Karma: The Self-Made Path to Suffering and Freedom

Karma is one of the only few concepts in the world that addresses human perplexity in the face of suffering. It is the only logic that explains the seeming arbitrariness of the world we live in.

Karma has nothing to do with reward and punishment. Karma is about becoming the source of one’s own creation. In shifting responsibility from heaven to oneself, one becomes the very maker of one’s destiny.

Our five senses are collecting data from the outside world every moment of our life. We are literally being bombarded with stimuli at every instant. Over time, this enormous volume of sense impressions begins to assume a certain distinctive pattern within us. This pattern slowly shapes itself into behavioral tendencies. A cluster of tendencies hardens over time into what we call our personality, or what we claim to be our true nature.

Depending on the type of physical, mental, and energetic actions we perform, we write our software. Once that software is written, our whole system functions accordingly. Based on the information from the past, certain memory patterns keep recurring. Now our life turns habitual, repetitive, and cyclical.

Over time, we become ensnared by our patterns. Like so many people, we probably don’t know why certain situations keep recurring in our inner and outer life. This is because these patterns are unconscious. As time goes on, we turn into a puppet of our accumulated past.

We now know that the human being is a psychosomatic organism–that whatever happens in the mind immediately imprints itself on the body as a chemical process. If we think of mountains, for instance, our chemistry will react in one way; if we think of tigers, it reacts in another. So for every minute mental fluctuation, there is a certain type of chemical reaction and sensation. We may not even be aware of it unless the sensations become acute. All these sensations register and over time become the blueprint of our unconscious mind.

For every other creature on this planet, the struggles are essentially physical. If they eat well, they are just fine. But human beings are different. For humans, when the stomach is empty, there is only one problem; but when the stomach is full, there are one hundred problems! We may talk about freedom, but we are gold-plating our limitations all the time in absolute unawareness.

A level of volition that many people are unaware of is action on the energy level. A negative thought, as we know, can breed karma. A negative thought combined with a negative emotion means a deeper karma. When a negative thought, negative emotion, and negative external action combine, there is even deeper karma. When a negative thought and negative emotion combine with a recurrent mental action, that karma is deeper still.

All the life-denying philosophies of detachment have developed because of the human fear of entanglement. What these philosophies overlook is that without an all-consuming, passionate involvement, there would be no life. What these philosophies end up denying altogether is life itself.

Pain is the body’s way of alerting us that something is wrong, that action must be taken. Pain is useful. It is a valuable wake-up call. Suffering, on the other hand, is psychological. It is produced by you. It is a hundred percent self-manufactured. You don’t have a choice about being in pain, but you do have a choice about suffering. You can always choose not to suffer.

Human beings are capable of suffering just about anything. Someone could not get into college, so they suffer. Someone else gets into college and can’t get out, so they suffer! Someone cannot get a job, so they suffer. Someone is given a job, and now they suffer even more. Someone isn’t married, so they suffer. Someone gets married, and they are in agony! Someone has no children, so they suffer. Someone has children, and so they are in constant torment. Our suffering is not because of our circumstances. Our suffering is because of the way we have made ourselves.

Maybe we win a lottery ticket today, but, still, how happily we live is something we decide. A poor man might be ecstatic if he wins a million dollars. But a rich man might have much more in his bank balance and still be unhappy. So luck alone does not determine our happiness.

For every action that we perform there is a consequence. Whether the consequence bears fruit today or tomorrow or ten years later is irrelevant. The point is that it always bears fruit one way or another. So, some deeds we performed unconsciously many years ago may have their consequences today. We may choose to call it fate. But we could just as well call it our karma, our responsibility.

Source : Karma: A Yogi’s Guide to Crafting Your Destiny by Sadhguru

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