Law of Karma in Advaita Vedanta | Swami Sarvapriyananda

[Music] I get it everything is Brahman in that case what is the significance of karma in this whole thing is isn't the idea of karma in incompatible with this paradigm in the sense that if drummond is everything and the doer is Brahman in that sense and and nothing attaches to Brahman what what how does Carmi work into this right it's a good question Krrish is asking about the role of karma and what we just talked about bran manatorian being the only reality and everything else being an appearance and nothing attaches tutorial it's not it's super Teflon does nothing sticks to it so how will karma stick to it and attach to this are serious questions of morality and immorality and reward and punishment and so many things follow from this from this question so it's a deep question now individual the acts of individuals and the results of those individual acts all of this is karma what is karma the law of karma real of karma is action has its results actions have consequences good action Dharma results in what is called putting your merit and that pornea gives a result suka happiness bad action what we might consider evil action consciously done you know when one is consciously naughty so a Dharma that results in what is called Papa or demerit and the result of that power is do come so this is the law of thermo Dharma Punia suka good action moral action ethical action results in merit results in happiness ah Dharma papa to come evil action immoral action unethical action consciously done generates what might be translated as sin demerit and the result of that will be unhappiness this is the law of karma and who gets who owns this karma the agent the person who feels I did it I am the tool who is this person in our present context of thorium and the three aspects of the self it's the Waker right now the Waker however much may be made to philosophy if I do something nice I feel good if I do something naughty afterwards I feel guilty so I own the action and I seem to get the results now this Waker is not the ultimate reality according to the according to the Manduca Venetian you are not really the Waker you are really to Liam who appears as the Waker and functions as the Waker the Waker is not ultimately real if the Waker is not ultimately real then the Waker as the agent of action cannot be ultimately real if there is no ultimately real agent of action there cannot be any real Karma also no real consequence also this is what he's asking and this straight answer to that is yes Shankar Acharya in one of his commentaries it is a very profound thing because whole of Hinduism Buddhism Jainism Sikhism all the Indian religions are explicitly based on the law of karma all of them except in spite of their vast internal diversity Buddhism does not accept God does not accept a permanent unchanging self Ishwara Atma no but it accepts law of karma and what this Manduca does is it smashes the law of karma to bits it gets rid of the law of karma also Shankar Acharya says correct ultimately speaking the law of karma is not right ultimately speaking ultimately speaking yes in what sense what up Dwight uh does is it divides reality into three tiers three levels of reality there is the ultimate reality which it calls param arctica the absolute reality there is a transactional reality which we which we inhabit which is this waking reality which it calls via Holika transactional reality and then there is a level of illusion error dream which it calls bratty hosaka example right now this reality which we inhabit Vedanta would call it via Chanukah transactional empirical relative reality the dreams which we have the snake which we see by mistake on a rope the water which we see by mistake in a desert a mirage illusions are the dreams they are called Pratibha seeker illusory and brahman alone is Parramatta quarter iam is Parramatta kadhi absolute what when aunt is trying to do is to shift us showers from this empirical reality identification with the entities of empirical reality into the param Arctica the real real the reality tour iam it's like suppose this were a dream our dream and somebody in the dream comes and tells you look all this is we are inhabiting a dream the reality is you are sleeping on your bed and imagining all this now the bed and you sleeping on it and imagining all of it that's nowhere part of the dream if somebody comes and tells you or actually on your bed and imagining all this now if you go around in the dream searching for the bed and where am i sleeping and where am i imagining all this you will never find it in the dream but that's the truth that's the ground of this entire dream similarly this entire way Bihari Kaja got this appearance world of appearances transactional world is grounded in the absolute which is to reom law of karma applies in varaha Rica in the relative word it does not apply to the thorium vivekananda put it in a very simple way good good bad bad and none escape the law law of karma moral action you get good results happiness in moral action and get bad results unhappiness and none escape the law he says then but whosoever wears the form where's the chain to where's the four means whoever is identified with a body and mind this body and mind is also identified with this chain which is tied to this party in mind what is the chain is a chain of past Karma the Lord of our past deeds and misdeeds is upon us though we know it not it's continuously giving results in the form of our Pleasant and unpleasant experiences through our days and months and years so that is the chain which we are tied to now what does Manduca say and what does Vivekananda say next line but far beyond name and form body and mind father your name and form is Atman everfree or in our language is to reham everfree no jawad that sannyasi bold say ohm tucks a toe in our language far beyond that means right here and yet transcending it like the waking transcends the dream the para martica the absolute transcends the relative historian everfree know thou art that or Girish bold say ohm that circle while in everything this while in everything this so the law of karma will continue to appear to function give results but you are not affected by it and that not affected to diem is the absolute this law of karma will continue to function just like a dream at this level yes but at that level the deeper level the reality itself No one thing which is that so the so karma existed the waking level if you would yes and and so so do the laws of physics and so to the enlightened man if you were a person the laws of physics wouldn't apply wouldn't apply as turian not as this waking person I'll give you an example once Swami oh it's very the happily named Swami Tory Ananda because we're talking about turian Swami Tory and there was a disciple of sri ramakrishna once he was there with an American Swami Swami Atul Ananda and they were on their way to a pilgrimage in America in hard water something I forget and they camped one night with lot of other pilgrims in a hut and this is in the reminiscences of Swami Atul Ananda so I meet Tori Allen there was a great weight on taste so there was a discussion on Vedanta and they were pilgrim sitting all around a roaring fire at night is winter then one of the gentlemen challenged stramit oriental you are saying all this is an appearance is a dream so your body is a dream this fire is a dream and this experience what you're experiencing now is just an appearance you are the unchanging consciousness so can you put your hand in this fire and 300 is said immediately and eternity records he got excited immediately and stood up and said yes I'll trust my hand in the fire it will get burned but that does not affect me be witnessing consciousness and he was about to jump into the fire when people rushed and caught him and pulled him back now you see it does not violate common sense of physics but what it says is I have recognized myself as the witness consciousness the body and the fire are at the same level of reality so the fire we burned the body the laws of physics and chemistry and biology will act upon the body and the mind to but I the witness consciousness I am NOT the body and mind it's as simple as that somebody asked I think it just yesterday bill pointed out a famous story about doctor Johnson Samuel Johnson I think and just Bishop Berkeley who was the subjective idealist who said everything that's different from Vedanta but it's still you know he says everything is in the mind the world exists because I experienced it and in Samuel Johnson he says I refute it thus and he kicked a rock see it this is resistance it bounces it hurts my foot this is real how is it in my mind but don't you think the same thing would happen if you do it in a dream in a dream which is entirely in your mind if you go and kick a rock in Central Park will it not will the dream Rock not hurt your dream foot it would it will you might even go after a dream ouch that does not make the dream Rock any more real at the same level they act on each other but the great discovery of Shankaracharya but with the great insight is that which is at a lower level of reality does not affect the higher level of reality so whatever happens in the dream Janaka lost his kingdom was wounded humiliated frustrated in in in despair in the dream when he wakes up none of it has affected him still his heart may pound a little bit but he will say oh it didn't happen of course he of course philosopher yes Satya was such but the dream did not affect his waiting all the things which invented in the dream had no effect on the waking because the waking is a higher level of reality than the dream Shankar Acharya says not one drop of one not one grain of sand in the desert can be made wet by the water of the Mirage you can see a whole races of water it will have no effect on the sand of the desert it remains unaffected because they are not at the same level of reality an unreal Oasis can exist with a real desert an unreal snake can coexist with a real rope an unreal defeat in the battle can coexist with the emperor retaining his empire and having a in the waking State unreality and reality have no clash but does the real level of the higher level of existence does it affect the lower level of experience yet it does how it forms the basis of that unless you are awake err you cannot go to sleep and dream unless there is a real desert the false oasis can of mirage cannot appear unless there is a real rope the false snake cannot appear there similarly the real this rope or the oasis of the desert in the desert of the waking all of this is based on a yet higher level of reality which is pure consciousness the non-dual consciousness - Liam this cannot affect that but that gives it gives this existence and that thing which gives this existence that is what you are really once you know that will continue to inhabit this very happily you will not be affected by the problems here then this itself there are beautiful verses none none of annum this itself becomes the garden of the gods in the novel and supposed to be in in heaven the garden of the gods this world some sort of terrible ills and frightening samsara becomes your pleasure garden [Music]

Channel: Vedanta Society of New York

Views: 310,667

Keywords: vedantany, vedanta society of new york, sarvapriyananda, swami sarvapriyananda, sarvapriyananda lectures, swami vivekananda, vivekananda, vivekananda teachings, vedanta ny, vedanta, vedanta lectures, belur math, jnana yoga, hinduism, spirituality, enlightenment, higher consciousness

Id: yJMqULiDtOM

Length: 14min 44sec (884 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 15 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/thecriclover99]

Whoever is identified with the body and mind is also chained by his/her past deeds and misdeeds... But far beyond name and form is Atman, ever free!

[u/thecriclover99]

Find out more at r/MandukyaUpanishad

[u/thecriclover99]

Swami Sarvapriyananda explains the law of karma in the context of Advaita Vedanta. This video is part of a Q&A from Apr 8, 2018.