Questions and Answers

Does Karma still affect us if we follow our Dharma?

Sure. Everything we did in our previous lives created our initial life conditions. The place where we were born depend on our actions in the previous lives. Now you have got what you deserve.If we don’t like something, we should start doing something to change it. Then in the next life we get less what we didn’t like and more what we like. This tendency keeps from life to life. At the end of our life we get a final result – the sum of our actions. And this result defines the start point for the next life: the place we would be born and our initial living conditions. Actually Karma defines much more then the place and living conditions. It defines happiness and sufferings. That is the most important. Living conditions and a place where you live is just a scenery. You spent one of your lives as a countryman and suffering because you were unhappy in your private life. The next life you will reborn as a prince and would be suffering for the same. Just the scenery will change from fields and pigs to palaces and yachts. That is why the most important thing – is the level of happiness. Do right things – suffer less in your next life; do wrong– suffer more.It is an endless journey, because usually people are inconsistent and do the same things from life to life and get the same the result.

Yoga is that very accelerator. Our world is a combination of “stick and carrot”. The world makes you do something anyway. If you do not work, you don’t have money and you would get hungry as “a stick” or something else that push you forward. If you go to work in that situation – you get a “carrot” (money to buy food) instead of the “stick” (hunger). When you try to change your life, your life changes. Yoga helps to change your life much faster. Yoga shrinks all changes from several lives to several years, months or even days and minutes.If you go deeper, you will understand the following: external circumstances are the consequences of our internal processes. And these external circumstances depend on what you have changed inside you. Yoga is the accelerator, which helps you to accelerate your internal process. Yoga includes a lot of practices and techniques to help you to advance the process of self-awareness.

If you have time, try to analyze all possible situations and choose the action which, from your point of view, would be the best for everyone who is involved in the situation. If you don’t have time, for instance, you are calling to order a gang of criminals with weapons. May be I wanted to have them alive and put them in jail, but I’m not sure that it would be safe for the society. Because they can escape from a prison or court can find them not guilty if they have a good lawyer. So it is a dilemma. But first you need to ask yourself: “Is it my duty to deal with this gang?”
As an example, you go home on a dark street and suddenly hear screams and see a man and a woman fighting. If you are a policeman you must interfere in this situation and sort it out. Even if later you understood that it was a kind of game for those man and woman, because your duty is maintaining order in the streets. But you if you are just passing by and you do not have enough courage to interfere, call the police and ask them to sort out in this situation, because it is their duty.It is not question about doing harm. The question is: if it is your duty to interfere in this situation. But also I want to tell, if you have a possibility to decrease sufferings and increase happiness – do it!

It is a very dangerous idea. This idea almost ruined India. They believe that if the person is born as Shudra (one of the lowest caste in India), so it is your fault. Do you feel bad in this caste? You deserved it. Generally, the law of Karma is a very simple law. It is just the law of cause and consequences. Karma can’t be transferred from one person to another and it is impossible to get it from somebody else. You can’t suffer instead of another person. If you think that it has happened, it just means that you have more complicated Karma. If I was cheated in this life, it means that I have already cheated someone before in the same way - a mirror situation. All you have now is just a reflection of your previous actions. Moreover, the law of Karma can be good protection for cynics and bad selfish people: “People die in Africa, therefore, it is their fault. They did something wrong in past. Kids were killed, it is because they did the same before” – this concept of thinking has nothing to do with yoga. From the point of view of yoga, if you see somebody getting what is deserved, you feel sorry for this person anyway.
For instance, the last three past lives a person was not kind to people who were helping so somebody now is not kind to this person when the kindness is showed. You understand that it is completely person’s fault; you see that this person did everything to deserve it, but on the other hand you feel sorry because somebody is suffering. To be a real yogi means – never go excited due to the fact that somebody else is suffering tell something this way: “Your Karma has reached you at last!” but do your best to help to get rid of sufferings. I repeat you one more time: formally people sufferings because they deserve it. But from the aspect of yoga it is not our duty to condemn them for it. Because if you laugh when somebody falls down, then when you will fall other people around will laugh at you instead of helping you. Law of Karma works everywhere and you create your own Universe by your behavior. So is you don’t feel sorry for a victim, it means that nobody feel sorry for you when you would be a victim. I’m going to give you free paraphrase of a story from The Upanishads. If you liked if, you can find it and read more thoughtfully. A sage was meditating, suddenly a dove flown to him and said: "Save me, a kite wants to eat me." Sage was a humanist, and felt sorry for the bird, he answered: “Sit here, I give you my word that no one will offend you” After a while the kite flown to the sag and asked him: "Give me the dove, I’m chasing it around for the third day. I have chicks in my nest and they are dying of hunger. I need the dove to feed them.” What should the sage do? If he gave the dove to the kite – the dove died, if not - the chicks will die. This is a typical situation that you can come across into your life. We have these situations every day. And usually we choose between two obvious options. And don’t think about alternative, because of our part of Karma, which we got when we were animals. But the story is continued. The Sage thought a bit and told the kite: “I offer you the following: I will cut off a piece of my body, exactly the same weight of the dove, so you can feed your chicks”. Kite agreed and left with piece of sage’s flash. It is not the end of story. If you are interested in what was next – find and read it. The same happened when yoga Teachers saw our behavior and realized that there is no the best options in our choices, situations can’t be resolved in the level of logic. So they sacrifice themselves – they bring the supreme logic into our life. The Supreme Logic is beyond the limits of Karma.
As example, in a train tunnel a kid sits on rails and a train is approaching. The kid has no choice to move or escape – that is Karma. But suddenly an invisible hand raises him and lets the train pass and put the kid down. It is the supreme logic, and it works beyond Karma.But the supreme logic (Higher Power) works only if you ask for help. In other way this power doesn’t interfere into your life: may be you like siting on rails and want to be killed. The meaning of yoga is doing your best to help people even if you understand they deserve their sufferings.