Commentaries by Vee Jay Attri during the Book Study – Secrets of Karma
Welcome to the session of Study and Great Invocation. Atma Namaste! How was the day? All is well, yes! Let us proceed for the study from the Secrets of Karma book. The title for today is “Karma and Motive,” a very, very important topic you need to pay attention to.
This will give you an answer to questions like, “Despite doing all the good things, why we are not receiving what we need to receive?” We shall be having a discussion on this. Let’s begin by a wonderful quotation by Lord Krishna.
Be concerned about the action and not about the fruits of the action.
Lord Krishna.
What you receive as a reward for your good actions depend upon the motive behind those actions. For example, you built a charitable hospital but the motive was to get a name for yourself more than the alleviation of miseries.
While the law will naturally reward you for your good karma, yet, the mixed motive will limit the benefit or joy you derive from that reward.
This is apparent in the lives of many successful people and even some celebrities, where you find they have little joy of living despite having everything in life.
This is something that we keep seeing everyday. You see, there is something called karmic entitlement. This is very important to understand. The karmic entitlement depends upon several factors. One of the important factors is, motive behind your actions. If there is no karmic entitlement, then, no matter what you have, cannot give you the benefit or joy.
Karmic entitlement is very important in receiving joy and happiness out of whatever that you have. Of course, together with that, another important factor that we talked about is the factor of gratitude but karmic entitlement is one of the most important factors.
There are other factors that help a person to experience benefit or joy out of whatever they have but one of the important aspect is entitlement. I remember a very beautiful story from the Puranas. This is about Shiva and Parvati.
So, Parvati was watching a very poor person and she told Shiva, “Why don’t you give something to that poor person? He is suffering for such a long time, let us help him to have something.” Shiva said, “My dear, unfortunately, that person is not entitled karmically to receive anything now.” But then, Parvati insisted, “No, I want you to give him something, please. He should receive it. I cannot see him suffering like this.”
Shiva said, “Okay, no problem! Let me just keep a pot of gold on the way he is walking now and let us see what happens.” Parvati was very happy thinking that the person will be picking up the pot of gold and his life will be wonderful after that. The gold was glittering. But then, strangely, as the man was approaching near the pot of gold, he had a weird thought, he said to himself, “How do blind people walk?”
So, he wanted to have an experience of being a blind person. He closed his eyes and started walking like a blind person and did not see the pot in front of him. After he crossed the pot, he opened the eyes and he said to himself, “Wow, that was a very amazing experience! Indeed, it is so difficult for a blind person and he kept walking on his path.” So, Shiva told Parvati “Have you seen, if the person is not karmically entitled, nothing can be done to that person.
So, that is exactly what we are referring to here. Therefore, the most important factor is karmic entitlement and that comes through right motive or benevolent motive. So, anytime you do something good to others, have zero expectation. If you check many of our pains, sufferings arise from wrong expectations for wrong things.
So, doing benevolent things and expecting people to be grateful to you, expecting people to reciprocate what you have done to them, that itself actually dilutes the purity of the motive of your action. Then, the result you gain from that is not the same that you would have had it, with a pure motive.
So, anytime you do any action towards somebody, remember what Lord Krishna said. Be concerned about the action, how best you can do an action, not about the fruits of the action. The fruits of the action will come, whether you expect it or you do not expect it.
This is actually a part of the law of harvest. What you sow is what you reap! If you have been planting seeds of kindness, seeds of compassion, these seeds have to harvest and come back to you at the right time. Of course, there is the divine time for everything.
Even though you might be doing lot of good things to the people, do not expect anything out of it immediately. If it comes immediately, it may not be the result of this action. It could be the result of an ancient action that is now karmically matured. So, there is a time for everything in life. Let us continue.
On the other hand, a small gift or help offered selflessly with love is superior to a most expensive gift or a charity rendered with a selfish motive. In the Bhagavat Purana, the episode of Sudama offering flattened rice (we call it powa) to Krishna is a great example to this:
Sudama was a poor boy who studied together with Lord Krishna in the hermitage of a sage. After their studies, Krishna became the king of Dwarka, while Sudama lead a simple life of a devotee.
As per some scholars, Krishna never was a king. He never accepted the role of a king. So, there could be difference of opinion on this issues. So, whether Krishna was a king or not, let us continue with the moral of the story. That is more important.
With little food to eat and no clothes to wear, one day out of desperation, Sudama’s wife pleaded with him to meet Krishna for some help. “I will go and see him,” Sudama said, “purely for the sake of my love for him.” All that they could find was a fist of powa, flattened rice, with Sudama bundled in a cloth to offer to Krishna.
When Krishna saw Sudama, he ran to embrace him. Sudama hesitated to give the powa to Krishna, now a king and no longer his school mate. Krishna said, “Sudama, the poorest gift given to me with pure love is dearer to me than the richest of gifts given without love and for rewards in return.
Very profound. You know, sometimes, I do get a little bit concerned about children’s attitude towards birthday gifts. Maybe if you happen to be a parent, you may educate them because they have to be taught to value the sentiments of people, the love that goes into whatever gift that they receive. That love is more precious than the gift itself.
I have seen children getting disappointed, opening ordinary gifts whereas they are very excited about receiving expensive gifts. Not only children, even adults, they have this kind of reaction. So, these are all very subtle things but makes a very big difference.
So, if you look into the motive behind all our activities and if you look into the love of the people in our lives, then, every other thing becomes really very secondary. Perhaps, you can think about it! Krishna said, “Sudama, the poorest gift given to me with pure love is dearer to me than the richest of gifts given without love and for rewards in return.
Then, he ate the powa with great joy. Back home, Sudama was amazed to see a big mansion standing in place of his hut. His wife and children, wearing new clothes came to receive him. Sudama felt Krishna’s love for him.
Now, this is basically a very symbolic way of expressing that when your motive is so pure, the reward will naturally come to you. Whether there was really a mansion standing in the place where Sudama’s hut was or not, that is not the point.
The point is, every seed of good karma that you sow will be rewarded at the right time. That is the message! That means, whenever I am doing something good, I don’t need to have any concern about the rewards for what I am doing. This is the law!
Every seed of good karma has to be rewarded and therefore, zero concern about your life, so long as you know all your life, you have been doing something good to the people. It doesn’t matter what is the quality of your life at this moment.
But so long as you know that you have been planting good seeds, you are on the right direction. Your destiny is 100% secured, have zero concern about it! That means, if you know that you have been doing consistently good things to people in your thought, in your speech and action, zero fear and just be the “Mast Fakir!”
Just be the intoxicated Fakir. You don’t have to have any concern about anything about your life. You are safe and your life is secured. That is the promise of the Masters.
You do not have to think about the reward of your good deeds, for it is inevitable. Hence, do good for the sake of doing good. Even a trace of selfish motive degrades the quality of good karma and also diminishes the intended result of your benevolent action.
That is why, many a times, despite people receiving so many good things, they don’t take full advantage of what they received. One factor could be that they don’t have gratitude but another factor could be that because of the mixed motive in what they received, the result of what they received is not 100%.
Moreover, manipulating people for your own benefit is bad karma. Some people generously help others but often the motive is to get something out of them or misguide them, even using them to harm others.
Here, the action may be benevolent but the motive being unwholesome, it is a negative karma.
We don’t have to elaborate this much. You are seeing in the lives of many people, what is happening around.
So, over and above bearing the effects of both direct and indirect harm, manipulative tactics come back to you in the form of stagnation in your material and spiritual growth. This may not happen immediately but will surely manifest in time.
Actions performed without attachment to the result of actions eventually liberate you from the karmic chain of action and reaction.
That means, even the subtlest attachment towards rewards, subtlest attachment to returns of whatever that you are doing is binding you karmically. So, this is a very important subject.
Perhaps, tomorrow, we shall begin with this subject. What is this subtle chain of karma that binds you over and you over again into coming into embodiments after embodiments. The subtle chain ok karma. We shall talk about it tomorrow.
Further reading, Secrets of Karma, Page 145 – 146