Reflections

July/August 2007

Karma and Dharma

Karma and Dharma

By Rev. LeRoy E. Zemke
Pastor, Temple of the Living God

“You are unique as you are here and now. You are never the same. You will never be the same again. You have never been what you are now. You will never be it again..”
Swami Rajnanpad

“Each one has a special nature, peculiar to himself, which he must follow and through which he will find his way to freedom."
Swami Vivekananda

Karma: (Sanskrit); action, seen as bringing upon oneself the inevitable results (perceived) as good or bad, either in this life or in reincarnation.

Dharma: The essential quality or character of one’s innermost nature. The central core or theme of a human being: found in Buddhism and Hinduism.

The ages old question that mankind asks over and over again in a myriad variety of ways emerges in the form of this specific question: Do I have a purpose, a specific purpose for my life? And, if so, what is that essential theme to which I have been born? While the questions surrounding purposefulness have been discussed earlier in my Reflections, I consistently hear the question over and over again in many guises. It appears from those who ask, coming from a very direct, truly a basic honesty, to those who have advanced along their life’s journey and frame their query in more lofty “purple passages” in their language, both are essentially asking the same question.

From the concept of Dharma, we gather two (2) very key ideas.

• Each soul incarnates with a life task, a central theme that can bring profound and lasting fulfillment and, in a spiritual sense, freedom. This life task is “implanted” in what we call our heart. It’s the deep, innermost yearning we have to fulfill, to accomplish the very finest, noblest calling (or a sense of purposefulness) in our lifetime. It can be a subtle, almost nagging feeling that there is more to our life than what we are doing with it. It’s more than professional accomplishment, success in a financial sense, wealth or fame, position or recognition in a field of work, human endeavor, business or any creative undertaking that we might engage.

At times this sense of purpose can be clouded by familial loyalties; promises to parents, for example, to stay in the family business or take over the family’s commitment to a political party, a specific church, religion, to attend a certain school, pursue a preset educational direction or course of study, or follow a military agenda, or social (societal) movement or cause.

Many other issues can mask a life task: addictions, delusional behavior, “hanging out” in our lives, refusing to take responsibility for our selves, becoming trapped in victim-hood or being a martyr for some perceived noble cause, intense ego involvements such as the denial of our talents or abilities, or sexual predilections, the need to be famous, or in control of others to make them do what we desire them to do, to cause people in our world to like us for all manner of emotional or intellectual reasons … all these and so much more may cloud our lifetime tasks.

• The sense of a task or theme is somehow unique to each of us. For example, it may be to learn to accept or to love all sentient beings unconditionally. That idea alone provides us with a huge lifetime theme and soul task as well as personal, if indeed, it is ours to accomplish. When one thinks, even very briefly, about all the men, women and children one has known in a lifetime … family, friends and acquaintances in each and every area of our lives until the moment (wherein or with whom we may have not been unconditional in our relationship with them) … we are confronted and perhaps confounded by what might appear as a dauntless task.

Yet, like the many pieces of a giant puzzle that lay heaped and scattered upon a tabletop or upon a large floor space, each piece has its place, its unique fit into the whole. We learn that each person is our life may offer us clues about how to become accepting, or unconditional in our approach and how thus we become conscious of the breadth, width, height and depth of the task called loving all beings unconditionally.

So here is a tiny part of the way we might begin to see or discover our personal sense of dharma. All of the various configurations of our life, with all the many different people in work, business, social interactions, religion, including each and all the various communities of our life, are a major webbing … all interrelated, all connected to help us discover our task!

• Karma (action) suggests the specific issues or qualities that give rise to where we hold restrictive patterns. It suggests also where we experience ease and flow in working with our capacities, abilities, skills, and talents. The restrictive aspect of karma, as I understand it, is not a punishment for misdeeds. It is more the sense of struggle, difficulty, anxiety or on-going conflict we either deeply or very subtly engage within ourselves as we attempt to resolve a troubling, and very often limiting issue or pattern.

Suppose, for example, we consistently attract (get hired by) a difficult boss, or we attract a headstrong spouse, partner, a confrontational child, or downright negative brother, sister, friend or co-worker. Our personal inner work will be to find a way to connect with each of these people in our life that is not confrontational, argumentative, mean spirited, hateful, vengeful, etc.

The concept of karma involved in this example is our own intense reactivity (sometimes called evil) to each person, not what they say or do, or do not say or do not do. Our discovery involves uncovering in ourselves what triggers the reactivity in the first place. Remember, we must respond inwardly first before there can be an argument or disagreement, hurt, anger or any kind of discord, destruction, loss, etc.

The persons who are being bossy or judgmental or negative or mean-spirited are (for the sake of this illustration) being true to some ego component of their nature at that moment. If we expect them to be different, i.e., kind, thoughtful, receptive, attentive, cooperative, tolerant, and they are not expressing any of those desired states of being, the problem (in the moment) as I see it, is not that they need to change. Rather, it is that we are reacting to them because we expect them to be different than what they are. It is our issue (first)! Once we acknowledge that we have an agenda, meaning we want them to be different, then we can be open to a better way to communicate, be less reactive to a boss, a partner, sibling, child, friend, neighbor, etc. Perhaps in the larger picture, others do need to change, but that’s not the issue here.

The unseen or unresolved karma here is uncovering where and perhaps how we come to be in reaction. Once genuine insight occurs for us, the famous “aha” experience many teachers and individuals have about a deep, internal discovery that’s life changing, the resistance drops, it tends to fall away. We use language such as “I am healed,” or “I’ve overcome my problem with him/her,” or “ lost my resentment, anger hurt, fear or sense of inadequacy.” And from that moment onward, our life is different (referencing how we heal with relationships and earlier mentioned difficult qualities.)

When a pattern, however, becomes deeply hardened, fixated and “carved in stone,” such as unrelenting anger, or a sense of injustice toward ourselves or someone (or a group) we love, or we find ourselves unable to forgive a real or imagined hurt, wrong or inequity in our lives, the issue deepens, intensifies and becomes long term. It then takes on the negative, restrictive implication of the idea of karma (action/reaction).

If we begin to actually discern and begin to consciously recognize the consequences of such a behavioral pattern, we can and do begin to change. But if we do not see it, it (the behavior) continues, such as an addiction, abuse, or “at risk” choices. Always remember that we each have a choice about the way we respond to life, its ups and downs. We often feel we are pressured or forced to react, but as we become more awake, more conscious, we do, indeed, have many choices about how to respond to life’s many thrusts.

Karma also has tribal roots, as are found in nearly every kind of group where a specific and socially reinforced and expected behavior is repeated or patterned over and over and over. This keeps the tribe safe, secure, and free of outside influences. Let me clarify what I mean: specific regions of any country, religions, political philosophies, social experiments involving specific behavioral choices that reflect a very determined focus or life style, all have some restrictive karmic qualities that I have been referencing.

Remember, again, karma is not a preordained judgment or punishment. It is revealed in the law of causation; the result of some action/reaction that causes us to do and behave the way we do.

We escape the famous wheel of karma when we become more and more conscious of who we are (internally). Prayer and meditation invoking the Divine helps us to become less ego bound, more God-conscious in each area of our lives. Also making a consistent effort to resist and turn away from such restrictions, as they appear, is part of our personal responsibility to break the hold of a specific reactive pattern.

In the matter of food choices, a brief example may be helpful. If eating any foods of whatever nature makes us sick, our task may be to learn to avoid such foods or to learn to make the choices to eat the foods that will not make us sick. The karma involved is not that we are stuck with poor body chemistry (although from a reincarnation viewpoint we may be repeating a very old pattern reflective of poor choices made previously). But rather, that as we become aware enough, awake enough, intelligent and smart enough, willing enough, able enough and capable enough to choose differently, we are enabled to assist our chemistry to function differently. As that happens (slowly, gradually or maybe even dramatically), we choose to support our body’s needs in a much more balanced manner.

As we can see, as one awakens, the variety of issues is incredibly complex and intertwined, not “one size fits all.” Because we each are individualized units (sparks) of God, the Infinite Source of All Life, we are each discovering our place in the grand scheme of things - cosmic, universal, within the construct of Karma and Dharma as has been discussed.

While we attempt to understand our personal piece in this incredibly broad and all-inclusive theory that postulates and focuses upon our entire reason for being, we must, I believe, continue on with our lives, putting together as best we can the referenced “pieces of the cosmic jigsaw puzzle.”

Once we have had an option revealed to us, it becomes a doorway that is then available, if not indeed opened for us to step through.

I quote from "The Devine Romance" (Paramahansa Yogananda)

“Fate does not mean something ordained - but it is ordained by you yourself, through the operation of the law of causation, or karma. God gave you the freedom to choose how you will act; but the law of causation governs the outcome according to the nature of the action. Thus every act becomes a cause that will produce a certain kind of effect. When you have set in motion a particular cause, the effect will inevitably correspond to that cause. Whether you do good or evil, you must reap the result of that action. So day by day you are creating causes that determine your own fate.

“Behind the light in every little bulb is a great dynamic current; beneath every little wave is the vast ocean, which has become the many waves. So it is with human beings. God made every man in His image, and gave each one freedom. But you forget the Source of your being and the unequaled power of God that is an inherent part of you. The possibilities of this world are limitless; the potential progress of man is limitless. Yet it appears that each individual is born with definite limitations. These are the results of the operation of the law of karma.

“Disease, health; failure, success; inequalities, equality; early death, long life - all these are outgrowths of the seeds of actions we have sown in the past. They cause us to come into this world with varying degrees of goodness or evil within us. So even though God made us in His image, no two people are alike; each has used his God-given free choice to make something different of himself.

“To resist the effects of karma is to use commonsense remedies, but rely more on the power of the mind. Refuse to accept any limiting condition. Affirm and believe in health, strength, success, even in the face of contradictory evidence. The effects of your actions have much less power to hurt you when you do not allow the mind to give in to them. Remember that. You can also resist by counteracting the bad effects of past wrong actions with good effects set in motion by present right actions, thus preventing the creation of an environment favorable to the fruition of your bad karma.”

Copyright©2002 Temple of the Living God of St. Petersburg, Inc.