Question:

Didi – in everyday life situations if I start to ask myself ‘why am I put into this situation?’ and be with awareness and observe without attachments & listen to the inner voice – will I find the answer? ( trying to understand my karma or pattern n thereby just ‘being’ and not ‘doing’). Or am I thinking too much?

Answer:

Karma is unfathomable dear. We can never know which Karma brings what Karmaphalam. So the question of ‘Why have I been put in this situation?’ is always going to remain a mystery for everyone.

At the most, we can understand how Karma gets created and prevent that from happening in the future.
Any wrongdoing will definitely lead to a future Karmaphalam, therefore we must avoid wrongdoing. But everyone’s definition of right & wrong is not the same.

So how to know if a specific Karma is right or wrong?
Discard the words ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. Let’s understand what is a ‘wholesome’ action versus an ‘unwholesome’ action. If your conscience pinches you before doing something then it is an unwholesome karma and it will lead to an unwholesome karmaphalam sooner or later. If your conscience does not pinch you before doing something then it is a wholesome karma and it will lead to a wholesome karmaphalam only.

Therefore one must learn the skill of recognizing and acknowledging the signals that come from one’s own conscience. Once you acknowledge it, one must gather the courage to back off from that action and not complete it. Just like an archer might pick up a bow and arrow to kill a bird, but the moment his conscience pricks him, he withdraws the force from the arrow and puts it down. The pressure that was on the string gets released. Similarly, you will feel a sense of relief once you back off. Again, I repeat, this requires both skill and courage, it is not for the weak-minded. The weak-minded always loses to his emotions like anger, hatred, jealousy, greed, etc.

Once you lose, you will have to experience the Karmaphalam, come what may. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. It will come back undoubtedly in this lifetime or the next.

When it comes, the wise one knows that even if I don’t know what I did to deserve this, I must go through it with a smile and be with what is. Then there is no aversion. If there is no aversion, there will not be any future karmic seeds sown. The cycle will stop there for that particular karma. But if one is averse and throws out emotional seeds of Karma, the cycle will continue.

Are you wise or not?