Karma: What It Is, What It’s Not, Why It Is Important To Understand | Philip Goldberg

[SPEAKER_02]: Good morning everybody and welcome.
[SPEAKER_02]: We are privileged to welcome here today, Philip Goldberg, an award-winning author and co-author of numerous books.
[SPEAKER_02]: Amongst his many books are American Veda, from Emerson and the Beatles to Yoga and Meditation, how Indian spirituality changed the world.
[SPEAKER_02]: The definitive biography of Paramahansa Yogananda, the life of Yogananda, the story of the Yogi who became the first modern guru, spiritual practice for crazy times, powerful tools to cultivate calm, clarity and courage.
[SPEAKER_02]: And his latest book published this year, Comic Relief, harnessing the laws, of course, and effects for a joyful meaningful life.
[SPEAKER_02]: Phil has been studying the world's spiritual traditions for more than 50 years as a practitioner, teacher, and author.
[SPEAKER_02]: His numerous articles have appeared in publications ranging from the Los Angeles Times, and Huffington Post to spirituality and health.
[SPEAKER_02]: As a public speaker and workshop leader, he has presented at leading venues online and in person.
[SPEAKER_02]: As a spiritual counselor, meditation teacher, and ordained interfaith minister, he hosts the Spirit Matters podcast and writes substantive essays on his sub-step platform, practical spirituality with Philip Goldberg.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's also an active board member of the Association for Spiritual Integrity.
[SPEAKER_02]: The subject of Phil's talk today is karma, what it is, what it's not and why it's important to understand.
[SPEAKER_02]: Phil, welcome again.
[SPEAKER_03]: Hello, everybody.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you, Diane, and it's always a strange experience, hearing an introduction of yourself.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like, who are they talking about?
[SPEAKER_03]: It's an honor to be here.
[SPEAKER_03]: I have
[SPEAKER_03]: just such warm feelings and high regard for this lineage going back to Sri Ramakrishna, Vivekananda.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I have had to, especially for American Veda, research this lineage, and speak to many of the swamis who are here.
[SPEAKER_03]: in the states, and in my visits to Bellarmut, and I just have the highest regard for this lineage, and the influence it's had over the course of what 120 some odd years now here in the West.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I'm very happy to be here, and again, I've been here before.
[SPEAKER_03]: Let me tell you a little bit about how this book on karma came to be.
[SPEAKER_03]: Back in the late 1960s, when I first, as a college student here in New York,
[SPEAKER_03]: I'd like to say I was a toddler, but I was really, when I began my own spiritual seeking.
[SPEAKER_03]: getting books from wizers, esoteric books stored down town, where they had books that were not in regular books stores, then.
[SPEAKER_03]: The first bug of a gate that I came across was by Swamney Probe of an Under and Christopher Isherwood published by the Vedanta Press.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then I read a great deal of their publications.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it was through, at first, Westerners, interpreting Vedanta all of the Huxley and Christopher Isherwood and others, Custon Smith, Joseph Campbell.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then I went to the sources, and when I heard about the Gita,
[SPEAKER_03]: I couldn't find a copy until I went to Wysers now, of course, I have 15 different translations on my shelves and it's available and it's largely through the work of this lineage.
[SPEAKER_03]: Among the many things that changed my life in those days was certain concepts that are core to Vedanta and yoga philosophy and non-dual Buddhism and others that I was exploring and one of them was karma.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I had trouble with karma because it was like really, really, we reap what we saw.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's the cosmic justice, and you know, at the time, you know, Vietnam War was raging in the civil rights movement.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm saying, I don't see justice here, you know, and I see too many innocent people suffering and scoundrels being rewarded, and it didn't, that wasn't sure, and I had
[SPEAKER_03]: kind of a rational approach to spirituality, it was just one of the reasons the Vedanta teachings were so important to me because they made sense, karma and reincarnation and not so sure.
[SPEAKER_03]: But over time, they grew on me as my own spiritual experiences deepened, and my way of looking at the world changed, and ultimately I said, okay, I think I can lean in that direction that the universe operates under.
[SPEAKER_03]: laws of karma just as it operates under gravity and thermodynamics and the physics principle that every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
[SPEAKER_03]: I can buy that that can apply to human behavior and human thought as well as physical objects.
[SPEAKER_03]: I can't prove it.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I'll lean in that direction, and being a berry, I always was attracted to Vivekananda's term practical Vedanta.
[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe that's why my sub-stack is called practical spirituality, but I've always been practical about the spiritual life, and I thought it was more practical to accept that karma is real.
[SPEAKER_03]: than to assume it's not, because if I assume karma is real, I'll behave myself.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'll make better decisions.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'll lean in the direction of...
[SPEAKER_03]: doing the right thing and not short-cutting on ethics or morality, and then I realize well, if more people felt that way, the world would be a better place.
[SPEAKER_03]: So let's lean in that direction.
[SPEAKER_03]: Act as if it's a proven fact.
[SPEAKER_03]: And over the years, as both a spiritual practitioner and a teacher and a writer, one of my tasks, especially when I started researching American Veda and ever since, was to see how the teachings of the East and their various forms influenced life in America and the spiritual landscape here.
[SPEAKER_03]: And how he came to know all so many of the swamis in this lineage.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I noticed that karma was one of those ideas, one of those concepts that were at caught on.
[SPEAKER_03]: It showed up in people's speech every day language.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then I would notice it.
[SPEAKER_03]: on the newscasts or in the sports report, the Nick's Karma, you know, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and,
[SPEAKER_03]: In sitcoms, and in movies, and then in song titles, and I did a search, and there was like, more than a hundred song titles with Carmen, and most recently, Taylor Swift of all people has a song called Karma, Willine Nelson had a song called, with Carmen in the title.
[SPEAKER_03]: And a lot of, and the singers you've never heard of have,
[SPEAKER_03]: And I said, there's something going on here.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's not just, we adopt vocabulary words from other cultures of the languages that, for which there's no English equivalent.
[SPEAKER_03]: And sometimes it's something trivial, like cinnamon, or any number of terms.
[SPEAKER_03]: overtones of how you look at the world.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so if people are using this, just suggest that they're seeing the world in terms of karma, at least to some degree, or at least they think they are.
[SPEAKER_03]: And at the same time, I don't know if you remember, but back in the 80s, there was a series of television specials called Comic Relief.
[SPEAKER_03]: They were raising money for charities.
[SPEAKER_03]: And once being a wise guy, I said, I used the term Carmichael if as a joke.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then I said, that's a good book title.
[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe I'll file that away and maybe I'll use it someday.
[SPEAKER_03]: I know wasn't sure what the book was, but then I noticed all this stuff and when I saw the Taylor Swift had a song called Carme, I said, oh, maybe I should resurrect that idea.
[SPEAKER_03]: And my wife kept encouraging me every once in a while, she said, why you should write that book about Carme?
[SPEAKER_03]: And one of the reasons that finally did was, I noticed not only that it was a popular word and showing up in all these places, but it was being misused in a lot of ways, and there were a lot of misconceptions about it, and a lot of, um,
[SPEAKER_03]: assumptions about what karma is that I thought needed to be corrected.
[SPEAKER_03]: And as with so many other aspects of Vedanta and yoga and other systems that came from the Indic traditions, the traditions born in India,
[SPEAKER_03]: They have a transformative effect on people's lives and on the spiritual landscape in general.
[SPEAKER_03]: But they are also subject to misinterpretation and dilution and distortion and that people who care about these things like everyone present here probably.
[SPEAKER_03]: should make a point of correcting when they can, and so I feel responsibility to some degree.
[SPEAKER_03]: I took on the book as a way for one thing to correct some of those misconceptions and to discuss how the understanding of karma and the application of it in our lives can be transformative and change things for the good in our lives and our families and our civilization.
[SPEAKER_03]: So that was the thing, so I wanted, that was my rationale.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I want to talk a little bit about some of those misuses or misinterpretations.
[SPEAKER_03]: One is that karma is about retribution or only about retribution.
[SPEAKER_03]: So if you look at how it's used in most people's language,
[SPEAKER_03]: or in popular culture.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's usually used when something bad happens.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, when the team is doing well, when the team is, you know, the metz karma is terrible, you know, and when there's the disaster or something tragic happens like, you know, someone's car is stolen or they get sick or they have an accident, oh, karma.
[SPEAKER_03]: or there's sometimes in social context where there's injustice and group or a hurricane or something with poor people's karma.
[SPEAKER_03]: You don't hear it when something good happens.
[SPEAKER_03]: And something good is happening a lot in people's lives.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you never hear them say, oh, my good karma, that, you know, I had a good medical diagnosis, or I have these grandchildren, or whatever.
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's thought of as Carmen's and the popular music is a giveaway, almost all of those songs with Carmen and it's about you done me wrong now now Carmen's going to get you and
[SPEAKER_03]: But karma is a law, if it's a law of nature, and if it's the way the universe operates, then all the good stuff is karma too.
[SPEAKER_03]: And we take it for granted, so that's one thing.
[SPEAKER_03]: A related to that is people talk about karma as though it's a system of reward and punishment.
[SPEAKER_03]: some overtone of theistic way of looking at the world, like we're being judged, so we're rewarded for good behavior, or punished for bad behavior, and not eat boy.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's much more efficacious, I think, and much more practical and probably much more accurate to the way the universe operates.
[SPEAKER_03]: To think rather than in terms of rewards and punishments, just in terms of cause and effect, the way we have cause and effect in physics or in biology, certain forces are created,
[SPEAKER_03]: vibrations, or sent out, energy is sent out.
[SPEAKER_03]: It has consequences.
[SPEAKER_03]: It has effects.
[SPEAKER_03]: It has results.
[SPEAKER_03]: So thinking in terms of results and consequences may be more acceptable to most people, especially in the West than thinking in terms of I'm being rewarded or
[SPEAKER_03]: It has much more practical overton and it removes the judgment and the shame and all those kinds of other unfortunate things to think of it in this as analogous to laws of physics or principles in nature.
[SPEAKER_03]: Also related to that is
[SPEAKER_03]: We, along with rewards and the rewards and punishment part is within a model of the universe as a kind of judicial system, where there's a, you know, a magistrate determining guilt and innocence and going out sentences or rewards.
[SPEAKER_03]: One of the sources of my research in doing this book was a swami-made nanda who was here.
[SPEAKER_03]: I know recently talking about his book and we've had conversations and I read his material and he pointed me in certain directions because he's an academic of some stature and I'm not.
[SPEAKER_03]: or writer.
[SPEAKER_03]: I always joke with my academic friends that my job is to take what you've learned and make it readable.
[SPEAKER_03]: And one of the things I learned from him was that some scholars
[SPEAKER_03]: And that makes a great deal of sense to me.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that goes back to Ramakrishna and Vivekananda.
[SPEAKER_03]: That it's an educational system, not a judicial one.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that if karma can be set to have a purpose, the purpose is educational.
[SPEAKER_03]: Made nanda tell me that Ramakrishna is to say that the purpose of karma was to create saints.
[SPEAKER_03]: Stuff happens, good stuff happens, bad stuff happens.
[SPEAKER_03]: If we accept that whatever happens is the result of our actions in the past, and those actions include things we say, things we think, things we feel, what we intend, what our motivations are.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not just physical action.
[SPEAKER_03]: actions and thoughts and words go out into the universe that's come back to us in some form or another, then every experience is shaped by the past.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the results, the consequences that we encounter
[SPEAKER_03]: are part of our lesson plan.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're here to learn.
[SPEAKER_03]: And if you think of reincarnation as an integral part of the theory of karma, and I don't see how you can escape doing that, um,
[SPEAKER_03]: Then we assume that we came into this life with a lesson plan and that we're adjusting it all along the way.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's independent study.
[SPEAKER_03]: And we're creating a lesson plan and learning and growing.
[SPEAKER_03]: And if we learn the right lessons, we matriculate.
[SPEAKER_03]: We get to move on to the next lesson
[SPEAKER_03]: We get left back as we used to say in public school.
[SPEAKER_03]: We have to repeat that grade.
[SPEAKER_03]: We have to take that class again.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's how phenomenal like repeated mistakes keep coming up in our lives.
[SPEAKER_03]: And why do you say everyone's somewhat, why does this keep happening to me?
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, why does every friendship have this pattern?
[SPEAKER_03]: Why do I have this series of relationships?
[SPEAKER_03]: Why?
[SPEAKER_03]: Why does this happen?
[SPEAKER_03]: Why do I make the same mistakes in business?
[SPEAKER_03]: Or why does the same good stuff keep happening?
[SPEAKER_03]: Even the good stuff can be repeated, and you want to move on.
[SPEAKER_03]: To better stuff.
[SPEAKER_03]: Not a judicial system, but an educational one keeps us alert to what are the lessons here.
[SPEAKER_03]: What do I have to learn?
[SPEAKER_03]: What is this teaching me?
[SPEAKER_03]: And what is the right lesson?
[SPEAKER_03]: Because it's very easy to fool ourselves and say, oh, I've learned from that experience.
[SPEAKER_03]: But did we learn the right lesson?
[SPEAKER_03]: Or did we learn a convenient lesson?
[SPEAKER_03]: And a lesson that makes us feel good and gives an easy way out.
[SPEAKER_03]: sometimes the right less and there's a harder one and require something of us and these are things to keep in mind and to think of
[SPEAKER_03]: Everything that we do and say and feel and intend setting out frequencies and vibrations that come reverberate back to us may be a healthier way to look at karma than to think of rewards and punishments and judgments.
[SPEAKER_03]: The other aspect of it is sometimes people think of karma as a kind of fatalism, or predeterminism, that everything's determined, everything is spelled out, it's karma, come back to you, nothing you could do about it.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's not the case.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's not how karma is properly understood and Vivekananda wrote about this a lot.
[SPEAKER_03]: Karma is a statement of freedom, and with that freedom, responsibility.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, everything that happens has, in some way, been determined by the past or caused by the past.
[SPEAKER_03]: And everything we do now is in some way going to determine the future, but we're here now.
[SPEAKER_03]: And we have the freedom, you know, it assumes freedom of choice as it assumes free will.
[SPEAKER_03]: thousands of years of debate about whether we actually have free will or we only it only appears that we have free will because that's unanswerable.
[SPEAKER_03]: I quote Alan Watts in my book saying something like, you remember Alan Watts, a great thinker and interpreter of Eastern philosophy.
[SPEAKER_03]: He said something like I can't remember exactly, but as free beings we are determined and as determined beings we
[SPEAKER_03]: So there's some of both, but our experience is we make choices and we make choices all the time.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not just the big decisions.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're making choices.
[SPEAKER_03]: Should I open the door?
[SPEAKER_03]: Should I take the subway?
[SPEAKER_03]: Should I, you know, what should I do?
[SPEAKER_03]: And for the most part, we're not thinking about these choices.
[SPEAKER_03]: We just make them.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's freedom, but with the freedom comes responsibility.
[SPEAKER_03]: So we have the freedom to change our karma, to modify our karma, to react to, for moment that whatever karma has created in the present, how we go forward in life depends on how we react and the choices we make now.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you did stuff in the past, that's going to come back in some undesirable way.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like taking out a loan, taking out a business loan.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's going to come do, you don't know, wet in this carma, and business contract, you know, when it's coming do.
[SPEAKER_03]: But by analogy,
[SPEAKER_03]: You do something, and in some form, it's going to come back to you according to the laws of karma.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, no, when, you don't know in what form, you're just going to come back to you.
[SPEAKER_03]: What you do in the interim is going to determine how you'll react when the loan becomes due.
[SPEAKER_03]: So by analogy, if you
[SPEAKER_03]: Take out a loan and you run a successful business and you make a profit then when the loan comes to it's not a big deal It's just of course of doing business.
[SPEAKER_03]: You have enough Resources to cover it and whereas if you don't and you squander the money and you're careless and you make mistakes Then when the loan comes to your in trouble
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's a similar thing with us.
[SPEAKER_03]: How we behave, you know, once we set things in motion, it's going to alter everything we do, it goes out to the cosmos with a self-adrest stamp, then, hello.
[SPEAKER_03]: But the content that comes back in that envelope, we get to modify as we go along.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then how we react when it arrives on a doorstep is up to us and how we move forward.
[SPEAKER_03]: So this is not only do we have that freedom, not only is everything not in a sense predetermined,
[SPEAKER_03]: But we have a responsibility, as well, not only to ourselves, but to our loved ones, our neighborhood, our family to do the right thing and create better karma going forward.
[SPEAKER_03]: The other thing karma is not, is an excuse for being indifferent.
[SPEAKER_03]: I see smiles because we've all probably many of us have heard when something unfortunate happens, or we become aware of people suffering, individuals or groups.
[SPEAKER_03]: I've heard too many people say, well, it's that karma, nothing I can do about it.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's been used as an excuse to exploit people.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's been used as an excuse to evade responsibility for their karma.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's even taken a step further in some cases where people say,
[SPEAKER_03]: Not just, well, it's their karma, but it would be wrong to intervene because the karma has to play out fully otherwise it will repeat.
[SPEAKER_03]: So now, if you were to walk across Central Park West and see somebody laying on the floor
[SPEAKER_03]: I'll just keep walking.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, you can apply that to
[SPEAKER_03]: many situations in life where there's unfor-people being exploited, people being caught up in natural disasters, or crimes, or whatever it is, people are suffering.
[SPEAKER_03]: You could say, well, it's their karma.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's unarguable because of karma's real, then yes, it's their karma.
[SPEAKER_03]: But it's also their karma that you or we become aware of it.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's the good part of their karma.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, it's not happening in isolation with no one can knows it's going on.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's your karma, my karma, that we become aware of it, and can perhaps do something.
[SPEAKER_03]: my feeling is when I hear that, think about it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, it's their karma.
[SPEAKER_03]: Your karma is what are you going to do?
[SPEAKER_03]: If what will create better karma for you, moving forward, being indifferent, being callous,
[SPEAKER_03]: being unconcerned or being compassionate and being kind and doing something helpful if you have the power to do it.
[SPEAKER_03]: What's because that's karma too.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, these things get complicated and speaking of complicated, one of the things that often happens when people talk about karma or bring it up in conversation is something happens usually something negative.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then people say,
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, you must have done something in the past, or you must have been a such in such in your previous life.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, your house was broken into you must have been a thief in your previous life.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's karma is much more complicated than that.
[SPEAKER_03]: You can't necessarily, for one thing, no one ever said there's a one-to-one correspondence that anything that happens has a single event in the past that created it.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're creating karma all the time by analogy.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you drop a pebble or a stone into a pond, it'll send out ripples and hit the shore and come back.
[SPEAKER_03]: So a scientist can probably calculate when it's coming back to its point of origin with the amplitude and all that stuff.
[SPEAKER_03]: But if you drop 10 stones in the pond
[SPEAKER_03]: And other people are throwing stones in, you can't keep track.
[SPEAKER_03]: You can't predict when the effect of any particular pebble.
[SPEAKER_03]: And we're throwing pebbles into the pond of karma all the time with every word we speak, every action we take, every decision we may.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so are the people in our lives who affect us, whose karma affects our family and our neighbors and whatever to varying degrees, will so their actions affect us.
[SPEAKER_03]: And everything gets thrown into the pot, which is why in the Bhagavad-gita there's passes where Christian says, the course of karma is unfathomable.
[SPEAKER_03]: some translations are the ways of karma are difficult to understand or impossible to comprehend you know, different language.
[SPEAKER_03]: But the point is that the details are beyond our comprehension.
[SPEAKER_03]: We just know there's cause and effect operating in the world that karma can get complicated and it's not just a one thing causes another.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a
[SPEAKER_03]: mix of stuff that we do, that creates waves coming back to us.
[SPEAKER_03]: So thinking about it, trying to analyze it, is...
[SPEAKER_03]: not encouraged, just radical acceptance.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is what's happened.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's the result of karma.
[SPEAKER_03]: What do I do now?
[SPEAKER_03]: How do I behave going forward?
[SPEAKER_03]: How can I ameliorate the effects of an unwanted karma?
[SPEAKER_03]: How can I magnify and enhance the effects of good karma?
[SPEAKER_03]: How can I...
[SPEAKER_03]: use and understand the laws of karma to change my karma conditions going forward and help others.
[SPEAKER_03]: So that leads to the practical component of my book and the understanding of karma.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so when I was doing the research, I looked into every religious system, every culture has its ethical codes, just moral codes.
[SPEAKER_03]: What's distinctive about the traditions that come from the East?
[SPEAKER_03]: Whether you look at the Yamas and Niyamas and the yoga sutras or the Parametas and the Buddhist tradition or...
[SPEAKER_03]: When you look at them, they're not just do's and don'ts.
[SPEAKER_03]: And they're certainly not commandments.
[SPEAKER_03]: Those of you are familiar with the Amazine Amazine yoga sutras, you may have heard naive people call them the ten commandments of Hinduism.
[SPEAKER_03]: Because they are a ten, but they are not commandments.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not thou shalt, not, or you'll be punished and go to hell and all that.
[SPEAKER_03]: They're more like guidelines, they're more like suggestions, they're in the spirit of
[SPEAKER_03]: We all want to evolve and have better lives, and we all want ultimately liberation, Moksha, enlightenment.
[SPEAKER_03]: We want to transcend the laws of karma and uncover the divinity within us.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's the whole point of Vedanta and the Vedanta society.
[SPEAKER_03]: And there's the, you know, the Tuttvam, Ossi, the hour that that's beyond karma.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the connecting to that divinity within us, that unity.
[SPEAKER_03]: is part of the ways we liberate ourselves from the conditioning of past karma because we bring into our individuality, that universal quality, or the universal status of divinity, of pure consciousness, or brum, or whatever.
[SPEAKER_03]: along the way, we have to learn to behave ourselves.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so there are ethical guidelines, but if you look at them, it's fascinating because what you would expect, you know, don't steal, don't lie, be kind, be generous.
[SPEAKER_03]: But along with those are things like,
[SPEAKER_03]: had to build your character, had to cultivate certain qualities, certain traits, like serenity and purity.
[SPEAKER_03]: And those are not, those are not behavioral guidelines.
[SPEAKER_03]: They are pointing you to more fundamental change.
[SPEAKER_03]: So the Vedantic texts,
[SPEAKER_03]: will take point out that our actions in the world are based on thought, and the mind, and then their subtler levels of our individual manifestation, and that action is one thing,
[SPEAKER_03]: those things determine our actions and how we perceive as determined by what you might think of as the state of our being, the quality of our character.
[SPEAKER_03]: the degree to which we are expressing our true nature as divine beings in the world, the capacity of our hearts.
[SPEAKER_03]: So the guidelines we see in these systems are not just do this and don't do that.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's be this and don't be that.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's cultivating
[SPEAKER_03]: qualities that lead naturally to better behavior and better choices.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that would be the ultimate goal of yoga, of Vedanta, of the Buddhist precepts.
[SPEAKER_03]: Not just
[SPEAKER_03]: behavior, so do this, don't do that, but be something different, transform yourself from within, express the deepest and purist and best qualities that are your inherent nature.
[SPEAKER_03]: So you cultivate compassion, you cultivate the qualities of love and generosity.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so for that, different from just do this and don't do that.
[SPEAKER_03]: that was a revelation to me and it shouldn't have been.
[SPEAKER_03]: I should have known this because I've been studying this stuff since I was a toddler.
[SPEAKER_03]: But seeing it spelled out in the precepts and codes of conduct and so forth was fascinating to me.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's something to bear in mind.
[SPEAKER_03]: And ultimately, it comes back to, you know, yes, we have to pay attention to what we do and what we say, and how we behave in the world.
[SPEAKER_03]: But what we really want is to transform ourselves from within so that doing the right thing is our default setting.
[SPEAKER_03]: Because so much of what we do is just automatic.
[SPEAKER_03]: We don't think it through.
[SPEAKER_03]: So if your GPS internally is set for goodness, because that's what you are and you're expressing that, then you're more likely to do the right thing and not do the wrong thing without thinking about it.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's where spiritual practice comes in.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's why he built into these codes
[SPEAKER_03]: meditate every day, do your sattina have a devotional practice, all those kinds of fundamental points of advice, have practical consequences.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the consequence is to ultimately transcend karma altogether.
[SPEAKER_03]: But in the meantime, as long as we're here and subject to the laws of karma,
[SPEAKER_03]: to function in a way that produces better karma for ourselves and the people we care about and the collective karma of the groups we're part of.
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's, I think it's a good time to open up the floor.
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you agree Diane?
[SPEAKER_08]: Lovely talk.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_08]: My name is Shilpa.
[SPEAKER_08]: One question that comes to me all the time is that if there's someone in need of help and you've repeatedly offered it and they've repeatedly refused what is my karma.
[SPEAKER_03]: I didn't give the last one.
[SPEAKER_08]: And if they repeatedly refused.
[SPEAKER_03]: Refuse your health.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, that's interesting.
[SPEAKER_08]: How do you go about your karma?
[SPEAKER_03]: That's very interesting and you would have to say that that person's karma is leading them to refuse your help, that your karma is leading you to be refused.
[SPEAKER_03]: So what is that about?
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't have the answer, but it's something to contemplate, and then you would be forced to contemplate, am I offering the help for the right reasons?
[SPEAKER_03]: Am I offering it in the right way so that is properly received?
[SPEAKER_03]: And if I am, what is it about that person's karma or feelings toward me that's
[SPEAKER_03]: Why are they refusing my help?
[SPEAKER_03]: And this is an individual matter.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm sure it's a relationship that's not cut and dry, as so many of our relationships do.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I was talking to somebody about before I came here about why we're born into the families we're born into.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's a mystery in itself.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the complications of relationships get pretty thorny and there's no easy formula, but those are the kind of questions that would have to be asked if you care.
[SPEAKER_03]: And at a certain point, maybe you have to stop trying, but on the other hand, maybe you do it differently.
[SPEAKER_03]: Some of these things have to say this, you know, when you think about karma and how it operates in all this and things that repeat themselves in our lives, some of it, you could just say, well, let's forget about abstract concepts like karma for now, and let's just go talk to a psychotherapist.
[SPEAKER_03]: Or is there something you could do that can help that person become more receptive in how you're making the offering?
[SPEAKER_03]: And you don't know if the person ever will become receptive.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you could just, you do the best you can, you do the right thing.
[SPEAKER_03]: And we all have that in our lives.
[SPEAKER_03]: We have our loved ones, and we say, well, you know, and a certain point you say, well,
[SPEAKER_03]: If I try to help again, they're just going to be angry.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so maybe I should be hands off, but you know, on the other hand, why don't you listen to me?
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm here as a messenger, you know, and it gets thorny.
[SPEAKER_03]: I know, so that's where, you know, open-mindedness and the big heart comes in.
[SPEAKER_03]: And sometimes the generous thing is to not into me.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, microphone right there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very thought-provoking and helpful.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm curious if there are any ways, you know, once you come into a kind of greater consciousness of your karma and the consequences of your actions, if there are any cheat codes, if there are any cheat codes or any cheat codes.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you're kind of, you integrate or awareness of where you are in life, and you have maybe half a life of accumulated decisions at this point.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's kind of a way to recognition of your karma.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you are sort of coming to greater consciousness of that, what do you do then?
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you deal with the fact that you have a lifetime of accumulated decisions?
[SPEAKER_00]: that you're only now fully aware of their consequence moving forward.
[SPEAKER_03]: Some body once said about the tendency of people to speculate about their past lives and stuff.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you want to know your past lives, look at the present.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you want to know your future lives, look at the present.
[SPEAKER_03]: And because this is where we are.
[SPEAKER_03]: So you're seeing your perceiving, you're living the consequences of your past karma.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the evidence that you're disposal is what's going on in my life right now, what are the good things, what are challenges, what are the lessons I have to learn.
[SPEAKER_03]: And if I understand your question correctly,
[SPEAKER_03]: It sounds like you're asking, as if there was some definitive way to say, this is your karma.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, what's happening now is your karma, and what happens next week will be the karma you create between now and then, plus all the stuff from the past.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't want to get into esoteric details, but one of the interesting things about doing
[SPEAKER_03]: And Swami Madinanda in his small book and his talks goes into this a lot.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's more variation about the details of karma and the understanding of it, among the
[SPEAKER_03]: Then you would think, they don't all agree on the details and nuances.
[SPEAKER_03]: But certain things are agreed upon.
[SPEAKER_03]: The basics of karma are agreed upon.
[SPEAKER_03]: And why was that going into this?
[SPEAKER_03]: And one of the points is that we,
[SPEAKER_03]: Karma is very complicated, so it's not like you have a karma, it's a package, and one of the things that's common is that the types of karma, the karma from past lives that will fructify in this life, the karma from early in this life that will fructify in the future, either in this life or future life, the karma you're creating now,
[SPEAKER_03]: in this moment that will fruit defy later at an undetermined time, an unpredictable time.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's what we're called upon to understand.
[SPEAKER_03]: To understand the all the nuances of our karma, why we were born in this life, why did this happen, why did I have this profession, why did I, how did I meet that person, why did this happen,
[SPEAKER_03]: You can drive yourself nuts trying to figure all that out, but you have the evidence in the present.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is my karma.
[SPEAKER_03]: How do I make the most of it?
[SPEAKER_03]: How do I mealy or ate the unwanted aspects of it?
[SPEAKER_03]: How do I behave going forward?
[SPEAKER_03]: And that means not just action, but right speech, right motivation, personal transformation.
[SPEAKER_03]: How can I be a better human being?
[SPEAKER_03]: That's really what matters.
[SPEAKER_03]: If I understand your question correctly.
[SPEAKER_04]: Much of what you said seems to parallel the Greek philosophies, arote and stoicism, have you looked into the parallelism between those two?
[SPEAKER_03]: The stoics are more interesting than I ever realized and, you know, taking a philosophy class in college.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's only recently that I've read some thinkers who, you know, elucidated the stoic philosophers.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I don't know enough about it to comment, but it's something really worth looking into.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's good character, virtue, truth, very toss, yes, and the treatment of others, and it seems to parallel what you said.
[SPEAKER_03]: Sure, because at an every system of ethics and proper behavior will have certain overlap.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, certain things are universal.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a version of the Golden Rule in every tradition on the planet, some form of
[SPEAKER_03]: do unto others as you or don't do to others what you don't want done to you or whatever it is.
[SPEAKER_03]: So there are certain principles what I find really important and distinctive about the traditions that were born in India and came down to us is this notion of layers and they're just not just how we behave but what we are and how we become
[SPEAKER_03]: how we can address our character and our identity, our behavior, from deeper and deeper levels of being.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know if that's part of stoicism.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know if they have the equivalent of Sodna and practices that purify the system and undo the effects of conditioning,
[SPEAKER_03]: But that's what I find distinctive, the element of the practical element of practice and transformation from deep within that so as I said, the default setting is virtuous.
[SPEAKER_04]: Going forward.
[SPEAKER_03]: Going forward.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, it's not looking back.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I'd much rather by
[SPEAKER_03]: automatically responding to situations with love and compassion and kindness, then have to think about it because you want it to be your nature to behave in those ways, and so there to be cultivated.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right, but you can transform yourself from within so that being truthful isn't more automatic and you don't have to think about it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Not that I'm not saying there's a guarantee.
[SPEAKER_03]: We always have to think about it and to be perfectly honest, part of my research into how the Eastern traditions have been lived here.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a lot of very wise people who transform the lives of very,
[SPEAKER_03]: millions of people who misbehaved, so we have to always be conscious of our behavior and our actions and all that.
[SPEAKER_03]: But we improve the odds if we, you know, have spiritual practices that make us by nature more likely to express goodness.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, oh, I have an old friend who's about to challenge you know, no, no, no challenges.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm watching my karma.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, so can you say something about the phrase burning?
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a phrase of burning your karma.
[SPEAKER_01]: Burning the karma part of the purification process.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Through those layers.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so when I'm going into detail, if many of you are familiar with the term some Skara and Vosana's, the deep impressions that are caused, created through our actions in the world, you can think of it physically that our experiences, creative impressions in the brain and nervous system,
[SPEAKER_03]: that determine our behavior, and condition our behavior going forward as we interact in the world.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so there's burning off our karma in the fires of Sadhana, is...
[SPEAKER_03]: One phrase you'll hear, or in the fires of yoga, burning it off the car, and that speaks to purification and the value of practices like meditation and yoga, and the prone, all the repertoire of practices in these traditions.
[SPEAKER_03]: Part one of the values is the direct neutralization of conditioning that is embedded within a step which we're referring to, Rachel.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and so, and there's many methods of doing that.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's one of the,
[SPEAKER_03]: Tactics, you could say, of improving our karma as to directly engaging in these practices that, in a sense, liberate us over time from the conditioning of the past, because every action creates an impression, those impressions, then, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know,
[SPEAKER_03]: at least in part dictate our future actions and our decisions and our thoughts and this this wheel of action and impression and they give rise to desires and other actions that create impressions and so forth and getting off that wheel by burning off some of that conditioning is part of the value of Sotna, of regular practice.
[SPEAKER_03]: And those of you who have a regular practice and then been doing it for some time, you see that.
[SPEAKER_03]: You see the practical effects of that, and they're like, you make fewer mistakes, perhaps.
[SPEAKER_03]: You make better decisions.
[SPEAKER_03]: And of course, then you shock when some other stuff comes up and you say, oh, I thought I was over that.
[SPEAKER_03]: But that's part of the deal.
[SPEAKER_03]: It just improves your odds.
[SPEAKER_03]: I remember when I first started meditating and going on retreats and stuff, and my life transformed.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's one of the reasons I don't what I've done all these years, because I was a mess as a young man.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I thought, oh, this is great.
[SPEAKER_03]: Life just gets better and better.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then suddenly stuff happens.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you say, oh, I thought it was going to get better and better.
[SPEAKER_03]: Why is this stuff happening?
[SPEAKER_03]: Karma, and I still have things to learn, things to grow.
[SPEAKER_03]: And there's
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a passage in the Bhagavad-gita where Krishna talks about having equanimity and loss and gain, pleasure and pain, victory and defeat.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I remember reading that the first time saying, yeah, please, that's what I want.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then things started getting better, and then I went through some stuff, I don't even remember what it was, and I thought, wait a minute, I thought there was not going to be any more a loss, and any more defeat, no more paint, no it didn't say that, it said you'll have more equanimity,
[SPEAKER_03]: in the midst of the loss and the pain, evictories and defeats, and all that.
[SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, I fooled myself with the thinking, it was going to be that ideal.
[SPEAKER_03]: No, but life in the world of karma, there's always going to be ups and downs, there's always going to be some degree of disappointment and pain and old age and loss, and all that, because we're humans in the world.
[SPEAKER_03]: But how we experience it, what level of inner peace and compassion and goodness can we bring to the situation?
[SPEAKER_03]: That's the challenge, not that there won't be problems anymore.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's another way of looking at karma.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, okay, okay, I guarantee.
[SPEAKER_07]: So one thought I had just listed to other questions is I don't believe Indian thought is so distinct from Greek thought or Persian thought.
[SPEAKER_07]: I think even three, four thousand years ago there was communication and there's some thought that Plato was influenced by Indian thought and had to look at that.
[SPEAKER_07]: But I was struck a lot, you know, I've learned a new idea for what you're saying about action to create who you are, not just to, you know, get some resultant to create who you are.
[SPEAKER_07]: And it struck me how similar that was to a phrase in the him we had, which was act, make your action a sacrament.
[SPEAKER_07]: So that your action is to bring out that divinity to make you more of that divinity is to be more of who you are.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's great.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I couldn't agree more.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think one of the things, you know, you find when you investigate these things is, you know, some of the great thinkers in the West that were influenced.
[SPEAKER_03]: It turns out by Vedanta society swamis and all history of Vedantic thought and yogic thought.
[SPEAKER_03]: But people like Houston Smith and Joseph Campbell and Aldous Huxley who were so influential and trained in adapting these teachings to the West.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, they looked at all the spiritual traditions and articulated in what came to be called perennial philosophy, the commonalities that you find in those systems.
[SPEAKER_03]: And most of the focus there is on spiritual experience, the core experiences recorded in the mystical branches.
[SPEAKER_03]: of all the religions.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's, you know, where he, as Houston Smith famously said, the exoteric aspects of religion, the externals, the belief systems, the rituals, the histories, and all that.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's where you see all the differences in where people fight.
[SPEAKER_03]: but on the level of spiritual experience of at their really at their deepest that that's the esoteric part of these spiritual traditions you find commonalities and you find unity and you find that not only in the descriptions of
[SPEAKER_03]: Experiences of mystical or spiritual experiences, but in terms of their consequences as well and one of the consequences would be
[SPEAKER_03]: proper action that leads to the creation of character.
[SPEAKER_03]: So some of the treatises on karma will talk about how one of the results of karma is to create habits that are expressed as our character.
[SPEAKER_03]: So what you were saying is that proper action,
[SPEAKER_03]: in turn, creates character and leads to perhaps deeper experience.
[SPEAKER_03]: Is that what you were saying because that makes sense to me?
[SPEAKER_07]: Well, especially in terms of, yeah, you're character, but when it says a sacrament, yeah, that means making more holy character, more spiritual character.
[SPEAKER_03]: So consciously behaving, making your actions and offering a sacrament.
[SPEAKER_07]: That's what the hymn said.
[SPEAKER_07]: What's that?
[SPEAKER_07]: That's what the hymn we sang said, make your acts of the sack.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, but you find the same thing in all the spiritual traditions, you know, make your actions an offering, and if it's a theistic, it would be making it offering to God.
[SPEAKER_07]: Of course, you said that means bringing that in to your character.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: But then that becomes, you don't even have that concept.
[SPEAKER_03]: unless you have the good karma to come to that point in your life where you can even conceive of making your actions an offering to the divine or a sacrament.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you know, in the Buddha's say, just go through life as if Buddha himself was walking next to you, keeping an eye on you, and act impeccably.
[SPEAKER_03]: even if no one's watching, and that's their way of saying, making it a sacrament, make it an offering.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you see that in the Gito, where Christan says, you know, make everything, everything you do, everything you say, as if an offering to me.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you'll see it in Judaism, you see it in Christianity as well, and why wouldn't you?
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: But that's a good point.
[SPEAKER_03]: So when you're walking home and the science says don't walk, but there's no cars coming, what would be your offering be?
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you J walk?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you are, I know, I grew up, I mean, I'm a New Yorker by birth and everything and I moved to LA.
[SPEAKER_03]: My first week in LA, I crossed the street, there was not a car in sight and I got a J walking ticket.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I said, there was no cars coming.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm sorry, sir.
[SPEAKER_03]: You walked in.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm a New Yorker.
[SPEAKER_03]: It didn't get me off the hook though.
[SPEAKER_09]: Hello, I have a question regarding people that we see in the world that are virtuous and have a big effect on humans.
[SPEAKER_09]: I would say politicians, celebrities, a lot of positive effect.
[SPEAKER_09]: And yet, you find that they can be very, very ethically challenged, they can be very ethically challenged or they didn't pass a test, trying to, well, if you look at the Epstein files, you see the people on there who've made tremendous,
[SPEAKER_09]: strides in the world and for humanity, and yet they, it was their Achilles Hill.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I'd say it to say you find it amongst spiritual people.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yes, that's absolutely.
[SPEAKER_09]: So, I mean, I would think that these are very evolved beings because they're having so much impact on humanity, and yet they're challenged.
[SPEAKER_09]: Can you explain that?
[SPEAKER_09]: Is that a test?
[SPEAKER_09]: Is that a framework in the world?
[SPEAKER_03]: The mysterious ways it's wonders to perform.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I don't know how to explain that.
[SPEAKER_03]: People are complicated.
[SPEAKER_03]: And some people become famous and influential and do good in the world.
[SPEAKER_03]: And some people become famous and influential and it feeds their egos and it makes them pompous and arrogant and think they can get away with stuff and they take advantage of people.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's their carmus complicated.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's, you know, so there's no easy way to explain that except that everybody's karma is mixed.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's our karma to think, okay, that's the situation.
[SPEAKER_03]: What is there anything I can do?
[SPEAKER_03]: Is there any way I can respond to this situation to make it better, whether it's, you know, calling my question.
[SPEAKER_09]: They're showing us an example of what not to do.
[SPEAKER_03]: there's that too.
[SPEAKER_03]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's in some of these cases it's a lesson for us to not venerate people by what seems to be their outer contribution to the world or a certain quality of charisma and to make assumptions about them and to trust them in ways that perhaps
[SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, I had to write about and investigate and write about some of the scandals that have happened in spiritual circles.
[SPEAKER_03]: And very often it's deifying a guru or a spiritual teacher for their charisma and intelligence and not knowing what shadow stuff is going on.
[SPEAKER_03]: Underneath it, and it's unfortunate, but we have to be vigilant and be careful about who we put on pedestals.
[SPEAKER_09]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's our karma in part.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, Phil, thank you so much, that was absolutely one and I think we can all wish you a normal success with this wonderful new book and hope to see you again very soon.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, on that matter, we do have copies of the book at the back and Phil has kindly agreed to sign the copies so as you leave please line up and they will be at the back there.