CHENNAI: Having completed a seven-day exercise to listen to our conscience, we have become conscious of how quickly our mental state fluctuates in each situation. For instance, when we are with people who are less experienced, less knowledgeable or junior to us, we feel superior. On the other hand, when we are with those whom we regard as more powerful or intelligent than us, we feel inferior. These feelings of superiority and inferiority are manifestations of our ego. Superiority is a state of positive ego and inferiority is a state of negative ego. Our positive ego gives us feelings like complacence, overconfidence, arrogance, callousness and the tendency to mock, ridicule and boss over others. Our negative ego generates feelings like comparison, envy, embarrassment, fear, worry, phobias and the tendency to please others by saying ‘yes’ when we mean ‘no’ and vice versa. We meet all kinds of people in our life. All of us have been born in this world to experience our karma or the fruit of the actions we have performed in this life or our past lives. Until we free ourselves from the shackles of karma by attaining liberation through meditation, we will keep being reborn to experience the karmic fruits of our actions. Every thought, feeling, word or act that we have generated so far has produced the karmic reactions that we are experiencing now. The karma we are generating right now will come back to us in the future. When our thought, feeling, speech and action are beneficial to others, we experience the karmic fruits of peace, happiness, health, wealth, fame, success, good relationship and pleasant circumstance. If they are detrimental to others, we experience the karmic fruits of conflict, problem, worry, obstacle, failure, ill health, financial hardship, bad reputation, hostile relationship and unpleasant circumstance. So all the good and bad circumstances of life that come to us are generated by our own karma. What we sow every moment of our life is what we reap.So my friends, we must be constantly aware of this. Whenever we meet people or interact with them, we should remember that they are also going through their own karmic cycle just like we are. Karma is not merely a process of reward and punishment; it is also a process of fulfilling all our unfulfilled obligations. It is nature’s justice. When we understand this and accept all situations with the right attitude, our karma leads us to inner growth by providing whatever we need for our spiritual evolution. We do not know the amount of karma we have. We are not aware what actions we have performed in our past lifetimes to generate that karma and we have no idea when or how it will manifest. When we know nothing about our own karma, how can we understand other people’s circumstances or karma? Having realised that everybody’s karma is different, we should be careful never to judge and gauge anybody. Even if we feel that someone’s actions are not right, we should not mock or scoff at them. Remember that every thought, feeling, word and action generates karma. So whenever we judge others, especially outside the scope of our profession, we are only generating more negative karma for ourselves, which will come back to us in the future. Instead, we should help such people in some way if we can. If this is not possible, we should simply pray for their well being and the quick dissolution of their karma. Another common trap that all of us fall into is comparison. Either consciously or unconsciously we are always comparing ourselves with others. If a colleague gets a raise or promotion before us, we may think, “That’s not fair. I deserved it more than him.” If our neighbour wins a lottery and becomes prosperous, we may envy his luck and acquired wealth. Even if someone else gets more attention and appreciation than we do, we may feel resentful and envious.
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