Karma: the Law of Action
Every worldly action has an equal reaction. Each time we carry out an action or think a thought which has a selfish motive, a karma is deposited in the mind. The quality of the karma depends on the nature of the intention behind the action. If we do selfless actions, that is with consciousness of oneness, which is of Brahman and not the relative world of good and bad, there is no karma. This system works entirely on the psychological plane.
If you try to pick somebody’s pocket when you already have a lot of money, you will receive a negative karma, as the action is bad. If you help somebody, hoping for some fruit in return, you will receive a positive karma, as the action is good. However, if you do a selfless action, for example help someone without looking for any fruit from the action, there will be no karma, as the action transcends the values of the relative world. It is a spiritual action as it is done with the consciousness of the Supreme Ego of Brahman as opposed to the consciousness of the individual. Actions which are necessary to maintain our lives such as breathing and eating necessary food do not attract karmas. Sometimes it is necessary to observe all aspects of an action to understand what its quality is. For example, stealing is normally a bad thing to do. However, if a single mother with five starving children and no other way of getting food steals something out of love for her children, there will be no karma. If she does not try to steal something in this case, she could actually get a bad karma, as failing to fulfil her duty to her children is like doing a bad action. If someone commits genocide, having fooled himself that this is a good action, then, although the intention may be good or even selfless, the karma will be bad, as he is failing to use the faculties he has been given to make right decisions. Failing to use his discriminative faculties is equivalent to doing a bad action. If we listen hard to our conscience, we will know if an action is good or bad.
A karma is like a seed deposited into the mind. Eventually, it will develop, and we will have to suffer its effects. It is the karmas which keep us chained to our bodies and, therefore, the material world. When the body becomes unusable, it dies, and the subtle body, containing the mind with the karmas in it, transmigrate to another body, so the rest of the karmic reactions may be suffered. When in the next body, we collect more karmas, thus necessitating another new body after death. In this way, we travel in a seemingly endless journey from death to death. Ultimate Truth can simply not be attained in the material world, so remaining in this world is, ultimately, pointless. Everything in the material world has an end, so if we get a lot of good karma, we will have a decent time for a bit, but it will eventually run out, and we will suffer again. In the context of eternity, even a billion years of pleasure is shorter than the blink of an eye. A prisoner is in a prison, and cannot escape because he is attached to the wall by a chain. We are prisoners, the prison is the material world, and the chain is our karma. If the chain is made of iron or of gold is irrelevant; we are still prisoners. If our karmas are good or bad is irrelevant; we are still bound. What we want is not a gold chain, not pleasure, but freedom. Self-realisation, the first goal of spirituality, is the point at which we escape from the karmas, thus shaking off the shackles of the material world.