By Atty. Antonio P. Pekas
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Is that Newton’s Second Law of Motion? Forgot already. In a simplistic way, that is what karma is all about. The consequence of action.
The more important thing is, how to beat karma or its painful expression?
Does flogging or flagellating oneself or carrying a big and heavy cross around town as they do in Pampanga during Holy Week, relieve you of bad karma?
I asked somebody that question and he answered me in an oblique way. “Better just go and render social service like helping somebody who is badly in need.”
Another way of putting the question is how do we repay or exhaust bad karma?
Long ago I asked that question to a yoga teacher. He was an American with a PhD in psychology but gave up everything to become a monk, devoting his life to teaching yoga all over the world.
I culled several things in numerous conversations with him long ago. Some karma are exhausted in near death experiences when the mind is practically dissociated from the body. This might be what happens when one is in deep coma. Usually the effect of an accident or some serious illness. Another is by going through painful circumstances. Well, understandably if you made others suffer then that is a just consequence.
Also in really deep meditation or trance to the point where one becomes clinically dead.
How about in ordinary meditation where you don’t reach a “death” or “trance” experience but just that blissful peaceful experience? What do we get from it? He says there are many physical and mental benefits such as relaxation that allows the body to recuperate or cure some ailments. In the mental plane, you recover from stress which also have physical benefits.
As to karma, meditation generally hastens the ripening of karma so it gets expressed or you pay for it through some suffering on an installment basis. So, I guess a big chunk of my stored bad karma got paid or is being paid as am still suffering and recovering from kidney and heart failure.
Is karma always bad? No. It can be nice or positive. Thus, doing good deeds will result in a nice or comfortable or happy and healthy life. Certainly, the reverse would be a troublesome life.
Dreaming or having an ambition and honestly working to achieve it is a way of creating positive karma. It could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
All the yogic practices are meant to have better meditation which generally results in a better life as you slowly burn your bad karma, or lighten your karmic load. If you have tons of karmic load, with more reason you should work more to lighten it. Which can mean having to go through some suffering.
God is very just or fair. And life is good. We just have to factor in the karmic load we are carrying around.
Drowning it through vices or burying it with money or power will not erase it. Only God can do that. Otherwise, some other time, somewhere, when it is fully ripe, nature will take its course and it will get expressed. And you will be helpless about it. **
**
