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As human beings we are the sum total of our choices and actions and the consequences we experience are according to the inexorable Karmic law that binds us,. The equilibrating law of Karma as expounded in the scriptures is that of action and reaction, cause and effect, sowing and reaping . Karma derives from the Sanskrit verb kri – to do to act and react. In the course of natural righteousness, rita, each man by his thoughts and actions moulds his destiny. Whatever universal energies he has set in motion must return to him like a circle completing itself. The philosopher Emerson says, “The world looks like a mathematical equation which turn it how we will balances itself . Every secret is told, every crime is punished, every virtue rewarded , every wrong redressed in silence and certainty.” An understanding of karma as the law of justice underlying man’s inequalities serves to free the human mind of resentment against God and man.
The Karmic law requires that every human wish finds ultimate fulfilment and desire is the chain that ties us to the incarnation wheel. Just as a cosmic order upholds the universe, there is a moral order that rules man’s destiny and no worldly being can read the secret scroll of karma that unrolls for each man a different script. A man’s allotted span in a physical world is predetermined and there is no escape from the karmic cycle. The three types of karma according to the Gita are Sanchita karma, the accumulation of all actions good and bad across several births, Prarabda karma which we are destined to experience in the present birth and Agami karma that depends on our actions in the present that will have future consequences. Srikrishna talks of performing one’s duty and being neutral to the outcomes and rewards. He emphasises the importance of living according to dharma or righteous duty, with responsibility and without self delusion. Inaction too is adharma when we do not act as circumstances dictate and as bystanders become accomplices in the evil perpetrated.
Man’s salvation, joys and sorrows are worked out on the basis of karma and a karmayogi is one who carries out his duty without desire: Nishkama karma. Everything in this world can be confronted with a sense of duty inspired by universal love, tolerance and empathy.