How do we practically implement our strategy for Karmic wealth generation ? We need to study the various aspects of what constitutes a profit or a loss in our Karma. We need to manipulate the future lives and walk off this life with a wealthier Balance Sheet.
A brief description of the expenditure side of the Profit & Loss (P& L) Account of a particular life.
To Parents
For a spirit to acquire a body to work out its Karma, it needs a set of parents to pave the way. The mother has to provide a spirit with a womb and nurture it for months before birth, and years thereafter. The father, and often both parents, have to work hard to earn enough money to support the child. The food, shelter, clothing and teachings are a great Karma for the mother & father but a huge obligation on the child. The child has to accrue a lot of positive Karmas, or create new Kriyamana Karmas, that balance the obligation. Looking after one’s parents in their old age, paying for their needs, medical treatment, funeral arrangement, and after their death doing good deeds and dedicating the benefits to them, are some ways to achieve this goal.
On the other hand being insulted, wrongfully scolded, physically punished, ill-treated, denied their family inheritance, are also some ways in which a child may get a reverse benefit, a parent may neutralize their receivable debt from their kids.
The body is constructed of the five elements of Ether, Air, Fire , Water & Earth. An entity may not feel directly obligated to these elements, but one needs to acknowledge their inputs into our physical existence. We often misuse these elements for personal gains. Cutting of trees for making paper, cooking, burning in havans or holy fires; wasting water, contaminating it, not harnessing it for greening places, are some examples of misusing the elements. Nuclear testing, polluting air with industrial gasses, toxins, vehicular exhaust and water pollution are some of the ways in which humans ill-treat the elements.
The elements are also mediums between one form of consciousness and another. Fire has been used as a carrier of offerings to the Demi-Gods or enlightened souls. Water can be energized into healing water. Earth is considered Mother Earth and has been worshipped by various civilizations. People purify the air as a gesture of self purification by burning essences. Most Hindu worship techniques are a use of the five elements as a witness. Keeping a lamp lit in a personal temple, during havans, where all the five elements are involved, greening the earth, worshiping fire and other elements vide their personifications in the form of Gods and Goddesses, are part of the program of reducing this obligation.
After mother’s milk a child for several years is brought up on cow’s milk and its milk products. To go to specifics, one consumes during one’s lifetime the supply of 12 cow’s lifetime production of milk. This consumption includes milk products as well. A debt of this magnitude is overbearing and hence the ancients in India worshipped the cow as a mark of gratitude. Even the cow-dung and cow’s urine have multiple uses for human beings. Cow’s urine is considered an elixir in ayurveda! One of the great charities (Daan) is said to be the Cow Daan, especially to the Brahmins or priests, in return for the prayers and religious ceremonies by them, in proxy, for an individual. The obligation naturally extends to other providers of milk.
The way to nullify these obligations is to feed cows, give them shelter, look after them, in exchange for the milk they provide. Being a benefactor to the cow is a way out of this debt.
We consume about 35 truckloads of vegetables in our lifetimes and acres of rice, wheat and other cereals, herbs, flowers, etc.
To be free from such a huge debt one has to develop either a green finger or have land cultivated to grow veggies, cereals, etc. and donate those to others. Greening spaces, getting tube wells or water resources to help green arid zones, or being a stakeholder in cultivation without any personal gain is a neutralizer.
Though plant life is the lowest form of life we consume, it is still a debt, though much lesser than a debt to animal life.
To the Animal Kingdom
Eating meat and fish may be a delicious experience but an expensive one. You pay for it in two currencies. Money in the physical one and debit in the spirit one.
Animal life becomes more expensive the higher their evolution in the animal world. A goat’s meat accrues more debt than that of a chicken, pork even more, and beef goes beyond all others. The positive balance of Karma gets depleted with such negative Karma acquisition. In order to get rid of this debit, one has to do a lot of good counter deeds. Guessing using common sense, would you not have to feed at least 200-300 people to pay for the life and flesh of a goat? Wouldn’t you have to feed around 5000 people to counter balance 20 goats eaten in one life? What about the 5000 chickens consumed? If a person eats only half a chicken a day, he consumes 175 a year, 1750 a decade and 5000 in less than 30 years of non-vegetarianism. If he consumes for 50 years, he has to payback the Karma for 8000 chickens! If consumption of one chicken’s negative life karma can be balanced by feeding say 50 people only, you still need to feed 400,000 people. Is that a doable number? Hence the saints call for vegetarianism.
To the Teachers and Guides in Life
The first Guru is the mother, the second the father, then come the teachers of education. Finally the spiritual Guru is the one who helps us attain Gyan or eternal knowledge, who makes one transcend perception and understand reality, and helps one to improve his/her Karma and add to his/her balance. The teachings of all are a debt. The spiritual teacher gets the cream of the credit because he has to help you first unlearn all the delusions, before he can clean your slate to rewrite on it. The understanding of the Karma theory and acquiring its best practices is the result of his performance. It is an invaluable debt and cannot be measured.
The only way to neutralize that debt is to work hard towards being a good student, giving your Guru his satisfaction. Thereafter, spreading the wisdom down-line and crediting that Karma to your Guru is an act of repayment. Tan, Man, Dhan or Body, Mind and Wealth are an offering the student makes to his preceptor as Guru Dakshina or repayment to Guru. Offering a coconut and 11 sets of clothes, utilities like bed, umbrella, etc. are ways in which people try to repay this debt. (Guru Dronacharya asked Eklavya to repay him by cutting off his right thumb) Ravan would offer his head to Lord Shiva, his Guru. These are not recommendations only bizarre examples to exaggerate a point.
Acts of Kindness
When people go out of their way to do us favours of any kind, including acts of kindness like giving us a glass of water to drink when we are thirsty, making us enjoy moments of laughter and fun or any other effort that makes us feel obliged, we become indebted to them and it adds to our negative Karma. Depending on the nature of the favour, the debt can be minor or large. We can repay this by giving them something small as a gift, even as small as a chewing gum, a movie ticket, anything which becomes a reverse acceptance regardless of its value.
I once was asked by a Sadhu (holy ascetic) to help get him and his friends blankets to deal with the cold in the Himalayas. I bought him six of those and he was very happy. He took out of his pocket a clove which he had gathered from the forest. He said it was a gesture of gratitude. I accepted it gracefully as I knew they were with little money so I did not want to disrespect him. When my preceptor / Guru found out he was very upset. He felt I had given away all the benefit due to my ignorance. I learnt that not accepting a return favour, however small, was critical to holding on to positive Karma.
Food, shelter, clothing, gifts, material products, household items, business items, etc. are a debt to Karma. Salt and cereal are considered to be a very big debt. In ancient times, people believed in not accepting anybody’s food especially cereal and salt. They believed salt spread to every cell in their bodies and so was a great obligation. Repaying a gift with a counter gift, not eating food paid for by others, paying for the food by giving them some token money, silver coin, etc, are ways to reduce the debt.
Similarly, living in someone’s house is considered a big debt. You not only enjoy the comfort of a bed and sitting facility, you also use the toilet and leave your dirt in their home, albeit for a short period, till it is cleaned. Accepting this facility makes you indebted for the hospitality.
Accepting medical help gives you great relief both to body and mind and makes you grateful and hence indebted.
Clothing makes you fit to be seen by others, besides helping you bear the vagaries of weather. This help from someone, is a debt.
Criticizing Others
Very often we initiate a debt, without the other party being involved, by doing negative things that make us indebted to others. Criticizing others’ negative qualities, thinking or talking badly about other people, gossiping, holding grudges about other people makes us either nullify their negative actions towards us, in part or in whole, or makes us have a balance of negative in our interaction with such others.
Holding grudges may make us imagine negative things and acts, hurl curses in our thoughts, and hurt the other person in a nonphysical way, nevertheless adding to our negative Karma.The way to ensure that we don’t fall into this very common trap is to understand the cost of the above thoughts and attitudes and avoid them as much as possible.
Do not burden yourself with negative thoughts, actions and Karmas in the mind. (Do refer to the pages on Kleshas in AFTER THOUGHTS.
Cheating people in business or trade, stealing money, ideas, materials from others, makes us go negative in Karma. Lying or deceiving people also adds to the debit balance.
In order to avoid a dwindling balance, we need to live life righteously and avoid deceit. To have slightly less of riches is better for us, rather than resort to the above means, because avoiding this illusionary richness makes us wealthier in real terms. Monetary richness do not make a person wealthy as a human being and vice-versa. Some of the wealthiest people I have met were simple folk but giants when it came to human values, karmic wealth and depth of aura or energy.
The Spiritual Guru that I have referred to earlier in this text worked in the Soil Survey Department of the Government of India. He had a very meager salary, lived in a 250 yards house in Gurgaon, Haryana. But he had a wealth that was immeasurable in terms of goodwill, respect, human values, shakti or energy, abilities, grit, control of his senses, detachment, power of the mind, and the power to heal others and will things to happen. He had regular ‘out of body’ experiences, at his own will. He could predict future events in a person’s life, read thoughts, communicate with dead people and saints. No amount of money or material assets can buy a person this kind of wealth!
The Urdu poet Ghalib said “Bas ke dushwar hai har kaam ka asan hona, aadmi ko mayesar nahin Insan hona”. Just like it is complicated for any task to be done easily, so it is not so simple for a man to become a human. (He referred to the humanitarian side of a person to qualify to be a human being).
Criminal Acts that Harm Others
We need to compensate in quid-pro-quo any harm that may befall others due to our acts. If we were to hurt someone physically, or kill someone, that would be a huge debt. Taking someone’s life is almost like owing one’s own to that person. The payments of such debts happen over many lifetimes and put a lot of burden on the wrongdoer for their repayment. If you are responsible for a person becoming handicapped, and their subsequent long years of suffering, the amount you have to repay is as huge. Sexual assaults leave people with psychological hurt and make them suffer mentally. Compensation for that cannot be a small debt. Of course, punishment by human law and imprisonment is a part of repayment.
Hurting people and making them suffer psychologically is also something that needs to be aptly compensated. Adultery makes the other person’s spouse suffer shame and feel cheated. It therefore is a debt on both people involved in the act. There are many ways in which you can make people suffer (like sacking them wrongfully from their jobs, etc.) That’s the easy part-repayment is not!
However the possible exception to these rules is that when you are a soldier in a war to protect your family or community in self defense, you do not have to pay for the negative Karma, as you are not desirous of hurting the other person for your gain or satisfaction. You are defending weaker people and yourself from oppressors. There is no intent to be harmful. Nor is it an egoistic act. However, if you feel guilty of doing something like hunting or killing the oppressor whilst protecting yourself or your country, the act will not, but the guilt will make you acquire negative karma and therefore add to your debt.
Encashment of Good Deeds
One way in which people encash their good deeds is they advertise them and get benefits like political leverage, social positioning, fame, glory, etc. This is unwittingly included in negative Karma only because it makes you lose the positivity you have earned, as you have already derived the benefits from it.
The list goes on and on, but the moral of the story is how do we send down to the Balance Sheet the minimum negative Karma so that we reduce suffering in the long term of eternal existence. Let us examine the rules behind acquisition of positive karmas.
What we get as karmic profit.
Food
Food being the main sustenance for life, feeding people, animals, plants and other life forms is considered good Karma. Most spiritual texts talk about having langars or mass feeding ceremonies. People hold such langars on special occasions like religious ceremonies, birthdays, marriages, death ceremonies, birth & death anniversaries of their ancestors, etc.
These Karmas accrue to those who spend on them or often they are transferred to others, like their departed ones, as a profit to their Karmic balances.
Allowing a seed to grow and investing in its space, nutrients and nurturing is considered great karma. The greenery also provides fodder to animals, man and other life forms. Trees provide fruit, which is food to birds, animals and man, shade for animals and humans, and wood for various uses. They also provide manure through dried leaves. Not to mention the ecological benefits.
Therefore helping to grow and sustain greenery is a multiple karma as it has multiple effects and benefits. If a tree was to bear fruit for 60 years, the benefit of that fruit being consumed would accrue to the planter or the person responsible, probably both, for those 60 years. All the plants, insects, birds, animals and humans who took refuge under the tree would also be obligated. The use of the wood of the tree during its lifetime or thereafter would also be a credit to the planter and a debt to those who benefitted from its usage.
Benefits to Various Life forms
One can benefit life forms in several ways. Food is only one of those ways. One can provide shelter, medication, and other such benefits. A lawyer in Mumbai goes around putting up artificial cones for bird housing in Mumbai city to help provide bird shelter. A film producer’s wife recently spent a lot of time with her friends to raise money for an animal hospital in Panvel near Mumbai.
Many Indians who have studied ancient Indian wisdom, try to benefit cows by providing them fodder, shelter, etc. The Indian saints of yore, considered the cow to be the second most evolved species after human beings. Some gave it the anointment of being a second mother. After mother’s milk, what helps bring up a child from a nutritional point of view is cow’s milk and its products. In the villages, cow-dung is used as an air purifier and a coating on walls and floors. Cow’s urine is used extensively in Ayurvedic recipes, in a modified way. It is considered a privilege to serve a life form which benefits us in so many ways.
Obligations can be got by doing all kinds of positive things for people. Making people laugh, running errands for them, giving them gifts, helping the less fortunate, acts that gratify others and make them happy, are all additives to the Karma consolidation.
Educating even one person who cannot afford to educate himself or herself can have a magnifier effect. That one person could do well in life and work and benefit several others. My grandfather was helped by a benefactor who helped him gain a college graduation. My grandfather rose to be a General Manager of an insurance company before it was nationalized. He helped educate all his family members and other relatives. His son set up a free school for handicapped children. Several hundred children have got free education from that school and its ancillary units in Mumbai and Delhi. In another 10 years that education would have benefitted over a 1000 children who are deaf. Did my grandfather’s benefactor know the geometric progression of his single kind act?
My sister got a scholarship from the Rotary Club of Mumbai and did her education in U.S.A. She settled there and started her own news-based television program. Several people learned from her and became successful in their media businesses. Again, it was a magnifier effect.
Part of the revenue of a hotel in Bandra goes to a trust. The trust funds education for the village kids next door. Many of them would have remained illiterate without this help. Some of these educated people may help uplift the state of their own brethren. In 10 to 20 years this would have a multiplier effect to the benefit of 10–20% of those dwelling in that village. Providing educational help is providing a better lifestyle not just for one, but for a multiple of one. The Karma of educating people has potential to benefit many. Many people do service by giving their time to help educate others and enhance their positive Karma.
Helping People with Medical Aid
Medical aid can help alleviate many people from physical suffering which is akin to torture. If one can help people escape from so much suffering, one has the right to claim positive karma, and plenty of it. Philanthropists help fund hospitals, provide free medical treatment, organize free medical camps and free distribution of medicines. Several doctors work without fees for helping poor patients.
A lady who used to make fudge in Lonavala, near Mumbai, set up a free homeopathic clinic there After her death, friends, carried out her good work, and today hundreds of poor people get free treatment in this clinic. A doctor friend now goes there once a week to give free consultation to poor patients suffering from diabetes.
Her investment in a one room hall flat has benefitted and will benefit several persons. A better proposition to an investment reward ratio may not be found on Wall Street !
People are normally highly indebted to their parents and grandparents for all the care, nurturing, physical aid, mental growth, education, etc. To convert this karmic loss into a profit, people do a lot of good deeds in aid of their late parents and ancestors. Feeding people, growing trees, giving medical help, educating children, are some such ways adopted. Helping ancestors to gain good Karmas to add to their balance, helps repay debts to one’s ancestors to some extent.
Pitra Peeda
Many people suffer due to the anger of their ancestors. The ancestors sometimes make sure that this suffering is meted out to their descendants, for them to pay for having troubled the ancestors. Giving birth to disabled and mongoloid children are said to be some of the effects of pitra peeda in some cases. Ancient Indian beliefs are that your deeds are shared, by three generations above and below you and vice-versa. I can only conjecture that if the ancestors feel let down, they ensure your suffering.
Sharing my own experience, I have a child who suffers from cerebral palsy. My Guru said I needed to do a few things to undo the pitra peeda faced by my family. He made me do ‘greening of land’ and farming on it, and made sure that the produce was donated to an ashram. He also made me keep a few cows and repeat the procedure of donating the milk. He said it would take a few years and so we should not have another child, till he gave us the go ahead. Thereafter, he said, we would have a son who would be good looking, healthy and lucky. And so it was! A few minutes before his birth, I heard a voice in my ear that said he is born and his name is x.
He is a good looking boy and his name is x. (Unfortunately, he is a bit arrogant and his sense of entitlement is something I need to learn to deal with). Before he was conceived, he whispered to my wife in her ear and said he wanted birth and that he was my grandfather!)
As if the story is not bizarre enough, I hesitatingly share with you another related experience. Months before my wife conceived, I woke up one night after meditation, and as I opened my eyes, I saw a man, made of a thin shining cloud form, sitting below her bed, just staring at her feet whilst she was asleep. It was 4 am! I freaked! The spirit noticed me I guess, turned to look at me, (as I was 270 degrees from where he was), and when his ether eyes met mine, he displayed a gesture of shock and disappeared. My Guru said he was giving my wife a mother’s form! (Of course he was not my grandfather!)
If you don’t believe this story, just ignore it.
However, the way to resolve pitra peeda is to do many deeds in your ancestors’ name, do their shradhs regularly (shradh is the belief that there are designated days in the year to make offerings in the names of your ancestors and the benefit accrues to them).
Prayers like the Antim Shradh (final ceremony) are done at GAYA in Bihar. There is a ceremony for pitra peeda, done at Trimbakeshwar in Maharashtra. A ceremony for calming down agitated ancestors is performed at Kuruk Shetra in Haryana. These, of course, are religious dogmas and you can just say PASS! Or you can make the effort, consult your religious teacher, and complete these rituals. Many people I know have found it helps. The long and the short of it is that we must perform good deeds, in the name of our ancestors, and pass the credit on to them.
Pitra Peeda is not applicable to any person particularly. It is applicable to a line of descent-what Indians call ‘Kul’-a few generations of a family. This happens when some of the ancestors are left without salvation, not settled after death, in any astral dimension.
(There are considered to be three astral worlds where spirits generally get placed, if they are lucky enough. The lowest is the plane where spirits with more tamasic nature linger. The second is the plane where spirits with a Rajsic nature flourish and the third is a plane where Satwik Spirits exist in harmony. The explanation of Tamasic, Rajsic and Satwik is available in ‘Afterthoughts’ in three GUNAS).
When people criticize us wrongfully and talk against us, they owe us for their slander. They pay us for the defamation. Similarly if someone was to hurt us emotionally, mentally or physically they would owe us a Karmic compensation for that.
When we criticize a person for certain qualities, you may have discovered that often we attract those qualities to ourselves, and start showcasing a list of those very qualities we talked or thought aversely about. It is a known yogic principle that you will acquire the qualities of that which you meditate on. Continuous criticism ends up to be a meditation of sorts! The person, whose negative qualities you attract, is rid of a part of them. It kind of works on the principle of electromagnetic attraction, from one aura to another. Most great saints have warned against the loss made by criticism of others and the profit, conversely, by admiration of the good qualities of others. So many prayers, mantras, poems are odes to the greatness of either saints, Gods or prophets.
Therefore allowing people to wrong us, and not reciprocating, helps us to grow our positive Karma balance in lieu of someone else’s negative balance. Reacting negatively would neutralize that.
Spiritual Healings and Helping Others
Jesus was a grand Karmayogi, so was Saibaba. Gurudev from Himshiri, Najafgarh, healed me of Arthritis in a few minutes. I saw him heal thousands of people. His only teachings were ‘SEWA’ He practiced it day and night and never allowed himself to be photographed by the press, never gave interviews. Remained low profile even though every month there were queues of people in thousands to meet him. Nor did the prophet Mohammed ever want personal fame and glory.
The L.C.M. (lowest common denominator) of most religions is service to others. The Sikhs, Muslims, and almost all others believe in Karsewa, charity and philanthropy. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are modern saints of today, because they decided to give up their personal wealth, or most of it, in order to serve disadvantaged people in third world countries. Thirty billion dollars donated by each, would make them serve millions now and hereafter. Their Karma would get a mega boost and will keep multiplying as their projects keep advancing. This multiplier effect would continue even after their deaths and provide positive profits. No religiousness, belief in God, desire to pray, is required to multiply positive Karma.
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