The Bonds Of Karma

The word Karma (कर्म) in Sanskrit means action, work or deed and it refers to our ability or lack of ability to balance our thoughts, words, and deeds in our daily lives. It is these actions that fall under the umbrella of karma that help to keep us in this constant cycle of Maya (माया).

Enlightenment means that we have become free from the bonds of Karma which is the cycle of birth and death. This cycle of birth and death is known as Samsara where the process of transmigration takes place when the eternal soul moves from one body to another.

In a very simplistic analogy, it would be fair to assume that karmic bonds keep us bound to Samsara, and that Maya hides our participation from Samsara by using the veil of ignorance known as Avidya. When enlightened your soul will no longer be born to this world again as you are now free of all of your karmic responsibilities.

Many different cultures and other belief systems have different ways of explaining their own version of karma. Some of the details and context in their texts may be different but the overall message remains the same.

Misconceptions

A major misunderstanding of karma is that many people believe that our current state is based purely on our past lives and associated bad karma. Your past is not your future, and I will explain this to you below.

For any action or deed that we commit there are four different possible outcomes.

• You can get what you want
• You can get more than you want
• You can get less than you want
• Or the complete opposite of what you wanted

Using a very simple analogy imagine that you wish to cross a river and you are waiting for a river boat to take you safely across.

• The boat turns up at the right time – (You get what you wanted)
• A friend may come along with their own boat – (You get more than you wanted)
• The boat may be late or not turn up at all – (You get less than you wanted)
• The boat sinks – (The opposite of what you wanted).

There are many different factors involved that can determine the possible outcome of our actions. Some of these factors are unknown and out of our control such as the boat turning up late or the boat developing a hole in the bow and sinking. According to the ancient Hindu texts these unknown factors can contain our good and bad karma.

Karma is a force of nature but not in the physical sense. It is subtle and unseen, and we have no way of predicting how karma will shape our daily lives. Karma can either help us or hinder us in achieving our goals. Our egoic minds of Maya like to assume the results of our actions but this is just a mere illusion pandered by our lower vibrational frequency.

Extract taken from my book: MAYA available to buy on Amazon Kindle.