Why are we here?

In response to my previous post, someone asked me a question via a comment:

Dharma. Can you help me with this question? Incarnation. Why are we incarnated and what does this have to do with karma? Karon x

Gee Karon, ask me a tricky one next time why don't you!!!  :)

So anyway, my response ended up being too long for Blogger to take in a comment, so I thought I'd make it a full new entry. Haven't had one in a while...

So here we go...

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Hi Karon. Not sure about 'help you out with a question'... I'm no authority ... but I can give you my opinion...

We are incarnated precisely because of karma. The physical plane is the plane of action, it's where karma plays out. Or at least where it is easiest to play out karma. 

You're probably not into football much, and neither am I, but this is what springs to mind: You can spend as much time as you like on the training ground, or in the dressing room talking about strategy, but you'll never get any results there. You have get on the pitch on a Saturday afternoon and take on your opponents, because that’s the way rules are written, You have to get in there and take part.

That's how it is with the universe. We can hover around between incarnations making plans, but unless we actually dive in and swim in it, it means nothing. I don't know why, other than to say that them's the rules! That's the way the universe is put together.

In fact, according to Hinduism, there are exceptions, and there are actually more efficient places for working off excesses of 'good' or 'bad' karma - heavens and hells. In yoga, heaven is place to avoid, because if you find yourself there, it means you have become to massively imbalanced with certain samskaras (karmic impressions), and you need to manifest in one of the heavens to work yourself back into a position of relative balance. From there, you can continue to work on your longer term karma (sanchita karma), back on the good old physical.

We touched on a point there...There are three types of karma: sanchita, prarabdha, and kriyamana.

Sanchita karma is all of your karma. It is the total net baggage of all unresolved karmic impressions that your own individual atman (soul for the sake of argument) has accrued since the beginning of time. No offence, but there's probably quite a lot of that :)

Prarabdha karma is that portion of sanchita karma that will have an impact on you in this lifetime. The rest of your sanchita karma is buried so deep, it will not, on its own and unprompted, be close enough to the surface of the lake to cause any noticeable ripples this time round. But prarabdha karma helps determine your lot in this life. If your favourite colour is blue, thats prarabdha karma. If you are female, that's prarabdha karma. If you are naturally active, lazy, creative, dour etc... that’s prarabdha karma. Also, if you get injured, ill, win the lottery and so on...

Kriyamana karma is the karma you create in this incarnation. Every time you act, speak or think, you are sending out ripples, and as we well know, every action etc... so the ripples you send outwards, also have an inwards effect. They add to your baggage...they become kriyamana karma in this life.

If you resolve kriyamana karma in the same incarnation you create it, then it has no lasting effect. New Agers call this 'instant karma'. If you don't, though, it will become prarabdha karma in your next life. If you keep doggedly refusing to act to resolve this new karma, it will eventually become sanchita karma, and just add to the heavy bags you carry from life to life.

So, we have all this karma, and are usually making more all the time. And the way the world works is that the only place you can smooth out these wrinkles is to incarnate here in the physical. So, the very fact that your atman is a writhing vortex of karmic knots and threads is what causes the atman to be physically incarnated. Because, just as if you release a gas into a space, it naturally expands to fill the space with a smooth, even distribution, so Nature wants to unwind all these knots that are making a mess of Her nice smooth karmic field.

What's special about human incarnation is that the equipment into which we are incarnated (brains and bodies) is highly enough developed to allow the atman to express a sense of its own existence, and to choose to act in ways other than those simply determined by karma.

Animal brains don't permit this (in the large - personally I believe there are exceptions). Animals incarnate in brains and bodies that are suited to expressing prarabdha karma. Human brains can do two extra things: they can learn to access sanchita karma, and they can learn to prevent the build up of kriyamana karma.

Yoga is a great way of achieving both of these things.

To access sanchita karma, we need to become very, very still and quiet. Once we have a great level of silence, we find all kinds of things arising from our 'subconscious' - sanchita karmas. And we then (hopefully) have the tools, through yoga, of dealing with these. Some of the most popular tools are models that give us a way of thinking about these things systematically. With systematic thought, we can think 'Oh, XYZ is happening, and this system tells me that this means ABC'. The Chakras, for example, are one such system. When we are working into the chakras, we are working into our sanchita karma, and the chakra system, developed by people who have been there and done it, gives us a way of dealing with what comes up.

As you know, there are may such systems.

The second thing a human incarnation gives us is the opportunity to avoid generating kriyamana karma.

There is great misunderstanding in this area in my view. Yes, it definitely means the yamas and the niyamas. And to some extent it means being a good 'citizen of the material plane'. But the green thing, and the slightly disturbing is-it-real-is-it-fake 'niceness' of a lot of yoga and New Age people isn't it.

'It', as in the way to avoid kriyamana karma, is karma and bhakti yoga.

It is performing your actions without hope, expectation, or desire of the fruits of the action. These desires and expectations are the 'equal and opposite action' of the action, and they are the force that cause the knots and ripples in your karma. Without attachment to these fruits, the kriyamana karma passes over and through you, and dissipates into none-existence.

Alternatively, if you can't be so abstract, perform your actions for the sake of God. Bhakti yoga. God can take as much karma as you care to throw at her/him/it. Redirect those 'equal and opposite' reactions towards God. That's the next best thing.

If you can do both, you are onto a winner. If you can perform actions actions whilst fully mindful of the divine, with no attachment to the results, you will be generating no kriyamana karma, and will probably also be making great inroads into your sanchita karma, if you have learned to access that by yogic practice.

There are two schools of thought regarding prarabdha karma. One says you are you stuck with it. Once it gets skimmed off the top of your sanchita karma, and manifests in this life as prarabdha, theres nothing you can do. If you prarabdha karma says you are going to be hit by a truck, then you are going to be hit by a truck. If it says you are going to prefer redheads, then you get no choice. Manchester City fan? Bad Karma Dude!!! Of course, you are still free to carry out actions of your own volition, but you are somewhat constrained by the prarabdha karma.

That's basically as close as yoga gets to fatalism.

The other view is that the prarabdha karma just gives you nudges, but you can either listen to them, or not, depending on how hefty the nudges are.

So there you go. My two penneth :)