When Life Gives Bad Results Inspite of Good Actions
Questioner: Past life Karma. You have a chapter dedicated to that. Now, we don’t know our past life Karma, we don’t know. Right? How do we make sure that we are doing the right Karma in this moment and that’s what matters but again sometimes, even after people do the right thing they don’t get the right results. So, how do you stay the cause?
Acharya Prashant: No, these are two questions in one, I will take them one by one. First of all, Vedanta does not talk of a personal past life, the person that you are or I am, we have no past or future life. Rebirth or reincarnation happens at a general, at a macro level, not at a personal level. I, as ‘Prashant’ am not going to take birth again, however, the tendency within me that says “I am Prashant” would remain till the time existence is.
Existence itself is the “I” tendency. So, we could say, “it’s the “I” tendency that exists and keeps repeating its existence in the form of Prashant and Nishant and Anurag and then something and something and something...”.
So, that’s about past lives. The form is new every-time. If the form expects that it’s immortal by way of reincarnation, then it’s not proper. That’s one thing.
And the second thing you said in continuation with this was that — “Is it due to past karma that often in spite of doing the right thing, we do not get the right results?’ Right? Probably that’s the link between two parts of your question. Is it due to past life Karma that I suffer in this birth? No, not really.
You see, the past has given us this body. Right? And the body for sure has a lot of garbage of the past accumulated in it. If one wants to put it in a very ruthlessly cynical way, one could even say that it’s only the garbage of the past that gets born with every child. Though I understand that’s a harsh way of putting it, but not an inaccurate way.
So, that garbage is born obviously and we all have that in us and the purpose of life therefore, is to act in a way that reduces the garbage, that cleans up. We often do not realize that what we are born with, is garbage, though if we clean that garbage up then what we will be left with, is something tremendous, something very precious, something immortal indeed, but that’s a far cry.
Mostly what happens is that we identify with the garbage and start thinking of the garbage itself as the truth, the real thing. And then obviously we are going to suffer. The desire towards action will itself be born from the latent tendencies coming from the past and then, even if that desire does get fulfilled, what we will get is suffering and if that desire doesn’t get fulfilled, we will get disappointment. And these are the two ends of the swing called life, desire fulfilled — what we get is frustration. Desire unfulfilled…
Questioner: We are not equanimous. We are not samantar. (hindi word)
Acharya Prashant: We cannot be equanimous, we cannot be equanimous even the way we take ourselves to be. We take ourselves as highly incomplete. You see, if I am incomplete, let's say I feel hungry, right. And there is a book kept here and there is food kept here then it is impossible for me to be equanimous towards both, samata, (5.12) equanimity will definitely elude me because my identity right now is linked to my mouth and to my stomach. I cannot look at these two in a neutral way, in an unbiased way. I will pounce upon the food. So, that depends on my situation.
Equanimity is possible only to the one who is operating from a place of fulfillment. If I am operating from a place of fulfillment, I can look at everything without coveting anything, without being fundamentally desirous of anything. Well, at a superficial level, I can play a game of desire.
At a superficial level, I can do what is needed at this moment for the sake of others, but for myself, I will not have any burning desire because I am already alright but that is a rare and difficult, unfortunately, point to come to. Most of us keep operating from very needless points of dissatisfaction, and therefore we keep throwing ourselves at one thing or the other. We keep falling in random directions of such things.
Questioner: You know, I am grateful to you and your team for setting this up. I really feel I can talk to you for two hours. If things permit, I will come and meet you and have a conversation.
Acharya Prashant: You are most welcome.
