These are the 15 Principles of the Law of Karma that I learned from Vedanta.
Karma and Its Results
1. Karma is action. Every action produces a result. Inaction also produces results.
2. Some actions produce desirable results while others produce undesirable results.
3. Action is value free. It is neither good nor bad.
The Doer/Enjoyer of Karma – Values
4. Desirable results are called good karma by the one that does karma. If you are not a
doer of karma you are an enjoyer of karma. If you aren’t a doer or an enjoyer, you don’t
have karma. Undesirable results produce bad karma. No result is sometimes good
and sometimes bad depending on the doer’s value system. To reset a value system
requires a dispassionate moral inventory.
The Doer Does Not Control Results
5. Doers only do to enjoy, never to suffer, unless suffering produces pleasure for them.
6. Some actions produce immediate results. Others take a long time to manifest results.
Some actions don’t produce results while the doer is alive. Assuming it was the same
doer that died, if it were to return from the dead, it would suffer and enjoy the
unseen karma it produced when it lived. But the same doer never survives death.
7. The doer is free to choose the actions it wants to do, but it does not have control of the
results. It has some influence, however.
9. All the factors operating in the field of existence are required to produce positive,
negative and value-neutral results. If the doer controlled the results, it would have only
desirable karma. A doer’s karma is always mixed.
Three Kinds of Karma
10. What I experience every moment is the result of previous actions waiting for
yesterday’s future karma to produce today’s experiences. I cannot sleep until I have
worked out my daily allotment of karma. I wake up when my daily karmic download
starts. Because sleep is an action, it produces a result. The more you sleep, the more
you sleep. The more you try to sleep, the less you sleep.
Karma Yoga
10. The doer’s karma is only worked out by facing the present situation and acting in an
appropriate and timely fashion.
11. Appropriate action is daily actions done at the right time in accordance with one’s
nature, keeping in mind universal values. Failure to act appropriately produces
suffering. Contravening universal values also produces suffering, potential and actual.
12. Daily karma appears as thoughts, feelings, and actions. The doer cannot avoid
karma without gladly accepting it. Gladly accepted karma produces more karmic
gratitude and reduces the store of karma sitting In the daily account.
Fate and Bondage
13. Daily manifested karma produces character, which produces the karma that manifests
destiny…your fate.
14. Your fate causes bondage, attachment to karma and its results. Bondage
is experienced directly as pleasure and pain. It is a 5-step slippery
emotional slope.
(a) Fear born of ignorance of my unborn wholeness causes desire.
(b) Obstructed desire causes anger.
(c) Anger generates confusion.
(d) Confusion causes delusion.
(e) Delusion causes lack of discrimination and the doer is unable to produce and
work out the karma appropriate to its nature. It stagnates at a childish level
and does not reach its full potential.
Warning – It’s Up to You
15. It pays to understand all the factors involved in karma before you set out to do
anything. If you are not satisfied with yourself and/or the world as
it is at any given moment, don’t blame the world or God. Whiners and complainers
are miserable people. Failure to appreciate the value of the law of karma is an
an invitation from yourself to suffer. Assimilating the knowledge in this list will free
you of karma.
Be the Perfect Child of God That You Are