Karma Redefined

We usually understand that karma means action/duty as we are generally engaged in day to day life, but it is not so. The karma means “duty as human being”. Let us try to understand the real meaning of KARMA.

The universe/earth is made up of animate and inanimate things. We as human beings are also part of the nature.

Now take the example of plants. What is their duty as plants? To prepare food for other lives, consume carbon diaoxide, release oxygen in the process of preparing food, providing shelter to various organisms, etc. They cannot do otherwise due to their nature itself. They don’t discriminate between good and bad or religious and non-religious etc.. In a sense they are behaving as if their nature is non-dual. Their true nature ( swabhav) is always getting reflected through their action. Similar is the case with air, water, fire, space, stones ,soil, even man made things like chair, table, computers etc. All of them are continuously contributing positively in running the nature. It means everything is engaged in fulfilling the purpose of its existence. Further all these components are not bound by any rules of society as no society exists in their world like us.

Every component of the nature has a special duty (Karma) assigned by the nature, which cannot be performed by any other component of the nature. Imagine the impact on the machinery called nature if any of them except humans, starts non co-operating with it i.e. starts doing otherwise than duty assigned by the nature; in other words stops doing its karma i.e. not according to its swabhav. In another words what will happen if any of the component except humans, is not present in the larger machinery called nature? The value of anything becomes known only when that thing is not present at a given point of time.

Now come to the miniscule (by weight and volume both) part/component of the nature known as humans by humans. In what way this component is special to the nature i.e. what is its positive contribution in running the nature. What nature has assigned duty to it which cannot be performed by any other component? Can anybody point out a single positive contribution of human being in running the nature? I don’t think so. All of our actions are retrogressive in nature. We use the power of discrimination for negative purpose only. We are not only damaging all other components of nature, but damaging our race in different ways which no other animals do.

How is it possible that 99.99999……% of the components have been assigned the duty ( non discriminating nature) by the nature to contribute to it in positive way and this miniscule part to do all sorts of negative things? Why did the seers/rishis/knowers have said that human’s birth is best among all lives, we take birth as humans after passing through 80 lakh yonies, the devatas(gods) are hankering to take birth as humans( our mythologies are full of this ), etc. but for what? What is the speciality of human life i.e. what is our duty as a human being in relation to running of the nature? This duty can precisely be termed as karma of human being. If we are not aware about our duty as human being, how we are going to perform our karmas? Hence, most of us are not doing or cannot do our karma as we do not know the purpose of our existence. Further in another words we are not aware of our nature (Swabhav).

Most of our action wrongly mentioned as karma, are mind driven not nature driven. Once our true nature(swabhav) is known /realized by us , any action happening through us will be nothing but the duty as human being only not otherwise, just like other components of the nature.

If the understanding of karma is so simple as it is generally understood, the world as a whole would have been a calm and peaceful place like heaven. Everybody says do your duty rest will follow. But they are basically referring to the duty assigned by the society not the duty as human being which is a part of large machinery called nature. The duty assigned by the society is necessary to run the society smoothly and the duty assigned by the nature is necessary to run the nature smoothly.

If the meaning of karma is so simple which is generally understood in common paralance, there was no need for Krishna to take human birth to simply give the massage that “do your karma and leave it to me”.