We explain what karma is, its history and its relationship with destiny. Also, what is karmic balance.
What is karma?
Karma is a spiritual and philosophical concept of the dharmic religions (from Sanskrit, religion, teaching or law) of India. Present in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, among others, karma is the law of cause and effect.
Dharmic traditions hold that all actions carry a consequence or effect that manifests in the future.. This manifestation can occur in the life in which the action is performed or in a later life, since most of these traditions believe in reincarnation.
Karma, for most religions, is that which works as a cosmic law of taxation, cause and effect. In each reincarnation there is a life conditioned by the acts performed in the previous life.
The term “karma” comes from Sanskrit, which is a classical language of India and one of the oldest documented Indo-European languages. It has its roots in kriwhich means, according to Unadi-sutra (which are a collection of Indian grammatical texts), “do”.
History of the concept “karma”
Karma has its origin in the Vedic conception of the sacrificial act. For the Vedic tradition, which is the source of the sacred texts of Hinduism, sacrifice was a way to purify oneself. This idea passed into the doctrine of karma as a sacred action, both at the ritual level and at the everyday level.
For Vedic religions, human action has serious consequences. When taking action, there are two possibilities:
- The liturgical conception maintains that we act as a collaboration with the construction and formation of the world in which we live.
- The arbitrary conception maintains that one acts in such a way that the being dissolves into unreality because it acts from what is not genuine in it.
The doctrine of karma maintains that those actions that are undertaken from unreality have effects on the material plane. Acting arbitrarily, without building the world, generates karmic consequences of vital and meaningless nonsense.
In classical India these ideas were taken to create the concept of an organized whole.where the notion of karma allowed us to build a society obliged to contribute to the whole. Thus, each person had to act and work in activities that were not foreseen in advance, arbitrarily, but rather all activity was determined by the effects of past actions. Thus, there was always a prior cause that determined the current nature of things.
Over time, the idea of karma became associated with incarnation, the purpose of which was the resolution of karma through dharma as a spiritual exercise or ascetic technique.
In the Western world, These ideas were related to the concept of destiny. For this reason, in the West destiny is associated with karma.
The karmic balance
The karmic balance is the balance that occurs with respect to the original vices in the cycle of life and death.
The process of incarnation and reincarnation (living again in another body) is related to the karmic residue. All experiences in life are good or bad. When an experience is bad, vicious karma accumulates.
If vice becomes sterile, karma does not mature and the duration of life and enjoyment assigned to the present life can be expected. If vice prevails, karma gradually matures. Thus, good and bad karma are obtained, which compensate each other.
The karmic balance It has to do with the residue that occurs between good and bad karma. When there is a residue, karma can transmigrate, and implies the need for reincarnation until the karma becomes sterile. The duration of life depends on the fruit of the karmic balance, whether in one or more incarnations.
References
- Cattedra, O. (2020). The gates of India. Considerations on modern Indology. Gadfly, (8), 41-59.
- Cattedra, O. (2014). The notion of âyus in the Indian tradition: brief introduction to the relationship time-action-freedom. Cuadernos del Sur Filosofía, (43-44), 89-105.
- Bazán, FG (1982). Sankara and yoga. East and West, 3(1).
