What is Karma and How Does it Work?

To understand what is karma, let us first understand what reincarnation is.

Humans have a delightful knack for creating chaos with their free will. It is like their superpower. Remember how humans wiped out entire forests to build your dream homes? Consequently, the wild animals had no choice but to invade your homes and reclaim their land.

Yes, that is a brutal invasion, not by the wild animals but by the humans. The consequence is the essence of karma, the universal law of cause and effect.

What is Karma?

In Hinduism and Buddhism, karma refers to the ideology that your actions not only impact your present but also affect your future. Your future lifetimes are deeply interlaced with consciousness, which continues to exist through reincarnation.

Reincarnation is a belief by which your soul persistently lives in different physical bodies in a continuous loop of birth, death, and rebirth.

Some people don’t believe in reincarnation, and that’s perfectly fine. Beliefs are personal, and there’s no need for judgment. However, we can explore karma from various perspectives, allowing us to respect different beliefs while gaining a deeper understanding of the concept.

A scientific perspective

Newton’s Third Law states that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, highlighting how our choices send out ripples that can eventually impact us.

This scientific law provides a gentle affirmation that karma exists — at least within a current lifetime. Despite this, some people still dismiss the idea of reincarnation, mainly due to the absence of scientific studies and concrete evidence.

What if I told you that the First Law of Thermodynamics could completely shift your perspective?

The law of conservation of energy states that “energy can neither be created nor destroyed but can be converted from one form to another.” Similarly, consciousness is a form of mysterious energy continuously shifting and transforming from one state to another.

Chameleons evolved over millions of years to blend into their environment for survival. The ability to camouflage and better temperature control enabled them to thrive in various climates. The evolutionary change in chameleons took multiple generations, not just one, to adapt to their environment.

Consciousness plays a greater role in the transfer of genetic and ancestral information stored in DNA through reproduction. While the DNA carries the inherited traits, consciousness may influence behavior and decisions that affect the passing on of those traits. That’s why you resemble one of your parents or ancestors. Similarly, your immunity or susceptibility to certain diseases is also inherited.

The consequences of choices made by your ancestors, whether consciously or unconsciously, play an important role in shaping your future. Whether you believe in reincarnation or not, what matters most is how you act in this life.

A religious perspective.

Many religious individuals embrace karma and reincarnation with great faith, seeing them as undeniable truths. For them, the real mystery is not whether you are reborn but how many times you must be reborn and why the cycle of birth continues.

The cycle of birth, death, and rebirth ends with Moksha, meaning liberation from eternal life. Imagine sipping a cosmic mojito on the shores while everyone else is still figuring out how to file their taxes.

How can one attain Moksha?

Desires connect a soul to the body, and unfulfilled desires result in the need for birth again. Moksha is not about going to heaven but about becoming free of desires and attachments. Here are three paths to attaining Moksha, as outlined in the sacred Hindu text, the Bhagavad Gita.

Moksha through karma yoga and selfless service.

Perform your duties without any attachment to results or outcomes. The selfless service acts as an instrument to purify the soul and free you from the cycle of birth and death.

Moksha through the path of divinity and devotion, the bhakti yoga.

Worship, love, and devotion towards God can lead us to liberation from the material world. How would you feel knowing that the god who creates something from nothing is the ultimate truth and everything else is an illusion?

Moksha through the path of jnana yoga, the quest for wisdom.

It starts when you see the divine presence in all beings through meditation and self-inquiry, breaking the illusion of separateness. Humanity wins when compassion, or a sense of equality, wins over hatred and indifference.

Spiritual perspective

Think of your life as a garden.

Sow seeds of flowers to build a garden full of beautiful flowers. Likewise, sow seeds of kindness, compassion, and generosity to enjoy a blissful life. Just as a garden requires nurturing and care, our spiritual journey towards liberation is also subject to dedication and mindful actions.

By cultivating positive qualities within yourselves, you can gradually move closer to the ultimate goal of liberation from the cycle of birth and death. Sowing seeds of dishonesty, greed, and selfishness will grow the weed that might displace you further from your spiritual growth.

It is essential to be mindful of the seeds you are planting in the garden of your lives. Eliminate the negative qualities from your life because we do not pull unwanted weeds from the garden just for aesthetics. It is a survival strategy.