The law of Karma, bondage or soul release
Good morning, everyone. Good morning. Well, as you can tell, the subject this morning is about the law of karma. I read something fun this week. Some of you may have seen it as well. My reality check just bounced. And that’s what it feels like sometimes with the law of karma. You know, that pendulum that just swings back and forth, back and forth. Every action has a reaction, and it’s endless.
I remember once there was a man that I was working with who was particularly smart. He was sharp with his tongue and difficult to get along with. I would react. He’d say something unkind or mean, and I would just react. I just kept praying about this, and I asked Yogananda, whose teachings we practice here, to help me not to react. You know, the whole karmic law is that of reaction. Then I started noticing that when he would try to puncture me, I was able to see it for what it was, even have a bit of compassion for him for having to express those thoughts. But I couldn’t go into positive gear to actually express kindness in return. At least I didn’t react. For all of us, that’s sort of what the spiritual life is like. It’s about slowing down the reactive process. That’s what meditation is about. It helps us to slow down that reactive process.
The karmic law is a little bit like gravity. It’s a force, like a natural law. It exists in duality, it’s always there, and it pulls on us. The more we have certain thoughts or actions, we draw more and more of that to ourselves. That’s why Yogananda explains that Satsang is so important. Satsang is spiritual fellowship, companionship, being in the company of saints. When I look around this room, I see lots of them. I am so grateful for the choice to be here with all of us striving for that sanctity.
Swami Kriyananda, Yogananda’s direct disciple and the founder of Ananda, describes when he was a young man in his early twenties, living with Yogananda. Yogananda asked him one day, what keeps the earth spinning around the sun? Kriyananda thought he needed a lesson in astronomy, so he said, it’s the magnetism of the sun. Yogananda said, well, why doesn’t the earth just collapse into the sun? Kriyananda said, it’s the centrifugal force of the earth. In other words, the earth is keeping itself at a distance from the sun. It was only sometime later that Kriyananda understood he was talking about the soul. He was talking about us, that God is constantly trying to magnetize us to God. We have this centrifugal force that keeps pulling away, and it keeps us going in circles and circles. That’s what the karmic law does when we keep acting and reacting in duality.
The story goes that there was a man before World War II who anticipated the war coming. He looked on the globe and tried to find a place where the war was not likely to be happening. And he landed in Guam to live there. That’s exactly where the war in the Pacific landed with its greatest force. We can’t escape these things.
When I first moved to Ananda Village in California, it was 1973, and I was 22 at that point. Even back then, Swami Kriyananda used to periodically talk to us about Yogananda explaining that we were going to go through some difficult times in the near future. I had very little, about $1,500, and I purchased silver and gold. I had this little batch, and next to my rustic cabin, I dug a hole and put the silver and gold in.
A few years later, I had the opportunity to purchase a slightly larger cottage. So, I did, and the only money I had was that silver and gold. I dug it up and exchanged it; it had more than tripled in value at that point. I purchased the little cottage for cash. Three days later, a fire came through Ananda Village and destroyed 21 out of our 22 homes, including the one I had just paid for in cash. It was gone, poof.
I was young enough, with my life still in front of me, that it didn’t bother me. It just happened. I realized that was not where I could put my security. I needed to work on my inner life so that I could be calm no matter what happens on the outside, even if everything I have goes up in smoke—literally. The karmic law is always at play. For some reason, I had some sense of security with that money. And God was there to show me that’s not where it is.
Because I was living in a spiritual community, it didn’t take me long to figure out that the answer is inside—the peace, joy, calmness, and all the qualities of the divine are within us. It is only when we’re in unity with God, in attunement with God, that we can act without the compulsion to react. Our thoughts become more uplifted and draw more upliftment to ourselves as a result.
There’s a story that Yogananda used to tell. I’m going to read to you just the first couple of sentences, because I can’t possibly duplicate these words, and then I’ll tell you the story. It starts like this: In the nocturnal depths of a jungle in India, there lived a propitious holy master and his disciple away from the haunts of insidious desires and sense-drugging environment. These childlike human gods of simplicity led a naive natural life, free from the travails of unfulfilled, increasing hopes.
They separated themselves as monastics in all traditions have done and as needed to be done in that age. In this age, Yogananda shows us that we look for the divine in life. So, we don’t separate ourselves from life, but we look for the divine in life. He starts the story that way, which I thought was pretty right on for this topic.
Then what happened was this one disciple, he was a little judgmental and frustrated with the life there and the daily duties. He went to his master and said, “I want to leave. I lived in a wealthy home with my parents, and I don’t see that my chores there were very much different than the chores you’re giving me here, and I just want to go off by myself.” The master, of course, recognized the fallacy in that thinking and said, “You have some fallacy in that thinking.” But the disciple left anyway, taking two little pieces of cloth, loincloths, that he alternated each day.
The first night, he found a tree to sleep under, and he hung up the second loincloth. When he woke up in the morning, it had holes in it because a mouse had found it and started eating holes into it. Just then, a villager came walking by and saw the frustration in this disciple.
The disciple (whose name was Ram), explained what had happened, and the villager said, “Oh, no worries. All you need is a cat, and I know where there is a cat that I can give to you.” So, he came back just a short time later with this cat. Ram was grateful, and sure enough, the cat took care of the mice, and there were no more holes in his clothes.
But then a villager came walking by again, and Ram said, “You know, now I have this cat, but I need to feed the cat, and I don’t have any food.” The villager said, “Oh, no worries. I have a cow I can give you, and the cow can give the cat milk.” So, he went and got the cow, and Ram was very grateful.
About a year went by, and the villager came by again. Ram said, “You know, I just don’t have enough food to feed the cow.” The villager said, “Oh, no worries. Just have him go to the village where we live nearby, and there are lots of fields there and food.” The cow went and foraged in their gardens, which became a nightmare for the villagers.
After some time, Ram explained to the villager passing by again. The villager said, “You know, we’re very unhappy with this solution because the cow is ruining our fields, and someone has to come and fix these fields.” Ram asked, “What do I do?” The villager said, “I’ll bring you some children from the village who can help you with this.” So, he brought the children, and they helped Ram repair the fields.
That was going well until the villager walked by and said, “We need the children to do chores at our house. You have them all the time, and that isn’t working. You should have your own children.” Ram said, “How am I going to have children? I’m not married.” The villager said, “Oh, no worries. One of us can give you a wife. Some of our daughters are ready to be married, so we’ll present one of them to you,” which they did.
Then there were preparations for a big wedding feast. Just at that time, the guru, the master, was meditating and had a thought that he should check on Ram. He went out and found Ram getting ready in regalia to get married. The master said, “What are you doing? You left the ashram because you thought the duties were too materialistic for you. And now here you are, and you’re getting married. What do you think you’re getting into here?” Ram realized his folly and went back home with the Guru to the ashram.
The story has many points, but the main one in relation to karma is that one thing leads to another, leads to another. We all know the drill. I’m looking around the room and seeing all these knowing eyes going, “Oh yeah, I’ve experienced that.” That’s what happens to us. So how do we turn that around? How do we transcend our karma?
First and foremost, we pray and ask God to work through us, to be with us. The more we act with that spirit and intention, the less the karma sticks to us. It’s like writing on water; it doesn’t stay. We can be less in the thought of, “I’m a victim, somebody is doing this to me.” We can take more responsibility for our actions and thoughts.
There’s a story that I like. I don’t have time to tell all of it, but it’s about a father and two daughters in Holland during World War II. They were devout Christians and took in Jews, hiding them in their home. At a certain point, the family was caught, arrested, and brought to a concentration camp. They remained very devout Christians, and the Jews hiding in their house were not found.
So, they ended up being safe, but in the end, the father and the eldest daughter couldn’t survive the concentration camp. As the eldest daughter was dying, she said to her sister, “Please go around and talk to as many people as you can and tell them there’s no pit so deep that God is in deeper still.”
This is a very poignant, meaningful, and important thought because when we’re in the midst of difficult times, how is it fair unless karma and reincarnation work together? I was so thrilled when I first rediscovered, because it seemed very familiar to me, the philosophies and doctrines of karma and reincarnation. How can we balance out our actions in any one given lifetime? It’s just not possible, not to mention our billions of thoughts.
A little child is born handicapped; another child is born in an abusive family. These terrible things happen, but how can it be? There are two ways it can be. One is reincarnation; it can be a reaction to something in a prior life. The second is that it’s not at all a reaction to something we did; it is a test to help us raise our energy above whatever the test is.
Yogananda was alive during World War II and knew about all the horrors that were going on. But he said at the same time, there were saints being born through that process. We don’t know. I have so many people who tell me, “I have this ache and this pain, but I don’t want to tell anybody because clearly I deserved it.” People self-judge, but there’s no point to that because, as the reading said this morning, we can’t see it. Only a master, a self-realized soul, can see the big picture.
All we can do is our best. All we can do is try to live with God, in God.