Freewill

[Jaldhar H. Vyas]

On Fri, 30 Nov 2001, Prasad Balasubramanian wrote:

> Namaskaram,
>       Thank you for the explanation. I have a few more questions.
>
>       Lets consider the same example of burying a treasure in the past
> life and trying to dig up in this life. What if the person who is
> digging up now , had buried it by exercising his free will in the wrong
> direction ?  Say, he had acquired the treasure by improper means and
> wanted to bury it. In that case, why should his digging up in this Jenma
> forever and for whatever depth, should lead him to the treasure ? If he
> gets it, then, is it not something that shouldnt happen has happened ?
> I'm not clear under what conditions this person's, who had buried it
> with bad intentions, getting the treasure in this jenma or any future
> jenma will be considered OK.
>

Ok correct me if I am misunderstanding what you are saying.

There is a man who at time t digs up a treasure which gives give karma k
= 10.  At time t-20, he did something really bad which gave him k - 100.

Now you are saying in this case, at time t, k = -90 so why is he getting
the "good luck" of discovering the treasure when by rights, he should be
suffering from "bad luck"?  Ok, in this scenario it doesn't make much
sense BUT how do you know at t-30 he didn't do some thing really
really saintly that set k to 5000, then at t it would be 4910.

The chain of actions and reaction stretches infinitely back to the past
and infinitely forward to the future.  Advaita Vedanta rejects the notion
that one can break free from samsara through karma.  Because at any given
t you can never precisely know what your k value is.  Instead one should
try and break free of the endless cycle of actions.  The idea of karma is
to explain how you got to be in your current situation.  But as they say
in the financial industry, "past performance is not a guarantee of future
results."  Wha you choose to do with your circumstances is up to you.

--
Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar at braincells.com>
It's a girl! See the pictures - http://www.braincells.com/shailaja/