[Advaita-l] pUrvajas' karma / pApa & our burden

[Sunil Bhattacharjya]

The following two stories tackle this situation in unique ways:
 
A person who was suffering went to a saint for a remedy. The saint told him that his sufferings were due to his past karma and he would have  to suffer it out. The depressed man went to commit suicide in the river but before he could commit the act another saint stopped him and told him that prayer to the Lord would alleviate his sufferings.
 
There was another person in a similar situation but before he could commit suicide an astrologer happened to stop him and advise him not to commit the act as he would be suffering for two years only. The surprised man asked the astrologer whether his sufferings would be over after two years and to that the astrologer replied that after two years of suffering he would get used to it.
 
Regards,
 
Sunil K. Bhattacharjya

--- On Wed, 9/15/10, Vidyasankar Sundaresan <svidyasankar at hotmail.com> wrote:


From: Vidyasankar Sundaresan <svidyasankar at hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] pUrvajas' karma / pApa & our burden
To: "Advaita List" <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
Date: Wednesday, September 15, 2010, 8:12 AM




> >Just a digression from the main topic, perhaps you might be knowing that
> >in advaita saMpradAya there is a (very) valid place for the influence of
> >prArabdha karma even after self-realization!! prArabdha karma cannot be
> >eradicated even after the dawn of brahma jnAna...Even a brahma jnAni can
> >act & do things (sometimes abnormally/strangely ) according to his
> >'prArabdha janita' set of BMI !! But through his power of jnAna, he
> >controls it within certain time gap..And this time gap depends on his
> >prArabdha karma...So, I humbly believe, talking on karma & karma phala &
> >its influence on various individuals etc. are very much within the scope
> >of vedAntins.

On a lighter note, Bhaskar, the above are strange words coming from you!

On a serious note, please note that when the texts say "prArabdha", they
are sometimes talking of prArabhdha karma-phala and at other times of
Arabdha karmA. The current body is part of the phala of prArabdha karma.
When it is said "bhogAd eva kshayaH" (extinction through experience), the
bhoga - experience - refers to the phala, not to the prior done karmA per se.

Vidyasankar                           
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