- What is Karma?
- Karma according to the dharmic religions
- Reincarnation and karma
- Karma: divine justice
- Anantarika-karma
We explain what karma is and its definition according to the dharmic religions. Its relationship with reincarnation and anantarika-karma.
What is Karma?
Karma is, within popular culture, a concept related to destiny. For some religions oriental is related purely and exclusively with an action that is derived from the acts of the persons. It is a central and foundational belief of various Eastern doctrines.
The concept of karma is an expression that comes from Sanskrit and is used by the dharmic religions (Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism and Sikhism). Translated into Spanish and accepted by the main eastern religions, it means done or action that he human being preserves of past lives and that will serve to foster a learning completely useful for future reincarnations.
According to Eastern beliefs, karma is formed from incarnation to incarnation, and indicates what each human being must learn during each of his reincarnations. Therefore, if an individual makes bad decisions during one life, this will be reflected in future lives, so that he has the possibility to learn about those decisions and make the right ones. On the other hand, if the decisions made during an entire life were positive and caused learning in the human being, you will enjoy everything that, in addition to achieving and learning, caused good vibrations of energy circulating in the universe.
Karma according to the dharmic religions
As we said before, this concept is part of several dharmic doctrines, which find in this concept an explanation for many events in the life of human beings. The basis of the concept is the same, but Buddhism and Hinduism are still faced by a different meaning of the law of karma.
- In Buddhism. Karma can be explained as a inertia natural. This means that it does not function as a magical reward or stimulus, but as a common and natural response to decisions made before.
- In Hinduism. Karma is explained as a law of action and reaction. This is quite similar to the idea that we have of karma and that runs as an almost accepted definition in our culture popular. According to the Hindus, Yama Rash will judge us at the end of our incarnation, according to subsequent decisions and consequent actions that we have recorded in the Book of Life. Then, we will receive in response to these actions, corresponding reactions.
- In Jainism. Karma not only refers to the cause for which reincarnation takes place, but it is also a broader concept about something dark that is introduced into the soul in order to affect the original and pure qualities.
Although the different dharmic doctrines have the same Indian origin and are based on practically the same principles and beliefs, they cannot all agree on a single definition in common.
Reincarnation and karma
Reincarnation consists of the transfer of the soul from one body to another body.
As we explained in the previous paragraphs, karma prepares the individual to face subsequent reincarnations in a more comfortable way and, perhaps, with more tools.
Reincarnation, according to Eastern religions, consists of the transfer of the soul from one body to another body, at the end of a life. The human being, through reincarnations, acquires and achieves processes of learning that provoke a constant transformation and that collaborate with the state of inner wisdom.
Karma: divine justice
In a way, karma is the way Eastern doctrines found to explain things that happened. If the Divine God is just, then they did not find an answer for the bad things that happened to good people. Karma was, then, the easiest and most complex way to explain that bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people.
In addition, and because karma, that is, the result of our actions, accumulates from incarnation to incarnation, we need to pay for it in many "installments". We will collect the good and the bad in different lives, because it would be impossible to see all the results, good and bad, in a single life.
Anantarika-karma
According to Buddhism, these are five cardinal sins (Buddhist maximum offenses) that, if committed, karma would cause an immediate catastrophe. These are: parricide (murder of the father); matricide (murder of the mother); murder of an enlightened being (an Arhat); shed the blood of a buddha priest; or cause a division between the community of Buddhist monks.
In conclusion, our idea of karma or popular belief has something to do with the actual concept of karma, although not the whole concept. Now, then, you will know that you must take advantage of everything that life puts in front of you, be it good or bad, because from all that you will be able to extract a learning process that, in case of decision making positive, it will be a glorious learning that will give meaning to all suffering and all processes that have left us something as a lesson that, in case of negative decisions, will accumulate for the next reincarnation, making our life, perhaps , a real torture.