One of the most asked questions about karma is how it will affect our lives. This is because most people want to know what will happen to them, whether they will still be here in 10 years, how bad their life will be and what they must do to deserve happiness and goodness. There are three things that we must know about karma. We have to know its source, what karmas are and how they affect our lives. And we must learn how to achieve good deeds and avoid bad ones.
Before I tell you how karma works, let me explain to you why so many people want to know about this topic. In modern times, the concept of karma has been discussed in many popular books such as The Kama Sutra and The Bible. Many religions believe in karma and there are rituals that are used to cleanse the devotees from karmas and that make them better beings. There are even courses at universities that teach you how to cleanse your past and move forward into a better future. These schools are trying to instill the concept that all good and bad deeds come from your actions can be changed.
The concept of karma comes from the Buddhist teachings. Buddha explained karma as a chain that goes from one person to another, explaining that everything has its own time to come into existence and everything has its time to pass away. For example, food will not appear again after being cooked for twenty years. Likewise, flowers will not bloom again after being seen for five days. The food in Buddha’s bowl will have no longer any taste after being cooked for two thousand years.
How does this concept work then? It is said that we are like empty shells waiting to be filled with more light. When we eat food that is delicious, our karmic seed is implanted in our bellies, ready to receive more nourishment when we create the appropriate situations for it. This is how karma works. When you go out to eat a nice meal, your mind becomes busy thinking about the delicious meal and so you fill your stomach quickly, excusing yourself from eating the whole steak, instead consuming only a quarter or an eighth of it.
So the next question we might ask ourselves is: How do we cleanse karma? How do we cleanse the bad karmas from our past and move on to a better future? The true answer lies in taking up a monastic practice called monk prayer. monk prayer takes us back to our roots, to the point where all bad karmas originated and which makes us whole, complete and powerful once again.
monk prayer is a form of meditation, where in we explore the true nature of life and how we can cleanse karma from our lives. In this process we start by identifying what bad things have happened in our lives, for example, murder, rape, theft, sexual abuse, etc. Then we try to figure out how we can make amends, how to build our good karma back, from bad experiences. We can think of good deeds that we can perform in front of God or other beings to show God or other people that we are not as bad as what others have thought of us. Sometimes, even after being told how we should act, we are unable to perform the right actions and so we end up defaming God, defaming other people, and ourselves.
However, when we pray to cleanse our karma, we become conscious of the actual act of pouring out the karmas that caused us to be what we are today. In this process, we realize that our good deeds, even if they are small, go a long way in terms of improving our future. At the end of the day, after we have completed our meditation to cleanse our karma, we feel refreshed, cleansed, energized and contented. We then know how to build up good karma for the next time, and with each new blessing, we begin to see more clearly how our life is reflected in Karma. Our life situation becomes clearer, and we also come to understand that even if some bad things happened in the past, we can always learn from it and make changes to improve our future.
A good way to start cleaning your karma is to meditate on the Gita: the ancient Hindu text which discusses various good deeds that one can do to transform his or her life. When you first sit down to meditate on the Gita, remember to go slowly and deliberately. The more you meditate and the more you read the Gita, the more you will understand how your previous good deeds will play into your future. This will enable you to make more good deeds in the future, and your Karma will also start to clear. Therefore, while you are reading the Gita, you can also start to incorporate some of the other methods of transforming karma, such as praying to remove bad karma.