The Real Karma

The Sanskrit term “Karma” simply refers to “duty”, that is, your everyday duty as a human being. And this duty has no mystical intervention in it – it has no divine law that can determine a certain reward in return. It’s plain ordinary everyday human action. However, the nonsense of Hindu orthodoxy and the gullibility of people have turned the simple idea of karma or human action into a form of divine law – where one receives reward for doing good and punishment for doing bad. This primordial and uncivilized form of Karma is nothing but an ignorant fantasy of ignorant people. It gives them a kind of comfort that if a person does good, he or she would for sure receive a reward in return by the force of this karmic law. And this is nothing but the product of psychological insecurity of the human mind. So, the so-called law of karma is all superstitious nonsense, quite similar to the afterlife nonsense.

Real humans with a beating heart and active conscience would do good in the world, not because of some mumbo-jumbo law, but because that’s what being human means. That act of goodness and kindness does not determine the reward you’ll get for your action. In fact, real karma or real human duty is the act that is carried out with the genuine hope of bringing a change outside of us – in the world, not in anticipation of reward. And that very act of pure conscience is karma, morality, religion, godliness, spirituality all together. These are all varied terms for the one and the same thing, that is being a conscientious human being. In short, to be a conscientious human is real karma – it is real spirituality – it is real religion.