What is Karma at Stuarts Yoga

"The word Karma, or in its neuter form, Karman (in Pali, Kamma), is a Sanskrit word from the root kri, meaning to do or make. Karma is therefore 'doing' or 'making.'" 1 It is seen as the law of cause and effect. As science would put it, action and reaction are equal and opposite. In spiritual terms karma is the law of moral retribution - every cause has an effect and the person who puts the cause into action suffers the effect.

The Universal Law
Who owns karma? The real answer is no body. Karma is a universal law. The word law with its connotation of something being right or wrong, good or bad, goes some way to explaining why karma has come into existence and been adopted by cultures and faiths across the world. With so many potential interpretations it is no wonder the concept of karma has become confusing. One thing that is clear is how this law is applied to man and his conduct.

The law of karma must either exist or not exist. It cannot be applied haphazardly to explain away something. There is either suffering as a result of taking an action or there is not.

Connection
What is interesting with the law of karma related to man is the connection of the results of actions between individuals, countries, nations and the world. Although one man may be responsible for an action the consequences of that action may affect many people. Starting a war in Iraq, flying a plane into the World Trade Center or Live Aid and World Aids Day are examples with consequences on each side.

Values Morals and Religions
"Not in the sky, not in the midst of the sea, not if we enter into the clefts of the mountains, is there known a spot in the whole world where a man may be freed from an evil deed" DHAMMAPADA

"All that we are is the result of what we have thought; it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts"

"If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him, as the wheel follows the foot of him who draws the carriage. But if a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him."DHAMMAPADA

Karma is the servant of its creator - man.

"Karma-all that total of a soul
Which is the things it did, the thoughts it had,
The 'Self' it wove-with woof of viewless time
Crossed on the warp invisible of acts-"

Edwin Arnold Light of Asia

"Rewards and punishments are the lowest form of education"

Chinese Taoist, Chuang-Tzu

The close proximity that karma has with upholding values and morality make it part of religious thought and commentary. It should be clearly understood that the religions do not own karma it does not have its origin in religion. But what religion can often do is frighten people with the consequences of their actions - hence the burning of witches and the Spanish Inquisition. Karma, although written into religion is not a religious law.

Quotations

"Karma is neither good nor bad, and it is inaccurate to speak of 'good Karma' and 'bad Karma'. Karma is how we view it is our own affair" CHRISTMAS HUMPHREYS

"Since everything in this world is caused by the concurrence of causes and conditions, there can be no fundamental distinction between things. The apparent distinctions exist because of people's absurd and deluding thoughts and desires. In the sky there is no distinction of East and West; people create the distinction out of their own minds and then believe it to be true" Japanese Scripture

"In the universal process of becoming there are inherently no distinctions between the process of life and the process of destruction; people make a distinction and call the one birth and the other death. In action there is no distinction between right and wrong, but people make a distinction for their own silly convenience"

"Freedom and karma are two aspects of the same reality"

"Indian philosophy has a complete record of 'Yugas', great and small, covering enormous periods of time, and of cycles, wheels within wheels, as regular as the ebb and flow of the tide. These cycles affect all planes of manifestation, the psychic and mental as well as the physical, but the law which governs these cycles cannot be understood save in the context of the wider, Karmic Law"

Karmic law can be used to explain the rise and then disappearance of great cultures and civilizations of the world. The karma of the great individuals that give rise to these developments leads to the evolution and it also leads to the downfall.

Reincarnation
The concept of reincarnation is often scoffed at by scientists, they cannot prove it, so it cannot possibly occur. In such arguments rarely, if ever, is the law of Karma mentioned. In the quotation above we read that there is no distinction between life and death in the universal process. Spiritually, rebirth achieves progress.

Convention in religious belief on rebirth change with time. One interpretation is that what is reborn is one tiny part of the Whole, (the whole being the source or origin of life and universe.)Prior to the buddha it became the interpretation that this spark found its enlightenment and became an 'immortal soul'.

Vacchagota the Wanderer
The story goes that Vacchagotta asked Buddha about the Self - he declined to answer. The questioner departed in disgust. In explanation, Buddha declared if he had said the Self existed he would find on one side of the argument, whilst if he had said the Self did not exist he would side on the other. There is more explanation offered. To clarify - the Self is and is not. The reborn was once old but returns new. The soul is immortal but ever changing:

"Life is a flame, and transmigration, new beginning, is the transmitting of the flame from one combustible aggregate to another: just that, and nothing more. If we light one candle from another, the communicated flame is one and the same, in the sense of an observed continuity, but the candle is not the same" BUDDHA AND THE GOSPEL OF BUDDHISM, COOMARASWAMY.