Karma, elitism and the trap of beliefs
I was talking to a friend of mine, a prominent life coach in the city I live in and we were talking about issues like mental health. He mentioned various reasons for poor mental health including and not limited to emotional sensitivity, workplace harassment, peer pressure, poverty, biological disorders in the brain and so on. Then he added a point that made me ponder and I have not yet got a satisfying answer. He said that past life Karma, as we believe in Hinduism is also a defining point in understanding our current miseries, including impact on mental health, our current life patterns and even things like accidental deaths etc. He explained how it gets manifested and how we can take care of it as well by performing some prayers and rituals. As an agnostic yet deeply spiritual person, I was not convinced at all.
This discussion got over and I forgot about it till the time I read a news story of a 13 year old girl brutally gang-raped and burnt alive in northern part of India. I also read about a girl child who was thrown into a well in another part of the country where having a girl child is considered a curse. I suddenly remembered that conversation on Karma. I spoke to another friend who works in the area of diversity and inclusion. I told her about the Karma issue and she got fiercely annoyed. She told me bluntly, “these are assertions made by people who live in their comfort zone. It is elitist to think of Karma and it is become a fad in many people’s lives. And by the way, why do women suffer more than men whether its pay parity or discrimination at home or all that sexual harassment that happens at home?. Do we have the burden of Karma as women? Did the girl who was raped had a bad karma in the past or she happened to live in a medieval society? This is what which makes me think that religion and all religious theories are complete bullshit”
After this conversation, I started thinking more about this area of discussion and I realized that yes sometimes to comfort ourselves when we are feeling the blues, we take support of some beliefs that are ingrained in us. However, whenever we are happy about something we achieve, we conveniently forget about the good karma and rather attribute our success to our hard work, out of the box thinking and intelligence among other attributes. I think the talk about Karma and all this trap of our beliefs cannot make a person who suffers from loosing people content or happy. People who were exterminated by the brutality of the holocaust or in the recent Bucha massacre in Ukraine were perhaps having bad past life karma hence they suffered enormously, while politicians like Putin or any rogue dictators had a good past life karma because of their massive successes, popularity and long life. I just cannot rationalize this at all.
People who follow new age gurus or any hoax cult are often heard to be talking about Karma and how they could heal your past life karma. In a sense if someone is healed of a past life karma, he/she should live a perfect life henceforth, which would not be the case considering that there is no perfect life that anyone can lead. We juxtapose through life through a trajectory of highs and lows and enormous trials and errors of our biases and judgements. Through this I guess we create a present life Karma. If I am compassionate, empathetic and have a bit of understanding, I will end up having good friends and good experiences. I can enhance my qualities and add value to people’s lives. This is the potent and visible karma or “intentional action” for me. Everything else is just half-baked belief without any rationality or substance. People who suffer brutality by the hands of others are victims of coincidence where they could have practically not being able to do anything to undo the circumstances which went against them. We live in an imperfect world where everyday people suffer from deep poverty, financial and health impoverishment, physical abuse, mental and physical debilities and so on. We cannot just let it hang on the karma hanger. That would be gross injustice. However, if we wish to, we can take better actions to make us the best version of ourselves and this is a continuing process. Spirituality is all about looking within and understanding ourselves.
