KARMA: Why do bad things happen to good people?
If you haven’t watched the first video in the series on the Soul, click HERE to watch it first. It will help you understand things better (Trust me!)
Now moving on… so far we know that
- There are various ways of understanding the world, and we can’t just rely on perceivable (wait, is that even a word?) proof.
- A very important way of understanding things is by learning from someone who’s done it before – and this is where the ancient books of wisdom come in – The Bhagavad Gita As It Is, and others.
- One of the first lessons is that the body is a shell and we are living entities inside – the soul. The body is just a machine to the soul like a car is to the driver.
- Different living entities are the same spiritually, but inhabit different bodies based on their karma and desires, just as different people based on their capability and desire will ‘inhabit’ different cars.
So now let’s learn more. Why does everyone inhabit different bodies. Why the difference? Who’s at fault? Why do bad things happen to good people, when bad guys seem to get away with a lot of mischief?
Going back to our question on why bad things happen to good people, why don’t you answer this first –
Would you say you are all good and have never done a bad thing in life?
It’s actually nothing to do with who you are – it’s all about what you’ve done in the past, and what you’re doing now. Let’s isolate the problem from the person. It makes sense. You are who you are today because of what you did yesterday, isn’t it? So the same thing applies to where you are in life to. It’s simple.
But then some things come out of the blue right? Like you break a fingernail, or on a bigger scale maybe you sustain an injury. It’s the same reason, except that we don’t know how and where to make the link because it’s not something we’re taught in school. Even if you learn everything, sometimes you still won’t be able to make the link. That’s OK. Maybe it’s something from a past life you can’t remember (which is still you in a different body).
Ok dude, what’s the point of that?
We can get into the philosophy in too much detail here. But trust me, there is an explanation for everything – it’s just I don’t want to philosophy and bore you with that stuff here. You can find me on facebook and we can talk about it. Or you can ask a question in the ‘Ask a monk’ section. But to be honest, it’s not so important. What’s important is to understand this: We don’t really get much choice in what life brings us. But we do have a choice how to respond to it. That’s what makes up our karma. Karma is just nature’s way of saying “Hey dude, you screwed up last time and messed up a lot of people. Do you get it now?”
Think about it. We spend all our lives trying to control everything around us. We want the best partner, best career, best house, best neighbours, etc., but the fact of the matter is we can’t actually control any of these. It’s beyond our ‘circle of influence’. What we can control though, is our mind and how you deal with it.
In short, life makes us step into someone else’s shoes to help us understand their side of the story. Everyone’s got to have a fair shot at life, don’t they? Karma is educational – so we don’t screw up again.
When we take responsiblity for our own actions, we empower ourselves to change and improve.
I know you wanna go do something else, but stay and finish it. The best is yet to come!
