Your karma is your destiny.
Slap someone and you get slapped, show kindness to someone and you are shown kindness. This is the basic principle of all karma in this world. It matters little, whether you are a prince or a pauper. Once we are of age and ready to take on the world we start accumulating all nature of karmas. We do good deeds, bad deeds, while the strength of such good and bad deeds varies according to its nature. Whatever it may be, the karma keep piling up like any bank balance and occasionally, it manifests by showing us how we are treating others and ourselves in this world. If we are sensitive we shall at once understand the underlying reasons for such manifestation and try to mend our ways to avoid further unhealthy and aggressive outburst of symptoms and happenings in our lives. Nevertheless, most of us, unfortunately, are unable to correlate the symptoms, thereby letting the bad karma take control of our lives. Man is gifted with a special quality of ignorance, whereby he always feels he is right and treading the right path. However, much he may be wrong and guilty of misdemeanor; he will justify and provide ample argument in his own favor. This is bad karma and it harms and kills the person slowly and subtly. Diseases, loss of respect and health, family feud, discontentment with life, anger, acrimony, believing in myth and rituals, ignorance of truth, all leads one into bad karma from which there is no respite.
I know of many real life examples appropriate to fit this chapter on karma and destiny. I shall share one with you. A few decades ago, we would communicate over fax with international business houses. Once it so happened, I received a fax message from Nigeria telling me about a few million US$, which was lying unclaimed for want of stamp duty in the country of origin. I was offered half the amount if I could help them with the stamp duty and other expenses to clear this huge sum of money from the bank. I was also asked to come to London branch of the bank and deposit the amount. I also received a faxed certificate in my name showing half the value in my favor. I could see through all these and greed could never get the better of me. I kept up the joke till the end after when they snapped ties with me, maybe they grew tired of chasing me for the money they needed. A year later, I was told that a distant acquaintance of ours was offered the same money in return for the monetary help to be deposited in a London bank. He took a flight to London where his room was pre-arranged by the thugs. I believe his passport, money, clothes and all his belongings were taken away by the thugs after he had checked into the hotel room. He was left only in his undergarments. This is outright greed and ignorance and the cause for this man’s destiny.
You will observe many people with super intellect and ability to succeed, unfortunately, remain in the rut, this is because their karma is negative and they live and work within the sphere of this negative and bad karmas. Such people have a rigid approach to life and work. Without dynamism, they are left far behind by people junior to them. They ultimately become frustrated and retire with their negative karmic actions throughout their lifetime.
Intellect and dynamism alone does not make or break anyone’s destiny. Negative use of such intellect and dynamism generally is backed by dishonesty, greed, passion, ambition, expectation, and desire which ultimately shape the destiny of such person in a negative way.
If the karmic actions were good and positive the destiny would be favorable, conversely, bad and negative karmic actions generates unfavorable conditions for that person. Chance happenings could also change the destiny of a person, which may not be due to his karma. Winning a lottery is a positive change in the destiny while losing limbs in an accident is a negative change in one’s destiny.
Destiny, therefore, is the karmic approach to life or sometime by some chance, changing the luck of the person.