Major aspects of Sanatana Dharma

Reincarnation: Every soul goes through the cycle of rebirth; everyone knows that death cannot be avoided similarly birth cannot be avoided either.  The actions we do in our lifetime determine the nature of our next birth.  It is a never ending cycle; the soul gets released from this cycle when it acquires true knowledge about itself and about Paramatma. Once this realization is reached, the soul then has to travel on the path to liberation leaving the karmic path.

The Law of Karma: Is the law of cause and effect. Our actions have consequences. Good deeds have positive consequences and negative deeds will have negative consequences.  Based on the type of karma or consequences accumulated, next birth is determined. The good (punya) and bad deeds (papa) do not cancel each other. They should be thought of as separate bank accounts. Each type of karma, punya or papa are accumulated or depleted separately. We have to reap the consequences of both punya and papa.

We often question why certain people go through unbearable suffering in this world. Why does a person have birth defects? Why does a person get incurable diseases? Why is a person born poor & someone else born rich? Why is a dog born as a stray and doesn’t have anyone else to depend on where as another dog is adopted by a rich person and lives in luxury? The answer to all these questions can be found in the Law of Karma.  For example if we have been blessed with good health and a good family, it is due to the good deeds we did in our past life. We may have  good health & good family but we may not have enough money or good employment which would be due to the bad deeds we did in our past lives. Every time we suffer, we spend some of the bad karmas that we have accumulated. Every time we enjoy we spend some of the good karmas we have accumulated. The banks of good and bad karma are replenished based on the deeds we do in our present life. If we enjoy life to the full extent but never help humanity or do any type of good deeds then the bank account of the good karma gets depleted but the bank account of the bad karma remains intact. This would result in us undergoing sufferings in our next birth so that the accumulated bad karma could be spent. This karmic cycle is a never ending process because in each lifetime we do both good and bad deeds on a daily basis.

Our accumulated Karmas also cause us to desire things and spur us further along the path of Karma. Good Karmas would make us help others and eventually cause spiritual awakening in us so that we can break the Karmic cycle. Bad karmas on the other hand would make us greedier and fuel our desire for material things which in turn would urge us to do more bad deeds. We can easily control the type of actions we do. By controlling our desire we can try not to walk down the path of bad karma. 

The next post will be on the Law of Dharma