Karma: Why Everything You Know About It Is Wrong

by Acharya Prashant

There is always an expectation attached with action. That is one’s connection with action.

Physics would tell you that perfect stillness to an atom comes at zero kelvin (minus 273 degrees centigrade). Elementary physics tells you that zero kelvin has never been reached. Even to an atom, stillness never comes. Everything is always acting, and it requires no consciousness. Things just move because it is their prakriti (nature) to move.

Even when the doer-consciousness is no more, the body is still moving. No atom of the body is going to lie still, ever.

The fact of the matter is otherwise: the more you want to take matters into your hands, the more you trouble yourself. Without you things are so very right! It is not as if some great intervention from your part is needed.

You are not Prakriti, for sure, because you are not material, and you are not Paramātman because you are not totally immaterial. You are some intermediary. Show your face! From where have you come? Neither are you just baby-like or animal-like, totally prakritik, nor are you divine. Who are you? Neither are you like a little kid who is nothing but Prakriti, nor are you pure, immaterial, divine light. Who are you?

You are some needless middleman. You have too many of them in India, don’t you? When the work can be done directly, we still trust the middleman. The ego is that middleman.

To take care of the body, Prakriti is sufficient. To take care of your worldly movements, basic worldly existence, Prakriti is sufficient. The nose knows how to breathe; you don’t have to teach it. The eyes know how to blink; you don’t have to teach them. Doership is not needed. The mouth knows how to sal...

And the Heart—I am not talking about the physical heart, I am talking of your essence—it knows love, it knows the right action, it knows devotion, it knows freedom. It does not have to be taught to value freedom. It takes its orders directl...

Let the physical heart obey Prakriti. Let the spiritual heart obey Paramātman. Your directions, your ...

Doership is a foolish thing in two ways. First, you are not the doer; secondly, even if you claim to be the doer, it is extremely unlikely that the doing will satisfy you the way you expect.

Now, first of all, we do not know what will come from what because the number of factors that get together to produce any outcome is simply innumerable.

In fact, all visualization is an exercise in retrospect.

If you are not currently okay, is not your current situation a product of your past? As the Ishavasya Upanishad says,

Remember what you have done. Your current situation is not without reason—you are responsible.

So, your past was really not that great; it resulted in the miserable thing you call your present. And what are you doing when you visualize? You are just trying to replicate that same past that has resulted in the current disaster called ‘you’. Therefore, visualization can never be successful. If it is successful, it will be a bigger disaster.

Instead of choosing something entirely new, you are just choosing to repeat the past. And what a shame it is that you are trying to repeat the past that never satisfied you in the first place!

The past was not great at all! The proof is that you still wallow in it; the proof is that it has resulted in a present that is not at all charming enough to hold you captivated.

Had the past been really good, then it would have resulted in a present in which there would be no need to go back to the past.

That’s the mark of any auspicious thing. Its output is residueless and independent of itself; it leaves you free of itself. And what is the sign of anything that is inauspicious for you? It will blemish you; it will never leave you even after you want to leave it behind; it will scar you; it will stubbornly leave its traces upon your existence, your psyche. You will want to just brush it off, leave it behind, but you will find that it is clinging, it is sticky. This stickiness is a sure-shot sign of inauspiciousness.

If you accept that the past was not really great, then you will have to redo, rework, create something new, and that involves effort, labour, and work. Tamoguṇa (quality of darkness, ignorance, laziness) doesn’t allow that.

Atmabala arises from the mind’s love and devotion towards its own welfare. That is what gives power to the mind. Mind says, ‘I might be moving towards the north, but I have just learnt that my welfare is towards the south, so I will apply the brakes.’ And when a system carrying a lot of momentum is braked suddenly, you know what happens? There is great stress on that system; a lot of heat and noise is generated. You should be prepared to take that. That is called sacrifice.

You are saying, ‘I am prepared to turn to ashes, but I am not prepared to keep going north when my welfare, my beloved, my liberation is to the south. I fully well know that my body is carrying me towards the north. I will not go in that direction.’

is the momentum, it is the tāmasika inertia of the past. It is saying, ‘Go, go, carry on, carry on.’ It is rolling, and you very well know that a rolling object will keep rolling. Why would it stop on its own, or would it? It won’t. It wants to keep rolling. But you are not that rolling object; you are somebody who is somehow, unfortunately, contained inside that rolling object but who is not that rolling object.

That distinction is the basis of all spirituality. You are contained in that massive rolling object,...

So, you have discovered: ‘I am not to go north,’ and with all your might you say, ‘This thing has to stop right now!’ When you apply the brakes so very hard, then there are consequences. What do you say? ‘I am prepared to take the consequences.’...

see that I am constituted of the past; all my movements, all my urges, impulses, my feelings, my instincts, they all come from my past. They are very dominant.’ That’s the momentum of the past, right? ‘But I won’t give in. If the whole system has to crash, so be it.’

What is niśkāma-karma? Having known what is right, you do what is right and forget the consequences. This forgetfulness towards the consequences is called niśkāmta. ‘I do not care for the consequences at all.’ This is called niśkāmta or action without expectation.

‘I will just do the right thing, and I will let the rightness of my action decide for me. If my action is right, how can the consequences be wrong? I may feel that the consequences are not suitable for me, but that would be my feeling, not the reality.’

So, you act and then you leave it to the rightness. Or you could say you act and you simply leave it; act and leave it. ‘If the action is right, how can the result be wrong? So, I leave it.’

This is what Krishna means when he says, ‘Your right, your adhikar is at most over the action. Forget the result.’

down in front of them? For example, people of a particular cult or religious denomination feeling that they must kill animals—is that really obligatory? People of a certain age feeling that they must marry—is that really obligatory? In all these matters we just relinquish choice. We feel that these things are not alterable.

Except for the Truth, everything is subject to conscious choice. There is nothing that cannot be decided upon; there is nothing that cannot be rejected; and equally, there is nothing that cannot be attempted and accepted.

Every time you say you are helpless against something, you are just displaying akarma.

None of us is ever helpless. Never say, ‘What else could I have done?’ There is always something else that you could have done. There is always the right thing that you could have done. All powerlessness is just a pretence. Even in your feeblest moment, you are still powerful enough to exercise choice, and you must always hold this very close to your heart.

The world can take anything, everything away from you, but nothing and nobody can ever take away from you your power to choose. That right has not been given to you by man; therefore, man cannot deprive you of th...

Those who say, ‘What do I do? I am helpless!’ are in the lowest state. They are the worst self-deceivers. They harm themselves and...

A little better than these are those who at least try exercising choice, though their choices are...

The highest one is the one who knows what is right and chooses only in one direction. His choices, in fact, have all already been made. In some sense, his life is just a continuous reiteration of his one unchangeable choice. Every time he is asked to choose, he just repeat...

These are, if taken in the right sense, some of the holiest words: ‘I don’t care.’ But, obviously, they have to be put in the right context.

Doership Is Bondage

Doership is necessitated by our incapacity, our poverty—inner poverty, that is—and our inner disease, and hollowness. That is what necessitates doership. If you are not feeling all right, you will have to do something—that’s doership. The liberated one indeed does appear to act, but he is not forced to act. His actions are sovereign.

When you are identified with the body, you are identified with a bundle of crying needs. Remember, the body has its needs—consciousness, too, has its needs—but they are diverse and unending. Even in the last moment of your life, you still require air to breathe, right? It might be your last moment, but you still need air. The needs of the body continue till death—and these needs are not at all deep. Shallow, but very widespread needs. ‘I want this! I want this!’ Little things. Little but endless.

Much in contrast are the needs of consciousness. Consciousness has just one need actually: liberation, and it is a very deep need.

Also, remember that even if you meet the needs of the body to a great extent, the unmet need of the z-axis will keep crying; whereas the higher you go up the z-axis, the more distance you have created from the x-y plane. Therefore, the needs of the x-y plane will no more be relevant to you. The needs are all there at ground level, the x-y plane, and where are you now? At a distance of forty light years. So, what is happening on the x-y plane doesn’t really concern

What are you doing all the time? Scavenging: ‘Can I get some food here?’ and poking into waste food baskets as cows and dogs do. Always looking for something to ingratiate you, and always managing to find something or the other, and yet never feeling fulfilled.

However, do remember that for the spaceship to be launched, first of all, you require a launch pad on that same x-y plane. So, that x-y plane is not useless. And now you know what rightful use of the body is. What is the x-y plane all about? It is the dimension of the body. What do you use that x-y plane for?

So, it is not so much about the statement ‘I am the doer’. Honestly, the statement should be: ‘I am forced to be the doer.’

The Upanishad says this is bondage. Your actions are not yours; you have been forced to act. The liberated one indeed does appear to act, but he is not forced to act. His actions are sovereign. There is a difference between jogging for fun and running to save your backside, right?

And when you know that the only way to set a record is to have a rabid dog chasing you, then it becomes necessary to invent or manufacture rabid dogs.

said, just for fun, ask yourself, ‘What if I do not do this?’ And if the moment you ask this question a chill rises up your spine, you should know that there is a problem.