Law of Karma in Advaita Vedanta

 Law of Karma in Advaita Vedanta

Law of Karma in Advaita Vedanta

I get it.

Everything is Brahman.

In that case, what is the significance of karma in this whole thing?

Isn't the idea of karma incompatible with this paradigm in the sense

that if Brahman is everything, and the doer is Brahman in that sense

and nothing attaches to Brahman?

How does karma work into this?

How does karma work into this?

Right.

It's a good question.

Girish is inquiring about the role of karma and what we just discussed.

Brahman or Turiyam being the only reality, and everything else being an appearance.

Nothing attaches to Turiyam.

It's super Teflon.

Nothing sticks to it.

So, 

How will karma stick to it?

And attached to this are serious questions of morality and immorality

and reward and punishment.

So many things follow from this question.

So, it's a deep question.

 

Now, individual, the individual acts of individuals and the results of those individual acts,

All of this is karma.

• What is karma?
• The law of karma?

The law of karma is: Action has its results.

Actions have consequences.

Good action, dharma, results in what is called punya, merit.

And that punya gives a result, sukha, happiness.

Bad action, what we might consider evil action, consciously done,

You know, when one is consciously naughty.

So, adharma results in what is called paapa or demerit.

And the result of that paapa is dukkham.

So, this is the law of karma.

 

Dharma, punya, sukha.

Good action, moral action, ethical action, results in merit, results in happiness.

Adharma, paapa, dukkham.

Evil action, immoral action, unethical action, consciously done,

generates what might be translated as sin, demerit.

And the result of that will be unhappiness.

This is the law of karma.

 

And who gets, who owns this karma?

The agent, the person who feels:

 “I did it.”

I am the doer.

Who is this person?

In our present context of Turiyam and the three aspects

of the self, it's the waker.

Right now, the waker.

 

However much we may do philosophy, if I do something nice, I feel good.

If I do something naughty, afterwards I feel guilty.

So, I own the action, and I seem to get the results.

 

Now, this waker is not the ultimate reality.

According to the Mandukya Upanishad, you are not really the waker.

You are really Turiyam, who appears as the waker and functions as the waker.

The waker is not ultimately real.

If the waker is not ultimately real, then the waker as the agent

of action cannot be ultimately real.

If there is no ultimately real agent of action,

There cannot be any real karma either.

No real consequence, also.

This is what he is asking.

 

And the straight answer to that is yes.

Shankaracharya, in one of his commentaries, you see, this is a very profound thing

because the whole of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, all the Indian religions

are explicitly based on the law of karma.

All of them accept.

Despite their vast internal diversities,

Buddhism does not accept God.

Does not accept a permanent, unchanging self.

Ishwara, Atma, no.

But it accepts the law of karma.

And what this Mandukya does is, it smashes the law of karma to bits.

It gets rid of the law of karma also.

 

Shankaracharya says, Correct.

Ultimately speaking, the law of karma is not right.

Ultimately speaking.

Just as the laws of physics are not right.

Ultimately speaking, yes.

 

In what sense?

What Advaita does is divide reality into three tiers, three levels of reality.

There is the ultimate reality, which it calls Paramarthika,

the absolute reality.

There is a transactional reality which we inhabit, which is this waking reality,

which it calls Vyavaharika, transactional reality.

And then there is a level of illusion, error, dream, which it calls Pratibhasika.

 

For example, right now, this reality which we inhabit, Vedanta would call it

Vyavaharika, transactional, empirical, relative reality.

The dreams which we have, the snake which we see by mistake on a rope, the water

which we see by mistake in a desert, in a mirage, illusions are the dreams.

They are called Pratibhasika, illusory.

And Brahman alone is Paramarthika.

Turiyam is Paramarthika, the absolute.

 

What Vedanta is trying to do is to shift us, shove us from this empirical reality,

identification with the entities of empirical reality, into the Paramarthika, the real reality, Turiyam.

It's like, suppose this were a dream, our dream, and somebody in the dream comes

and tells you, Look, all this is, we are inhabiting a dream.

The reality is you are sleeping on your bed and imagining all this.

Now the bed and you sleeping on it and imagining all of it,

that's nowhere part of the dream.

If somebody comes and tells you, you are actually

on your bed and imagining all this.

Now, if you go around in the dream searching for the bed

And where am I sleeping, and where am I imagining all this,

You will never find it in a dream.

But that's the truth.

That's the ground of this entire dream.

 

Similarly, this entire Vyavaharika jagat, this appearance, world of appearances,

transactional world is grounded in the absolute, which is Turiyam.

The law of karma applies in Vyavaharika, in the relative world.

It does not apply to the Turiyam.

 

Vivekananda put it in a very simple way.

Good, good, bad, bad, and none escape the law.

Law of karma, moral action, you get good results, happiness.

Immoral action, you get bad results, unhappiness.

None escapes the law, he says.

Then, but whosoever wears the form wears the chain too.

Wears the form means whoever is identified with the body and mind, this body and mind is also identified with the chain which is tied to this body and mind.

 

What is the chain?

It's a chain of past karma.

The load of our past deeds and misdeeds is upon us.

Though we know it not, it's continuously giving results in the form of our pleasant and unpleasant experiences through our days and months, and years.

So that is the chain which we are tied to.

 

Now, what does Mandukya say and what does Vivekananda say?

Next line, but far beyond name and form, body and mind, far beyond name

and form, is Atman ever free, or in our language, is Turiyam ever free.

Know thou art that sannyasi bold.

Say Om Tat Sat Om.

 

In our language, far beyond that means right here and yet transcending it.

Like the waking transcends the dream, the Paramarthika,

the absolute, transcends the relative.

Is Turiyam ever free?

Know thou art that.

Oh Girish bold.

Say Om Tat Sat Om.

 

While inhabiting this, while inhabiting this.

So the law of karma will continue to appear to function and give results.

But you are not affected by it.

And that not affected Turiyam is the absolute.

This law of karma will continue to function just

like a dream.

At this level, yes.

But at that level, the deeper level, the reality itself, no.

 

The follow-on thing, which is that, so the karma exists at the waking level, if you would.

And so do the laws of physics.

And so, to the enlightened man, if you would, or person,

The laws of physics wouldn't apply.

Wouldn't apply as Turiyam.

Not as this waking person.

 

I will give you an example.

Once, Swami, oh, it's very, very, the happily named Swami Turiyananda.

Because we are talking about Turiyam.

Swami Turiyananda was a disciple of Sri Ramakrishna.

Once he was there with an American Swami,

Swami Atulananda.

And they were on their way to a pilgrimage in Haridwar or somewhere, I forget.

And they camped one night with a lot of other pilgrims in a hut.

And this is in the reminiscences of Swami Atulananda.

Swami Turiyananda was a great Vedantist.

 

So, there was a discussion on Vedanta.

And pilgrims were sitting all around a roaring fire at night.

It was winter.

Then one of the gentlemen challenged Swami Turiyananda.

You are saying all this is an appearance, is a dream.

So, your body is a dream, this fire is a dream, and this experience, what

you are experiencing now, is just an appearance.

You are the unchanging consciousness.

So, 

Can you put your hand in this fire?

And Turiyananda said immediately, Atulanandaji records,

He got excited immediately and stood up and said, Yes,

I will thrust my hand in the fire.

It will get burned.

But that does not affect me, the witnessing consciousness.

 

And he was about to jump into the fire.

When people rushed and caught him and pulled him back.

Now, you see, it does not violate the common sense of physics.

But what it says is, I have recognized myself as the witness consciousness.

The body and the fire are at the same level of reality.

So, the fire will burn the body.

The laws of physics and chemistry, and biology will act upon the body.

And the mind too.

But I, the witness consciousness, I am not the body and mind.

It's as simple as that.

 

Somebody asked, I think it was just yesterday, Bill pointed out

a famous story about Dr. Samuel Johnson, I think.

And Bishop Berkeley, who was the subjective idealist,

who said everything, that's different from Vedanta, but it's still, you know,

he said everything is in the mind.

The world exists because I experience it.

And Samuel Johnson, he says, I refute it thus, and he kicked a rock.

See, it is resistance, it bounces, it hurts my foot.

This is real.

How is it in my mind?

 

But don't you think the same thing would happen if you do it in a dream?

In a dream, which is entirely in your mind, if you go and kick a rock in

Central Park, will the dream rock not hurt your dream foot?

It would.

It will.

You might even utter a dream, ouch.

That does not make the dream rock any more real.

At the same level, they act on each other.

 

But the great discovery of Shankaracharya, the great insight, is that which is at

A lower level of reality does not affect the higher level of reality.

So, whatever happens in the dream, Janaka lost his kingdom, was wounded,

humiliated, frustrated, in despair, in the dream. When he wakes up,

none of it has affected him.

Still, his heart may pound a little bit, but he will say, oh, it didn't happen.

He is a philosopher, he says, yeh satch, ya woh satch.

But the dream did not affect his waking.

 

All the things that went on in the dream had no effect on the waking,

Because waking is a higher level of reality than the dream.

Shankaracharya says, not one drop of, not one grain of sand in the desert

can be made wet by the water of the mirage.

You can see a whole oasis of water, it will have no effect on the sand

of the desert, it remains unaffected, because they are not

at the same level of reality.

 

An unreal oasis can exist with a real desert.

An unreal snake can coexist with a real rope.

An unreal defeat in the battle can coexist with the emperor retaining

his empire and being very happy in the waking state.

Unreality and reality have no clash.

 

But does the higher level of existence, does it affect

the lower level of experience?

Yes, it does.

 

How?

It forms the basis of that.

Unless you are a waker, you cannot go to sleep and dream.

Unless there is a real desert, the false oasis, mirage cannot appear.

Unless there is a real rope, the false snake cannot appear there.

Similarly, this rope or the oasis of the desert or the waking,

all of this is based on a yet higher level of reality, which is pure consciousness,

the non-dual consciousness, Turiyam.

 

This cannot affect that.

But that gives this existence.

And that thing which gives this existence, that is what you are really.

Once you know that, you will continue to inhabit this

very happily.

You will not be affected by the problems here.

Then this itself, there are beautiful verses, Nandanavanam,

this itself becomes the garden of the gods.

Nandanavanam is supposed to be in heaven, the garden of the gods.

This world, samsara of terrible ills and frightening samsara,

becomes your pleasure garden.