TALES
OF KARMA I
When blisters of woes
were tattooed on the nucleus
of our glory, did you tarry?
Like mother. No.
Rather like an erratic culinarian
who manages an old canteen
down the street of nonfeasance
You parboiled propaganda
and poured it at the entrance
of our redemption.
Lo! You repressed our motivation
like scrumptious diuretics
do to hypertensive patients.
Now, Cancer renders sermons
on the pulpit of your testicles;
And death knocks
at the sanctuary of your grace
You bear the olive branch.
I can only wish you well, father.
The Mahabharata ("the great tale of the Bhārata dynasty") is the longest known epic poem; its longest version consists of over 100,000 shloka (couplets) or over 200,000 individual verse lines plus long prose passages, or some 1.8 million words altogether. It includes the Bhagavad Gita and an abbreviated version of the Ramayana (the other major Sanskrit epic), and other texts that are regarded as works in their own right. The origins of the epic probably fall between the 8th and 9th centuries BCE.and probably reached its final form by the 4th century CE. Traditionally, it is attributed to one of the epic's characters, Vyasa (3rd millennium BCE), the compiler of the Vedas and Puranas. An avatar of the god Vishnu, he is also one of the seven Chiranjivins, who are still in existence according to Hindu belief. The Mahabharata discusses the nature and existence of suffering from three perspectives: a fatalistic one, that everything is divinely ordained; chance events; and karma.
ReplyDeleteKarma comes from a Sanskrit word meaning "to do, make, perform, accomplish, cause, effect, prepare, undertake." It generally refers to the spiritual notion by which principle of an individual's intent and actions influencing that individual's future. The law of karma operates independent of any deity or any process of divine judgment. As early as the 7th century BCE the principle was discussed in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, at 4.4.5-6:"Now as a man is like this or like that, according as he acts and according as he behaves, so will he be a man of good acts will become good, a man of bad acts, bad; he becomes pure by pure deeds, bad by bad deeds; And here they say that a person consists of desires,and as is his desire, so is his will; and as is his will, so is his deed; and whatever deed he does, that he will reap." The effects of one's karma can be described in two forms: phalas and samskaras. A phala (literally, fruit or result) is the effect that is immediate or within one's lifetime, whether that effect is visible or not.. In contrast, samskaras are always invisible and produced inside the actor, thus transforming the agent and affecting one's ability to be happy or unhappy in this and future lives. Karma itself is is not "reward and punishment" but rather the law that produces consequence. Good karma is dharma and leads to merit, while bad karma is adharma and leads to demerit or sin. Some schools of Hinduism, such as Yoga and Advaita Vedanta, that emphasize current life over the dynamics of karma residue moving across past lives, allow for the existence of free will in that not only is one affected by past karma, but one also creates new karma whenever one acts with intent. In nontheistic religions such as Buddhism, Jainism, and the Mimamsa school of Hinduism, karma theory is used to explain the cause of evil as well as to offer distinct ways to avoid or be unaffected by evil in the world, while some theistic Indian religions, such as Sikhism, suggest that evil and suffering are human phenomena that arise from the karma of individuals, while still others, such as the Nyaya school of Hinduisn, combine karma with dharma and explain evil is as arising from human actions and intent that are in conflict with dharma. In the Advaita Vedanta school, it is believed actions in one's current life have moral consequences, but liberation from karma is possible within one's life as a self-realized person). Furthermore, other Hinduists such as the Lokayata (the materialists) deny the theory of karma-rebirth as well as the existence of God; to them, the properties of things come from the nature of things; causality emerges from the interaction, actions, and nature of things and people.
ReplyDeleteIn Sikhism, all living beings are under the influence of the three qualities of Maya which bind the soul to the body and to the earth plane; jivas (individual beings) act under the control and purview of eternal time, and their activities are "karma". (The underlying principle is that karma is the law that brings back the results of actions to the person performing them.) Jains posit karma as subtle, microscopic particles that pervade the entire universe and are attracted to the karmic field of a soul due to vibrations created by activities of mind, speech, and body as well as various mental dispositions; when these two components (consciousness and karma) interact, we experience the life we know at present. Thus karma operates as a self-sustaining mechanism as natural universal law, without any need of an external entity to manage it; a soul's karma changes even with one's thoughts, and not just one's actions; a soul is released of worldly affairs as soon as it is able to emancipate itself from bad karma, for which divine assistance is unnecessary; all souls have the same potential of attaining nirvana by reducing its karma, though only those souls that make an effort are able to do. In Falun Gong; the spirit is locked in the cycle of rebirth due to the accumulation of karma, a negative, black substance that accumulates in other dimensions lifetime after lifetime via the process of doing bad deeds and thinking bad thoughts; it is the cause of all suffering and that which blocks people from knowing the truth of the universe and thus attaining enlightenment.
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