Questioner: Karma is such a ubiquitous word. Everyone is using it. And the word ‘Karma’ is right now popular in the west, too. Even if you see Hollywood movies, they use the word Karma, maybe with some negative words between. What is Karma?
Acharya Prashant: You see, the entire Vedantic approach is to inquire into ‘Who I am?’ ‘Ko-aham’—Who am I?. Because unless I have self-knowledge, unless I know who I am, it's futile acting, believing, relating, doing whatever, even existing. But since it's very difficult to get into oneself and just know who one is, what one's real identity is, therefore, we use a proxy to know oneself. That proxy is ‘*Karma*’.
The one we want to know is the ‘Karta, the doer, but because we cannot directly know the doer, so instead we use a proxy, a surrogate to know the doer, his actions, his doing, his Karma. That's the reason why Karma is actually very important, though that's not the reason why today most people talk so much of Karma.
Questioner: And one question, even in the west you can see this fascination for Indian culture including the word Karma, and many people think about that there is a possibility of reincarnation, and rebirth, such ideas are getting rooted everywhere. These are very different, difficult, nuanced multilayered topics, but generally speaking, for a common man like us, is there reincarnation and rebirth? Do we take multiple births?
Acharya Prashant: Definitely. There is reincarnation and rebirth, and reincarnation is such a beautiful and deep Vedantic concept, but reincarnation is not what most people take it to be. At the level of the person, there is no reincarnation. It is the
