inner stuff had been made. After the realization of God, what difference does it make whether the body lives or dies?
Different kinds of samadhi
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TANTRIK: "But the law of Karma exists, doesn't it?"
MASTER: "That also is true. Good produces good, and bad produces bad. Don't you get the hot taste if you eat chillies? But these are all God's lila, His play."
TANTRIK: "Then what is the way for us? We shall have to reap the result of our past Karma, shall we not?"
MASTER: "That may be so. But it is different with the devotees of God. Listen to a song:
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"Assume the tamasic aspect of bhakti. Say with force: 'What? I have uttered the names of Rma and Kali. How can I be in bondage any more? How can I be affected by the law of Karma?' "
The Master sang:
1.11 - Works and Sacrifice, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Our physical life, its maintenance, its continuance is a journey, a pilgrimage of the body, sarra-yatra, and that cannot be effected without action. But even if a man could leave his body unmaintained, otiose, if he could stand still always like a tree or sit inert like a stone, tis.t.hati, that vegetable or material immobility would not save him from the hands of Nature; he would not be liberated from her workings. For it is not our physical movements and activities alone which are meant by works, by Karma; our mental existence also is a great complex action, it is even the greater and more important part of the works of the unresting energy, - subjective cause and determinant of the physical. We have gained nothing if we repress the effect but
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Since the mind is the instrumental cause, since inaction is impossible, what is rational, necessary, the right way is a controlled action of the subjective and objective organism. The mind must bring the senses under its control as an instrument of the intelligent will and then the organs of action must be used for their proper office, for action, but for action done as Yoga. But what is the essence of this self-control, what is meant by action done as Yoga, Karmayoga? It is non-attachment, it is to do works without clinging with the mind to the objects of sense and the fruit of the works. Not complete inaction, which is an error, a confusion, a self-delusion, an impossibility, but action full and
I cannot think that mithyacara means a hypocrite. How is a man a hypocrite who inflicts on himself so severe and complete a privation? He is mistaken and deluded, vimud.hatma, and his acara, his formally regulated method of self-discipline, is a false and vain method, - this surely is all that the Gita means.
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free done without subjection to sense and passion, desireless and unattached works, are the first secret of perfection. Do action thus self-controlled, says Krishna, niyatam kuru Karma tvam: I have said that knowledge, the intelligence, is greater than works, jyayas Karman.o buddhih., but I did not mean that inaction is greater than action; the contrary is the truth, Karma jyayo a Karman.ah.. For knowledge does not mean renunciation of works, it means equality and non-attachment to desire and the objects of sense; and it means the poise of the intelligent will in the Soul free and high-uplifted above the lower instrumentation of Prakriti and controlling the works of the mind and the senses and body in the power of self-knowledge and the pure objectless self-delight of spiritual realisation, niyatam Karma.2 Buddhiyoga is fulfilled by Karmayoga; the Yoga of the self-liberating intelligent will finds its full meaning by the Yoga of desireless works.
Thus the Gita founds its teaching of the necessity of desireless works, nis.kama Karma, and unites the subjective practice of the Sankhyas - rejecting their merely physical rule - with the practice of Yoga.
But still there is an essential difficulty unsolved. Desire is the ordinary motive of all human actions, and if the soul is free from desire, then there is no farther rationale for action.
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Again, I cannot accept the current interpretation of niyatam Karma as if it meant fixed and formal works and were equivalent to the Vedic nitya Karma, the regular works of sacrifice, ceremonial and the daily rule of Vedic living. Surely, niyata simply takes up the niyamya of the last verse. Krishna makes a statement, "he who controlling the senses by the mind engages with the organs of action in Yoga of action, he excels," manasa niyamya arabhate Karmayogam, and he immediately goes on to draw from the statement an injunction, to sum it up and convert it into a rule. "Do thou do controlled action," niyatam kuru Karma tvam: niyatam takes up the niyamya, kuru Karma takes up the arabhate Karmayogam. Not formal works fixed by an external rule, but desireless works controlled by the liberated buddhi, is the Gita's teaching.
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Prakriti. Let us then interpret the niyata Karma of the Gita as the nitya Karma of the Vedic rule, its kartavya Karma or work that has to be done as the Aryan rule of social duty and let us take too its work done as a sacrifice to mean simply these Vedic sacrifices and this fixed social duty performed disinterestedly and without any personal object. This is how the Gita's doctrine of desireless work is often interpreted. But it seems to me that the Gita's teaching is not so crude and simple, not so local and temporal and narrow as all that. It is large, free, subtle and profound; it is for all time and for all men, not for a particular age and country.
Especially, it is always breaking free from external forms, details, dogmatic notions and going back to principles and the great facts of our nature and our being. It is a work of large philosophic truth and spiritual practicality, not of constrained religious and philosophical formulas and stereotyped dogmas.
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In the opposition of Vedism and Vedantism works, Karma, are restricted to Vedic works and sometimes even to Vedic sacrifice and ritualised works, all else being excluded as not useful to salvation. Vedism of the Mimansakas insisted on them as the means, Vedantism taking its stand on the Upanishads looked on them as only a preliminary belonging to the state of ignorance and in the end to be overpassed and rejected, an obstacle to the seeker of liberation. Vedism worshipped the Devas, the gods, with sacrifice and held them to be the powers who assist our salvation. Vedantism was inclined to regard them as powers of the mental and material world opposed to our salvation (men, says the Upanishad, are the cattle of the gods, who do not desire man to know and be free); it saw the Divine as the immutable
Brahman who has to be attained not by works of sacrifice and worship but by knowledge. Works only lead to material results and to an inferior Paradise; therefore they have to be renounced.
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Divine, sarvam Karmakhilam partha jnane parisamapyate. They are not an obstacle, but the way to the supreme knowledge.
Works and Sacrifice
1.12 - Independence, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
The theory of Karma is that we suffer for our good or bad deeds, and the whole scope of philosophy is to reach the glory of man. All the scriptures sing the glory of man, of the soul, and then, in the same breath, they preach Karma. A good deed brings such a result, and a bad deed such another, but if the soul can be acted upon by a good or a bad deed, the soul amounts to nothing. Bad deeds put a bar to the manifestation of the nature of the Purusha; good deeds take the obstacles off, and the glory of the Purusha becomes manifest. The Purusha itself is never changed. Whatever you do never destroys your own glory, your own nature, because the soul cannot be acted upon by anything, only a veil is spread before it, hiding its perfection.
With a view to exhausting their Karma quickly, Yogis create Kya-vyuha, or groups of bodies, in which to work it out. For all these bodies they create minds from egoism. These are called "created minds", in contradistinction to their original minds.
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When the Yogi has attained perfection, his actions, and the Karma produced by those actions, do not bind him, because he did not desire them. He just works on; he works to do good, and he does good, but does not care for the result, and it will not come to him. But, for ordinary men, who have not attained to the highest state, works are of three kinds, black (evil actions), white (good actions), and mixed.
8. From these threefold works are manifested in each state only those desires (which are) fitting to that state alone. (The others are held in abeyance for the time being.)
Suppose I have made the three kinds of Karma, good, bad, and mixed, and suppose I die and become a god in heaven. The desires in a god body are not the same as the desires in a human body; the god body neither eats nor drinks. What becomes of my past unworked Karmas which produce as their effect the desire to eat and drink? Where would these Karmas go when I become a god? The answer is that desires can only manifest themselves in proper environments. Only those desires will come out for which the environment is fitted; the rest will remain stored up. In this life we have many godly desires, many human desires, many animal desires. If I take a god body, only the good desires will come up, because for them the environments are suitable. And if I take an animal body, only the animal desires will come up, and the good desires will wait. What does this show? That by means of environment we can check these desires. Only that Karma which is suited to and fitted for the environments will come out. This shows that the power of environment is the great check to control even Karma itself.
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1.12 - The Divine Work, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
in which Fate or God or his past Karma has placed him, content
to work in the field and cadre of the family, clan, caste, nation,
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that can be imposed on the Karmayogin as his rule or his
province. This much is true that every kind of works, whether
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world will be the rule of the Karmayogin; to live for God in the
world and therefore so to act that the Divine may more and more
1.12 - The Significance of Sacrifice, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The whole sense and drift of this teaching turns upon the interpretation we are to give to the important words, yajna, Karma, brahma, sacrifice, work, Brahman. If the sacrifice is simply the Vedic sacrifice, if the work from which it is born is the Vedic rule of works and if the brahman from which the work itself is born is the sabdabrahman in the sense only of the
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Brahman with qualities, proceed all the works1 of the universal energy, Karma, in man and in all existences; from that work proceeds the principle of sacrifice. Even the material interchange between gods and men proceeds upon this principle, as typified in the dependence of rain and its product food on this working and on them the physical birth of creatures. For all the working of Prakriti is in its true nature a sacrifice, yajna, with the Divine
Being as the enjoyer of all energisms and works and sacrifice and the great Lord of all existences, bhoktaram yajnatapasam sarvaloka-mahesvaram, and to know this Divine all-pervading and established in sacrifice, sarvagatam yajne pratis.t.hitam, is the true, the Vedic knowledge.
That this is the right interpretation results also from the opening of the eighth chapter where the universal principles are enumerated, aks.ara (brahma), svabhava, Karma, ks.ara bhava, purus.a, adhiyajna. Akshara is the immutable Brahman, spirit or self, Atman; swabhava is the principle of the self, adhyatma, operative as the original nature of the being, "own way of becoming", and this proceeds out of the self, the Akshara; Karma proceeds from that and is the creative movement, visarga, which brings all natural beings and all changing subjective and objective shapes of being into existence; the result of
Karma therefore is all this mutable becoming, the changes of nature developed out of the original self-nature, ks.ara bhava out of svabhava; Purusha is the soul, the divine element in the becoming, adhidaivata, by whose presence the workings of Karma become a sacrifice, yajna, to the Divine within; adhiyajna is this secret Divine who receives the sacrifice.
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"They who enjoy the nectar of immortality left over from the sacrifice attain to the eternal Brahman." Sacrifice is the law of the world and nothing can be gained without it, neither mastery here, nor the possession of heavens beyond, nor the supreme possession of all; "this world is not for him who doeth not sacrifice, how then any other world?" Therefore all these and many other forms of sacrifice have been "extended in the mouth of the Brahman," the mouth of that Fire which receives all offerings; they are all means and forms of the one great Existence in activity, means by which the action of the human being can be offered up to That of which his outward existence is a part and with which his inmost self is one. They are "all born of work"; all proceed from and are ordained by the one vast energy of the Divine which manifests itself in the universal Karma and makes all the cosmic activity a progressive offering to the one
Self and Lord and of which the last stage for the human being is self-knowledge and the possession of the divine or Brahmic consciousness. "So knowing thou shalt become free."
1.12 - The Strength of Stillness, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In this calm, right knowledge comes. The thoughts of men are a tangle of truth and falsehood, satyam and antam. True perception is marred and clouded by false perception, true judgment lamed by false judgment, true imagination distorted by false imagination, true memory deceived by false memory. The activity of the mind must cease, the chitta be purified, a silence fall upon the restlessness of Prakriti, then in that calm, in that voiceless stillness illumination comes upon the mind, error begins to fall away and, so long as desire does not stir again, clarity establishes itself in the higher stratum of the consciousness compelling peace and joy in the lower. Right knowledge becomes the infallible source of right action. Yoga Karmasu kaualam.
The knowledge of the Yogin is not the knowledge of the average desire-driven mind. Neither is it the knowledge of the scientific or of the worldly-wise reason which anchors itself on surface facts and leans upon experience and probability. The Yogin knows Gods way of working and is aware that the improbable often happens, that facts mislead. He rises above reason to that direct and illuminated knowledge which we call vijnam. The desire-driven mind is emmeshed in the intricate tangle of good and evil, of the pleasant and the unpleasant, of happiness and misfortune. It strives to have the good always, the pleasant always, the happiness always. It is elated by fortunate happenings, disturbed and unnerved by their opposite. But the illuminated eye of the seer perceives that all leads to good; for God is all and God is sarvama
1.13 - Gnostic Symbols of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
they would not fulfil it. Only the man who was qualified by his Karma (the fate
earned through works in previous existences), and who was destined for the life
1.13 - THE MASTER AND M., #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER: "The thing is that everyone must reap the result of his past- Karma. One must admit the influence of tendencies inherited from past births and the result of the prarabdha Karma. Nevertheless, in that dilapidated house I saw the face of the Goddess radiating a divine light. One must believe in the Divine Presence in the image.
"Once I went to Vishnupur. The raja of that place has several fine temples. In one of them there is an image of the Divine Mother, called Mrinmayi. There are several lakes near the temple, known as the Lalbandh, Krishnabandh, and so on. In the water of one of the lakes I could smell the ointments that women use for their hair. How do you explain that? I didn't know at that time that the woman devotees offer ointments to the Goddess Mrinmayi while visiting Her temple. Near the lake I went into samdhi, though I had not yet seen the image in the temple. In that state I saw the divine form from the waist up, rising from the water."
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Law of Karma
MASTER: "The truth is that one must reap the result of the prarabdha Karma. The body remains as long as the results of past actions do not completely wear away. Once a blind man bathed in the Ganges and as a result was freed from his sins. But his blindness remained all the same. (All laugh.) It was because of his evil deeds in his past birth that he had to undergo that affliction."
M: "Yes,sir. The arrow that has already left the bow is beyond our control."
1.13 - Under the Auspices of the Gods, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
When he came out of the Alipore jail, Sri Aurobindo found the political scene purged by the executions and mass deportations of the British government. He resumed his work, however, starting a Benagli weekly and another in English, the Karmayogin, with the Gita's very symbolic motto: "Yoga is skill in works." At the risk of a new imprisonment, Sri Aurobindo affirmed once again the ideal of complete independence from and noncooperation with the British
except that now it was not only India's destiny that preoccupied him,
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One evening in February 1910, less than a year after his release from Alipore, someone came to the office of the Karmayogin to warn Sri Aurobindo that he was to be arrested again and deported to the Andaman Islands. Suddenly, he heard the Voice speak three distinct words: Go to Chandernagore. Ten minutes later, Sri Aurobindo was aboard the first boat going down the Ganges. It was the end of his political life, the end of the integral yoga, and the beginning of the supramental yoga.
1.14 - The Principle of Divine Works, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Janaka and other great Karmayogins of the mighty ancient
Yoga attained to perfection, by equal and desireless works done as a sacrifice, without the least egoistic aim or attachment - Karman.aiva hi samsiddhim asthita janakadayah.. So too and with the same desirelessness, after liberation and perfection, works can and have to be continued by us in a large divine spirit, with the calm high nature of a spiritual royalty. "Thou shouldst do works regarding also the holding together of the peoples, lokasangraham evapi sampasyan kartum arhasi. Whatsoever the
Best doeth, that the lower kind of man puts into practice; the standard he creates, the people follows. O son of Pritha, I have no work that I need to do in all the three worlds, I have nothing that I have not gained and have yet to gain, and I abide verily in the paths of action," varta eva ca Karman.i, - eva implying,
I abide in it and do not leave it as the Sannyasin thinks himself bound to abandon works. "For if I did not abide sleeplessly in
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Divine is at work in man in the ignorance and at work in man in the knowledge. To know Him is our soul's highest welfare and the condition of its perfection, but to know and realise Him as a transcendent peace and silence is not all; the secret that has to be learned is at once the secret of the eternal and unborn Divine and the secret of the divine birth and works, janma Karma ca me divyam. The action which proceeds from that knowledge, will be free from all bondage; "he who so knoweth me," says the Teacher, "is not bound by works." If the escape from the obligation of works and desire and from the wheel of rebirth is to be the aim and the ideal, then this knowledge is to be taken as the true, the broad way of escape; for, says the Gita, "he who knows in their right principles my divine birth and works, comes when he leaves his body, not to rebirth, but to Me, O
Arjuna." Through the knowledge and possession of the divine birth he comes to the unborn and imperishable Divine who is the self of all beings, ajo avyaya atma; through the knowledge and execution of divine works to the Master of works, the lord of all beings, bhutanam svara. He lives in that unborn being; his works are those of that universal Mastery.
1.14 - The Stress of the Hidden Spirit, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Essays from the Karmayogin
The energy of Prajna is what the Europeans call Nature. The tree does not and cannot shape itself, the stress of the hidden
1.15 - In the Domain of the Spirit Beings, #The Practice of Magical Evocation, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
Naturally, this is not so in the astral world. The idea of beauty in the astral world, too, is quite different from the idea of beauty in this physical world. Since a deceased person is no longer subject to time and space when entering the astral sphere and thus in that world loses the means to measure its degree of perfection, it longs to return to the earth. The human being not only longs to return because he must equalize, by force of the Law of Karma of cause and effect, the errors he made during his lifetime but he also longs to come back to have another chance of development in the physical world and to gather further experiences, in his spirit, for the higher spheres of the astral world.
Every human being, after having died, will realise yet another fact in the astral world: having only a low degree of development, he will not be able to communicate with beings who, during their lifetime, have reached a higher degree of development, because these beings will stay in a higher, more subtle sphere of the astral world, and he himself will not be able to travel to their sphere of light. Even if he were able to move to those higher spheres he would not be able to stand the elevated vibration there and would drop back, that is he would soon find himself transferred to that astral sphere in which he belongs on account of his degree of development. A person with a high degree of perfection, however, is able to place himself into a lower sphere by accomodating the vibration of that sphere in his spirit.
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Providence has planned for him. If an individual living in this world could know in advance everything he has to go through, he would no longer have a free will in the physical world. Such an individual would be equivalent to a mere robot in all his doings or an automaton, and the task which he would have to complete in this world would become impracticable. Only an initiate of higher degree, being master over Karma, that is over cause and effect, and feeling equally familiar with the physical as well as the astral world is mature enough to know everything in advance without having to fear any disadvantageous influences on his free will.
Beings incarnate themselves from the astral world into the physical sphere of our planet, bordered by time and space, in order to work on their development, since the material laws of this plane put far more hindrances in front of every individual than is the case in the astral sphere. The impediments of the physical world streng then the spirit and enable it to grow more rapidly in its development than it would be possible in the astral world. Therefore the human beings of the astral world are urged to achieve re-incarnation in this world as soon as possible, and are ready to accept even the toughest conditions in order to be able to continue their spiritual development.
1.15 - The Possibility and Purpose of Avatarhood, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Sun-God, Vivasvan gave it to Manu, the father of men, Manu gave it to Ikshvaku, head of the Solar line, and so it came down from royal sage to royal sage till it was lost in the great lapse of Time and is now renewed for Arjuna, because he is the lover and devotee, friend and comrade of the Avatar. For this, he says, is the highest secret, - thus claiming for it a superiority to all other forms of Yoga, because those others lead to the impersonal Brahman or to a personal Deity, to a liberation in actionless knowledge or a liberation in absorbed beatitude, but this gives the highest secret and the whole secret; it brings us to divine peace and divine works, to divine knowledge, action and ecstasy unified in a perfect freedom; it unites into itself all the Yogic paths as the highest being of the Divine reconciles and makes one in itself all the different and even contrary powers and principles of its manifested being. Therefore this Yoga of the Gita is not, as some contend, only the Karmayoga, one and the lowest, according to them, of the three paths, but a highest
Yoga synthetic and integral directing Godward all the powers of our being.
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The second portion of these passages which has here been given in substance, explains the nature of divine works, divyam Karma, with the principle of which we have had to deal in the last essay; the first, which has been fully translated, explains the way of the divine birth, divyam janma, the Avatarhood. But we have to remark carefully that the upholding of Dharma in
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1.15 - The Supramental Consciousness, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
The Ideal of the Karmayogin, 2:17
On Himself, 26:58
1.16 - Advantages and Disadvantages of Evocational Magic, #The Practice of Magical Evocation, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
Should the necromancer have a predeliction for negative powers, his evocation and his endeavours to cause a projection in the astral world will possibly be readily answered by a so-called black-magician who will himself try to get into contact with such a necromancer. All of the necromancer's appetite for instructions, practices, satisfying of his curiosity, fulfillment of his desires, will then be quenched by that being. The necromancer is responsible for all that happens and he will thus charge his Karma to his account, especially if he wants to see desires realized which he can in no way justify. That the end of such a necromancer cannot be other than tragic need not be stressed. Necromancers usually die an unnatural death or suddenly of an incurable disease.
I should also mention the fact that there is also possible a passive relationship with beings of the astral plane and with beings of higher zones. This passive intercourse, however, is not so effective and does not give such great magical results as the practice of evocation. Also in this case an unexpected pact could be the final outcome, and the person taking up the connection by this passive intercourse is sometimes even worse off than the sorcerer or necromancer, since he has no control at allover the being with which he has taken up connection, or over the effects caused by it.
1.16 - WITH THE DEVOTEES AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
(To the devotees) "One cannot renounce by the mere wish. There are prarabdha Karma-inherited tendencies-and the like. Once a yogi said to a king, 'Live with me in the forest and think of God.' The king replied: 'That I cannot very well do. I could live with you, but I still have the desire for enjoyment. If I live in this forest, perhaps I shall create a kingdom even here. I still have desires.'
"Natabar Panja used to look after his cows in this garden during his boyhood. He had many desires. Hence he has established a castor-oil factory and earned a great deal of money. He has a prosperous castor-oil business at Alambazar.
1.17 - Astral Journey Example, How to do it, How to Verify your Experience, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Please observe that the further you get on, the higher your potential, the greater is the tendency to leak, or even to break the containing vessel. I can help you by warning you against setting up obstacles, real or imaginary, in your own path; which is what most people do. It is almost laughable to think that the Great Work consists merely in "letting her rip;" but Karma bumps you from one side of the toboggan slide to the other, until you vcome into the straight." (There's a chapter or two in the The Book of Lies about this, but I haven't got a copy. I must find one, and put them in here. Yes: p. 22)[26]
O thou that settest out upon the Path, false is the Phantom that thou seekest. When thou hast it thou shalt know all bitterness, thy teeth fixed in the Sodom-Apple.
1.17 - The Divine Birth and Divine Works, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
2 janma Karma ca me divyam evam yo vetti tattvatah,
tyaktva deham punarjanma naiti mam eti so'rjuna. vtaragabhayakrodha manmaya mam upasritah., bahavo jnanatapasa puta madbhavam agatah..
1.17 - The Spiritus Familiaris or Serving Spirits, #The Practice of Magical Evocation, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
The attitude a genuine magician takes towards getting into contact with a head, i. e. a higher being, a higher intelligence, is quite different to that of a sorcerer or black-magician. The latter wants to get beings under his power without any special effort and without the appropriate preparatory operations and magical development, in order to make these being serve him and help him to realize all his desires. Unfortunately, a sorcerer is likely to forget that by doing so he is debiting his Karma and that he is doing this at the costs of his evolution, and above all, to the costs of his magical development. Beings serving a sorcerer never work without reward. From the material point of view such services may only be regarded as loans. Actually, the sorcerer becomes the slave of the relevant being, for after their contract has expired, the sorcerer must, as already pointed 'out before, pay back everything. The beings are fully aware of this fact, and their devotion towards the magician, which is to ensure him that they are always willing to serve him and to fulfill any of his desires, often delude a sorcerer to the erroneous opinion that he has become master over the beings. His desires, his claims towards these beings increase during the course of the alliance, and the sorcerer eventually develops into a glutton. Only shortly before the expiration date of the contract, the sorcerer realizes what he has done and what Karmic responsibilities he has taken upon his shoulders. But at that point it is usually too late, and all advice and instructions to shake off the bondages of such a contract are, from the hermetic point of view, useless and impracticable, andin the eyes of a true magician sheer ridiculous. Negative effects that have once been set at work, no matter in which way, must, due to the law of cause and effect, have their due clear off and adjustment.
One might oppose that Divine Providence, in its aspects of love and charity, could, in some cases, make an exception. However, the genuine magician knows that causes are always followed up by the relevant effects, otherwise the Law of Karma, the law of retaliation, the rule of law of the whole universe, would be untrue, that is illusory. That this is not so, but that, on the contrary, everything takes place due to the most genuine laws with a most admirable precision need not be stressed here. Divine love and charity with all their other aspects such as benevolence etc. work up to the point where man realizes that he himself is the cause of the sorrows that have overcome him, and this knowledge enables him to carry his burden more easily. From the correct universal point of view Providence, in its aspects of love, benevolence etc., cannot further intervene. Every experienced magician, knowing the universal laws, finds this in order. Every genuine magician should therefore take heed not to conclude a contract which would entirely halt his personal magical development and evolution. A true initiate will not even be tempted to conclude contacts with high and good heads, no matter how great the advantages might be. To bind oneself to spirit beings and their spheres means losing the freedom of one's own thoughts and doings.
Why then, one might ask, is it necessary to deal with the magic of evocation; is it not better to work for one's personal development and to leave the beings where they are? The answer to this
1.17 - The Transformation, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
The Ideal of the Karmayogin, 10
Aurobindo's written works and the Mother's Questions and Answers,
--
Sri Aurobindo: The Ideal of the Karmayogin (1950)
A. B. Purani: Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo (1959)
--
5 - Political Period The Ideal of the Karmayogin, ' Karmayogin' 1909-10 1st ed. 1918
A System of National Education, ' Karmayogin' 1910 1st ed. 1921
1.18 - FAITH, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
The immortality attained through the acquisition of any objective condition (e.g., the conditionmerited through good works, which have been inspired by love of, and faith in, something less than the supreme Godheadof being united in act to what is worshipped) is liable to end; for it is distinctly stated in the Scriptures that Karma is never the cause of emancipation.
Shankara
1.18 - The Divine Worker, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Yoga than to action done in the blindness of hopes and fears, lamed by the judgments of the stumbling reason, running about amidst the eager trepidations of the hasty human will: Yoga, says the Gita elsewhere, is the true skill in works, yogah. Karmasu kausalam. But all this is done impersonally by the action of a great universal light and power operating through the individual nature. The Karmayogin knows that the power given to him will be adapted to the fruit decreed, the divine thought behind the work equated with the work he has to do, the will in him, - which will not be wish or desire, but an impersonal drive of conscious power directed towards an aim not his own, - subtly regulated in its energy and direction by the divine wisdom. The result may be success, as the ordinary mind understands it, or it may seem to that mind to be defeat and failure; but to him it is always the success intended, not by him, but by the all-wise manipulator of action and result, because he does not seek for victory, but only for the fulfilment of the divine will and wisdom which works out its ends through apparent failure as well as and often with greater force than through apparent triumph. Arjuna, bidden to fight, is assured of victory; but even if certain defeat were before him, he must still fight because that is the present work assigned to him as his immediate share in the great sum of energies by which the divine will is surely accomplished.
The liberated man has no personal hopes; he does not seize on things as his personal possessions; he receives what the divine
--
His action is indeed a purely physical action, sarram kevalam Karma; for all else comes from above, is not generated on the human plane, is only a reflection of the will, knowledge, joy of the divine Purushottama. Therefore he does not by a stress on
The Divine Worker
--
of the evolving Dharma, and every turn of the conflict has been designed and mapped by the foreseeing eye of the Master of the battle, the Lord of works and Guide of the dharma. Honour and dishonour from men cannot move him, nor their praise nor their blame; for he has a greater clear-seeing judge and another standard for his action, and his motive admits no dependence upon worldly rewards. Arjuna the Kshatriya prizes naturally honour and reputation and is right in shunning disgrace and the name of coward as worse than death; for to maintain the point of honour and the standard of courage in the world is part of his dharma: but Arjuna the liberated soul need care for none of these things, he has only to know the kartavyam Karma, the work which the supreme Self demands from him, and to do that and leave the result to the Lord of his actions. He has passed even beyond that distinction of sin and virtue which is so allimportant to the human soul while it is struggling to minimise the hold of its egoism and lighten the heavy and violent yoke of its passions, - the liberated has risen above these struggles and is seated firmly in the purity of the witnessing and enlightened soul. Sin has fallen away from him, and not a virtue acquired and increased by good action and impaired or lost by evil action, but the inalienable and unalterable purity of a divine and selfless nature is the peak to which he has climbed and the seat upon which he is founded. There the sense of sin and the sense of virtue have no starting-point or applicability.
Arjuna, still in the ignorance, may feel in his heart the call of right and justice and may argue in his mind that abstention from battle would be a sin entailing responsibility for all the suffering that injustice and oppression and the evil Karma of the triumph of wrong bring upon men and nations, or he may feel in his heart the recoil from violence and slaughter and argue in his mind that all shedding of blood is a sin which nothing can justify. Both of these attitudes would appeal with equal right to virtue and reason and it would depend upon the man, the circumstances and the time which of these might prevail in his mind or before the eyes of the world. Or he might simply feel constrained by his heart and his honour to support his friends against his enemies,
The Divine Worker
--
Impersonal from whom all action proceeds without disturbing his peace. The true Sannyasa of action is the reposing of all works on the Brahman. "He who, having abandoned attachment, acts reposing (or founding) his works on the Brahman, brahman.yadhaya Karman.i, is not stained by sin even as water clings not to the lotus-leaf." Therefore the Yogins first "do works with the body, mind, understanding, or even merely with the organs of action, abandoning attachment, for self-purification, sangam tyaktvatmasuddhaye. By abandoning attachment to the fruits of works the soul in union with Brahman attains to peace of rapt foundation in Brahman, but the soul not in union is attached to the fruit and bound by the action of desire." The foundation, the purity, the peace once attained, the embodied soul perfectly controlling its nature, having renounced all its actions by the mind, inwardly, not outwardly, "sits in its ninegated city neither doing nor causing to be done." For this soul is the one impersonal Soul in all, the all-pervading Lord, prabhu, vibhu, who, as the impersonal, neither creates the works of the world, nor the mind's idea of being the doer, na kartr.tvam na Karman.i, nor the coupling of works to their fruits, the chain of cause and effect. All that is worked out by the Nature in the man, svabhava, his principle of self-becoming, as the word literally means. The all-pervading Impersonal accepts neither the sin nor the virtue of any: these are things created by the ignorance in the creature, by his egoism of the doer, by his ignorance of his highest self, by his involution in the operations of Nature, and
186
--
Self, renouncing all thy actions into Me, mayi sarvan.i Karman.i
The Divine Worker
--
Such only are the works of the liberated soul, muktasya Karma, for in nothing does he act from a personal inception; such are the actions of the accomplished Karmayogin. They rise from a free spirit and disappear without modifying it, like waves that rise and disappear on the surface of conscious, immutable depths.
Gata-sangasya muktasya jnanavasthita-cetasah., yajnayacaratah. Karma samagram pravilyate.
1.19 - Equality, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Hence the immense importance attached by the Gita in its elements of Karmayoga to equality; it is the nodus of the free spirit's free relations with the world. Self-knowledge, desirelessness, impersonality, bliss, freedom from the modes of Nature, when withdrawn into themselves, self-absorbed, inactive, have no need of equality; for they take no cognisance of the things in which the opposition of equality and inequality arises. But the moment the spirit takes cognisance of and deals with the multiplicities, personalities, differences, inequalities of the action of Nature, it has to effectuate these other signs of its free status by this one manifesting sign of equality. Knowledge is the consciousness of unity with the One; and in relation with the many different beings and existences of the universe it must
Equality
1.19 - GOD IS NOT MOCKED, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
IF THERE is freedom (and even Determinists consistently act as if they were certain of it) and if (as everyone who has qualified himself to talk about the subject has always been convinced) there is a spiritual Reality, which it is the final end and purpose of consciousness to know; then all life is in the nature of an intelligence test, and the higher the level of awareness and the greater the potentialities of the creature, the more searchingly difficult will be the questions asked. For, in Bagehots words, we could not be what we ought to be, if we lived in the sort of universe we should expect. A latent Providence, a confused life, an odd material world, an existence broken short in the midst and on a sudden, are not real difficulties, but real helps; for they, or something like them, are essential conditions of a moral life in a subordinate being. Because we are free, it is possible for us to answer lifes questions either well or badly. If we answer them badly, we shall bring down upon ourselves self-stultification. Most often this self-stultification will take subtle and not immediately detectable forms, as when our failure to answer properly makes it impossible for us to realize the higher potentialities of our being. Sometimes, on the contrary, the self-stultification is manifest on the physical level, and may involve not only individuals as individuals, but entire societies, which go down in catastrophe or sink more slowly into decay. The giving of correct answers is rewarded primarily by spiritual growth and progressive realization of latent potentialities, and secondarily (when circumstances make it possible) by the adding of all the rest to the realized kingdom of God. Karma exists; but its equivalence of act and award is not always obvious and material, as the earlier Buddhist and Hebrew writers ingenuously imagined that it should be. The bad man in prosperity may, all unknown to himself, be darkened and corroded with inward rust, while the good man under afflictions may be in the rewarding process of spiritual growth. No, God is not mocked; but also, let us always remember, He is not understood.
Per nella giustizia sempiterna
--
Horizontally and vertically, in physical and temperamental kind as well as in degree of inborn ability and native goodness, human beings differ profoundly one from another. Why? To what end and for what past causes? Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned nor his parents, but that the works of God should be made manifest in him. The man of science, on the contrary, would say that the responsibility rested with the parents who had caused the blindness of their child either by having the wrong kind of genes, or by contracting some avoidable disease. Hindu or Buddhist believers in reincarnation according to the laws of Karma (the destiny which, by their actions, individuals and groups of individuals impose upon themselves, one another and their descendants) would give another answer and say that, owing to what he had done in previous existences, the blind man had predestined himself to choose the sort of parents from whom he would have to inherit blindness.
These three answers are not mutually incompatible. The parents are responsible for making the child what, by heredity and upbringing, he turns out to be. The soul or character incarnated in the child is of such a nature, owing to past behaviour, that it is forced to select those particular parents. And collaborating with the material and efficient causes is the final cause, the teleological pull from in front. This teleological pull is a pull from the divine Ground of things acting upon that part of the timeless now, which a finite mind must regard as the future. Men sin and their parents sin; but the works of God have to be manifested in every sentient being (either by exceptional ways, as in this case of supernormal healing, or in the ordinary course of events)have to be manifested again and again, with the infinite patience of eternity, until at last the creature makes itself fit for the perfect and consummate manifestation of unitive knowledge, of the state of not I, but God in me.
1.19 - THE MASTER AND HIS INJURED ARM, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"Janaka fenced with two swords, the one of jnna and the other of Karma. The sannyasi renounces action; therefore he fences with one sword only, that of knowledge. A householder, endowed with knowledge like Janaka's, can enjoy fruit both from the tree and from the ground. He can serve holy men, entertain guests, and do other things like that. I said to the Divine Mother, 'O Mother, I don't want to be a dry sdhu.'
"After attaining Brahmajnana one does not have to discriminate even about food. The rishis of olden times, endowed with the Knowledge of Brahman and having experienced divine bliss, ate everything, even pork.
(To Mahima) "Generally speaking there are two kinds of yoga: Karmayoga and manoyoga, that is to say, union with God through work and through the mind.
Four stages of life
--
"In the case of a paramahamsa, like Sukadeva, all Karmas-all puja, japa, tarpan, sandhya, and so forth-drop away. In this state a man communes with God through the mind alone. Sometimes he may be pleased to perform outward activities for the welfare of mankind. But his recollection and contemplation of God remain uninterrupted."
It was about eight o'clock in the evening. Sri Ramakrishna asked Mahimacharan to recite a few hymns from the scriptures. Mahima read the first verse of the Uttara Git, describing the nature of the Supreme Brahman:
12.02 - The Stress of the Spirit, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The universe is a close-knit pattern in which each part, each point is inextricably linked with every other part and point. Each element acts and reacts upon every other: the Karma of one is echoed and re-echoed in the Karma of all others. An inevitable, inescapable mutuality rules the behaviour of the constituent entities of a whole; in other words, there is only one Force, one Presence that permeates all, even constitutes the All.
The material universe makes one single block of reality, homogeneous and indivisible. Modern knowledge has proved the fact to the hilt. It is one continuous extension like the ocean's rippling wet sheet. If you pull at one point the tension is felt in the whole at every other point. That is Einstein's gravitational field constituting the universe: a change of disposition at one point changes the disposition of the whole universe. The very character of this world is its rigorous determinism: the part is absolutely and completely a portion and parcel of the whole. Somewhat paradoxically one might say that the part is the whole, nothing but the whole, only on a reduced scale.
12.08 - Notes on Freedom, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Freedom is a divine quality; it belongs to the Divine Consciousness. Nothing below that status is free or can be freeall are bound to the Cosmic Law, the inexorable law of Karma, the chain of global Causation. You are free when you are out of it and dwell with and in the Master of the causal ring.
God alone is free. You are free only when you are united with God and your will merges in His Will and His Will manifests in yours.
1.20 - Equality and Knowledge, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is in this sense that the Gita is speaking when it says that all the totality of work finds its completion, culmination, end in knowledge, sarvam Karmakhilam jnane parisamapyate. "As
Equality and Knowledge
--
a fire kindled turns to ashes its fuel, so the fire of knowledge turns all works to ashes." By this it is not at all meant that when knowledge is complete, there is cessation from works. What is meant is made clear by the Gita when it says that he who has destroyed all doubt by knowledge and has by Yoga given up all works and is in possession of the Self is not bound by his works, yoga-sannyasta- Karman.am atmavantam na Karman.i nibadhnanti, and that he whose self has become the self of all existences, acts and yet is not affected by his works, is not caught in them, receives from them no soul-ensnaring reaction, kurvann api na lipyate. Therefore, it says, the Yoga of works is better than the physical renunciation of works, because, while Sannyasa is difficult for embodied beings who must do works so long as they are in the body, Yoga of works is entirely sufficient and it rapidly and easily brings the soul to Brahman. That Yoga of works is, we have seen, the offering of all action to the Lord, which induces as its culmination an inner and not an outer, a spiritual, not a physical giving up of works into the Brahman, into the being of the Lord, brahman.i adhaya Karman.i, mayi sannyasya. When works are thus "reposed on the Brahman," the personality of the instrumental doer ceases; though he acts, he does nothing; for he has given up not only the fruits of his works, but the works themselves and the doing of them to the
Lord. The Divine then takes the burden of works from him; the
--
"Equal-visioned everywhere, he sees the Self in all existences and all existences in the Self. He who sees Me everywhere and all and each in Me, is never lost to Me nor I to him. He who has reached oneness and loves Me in all beings, that Yogin, howsoever he lives and acts, is living and acting in Me. O Arjuna, he who sees all equally everywhere as himself, whether it be happiness or suffering, I hold him to be the supreme Yogin." That is the old Vedantic knowledge of the Upanishads which the Gita holds up constantly before us; but it is its superiority to other later formulations of it that it turns persistently this knowledge into a great practical philosophy of divine living. Always it insists on the relation between this knowledge of oneness and Karmayoga, and therefore on the knowledge of oneness as the basis of a liberated action in the world. Whenever it speaks of knowledge, it turns at once to speak of equality which is its result; whenever it speaks of equality, it turns to speak too of the knowledge which is its basis. The equality it enjoins does not begin and end in a static condition of the soul useful only for self-liberation; it is always a basis of works. The peace of the Brahman in the liberated soul is the foundation; the large, free, equal, worldwide action of the Lord in the liberated nature radiates the power which proceeds from that peace; these two made one synthesise divine works and God-knowledge.
We see at once what a profound extension we get here for the ideas which otherwise the Gita has in common with other systems of philosophic, ethical or religious living. Endurance, philosophic indifference, resignation are, we have said, the foundation of three kinds of equality; but the Gita's truth of knowledge not only gathers them all up together, but gives them an infinitely profound, a magnificently ample significance.
1.23 - FESTIVAL AT SURENDRAS HOUSE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"To work in such a spirit of detachment is known as Karmayoga. But it is very difficult.
We are living in the Kaliyuga, when one easily becomes attached to one's actions. You may think you are working in a detached spirit, but attachment creeps into the mind from nobody knows where. You may worship in the temple or arrange a grand religious festival or feed many poor and starving people. You may think you have done all this without hankering after the results. But unknown to yourself the desire for name and fame has somehow crept into your mind. Complete detachment from the results of action is possible only for one who has seen God."
--
God, give me knowledge, give me devotion, and reveal Thyself to me!' The path of Karma is extremely difficult. Therefore one should pray: 'O God, make my duties fewer and fewer; and may I, through Thy grace, do the few duties that Thou givest me without any attachment to their results! May I have no desire to be involved in many activities!'
"It is not possible to give up work altogether. Even to think or to meditate is a kind of work.
1.240 - 1.300 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
Why ask "Was I born? Am I reaping fruits of my past Karma," and so on? They will not be raised some time hence when you fall asleep. Why? Are you now different from the one in sleep? You are not. Why do these questions arise now and not in sleep? Find out.
202
--
D.: Is not destiny due to past Karma?
M.: If one is surrendered to God, God will look to it.
--
D.: Buddha, when asked if there is the ego, was silent; when asked if there is no ego, he was silent; asked if there is God, he was silent; asked if there is no God, he was silent. Silence was his answer for all these. Mahayana and Hinayana schools have both misinterpreted his silence because they say that he was an atheist. If he was an atheist, why should he have spoken of nirvana, of births and deaths, of Karma, reincarnations and dharma? His interpreters are wrong. Is it not so?
M.: You are right.
--
D.: But saktipata is said to occur in Karmasamya, i.e., when merit and demerit are equal.
M.: Yes. Malaparipaka, Karmasamya and saktipata mean the same,
A man is running the course of his samskaras; when taught he is the Self, the teaching affects his mind and imagination runs riot.
--
While discussing Karma, Sri Bhagavan said: " Karma has its fruit
(phala). They are like cause and effect. The interrelation of a cause and its effect is due to a Sakti whom we call God. God is phala data
--
Q.: Is there any Karma for them?
M.: Their conduct is not regulated according to any rules or codes.
--
D.: How is prarabdha (past Karma) related to purushakara (one's own effort here)?
M.: Prarabdha is Karma (action). There must be a karta (doer) for it.
See who the karta is. Purushakara is effort. See who exerts. There is identity established. The one who seeks to know their relation is himself the link.
D.: What is Karma and rebirth?
M.: See the karta (doer) and then the Karma (action) becomes obvious.
If you are born now, rebirth may follow. See if you are born now.
1.240 - Talks 2, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
Why ask Was I born? Am I reaping fruits of my past Karma, and so on? They will not be raised some time hence when you fall asleep. Why? Are you now different from the one in sleep? You are not. Why do these questions arise now and not in sleep? Find out.
Talk 243.
--
D.: Is not destiny due to past Karma?
M.: If one is surrendered to God, God will look to it.
--
D.: Buddha, when asked if there is the ego, was silent; when asked if there is no ego, he was silent; asked if there is God, he was silent; asked if there is no God, he was silent. Silence was his answer for all these. Mahayana and Hinayana schools have both misinterpreted his silence because they say that he was an atheist. If he was an atheist, why should he have spoken of nirvana, of births and deaths, of Karma, reincarnations and dharma? His interpreters are wrong. Is it not so?
M.: You are right.
--
D.: But saktipata is said to occur in Karmasamya, i.e., when merit and demerit are equal.
M.: Yes. Malaparipaka, Karmasamya and saktipata mean the same,
A man is running the course of his samskaras; when taught he is the Self, the teaching affects his mind and imagination runs riot.
--
While discussing Karma, Sri Bhagavan said: Karma has its fruit
(phala). They are like cause and effect. The interrelation of a cause and its effect is due to a Sakti whom we call God. God is phala data
--
Q.: Is there any Karma for them?
M.: Their conduct is not regulated according to any rules or codes.
--
D.: How is prarabdha (past Karma) related to purushakara (ones own effort here)?
M.: Prarabdha is Karma (action). There must be a karta (doer) for it.
See who the karta is. Purushakara is effort. See who exerts. There is identity established. The one who seeks to know their relation is himself the link.
D.: What is Karma and rebirth?
M.: See the karta (doer) and then the Karma (action) becomes obvious.
If you are born now, rebirth may follow. See if you are born now.
--
Mr. Sridhar, a Hindu from Goa, asked: What is kousalam (skill) in Yogah Karmasu kousalam (yoga is skill in action). How is that gained?
M.: Do actions without caring for the result. Do not think that you are the doer. Dedicate the work to God. That is the skill and also the way to gain it.
--
Yogah Karmasu kousalam = Skill in work is yoga,
Samatvam yoga uchyate = Equanimity is yoga,
--
Ekamevadwiteeyam = Only one without a second, representing Karma, Yoga, Bhakti and Jnana convey the same meaning.
They are only the single Truth presented in different aspects.
--
The final word in the previous stanza asks, Is there one? The initial words in the present stanza answer, Yes, there is the One..... It proceeds, Though it is the only One, yet by its wonderful power it gets reflected on the tiny dot I (the ego) otherwise known as ignorance or the aggregate of latent tendencies; this reflected light is relative knowledge. This, according to ones prarabdha (past Karma now fructifying), manifests the inner latent tendencies as the outer gross world and withdraws the gross external world as the subtle internal tendencies; such power is called mind in the subtle plane and brain in the physical plane. This mind or brain acts as the magnifier to that
Eternal One Being and shows It forth as the expanded universe. In the waking and dream states the mind is out-ward bent and in sleep it is in-ward bent; with the mind as the medium, the one Supreme
--
M.: The sastras say: By Karma, bhakti and so on. My attendant asked the same question once before. He was told, By Karma dedicated to God. It is not enough that one thinks of God while doing the Karma, but one must continually and unceasingly think of Him. Then alone will the mind become pure.
The attendant applies it to himself and says, It is not enough that I serve
--
LIMITLESS BLISS: This is Self-Realisation; and thereby is cut asunder the hridaya-granthi or the Knot of the Heart. The false delusions of ignorance, the vicious and age-long tendencies of the mind, which constitute this knot, are destroyed. All doubts are dispelled and the bondage of Karma is severed.
Thus has Sri Sankara described, in this Crown-gem of
--
FINAL FREEDOM: Thus defining a jivanmukta, he is declared to be free from the bonds of threefold Karmas (sanchita, agami and prarabdha).
The disciple who has reached this stage then relates his personal experience. The liberated one is free indeed to act as he pleases, and when he leaves the mortal frame, attains absolution, and returns not to this birth which is death.
--
M.: Due to Karma.
D.: Who makes Karma bear fruits?
M.: God.
D.: God makes us do Karma and gives bad fruits for bad Karma. Is it fair?
Sri Bhagavan almost laughed and was very pleased with her. Later he was coaxing her to read something on returning to the hall. Since then He is watching her.
--
Karma is posited as past Karma, etc., prarabdha, agami and sanchita. There must be kartritva (doership) and karta (doer) for it. Karma (action) cannot be for the body because it is insentient.
It is only so long as dehatma buddhi (I-am-the-body idea) lasts.
After transcending dehatma buddhi one becomes a Jnani. In the absence of that idea (buddhi) there cannot be either kartritva or karta. So a Jnani has no Karma. That is his experience. Otherwise he is not a Jnani. However an ajnani identifies the Jnani with his body, which the Jnani does not do. So the ajnani finds the Jnani acting, because his body is active, and therefore he asks if the Jnani is not affected by prarabdha.
The scriptures say that jnana is the fire which burns away all Karma
(sarva Karmani). Sarva (all) is interpreted in two ways: (1) to include prarabdha and (2) to exclude it. In the first way: if a man with three wives dies, it is asked. can two of them be called widows and the third not? All are widows. So it is with prarabdha, agami and sanchita.
--
The second explanation is, however, given only to satisfy the enquirer. It is said that all Karma is burnt away leaving prarabdha alone. The body is said to continue in the functions for which it
Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi has taken its birth. That is prarabdha. But from the jnanis point of view there is only the Self which manifests in such variety.
There is no body or Karma apart from the Self, so that the actions do not affect him.
D.: Is there no dehatma buddhi (I-am-the-body idea) for the Jnani?
--
(bhogahetu). That is to say, actions bear twofold fruits, the one for enjoyment of their fruits and the other leaving an impress on the mind in the form of samskaras for subsequent manifestation in future births. The jnanis mind being barren cannot entertain seeds of Karma. His vasanas simply exhaust themselves by activities ending in enjoyment only (bhogahetuka Karma). In fact, his Karma is seen only from the ajnanis standpoint. He remains actionless only. He is not aware of the body as being apart from the Self. How can there be liberation (mukti) or bondage (bandha) for him? He is beyond both. He is not bound by Karma, either now or ever. There is no jivanmukta or videhamukta according to him.
D.: From all this it looks as if a Jnani who has scorched all the vasanas is the best and that he would remain inactive like a stock or stone.
--
(8) Karma Yoga also is Bhakti:
To worship God with flowers and other external objects is troublesome. Only lay the single flower, the heart, at the feet of
--
(9) This Karma Yoga puts an end to ones samsara:
Whatever the order of life (asrama) of the devotee, only once thought of, Siva relieves the devotee of his load of samsara and takes it on Himself. (11)
1.24 - PUNDIT SHASHADHAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Three yogas explained by Master "Innumerable are the ways that lead to God. There are the paths of jnna, of Karma, and of bhakti. If you are sincere, you will attain God in the end, whichever path you follow. Roughly speaking, there are three kinds of yoga: jnanayoga, Karma yoga, and bhaktiyoga.
"What is jnanayoga? The Jnni seeks to realize Brahman. He discriminates, saying, 'Not this, not this'. He discriminates, saying, 'Brahman is real and the universe illusory.' He discriminates between the Real and the unreal. As he comes to the end of discrimination, he goes into samdhi and attains the Knowledge of Brahman.
"What is Karmayoga? Its aim is to fix one's mind on God by means of work. That is what you are teaching. It consists of breath-control, concentration, meditation, and so on, done in a spirit of detachment. If a householder performs his duties in the world in a spirit of detachment, surrendering the results to God and with devotion to God in his heart, he too may be said to practise Karmayoga. Further, if a person performs worship, japa, and other forms of devotion, surrendering the results to God, he may be said to practise Karmayoga. Attainment of God alone is the aim of Karmayoga.
"What is bhaktiyoga? It is to keep the mind on God by chanting His name and glories.
--
Difficulties of the paths of jnna and Karma
"The path of Karma is very difficult. First of all, as I have just said, where will one find the time for it nowadays? Where is the time for a man to perform his duties as enjoined in the scriptures? Man's life is short in this age. Further, it is extremely difficult to perform one's duties in a spirit of detachment, without craving the result. One cannot work in such a spirit without first having realized God. Attachment to the result somehow enters the mind, though you may not be aware of it.
"To follow jnanayoga in this age is also very difficult. First, a man's life depends entirely on food. Second, he has a short span of life. Third, he can by no means get rid of body-consciousness; and the Knowledge of Brahman is impossible without the destruction of body-consciousness. The Jnni says: 'I am Brahman; I am not the body. I am beyond hunger and thirst, disease and grief, birth and death, pleasure and pain.' How can you be a Jnni if you are conscious of disease, grief, pain, pleasure, and the like? A thorn enters your flesh, blood flow from the wound, and you suffer very badly from the pain; but nevertheless, if you are a Jnni you must be able to say: 'Why, there is no thorn in my flesh at all. Nothing is the matter with me'
"Therefore bhaktiyoga is prescribed for this age. By following this path one comes to God more easily than by following the others. One can undoubtedly, reach God by following the paths of jnna and Karma, but they are very difficult paths.
God fulfils all desires of His devotees
1.25 - ADVICE TO PUNDIT SHASHADHAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER: "The body survives with some so that they may work out their prarabdha Karma or work for the welfare of others. By bathing in the Ganges a man gets rid of his sin and attains liberation. But if he happens to be blind, he doesn't get rid of his blindness. Of course, he escapes future births, which would otherwise be necessary for reaping the results of his past sinful Karma. His present body remains alive as long as its momentum7 is not exhausted; but future births are no longer possible. The wheel moves as long as the impulse that has set it in motion lasts. Then it comes to a stop. In the case of such a person, passions like lust and anger are burnt up. Only the body remains alive to perform a few actions."
PUNDIT: "That is called samskara."
1.25 - SPIRITUAL EXERCISES, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
What is this Way of Wisdom designed to accomplish? There are three classes of conditions that hinder one from advancing along the path to Enlightenment. First, there are the allurements arising from the senses, from external conditions and from the discriminating mind. Second, there are the internal conditions of the mind, its thoughts, desires and mood. All these the earlier practices (ethical and mortificatory) are designed to eliminate. In the third class of impediments are placed the individuals instinctive and fundamental (and therefore most insidious and persistent) urges the will to live and to enjoy, the will to cherish ones personality, the will to propagate, which give rise to greed and lust, fear and anger, infatuation, pride and egotism. The practice of the Wisdom Paramita is designed to control and eliminate these fundamental and instinctive hindrances. By means of it the mind gradually grows clearer, more luminous, more peaceful. Insight becomes more penetrating, faith deepens and broadens, until they merge into the inconceivable Samadhi of the Minds Pure Essence. As one continues the practice of the Way of Wisdom, one yields less and less to thoughts of comfort or desolation; faith becomes surer, more pervasive, beneficent and joyous; and fear of retrogression vanishes. But do not think that the consummation is to be attained easily or quickly; many rebirths may be necessary, many aeons may have to elapse. So long as doubt, unbelief, slanders, evil conduct, hindrances of Karma, weakness of faith, pride, sloth and mental agitation persist, so long as even their shadows linger, there can be no attainment of the Samadhi of the Buddhas. But he who has attained to the radiance of highest Samadhi, or unitive Knowledge, will be able to realize, with all the Buddhas, the perfect unity of all sentient beings with Buddhahoods Dharmakaya. In the pure Dharmakaya there is no dualism, neither shadow of differentiation. All sentient beings, if only they were able to realize it, are already in Nirvana. The Minds pure Essence is Highest Samadhi, is Anuttara-samyak-sambodhi, is Prajna Paramita, is Highest Perfect Wisdom.
Ashvoghosha
1.300 - 1.400 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
Mr. Sridhar, a Hindu from Goa, asked: What is kousalam (skill) in Yogah Karmasu kousalam (yoga is skill in action). How is that gained?
M.: Do actions without caring for the result. Do not think that you are the doer. Dedicate the work to God. That is the skill and also the way to gain it.
--
Yogah Karmasu kousalam = Skill in work is yoga,
Samatvam yoga uchyate = Equanimity is yoga,
--
Ekamevadwiteeyam = Only one without a second, representing Karma, Yoga, Bhakti and Jnana convey the same meaning.
They are only the single Truth presented in different aspects.
--
The final word in the previous stanza asks, "Is there one?" The initial words in the present stanza answer, "Yes, there is the One....." It proceeds, "Though it is the only One, yet by its wonderful power it gets reflected on the tiny dot 'I' (the ego) otherwise known as ignorance or the aggregate of latent tendencies; this reflected light is relative knowledge. This, according to one's prarabdha (past Karma now fructifying), manifests the inner latent tendencies as the outer gross world and withdraws the gross external world as the subtle internal tendencies; such power is called mind in the subtle plane and brain in the physical plane. This mind or brain acts as the magnifier to that
Eternal One Being and shows It forth as the expanded universe. In the waking and dream states the mind is out-ward bent and in sleep it is in-ward bent; with the mind as the medium, the one Supreme
--
M.: The sastras say: "By Karma, bhakti and so on". My attendant asked the same question once before. He was told, "By Karma dedicated to God". It is not enough that one thinks of God while doing the Karma, but one must continually and unceasingly think of Him. Then alone will the mind become pure.
The attendant applies it to himself and says, "It is not enough that I serve
--
LIMITLESS BLISS: This is Self-Realisation; and thereby is cut asunder the hridaya-granthi or the Knot of the Heart. The false delusions of ignorance, the vicious and age-long tendencies of the mind, which constitute this knot, are destroyed. All doubts are dispelled and the bondage of Karma is severed.
Thus has Sri Sankara described, in this "Crown-gem of
--
FINAL FREEDOM: Thus defining a jivanmukta, he is declared to be free from the bonds of threefold Karmas (sanchita, agami and prarabdha).
The disciple who has reached this stage then relates his personal experience. The liberated one is free indeed to act as he pleases, and when he leaves the mortal frame, attains absolution, and returns not to this "birth which is death".
--
M.: Due to Karma.
D.: Who makes Karma bear fruits?
M.: God.
D.: God makes us do Karma and gives bad fruits for bad Karma. Is it fair?
Sri Bhagavan almost laughed and was very pleased with her. Later he was coaxing her to read something on returning to the hall. Since then He is watching her.
--
Karma is posited as past Karma, etc., prarabdha, agami and sanchita. There must be kartritva (doership) and karta (doer) for it. Karma (action) cannot be for the body because it is insentient.
It is only so long as dehatma buddhi ('I-am-the-body idea') lasts.
After transcending dehatma buddhi one becomes a Jnani. In the absence of that idea (buddhi) there cannot be either kartritva or karta. So a Jnani has no Karma. That is his experience. Otherwise he is not a Jnani. However an ajnani identifies the Jnani with his body, which the Jnani does not do. So the ajnani finds the Jnani acting, because his body is active, and therefore he asks if the Jnani is not affected by prarabdha.
The scriptures say that jnana is the fire which burns away all Karma
(sarva Karmani). Sarva (all) is interpreted in two ways: (1) to include prarabdha and (2) to exclude it. In the first way: if a man with three wives dies, it is asked. "can two of them be called widows and the third not?" All are widows. So it is with prarabdha, agami and sanchita.
--
The second explanation is, however, given only to satisfy the enquirer. It is said that all Karma is burnt away leaving prarabdha alone. The body is said to continue in the functions for which it
363
--
There is no body or Karma apart from the Self, so that the actions do not affect him.
D.: Is there no dehatma buddhi (I-am-the-body idea) for the Jnani?
--
(bhogahetu). That is to say, actions bear twofold fruits, the one for enjoyment of their fruits and the other leaving an impress on the mind in the form of samskaras for subsequent manifestation in future births. The jnani's mind being barren cannot entertain seeds of Karma. His vasanas simply exhaust themselves by activities ending in enjoyment only (bhogahetuka Karma). In fact, his Karma is seen only from the ajnani's standpoint. He remains actionless only. He is not aware of the body as being apart from the Self. How can there be liberation (mukti) or bondage (bandha) for him? He is beyond both. He is not bound by Karma, either now or ever. There is no jivanmukta or videhamukta according to him.
364
13.01 - A Centurys Salutation to Sri Aurobindo The Greatness of the Great, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In other words, the yogi, the Divine, the Impersonal man in Sri Aurobindo was the real person always there from the very birth. Thus we see him starting life exactly with the thing where every one ends. In his inner being he had not to pass through the gradations that lead an ordinary person gradually towards the widening ranges of consciousness and existence. In all the stations of his life, in every sphere and status Sri Aurobindo was doing his duties, that is, his workkartavyam Karmaselflessly, which means with no sense of self, or perhaps we should say, with supreme Selfhoodness; for such is the character, the very nature of the born yogi, the Godman. The duties done for and within a frame of life tend always to overflow, as it were, the boundaries and do not always strictly follow the norm of the limited frame. For example, even while in the family life, in the midst of relatives and close friends he was never moved by mere attachment or worldly ties, he was impelled to do what he had to in the circumstances, unattached, free, under another command. Again, when he chose the larger field of national life, here too, he was not limited to that frame, his patriotism was not chauvinism or a return to the parochialism of the past; his patriotism was broad-based upon the sense of human solidarity and even the broad-based humanity was not broad enough for the consciousness in him; for humanity does not mean mere humanitarianism, charity, benevolence, or service to mankind. True humanity can be or is to be reached by pushing it still farther into the Divinity where men are not merely brothers or even portions of the Divine but one with Him, the self-same being and personality.
Thus, Sri Aurobindo was an ideal worker, the perfect workman doing the work appropriate to the field of work according to its norm, faultless in execution. As a family man, as a citizen, as a patriot, he carried out his appointed function not in any personal sense with the feeling or consciousness of any individual personality but a large impersonal personality free from ego-sense which is the hallmark of a luminous cosmic consciousness, based upon a still higher and transcendent standing.
--
It was this secret ultimate truth that overshadowed, brooded over all these stages and steps and occupations he passed through: they only led up to that transcendent reality, but it was the sense, constant sense of that reality that lent a special character to all his Karma. This urge towards the supreme reality, this transcendence, did not mean for him a rejection of the domains passed through: it is a subsuming, that is to say, uplifting the narrower, the lower status, integrating them into the higher: even as the soil at the root of the plant is subsumed and transmuted into the living sap that mounts high up the plant towards its very top, to the light and energy above.
In the scheme and pattern of human existence in the hierarchy that is collective life, Sri Aurobindo sought to express the play of the supreme Truth, express materially that which works always in secret and behind the veil. The Supreme Reality is not merely the supreme awareness and consciousness, but it is a power and a force; and it holds still a secret source that has not yet been touched,touched consciously by the human consciousness and utilised for world existence. Man's genius has contacted today in the material world material forces which are almost immaterial the extra-galactic radiation, the laser beams and other energies of that category which are powerful in an unbelievable unheard of 'degree. Even so in the consciousness, there is a mode of force which is not only a force that knows but creates, not only creates but transforms. That force at its intrinsic optimum can enter into dull matter and transforming it, transform into radiant matter, radiant not only with the physical, the solar light but the light of the supreme Spirit.
1.33 - The Gardens of Adonis, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
of both sexes go to the forest and cut a young Karma-tree, or the
branch of one. Bearing it in triumph they return dancing, singing,
--
round the Karma-tree, which is decked with strips of coloured cloth
and sham bracelets and necklets of plaited straw. As a preparation
--
they place some of the plants before the Karma-tree. Finally, the
Karma-tree is taken away and thrown into a stream or tank. The
--
the Karma-tree is hardly open to question. Trees are supposed to
exercise a quickening influence upon the growth of crops, and
--
example of rapid vegetable growth. The throwing of the Karma-tree
into the water is to be interpreted as a rain-charm. Whether the
1.400 - 1.450 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
(8) Karma Yoga also is Bhakti:
To worship God with flowers and other external objects is troublesome. Only lay the single flower, the heart, at the feet of
--
(9) This Karma Yoga puts an end to one's samsara:
Whatever the order of life (asrama) of the devotee, only once thought of, Siva relieves the devotee of his load of samsara and takes it on Himself. (11)
--
D.: Beginningless predisposition makes one do wrong. Without jnana this predisposition cannot vanish. But jnana looks almost impossible. Expiation alone cannot undo all the Karma; for how much expiation will be needed! Look where we will! Everything looks difficult, even impossible. Association with the wise seems to be the only cure of all ills.
M.: What is to be done? Reality is One only. How can It be realised?
--
D.: Karma, bhakti, yoga and jnana and their subdivisions only confuse the mind. To follow the elders' words seems to be the only right thing to do. What should I hold? Please tell me. I cannot sift the srutis and smritis; they are too vast. So please advise me.
(No answer.)
--
An advocate visitor: The mind becomes aware of the world through the senses. When the senses are active, one cannot help feeling the existence of the world. How can Karma yoga be of any use for pure awareness?
M.: The world is perceived by the mind through the senses. It is of the mind. The seer sees the mind and the senses as within the Self and not apart from it. The agent, remaining unaffected by the actions, gets more purified until he realises the Self.
--
D.: If one remained quiet how is action to go on? Where is the place for Karma yoga?
M.: Let us first understand what Karma is, whose Karma it is and who is the doer. Analysing them and enquiring into their truth, one is perforce obliged to remain as the Self in peace. Nevertheless the actions will go on.
D.: How will the actions go on if I do not act?
1.4.01 - The Divine Grace and Guidance, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Cosmic Law, of Karma or what else; (2) the Divine Compassion acting on as many as it can reach through the nets of the Law and giving them their chance; and (3) the Divine Grace which
The Divine Grace and Guidance
--
Suicide solves nothing - it only brings one back to life with the same difficulties to be faced in worse conditions. If one wishes to escape from life altogether, it can only be by the way of complete inner renunciation and merging oneself in the Silence of the Absolute or by a bhakti that becomes absolute or by a Karmayoga that gives up one's own will and desires to the will of the Divine.
I have said also that the Grace can at any moment act suddenly, but over that one has no control, because it comes by an incalculable Will which sees things that the mind cannot see. It is precisely the reason why one should never despair, - that and also because no sincere aspiration to the Divine can fail in the end.
--- Overview of noun karma
The noun karma has 1 sense (no senses from tagged texts)
1. karma ::: ((Hinduism and Buddhism) the effects of a person's actions that determine his destiny in his next incarnation)
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun karma
1 sense of karma
Sense 1
karma
=> destiny, fate
=> happening, occurrence, occurrent, natural event
=> event
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
--- Hyponyms of noun karma
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun karma
1 sense of karma
Sense 1
karma
=> destiny, fate
--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun karma
1 sense of karma
Sense 1
karma
-> destiny, fate
=> inevitable
=> karma
=> kismet, kismat
=> predestination
=> doom, doomsday, day of reckoning, end of the world
--- Grep of noun karma
karma
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https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/200153.Karma_Yoga_Bhakti_Yoga
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2016321.Ayurveda_and_Panchakarma
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21047321-karma-chameleon
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21394292-bad-karma-in-the-big-easy
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https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/408933.The_Ninth_Karmapa_s_Ocean_of_Definitive_Meaning
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/432596.Sitting_in_the_Club_Car_Drinking_Rum_and_Karma_Kola
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https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/538558.Grace_Beats_Karma
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5478184-zen-wrapped-in-karma-dipped-in-chocolate
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https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/13484775.Jonali_Karmakar
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https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4599426.David_Karma_Choephel
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Goodreads author - Karma_Wilson
Goodreads author - Karma_Brown
https://historia.wikia.org/pl/wiki/Karma_w_Buddyzmie
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Anantarika-karma
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Buddhism#Karma:_Cause_and_effect
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Karma
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Karma#Buddhism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Karma_in_Buddhism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Karma_in_Buddhism#External_links
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Karma_in_Buddhism#Incorrect_understandings_of_karma
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Karma_in_Buddhism#In_the_Early_Sutras
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Karma_in_Buddhism#Karma_family_in_Indo-Tibetan_cosmology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Karma_in_Buddhism#Karma_in_Buddhism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Karma_in_Buddhism#Other_causal_categories
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Karma_in_Buddhism#References
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Karma_in_Buddhism#See_also
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Karma_Kagyu
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Karma_Lingpa
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Mahamudra#Karma_Kagyu_.27Simultaneously_Arising_as_Merged.27_tradition
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Outline_of_Buddhism#Karma
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Buddhism/Revised#Karma_and_rebirth
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Karma_in_Buddhism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/The_Eightfold_Path#KARMA:_REBIRTH_-_PRODUCING_AND_BARREN
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/THE_NOBLE_TRUTH_OF_THE_ORIGIN_OF_SUFFERING#INHERITANCE_OF_DEEDS_.28KARMA.29
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Upakarma
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Vishvakarman
auromere - aspects-of-karma-yoga
auromere - karma-can-be-changed-destiny-in-your-hands
auromere - aurobindonian-perspective-on-karma
auromere - why-the-future-is-veiled-from-us
auromere - aurobindonian-perspective-on-karma
auromere - bhagavad-gita
auromere - constitution-of-man
auromere - mental-sheath
auromere - pranamaya-kosha
auromere - cosmology
auromere - aspects-of-karma-yoga
auromere - rape-victims-and-karma
auromere - karma-yoga
Integral World - Excerpts Roadmap: Preview of parts of Wilber's "Kosmic Karma and Creativity" (Shambhala, 2004)
Integral World - The Skeptical Yogi, Part Seven: Karma, Conversion, and the Science of Yoga, David Lane
Integral World - The Infinite Regress, Why Karma Theory is Nonsense, David Lane
Life as Practice: Karma Yoga and Awakening Service
selforum - karma yoga
selforum - karma and consequence are not solely
selforum - karma and popular imagination of it are
selforum - buddha introduced superstition of karma
https://thoughtsandvisions-searle88.blogspot.com/2012/10/karma.html
https://thoughtsandvisions-searle88.blogspot.com/2014/05/free-will-reincarnation-and-karma.html
dedroidify.blogspot - daily-dedroidify-karma
dedroidify.blogspot - karma-global-limited
dedroidify.blogspot - karma-police
dedroidify.blogspot - karma-weed-dragon-choo-choo-train
dedroidify.blogspot - robert-anton-wilson-lesson-in-karma
https://esotericotherworlds.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-truth-about-karma.html
wiki.auroville - Karma
wiki.auroville - Karmayogin
Dharmapedia - Category:Karma
Dharmapedia - Karma
Dharmapedia - Karma_Yoga_(book
Dharmapedia - Panchakarma
Psychology Wiki - Hinduism#Karma_and_samsara
Psychology Wiki - Karma
Psychology Wiki - Karma_in_Buddhism
Psychology Wiki - Karma_in_Hinduism
Psychology Wiki - Karma_Yoga
Psychology Wiki - Karma_yoga
Psychology Wiki - Karma_Yoga#Concept
Psychology Wiki - Karma_Yoga#External_links
Psychology Wiki - Karma_Yoga#References_in_Hindu_Scriptures
Psychology Wiki - Karma_Yoga#See_also
Occultopedia - karma
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Analysis/KarmaHoudini
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Fanfic/KarmaInRetrograde
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/LaserGuidedKarma/AnimeAndManga
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/LaserGuidedKarma/FanWorks
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/LaserGuidedKarma/WesternAnimation
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AdaptationalKarma
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CallItKarma
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CartesianKarma
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CharacterModelKarmaMeter
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Karma
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/KarmaHoudini
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/KarmaHoudiniWarranty
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/KarmaMeter
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LaserGuidedKarma
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SexualKarma
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Music/Karma
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Music/KarmaToBurn
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/BarKarma
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Tropers/AlmaKarma
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Tropers/BadKarma
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Tropers/KarmaChameleon
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Tropers/Karmadoodles
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Tropers/KarmaMeter
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Tropers/KBKarma
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:Mairead_Maguire,_Shirin_Ebadi_and_Tawakkol_Karman_talk_about_rohingya_issues_during_Bangadesh_on_March_2018_(1).jpg
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Karma
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tawakkol_Karman
https://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/Poets/T/TrinleyKarma/index.html
Alam Simsim (2000 - Current) - an Arabic language Egyptian-made adaptation of the format used in the children's television series Sesame Street. Alam Simsim is Arabic for "Sesame World".The show, funded by the U.S. Government's U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), is a cooperative project between Egypt's Al Karma Ed...
Tales of the abyss (2008 - 2009) - A 26-episode animated TV adaptation of Tales of the Abyss, produced by Bandai Visual, Namco, and Sunrise Animation Studios, began airing on October 4, 2008, and ended its run on March 28, 2009. The episodes were directed by Kenji Kodama and written by Akemi Omode.[59] The game's theme song, "Karma"...
https://myanimelist.net/manga/4036/Skyhigh__Karma
Faking It ::: TV-14 | 21min | Comedy, Drama, Romance | TV Series (20142016) -- After numerous attempts of trying to be popular two best friends decide to come out as lesbians, which launches them to instant celebrity status. Seduced by their newfound fame, Karma and Amy decide to keep up their romantic ruse. Creators:
The Chipmunk Adventure (1987) ::: 7.2/10 -- G | 1h 17min | Animation, Adventure, Comedy | 22 May 1987 (USA) -- The Chipmunks compete with the Chipettes in a round the world race. Director: Janice Karman Writers: Janice Karman, Ross Bagdasarian Jr. (as Ross Bagdasarian) Stars: Ross Bagdasarian Jr., Janice Karman, Dody Goodman | See full cast &
https://alvin.fandom.com/wiki/Janice_Karman
https://animanga.fandom.com/wiki/The_Wicked_and_the_Damned:_A_Hundred_Tales_of_Karma
https://ansatsukyoshitsu.fandom.com/wiki/Karma_Akabane
https://bep.fandom.com/wiki/Karma
https://classiccars.fandom.com/wiki/Volkswagen_Karmann_Ghia
https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Karma
https://dreamfiction.fandom.com/wiki/Charlie_Karma_and_Friends
https://dreamfiction.fandom.com/wiki/Feralkarma_Games
https://dreamfiction.fandom.com/wiki/Get_on_Up_(Charlie_Karma_song)
https://dreamfiction.fandom.com/wiki/Who_I_Am_(Charlie_Karma_song)
https://elona.fandom.com/wiki/Karma
https://fanfiction.fandom.com/wiki/Franziska_von_Karma
https://fanfiction.fandom.com/wiki/"Karma,_thy_Name_is_Survivor"
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Skarmaen_Alibakkar
https://ftb.fandom.com/wiki/ChaoticKarma
https://garoseries.fandom.com/wiki/Karma
https://guildopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Chaos_and_Karma
https://guildopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Karma
https://how-i-met-your-mother.fandom.com/wiki/Karma
https://johnnybravo.fandom.com/wiki/Karma_Krisis
https://joinme.fandom.com/wiki/Karmageddon_5
https://joinme.fandom.com/wiki/The_Karma_Army
https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Karma
https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Karma/LoL
https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Karma/LoR
https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Good_Karma_Brands
https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Karma
https://mythus.fandom.com/wiki/Vishvakarman
https://new-amsterdam.fandom.com/wiki/The_Karman_Line
https://overlordmaruyama.fandom.com/wiki/Karma
https://personofinterest.fandom.com/wiki/Karma
https://soulfly.fandom.com/wiki/Karmageddon
https://star.fandom.com/wiki/Karma
https://talesoferin.fandom.com/wiki/Karma's_Spear
https://thegoodkarmahospital.fandom.com/wiki/Padma_Kholi
https://thegoodkarmahospital.fandom.com/wiki/Series_1_-_Episode_2
https://thegoodkarmahospital.fandom.com/wiki/Series_1_-_Episode_6
https://thegoodkarmahospital.fandom.com/wiki/The_Good_Karma_Hospital
https://timeless.fandom.com/wiki/Karma_Chameleon
https://videogames-fanon.fandom.com/wiki/Karma_Akabane
https://volkswagens.fandom.com/wiki/Karmann_Ghia_(type_1)
https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Touch_of_Karma
Ansatsu Kyoushitsu: 365-nichi no Jikan -- -- Lerche -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Action Comedy School Shounen -- Ansatsu Kyoushitsu: 365-nichi no Jikan Ansatsu Kyoushitsu: 365-nichi no Jikan -- A year can change a person's life forever. The 365 days Class 3-E of Kunugigaoka Junior High spent with their eccentric teacher, Koro-sensei, certainly did. Carrying the memories of that year close to their hearts, alumni Nagisa Shiota and Karma Akabane return to their former classroom to recall the events of that momentous time of their lives. -- -- Nagisa and Karma are reminded by the familiar rooms, desks, chalkboard, and the class album of the events that shaped them into "assassins" and prepared them for the real world. That is the legacy of their octopus-like teacher—who had introduced himself by threatening to destroy the world if they didn't kill him by the end of the school year—and the time spent in the bizarre yet exceptional "Assassination Classroom." -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- Movie - Nov 19, 2016 -- 71,344 7.35
Ansatsu Kyoushitsu: 365-nichi no Jikan -- -- Lerche -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Action Comedy School Shounen -- Ansatsu Kyoushitsu: 365-nichi no Jikan Ansatsu Kyoushitsu: 365-nichi no Jikan -- A year can change a person's life forever. The 365 days Class 3-E of Kunugigaoka Junior High spent with their eccentric teacher, Koro-sensei, certainly did. Carrying the memories of that year close to their hearts, alumni Nagisa Shiota and Karma Akabane return to their former classroom to recall the events of that momentous time of their lives. -- -- Nagisa and Karma are reminded by the familiar rooms, desks, chalkboard, and the class album of the events that shaped them into "assassins" and prepared them for the real world. That is the legacy of their octopus-like teacher—who had introduced himself by threatening to destroy the world if they didn't kill him by the end of the school year—and the time spent in the bizarre yet exceptional "Assassination Classroom." -- -- Movie - Nov 19, 2016 -- 71,344 7.35
Ansatsu Kyoushitsu: 365-nichi no Jikan -- -- Lerche -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Action Comedy School Shounen -- Ansatsu Kyoushitsu: 365-nichi no Jikan Ansatsu Kyoushitsu: 365-nichi no Jikan -- A year can change a person's life forever. The 365 days Class 3-E of Kunugigaoka Junior High spent with their eccentric teacher, Koro-sensei, certainly did. Carrying the memories of that year close to their hearts, alumni Nagisa Shiota and Karma Akabane return to their former classroom to recall the events of that momentous time of their lives. -- -- Nagisa and Karma are reminded by the familiar rooms, desks, chalkboard, and the class album of the events that shaped them into "assassins" and prepared them for the real world. That is the legacy of their octopus-like teacher—who had introduced himself by threatening to destroy the world if they didn't kill him by the end of the school year—and the time spent in the bizarre yet exceptional "Assassination Classroom." -- -- Movie - Nov 19, 2016 -- 72,040 7.34
Ansatsu Kyoushitsu: Jump Festa 2013 Special -- -- Brain's Base -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Action Comedy Shounen -- Ansatsu Kyoushitsu: Jump Festa 2013 Special Ansatsu Kyoushitsu: Jump Festa 2013 Special -- Class 3-E is getting ready for their class trip to Kyoto, and Koro-sensei is as excited as ever! Nagisa is in a group with Kaede, Karma, Tomohito, Manami, and the class idol Yukiko Kanzaki. The students are aware of the fact that this is a great opportunity to assassinate Koro-sensei, but they cannot help having great time with him. However, the trip becomes even more exciting and dangerous when they get attacked by a bunch of delinquents who kidnap the girls. As if that is not enough, there is a hired sniper named Red Eye lurking around, ready to be the one who would assassinate Koro-sensei and claim the prize. Can the students of Class 3-E rely on Koro-sensei even now? -- Special - Oct 6, 2013 -- 66,426 7.21
Karma -- -- - -- 1 ep -- - -- Dementia -- Karma Karma -- "In his early experimental short Karma (カルマ, 1977), Aihara uses water as his central motif. The film is hand drawn and appears to be shot on 16mm using a blue filter. At first we can only see tiny specks on the screen, coming and going like snow flurries. The specks gradually grow larger and take the shape of bubbles, then even larger into rivulets of water on a transparent surface." -- -- (Source: Nishikata Film Review) -- Movie - ??? ??, 1977 -- 347 5.16
Koro-sensei Quest! -- -- Lerche -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Comedy Magic Shounen -- Koro-sensei Quest! Koro-sensei Quest! -- One day, class 3-E of Kunugigaoka Magic School receives a special mission: to kill their homeroom teacher, the Demon King Koro-sensei. To increase their chances of succeeding, the class searches for the three most powerful warriors—Karma Akabane, Itona Horibe, and Ritsu—who later join their company. Even with their help, accomplishing the mission becomes an insurmountable task as they are not the only ones after the Demon King's life. -- -- Koro-sensei Quest! tells the comedic adventures of Nagisa Shiota and class 3-E as chibi magical students. Trained by none other than their very target, the students encounter challenging, yet hilarious situations all through the perilous mission of defeating the Demon King. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- ONA - Dec 23, 2016 -- 37,968 7.09
Koro-sensei Quest! -- -- Lerche -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Comedy Magic Shounen -- Koro-sensei Quest! Koro-sensei Quest! -- One day, class 3-E of Kunugigaoka Magic School receives a special mission: to kill their homeroom teacher, the Demon King Koro-sensei. To increase their chances of succeeding, the class searches for the three most powerful warriors—Karma Akabane, Itona Horibe, and Ritsu—who later join their company. Even with their help, accomplishing the mission becomes an insurmountable task as they are not the only ones after the Demon King's life. -- -- Koro-sensei Quest! tells the comedic adventures of Nagisa Shiota and class 3-E as chibi magical students. Trained by none other than their very target, the students encounter challenging, yet hilarious situations all through the perilous mission of defeating the Demon King. -- -- ONA - Dec 23, 2016 -- 37,968 7.09
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:058_Visvakarman,_13c,_Lopburi_(34865435730).jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Buddha_statue_at_Karmaihiya.jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:De-Karma.ogg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Karma_Gadri_Goku.jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Karmapa_Temple_Dharamshala.jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Visvakarma.jpg
2008 Karmah bombing
Al-Karmah
Al-Karmah offensive
Anantarika-karma
Anastas Al-Karmali
Antonio Karmany
Babrak Karmal
Bad Karma
Bad Karma (EP)
Bimala Bishwakarma
Birla Vishvakarma Mahavidyalaya
Bornvon Karman boundary condition
Causes of karma in Jainism
Changchub Dorje, 12th Karmapa Lama
Chhabilal Bishwakarma
Chdrak Gyatso, 7th Karmapa Lama
Chying Dorje, 10th Karmapa
Credit Karma
Danialle Karmanos
David O'Karma
Deshin Shekpa, 5th Karmapa Lama
Dharma Karmadhipati yoga
Diagnostics of Karma
Dipa Karmakar
Don't Blame the Karma for Being an Idiot
Dudul Dorje, 13th Karmapa Lama
Dsum Khyenpa, 1st Karmapa Lama
Euthymius II Karmah
Fisker Karma
Good Karma
Good Karma Brands
Harvey Karman
Instant Karma
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Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur
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Miky Dorje, 8th Karmapa Lama
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Te o Tsunag / Kindan no Karma
Thekchok Dorje, 14th Karmapa Lama
Theodore von Karman Medal
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V (Karma to Burn album)
Volkswagen Karmann Ghia
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Wangchuk Dorje, 9th Karmapa Lama
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Yukarmaden, Artvin
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