Mark: The jiva really doesn’t know where and what to do with this body … no peace of mind … where’s karma yoga in all this? … it’s like I’m neither making nor faking it. Apart from the real issue, which is that I don’t use Self Knowledge (not a good seeker …), I was not honest in saying that my lacking peace of mind is due to worries about the future of my body abilities… rather what I mostly feel is fear, shame, anger, anxiety … so I stop here … nothing new, it’s the usual … I am sorry for the word in my last email
Sundari It is true that these priceless teachings only work if you apply them. Karma yoga is like a miracle drug, a little goes a long way. That said, it takes great dispassion to cope with the karma Isvara has dealt your jiva. Take strength in this: no matter how hard our karma is on the jiva level, karma only becomes a very heavy problem when we as a doer identify with it.
What is karma other than what the ego makes of it? Karma depends on who you think you are because karma itself is value neutral. Impersonal karma is just action and its results. This is the central issue in the discussion on karma: Karma only becomes meaningful when we evaluate it. We either like it or don’t like it or are indifferent to it. The nondual teaching on karma is that karma is just the impersonal playing out of the gunas. All life is karma as in action. Life is movement.
Though all karma is actually impersonal, only IN THE MIND of the jiva does it become personal and cause existential suffering. There is no such thing as personal karma, actually; it is an idea cooked up by Maya when ignorance, avidya, covers the mind of the human. Hence, moksa is surrendering the idea of doership and agency to Isvara.
There is no karma for an enlightened person (jnani). The individual or jiva identified as a jiva accumulates karma that seems to come to the body/mind sense complex; when moksha obtains, the karma burns up. However, one has to look at what “burns up” actually means. Karma does not burn up for Awareness as there is no karma for it because for it nothing ever happened. It is not a doer. Karma is not real.
Personal karma is just an idea in the mind that causes suffering. So “burning up” karma happens when the jiva is no longer identified with the body/mind (egoic identity) and knows that its true identity is Awareness. Karma “burns up” for the Subtle Body, because it is only ever “in” the mind, not in the physical body or the Self.
The body – whether human, animal or plant – is just meat/matter. It is inert, so there is no karma for it. Karma seems to take place in the physical body because the physical body is “attached” to the Subtle Body. It is a counter across which experience is transacted. But from the Self or Isvara’s point of view (Causal Body) there is no karma because the body is not real.
This does not mean that karma does not still play out (for all jivas) because the body (all life) belongs to Isvara, the Total. The momentum of past actions, whether it is personal or impersonal prarabdha karma, which is Isvara delivering the fruits of actions via the gunas, plays out as long as the jiva is alive. When our prarabdha is over the body dies.
Even though your illness seems very personal because it affects you so deeply, it is not actually personal because you are not responsible for your body or your illness. You are not a doer. This applies even in the case when we break dharma and reap the rewards of bad karma. Though there seems to be a direct cause and effect, we still have the option of neutralizing any karma, good or bad, with Self-knowledge.
The bottom line here is that karma is only real and can thus cause existential suffering if the doer has not been negated by Self-knowledge. When it has, any karma that plays out for you as a jiva as long as it lives, is neutralized by Self-knowledge. So you bear it with the strength that is the hallmark of a free person.
This is a big thing, I know, in your case. Easier said than done. But it is an option, always. Hand it over to Isvara, to whom it belongs
With much love
Sundari
