Karma: Why Everything You Know About It Is Wrong

by Acharya Prashant

Let something beyond you work through you. You will be amazed; you will be thrilled. You will then know what it means to really live. If you are living only for yourself, if you are so afraid that you cannot give up your control of yourself, then all you get is ‘yourself’.

If you have only yourself to talk to, would you prefer that? No. The proof is that you keep looking for others to talk to. You aren’t happy with yourself, and the proof is that you want to change and improve, don’t you? And still you want to follow your own whims and desires. Isn’t that stupid?

The happening is just a random coincidence. How you experience the happening is your own decision, your own doing, in other words, karma.

Get the difference right. The material world is not predetermined. It is not even deterministic; it is random in the real sense of the word. There are just too many cause and effect nodes to take care of, and additionally there is the unpredictable element of free will involved with respect to many of the actors.

But the machine is not only gigantic, several parts of it also carry free will, so unexpected things happen. Therefore, you cannot really know what is going to happen next in the external world. It is going to be a coincidence.

Fatalism is a sham.

You have brought yourself to a stage where you will respond negatively or favourably to an incident, where an incident will impact you greatly or not at all. That is your doing. That is what you have done.

So, good and bad things that happen, are they karma—in other words, a result of our past actions, deeds, choices, etc.—or coincidence? Both.

The external world, we said, is random. Anything can happen to anybody anytime. There is no guarantee of any fixed thing happening. Things are probabilistic at best.

In life, it is not the number of calories that you have burnt that matter so much; rather it is the purpose for which you are burning those calories.

I repeat, intensity of work does not refer to the number of calories burnt. Intensity of the work refers to the depth of the point, the intensity of the point, from where the work is arising.

To be intense is to work from the right centre; it does not relate to anything else. It is quite possible that over an entire decade you have just been saying no; that is the sum total of your entire work. What did you do the entire decade? ‘I said no.’ But then, it could still be very, very intense and unceasing work.

And remember, the purpose of work is exactly the same as the centre of the work; where you are coming from will be exactly the same as where you are going to.

There is a lot of hard work that is not right work but is chosen simply because it is easy. Therefore, that hard work is not hard work, but cheap, easy, compromised work.

Never honour somebody purely on the basis of the number of hours of work they have put in, or the calories they have burnt, or the number of units they have manufactured, or the amounts they have earned. That is not the real or spiritual way of looking at things. If you really have to assess somebody’s work, assess the work by its centre. Where is the work coming from? Which direction is it going towards?

How many more trials do you need? Have you already not given everything a shot? Are soft-drinks or ice creams or petroleum new things to you? You have already tried them a thousand times. Are you still not fed up?

If you are not fed up, give them one more chance, and then be absolutely fed up.

But please, at some point, learn to be honest, learn to quit. Learn to honestly face the mirror and tell yourself, ‘I have been cheating myself all my life.’ If you don’t do that, there are a thousand kinds of flu...

Water is simple water—pure, direct. I have no issues if you want to give various things, various methods, various means, various books, various teachers a chance. Please do that. But do that with all honesty. Having given the chance, ask yourself, ‘Is the thirst being quenched?’ If yes, then stay put, then don...

Any kind of knowledge that does not lead you directly towards the goal is merely a burden. Disregard it.

What is really meant by sacrifice or yagya, and what is really meant by jñāna-yagya that Krishna calls as greater than all the other sacrifices or yagya?

‘All actions in their totality culminate in knowledge.’ Acharya Prashant (AP): No, no. That is not what verse 33 says. Not ‘culminate’ in knowledge; dissolve in knowledge.

What is it that actions leave behind?

Their fruits, right? Their residues. But in understanding, actions do not leave behind any residue because you do not act for the sake of the residue; the action itself is chosen so wisely that it will not leave behind any fruit, any clutter, any dirt. It simply means niśkāma-karma.

You do not act for the sake of the result. That is the mark of wisdom or understanding. You just act; therefore, action leaves you with no obligations, no achievements, nor any heartbreaks.

Both of these residues come only to those who act in order to get something. Get something for whom? For whom is the euphoria? To whom is the sadness?

When you do not act for the sake of your own personal benefit, then action leaves you with neither happiness nor sadness; you are free of the action.

you’re not liberated. You’re still under the obligation to act one more time because the action has left you with bitterness.

What if the action leaves you with a sense of accomplishment? Again, you will be tempted to act one more time.

If you want to act one more time, what do you require? You require one more time; you require time. And if you require time, then you’re still caught in the clockwork; you’re not free of time; you’re still in Kalachakra (the wheel of time). Kāla is time and kāla is death—and you will be afraid.

So, in that sense, it is actually just a trade-off. But it is a very wise trade-off; it is a bargain in wisdom.

You’re giving up something that has a lower value, and having given this thing up, you attain something that has a higher value. This is yagya.

Basically, we are talking of a value system here. We must know how to assess, how to evaluate. We must know what is the right value of one thing vis-à-vis another thing, and we must know that Truth and freedom are the most valuable; therefore, anything can be sacrificed for their sake.

And remember that giving up in the spiritual sense is not charity; it is good business. You have given a smaller thing up and attained something . . .? Q: Bigger. AP: Far bigger. Infinitely more profitable. In fact, that is one way to define joy. Do not call joy as freedom from pleasure; just call joy as higher pleasure.

Now, if you call joy as higher pleasure, then it becomes possible to sacrifice the lower pleasures for the sake of the higher pleasure called joy.

Otherwise, spirituality remains very scary to people who have been spoken to in the language of renunciation. ‘Give this up, give that up.’ The ego asks, ‘But why? All I have is this 10-rupee note, and you’re asking me to give it up!’ You have to, in the same breath, tell him that by giving up this 10-rupee note, you will indeed get something that is worth Rs 500. And you have to really demonstrate it. He must be able to see it in his life that by giving up on smaller pleasures or the so-called good ...

Dharma is the same for everybody, but swadharma varies according to your physical, social, temporal conditions. But remember that swadharma can never be in contradiction of Dharma; swadharma will always be something within the ambit of Dharma.

liberation is Dharma.

Nobody stands at a position called ‘no position’, we all stand somewhere. Wherever we stand, that point is actually a point of conditioning.

Had we not been standing somewhere, there was no need to travel to be liberated. You could consider the point of liberation as the origin, (0,0). Basic x-y coordinates. So, liberation is at (0,0), the origin, and you have to go back to that very origin where everything comes from.

The (x,y,z) combo can take infinite distinct values, correct?

Wherever you are currently located, from there you have to come to the origin. So, coming to the origin is Dharma, but swadharma is coming to the origin from where you are. Therefore, each person, each (x,y,z), will have his own particular path to come to the origin. That’s why it is called swadharma, not just Dharma.

Swadharma means your Dharma. Swadharma is not really different from Dharma, but Dharma merely says, ‘Come to the origin, come to zero. Come to the point where everything is dissolved, where nothing exists. Become zero.’ Swadharma clarifies things a little more. Swadharma says, ‘Y...

So, now things stand clearer: From (4,5,8) you have to come to zero, and now you can find out a route. Obviously, the shortest route is a straight line, but maybe the configurations, the situations stand in such a way that a straight line is not even possible, so you figure out some other route, whatever it ...

So, now when he is talking to Arjuna, he is saying, ‘You see, over the passage of time in the game of Prakriti, in the entire play of Maya, you have become a Kshatriya.’

But to reach (0,0,0), he has to start from being a Kshatriya.

Now, both the things are at play here, Dharma and swadharma. In what does Dharma lie? Dharma lies in fighting Duryodhana. In what does swadharma lie? Swadharma lies in fighting Duryodhana like a Kshatriya.

Let’s say, if a Brahmin was present at the battlefield, Dharma would remain the same for Arjuna and that Brahmin: Dharma is to fight Duryodhana because Duryodhana is representing adharma. But swadharma will be different: Arjuna’s swadharma will be to fight Duryodhana like a warrior, and the Brahmin’s swadharma will be to fight Duryodhana like a scholar.

So, Dharma is the same for everybody, but swadharma varies according to the kind of p...

According to your physical, social, temporal conditions, swadharma varies, but remember that swadharma can never be in contradiction of Dharma; swadharma will al...