Yesterday I volunteered to type out an entire booklet on "Prayers" written by Swami Dayananda Saraswati. My wife wanted me to photocopy it, but I thought I might as well type it out fully so that I may get a chance to understand what it is about. I have been trying to understand life from a different perspective other than religion, prayers and karma and have come to some conclusions so far. After reading the prayer book I found that my understandings were not fundamentally any different from what the book conveyed.
The booklet talked about Karma and how it affects our everyday lives. But the book also goes beyond this birth and talks about previous births and the karma we might have done in those births. What it doesn't explain is why we sometimes end up doing the wrong things and what decided our fate in the first birth. Karma is another way of saying that we are responsible for our own actions. The western theory on this speaks about it in a rather detached way - the fundamental assumption is that they talk only about this birth and they don't extrapolate bad times and good times to the papa or punya done in previous births.
As far as the western theory goes, I fully agree with it and would like to embrace it. I am responsible for my own actions. The one thing that puzzles me is the fact that we don't have a choice over our parents. What then decides that some person be born in Africa with AIDS and some person born in a Royal family with so many resources around. Immediately after they are born in their respective places, they are subjected to different environment, which includes thier parents, siblings, immediate family, the weather/climate, culture and what not. None of these are obviously under our control, but then go a very long way in shaping us up as we grow. This is explained by the Karma theory - it says that to be born in a Royal family or the like in this birth, you need to have done some punya in the past birth. It seems like a model to explain things. It goes one step further and says that you can neutralize the papas you've done in your previous birth and this birth by praying. It made a very important point which I have realized otherwise as well - it said that people pray only for themselves. They may pray for you, but at a more subconscious level, they pray that they be happy as a result of you being happy. "Selfishness" is a very crude way of explaining this.
Luck is something that I have not been able to explain with my existing knowledge. Some people end up making lots of riches while some people suffer, even if they start out from the same starting point. One can argue that the starting point is not quite the same for two individuals because you can ultimately find a point where they were quite different - it may come to their births - they would have had different parents, different environment where they grew up and different values. That's where my understanding is weak. One may even argue that getting the riches is not a goal to have and that it may be devil's temptation. This can be a good road trip conversation. Never ending is our quest for understanding why we are here in the first place.
The booklet talked about Karma and how it affects our everyday lives. But the book also goes beyond this birth and talks about previous births and the karma we might have done in those births. What it doesn't explain is why we sometimes end up doing the wrong things and what decided our fate in the first birth. Karma is another way of saying that we are responsible for our own actions. The western theory on this speaks about it in a rather detached way - the fundamental assumption is that they talk only about this birth and they don't extrapolate bad times and good times to the papa or punya done in previous births.
As far as the western theory goes, I fully agree with it and would like to embrace it. I am responsible for my own actions. The one thing that puzzles me is the fact that we don't have a choice over our parents. What then decides that some person be born in Africa with AIDS and some person born in a Royal family with so many resources around. Immediately after they are born in their respective places, they are subjected to different environment, which includes thier parents, siblings, immediate family, the weather/climate, culture and what not. None of these are obviously under our control, but then go a very long way in shaping us up as we grow. This is explained by the Karma theory - it says that to be born in a Royal family or the like in this birth, you need to have done some punya in the past birth. It seems like a model to explain things. It goes one step further and says that you can neutralize the papas you've done in your previous birth and this birth by praying. It made a very important point which I have realized otherwise as well - it said that people pray only for themselves. They may pray for you, but at a more subconscious level, they pray that they be happy as a result of you being happy. "Selfishness" is a very crude way of explaining this.
Luck is something that I have not been able to explain with my existing knowledge. Some people end up making lots of riches while some people suffer, even if they start out from the same starting point. One can argue that the starting point is not quite the same for two individuals because you can ultimately find a point where they were quite different - it may come to their births - they would have had different parents, different environment where they grew up and different values. That's where my understanding is weak. One may even argue that getting the riches is not a goal to have and that it may be devil's temptation. This can be a good road trip conversation. Never ending is our quest for understanding why we are here in the first place.
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