You have the free will to change your habits at any time, but the deeper the groove, the harder those habits - whether good or bad - are to change. Repeated actions become like grooves in the mind that get deeper and deeper. The fruit you eat now ( prarabdha ) leaves an impression in your mind - compelling you to plant more of a particular seed ( agami ), which will cause you to eat similar fruit in the future ( sanchita ). The three categories of karma ultimately work in creating a cycle of cause and effect. It is the seed of a past action that has grown into a tree, producing the fully ripened fruit you’re eating in the present.Īgami is a seed of action you’re planting in the present that will inevitably produce the fruit of the future. Prarabdha is what you’re experiencing now. In due time, the tree will grow and produce a particular fruit you’re destined to eat. Sanchita is like the seed of a tree you planted in the past. Sanchita is the accumulated karma from your past thoughts and actions, the results of which will eventually be experienced in the future. Karma is generally divided into three categories: sanchita (latent karma ), prarabdha (ripened karma ), and agami (future karma ). If, however, a person chooses to commit one selfish act after another, spiritual progress is not made and in extreme cases what progress has already been made can be squandered. Theoretically speaking, if one takes its karmic lessons seriously, and strives to act selflessly, one can continuously elevate its status of existence. Karma is thus the ultimate teacher of empathy. The results of both selfless and selfish actions are experienced over a series of lives, as a soul comes to understand how its actions affect those and the world around it. Through karma, selfless actions uplift a soul, while selfish actions degrade it. One of creation’s mechanisms to help facilitate a soul’s spiritual development is karma, the concept that every thought and action has a corresponding reaction. The whole of material creation can be likened to a rehabilitation center meant for helping a soul to rediscover its Divine nature. Though not impossible to achieve moksha in other incarnations, Hindu sages have long insisted that this is far easier done in a human birth. Hindu texts strongly encourage individuals to spend their human births endeavoring to make spiritual progress. 2) Karma and reincarnation are closely tied The soul moves through this cycle of births until - after lifetimes of spiritual practice - this Divine nature is fully realized, the cycle of reincarnation ends, and spiritual liberation ( moksha ) is achieved. From body to body, and species to species, each soul lives one lifetime after the next, all the while ignorant of its Divine nature. Lacking proper knowledge, each soul is stuck in a cycle of reincarnation called samsara, in which each is born into a variety of physical bodies, including that of plants and animals. Just as sparks of a fire become extinguished when separated from fire, souls forget their true spiritual nature when separated from their Divine source. Though these physical bodies die, each immortal soul continues to exist.Īll souls are a part of the Divine and thus spiritual in nature, according to the Bhagavad Gita, a sacred Hindu text. One of Hinduism’s most fundamental teachings is that every living being is a physical incarnation of an immortal soul.
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