One day, do we have to sell chocolates ? It’s all about Karma

Selling Chocolates

Seriously, many of you must have done this at least once. Selling Chocolates, on the behalf of your Child to raise donations or funds to your child’s school or some Welfare society ? . So, I walked into the kitchen at my workplace to warm up my lunch and right there on the Microwave, I saw a box of Chocolates (Freddo Frogs) and an interesting message “ One day You’LL have to sell Chocolates for Your Child’s school. Contribute to the sense of social obligation for everyone to purchase NOW, before it is your turn....” This raised some interesting thoughts and doubts in my mind about law of Karma, action, inaction and reaction.

Logically speaking, as per the above statement, we can derive that everyone who has or would have a child, children will have to sell chocolates, because it is normal that almost every kid school goes to a school. And, every school has and will have one of these fund raising activities, passed on to its students which are passed on to their parents. After all, it is for a good cause and kids should learn these things quite young and of course parents are there to support them. Then, secondly it is a social obligation to buy a Chocolate because who knows, one day you will be doing the same thing. And, if you don’t buy one – tomorrow you may have to sell chocolates yourself and then, because of your bad Karma, you won’t be able to sell any chocolates, either eat them yourself or donate them to your friends for free and pay from your pocket. What if you don’t eat chocolates at all and you won’t buy or sell any chocolates ?. Shut up you silly mind, I said to my mind. It is really getting complicated. Of course, the seller (one of my colleague, did not use the word Karma but, that is what it implicitly means.) These days, everyone knows about Karma and that’s how all the roadside beggars, Chuggers gets all the money. Really, the intricacies of Karma – the law of action and reaction are very hard to understand. If this can get so complicated for a simple thing like this one, what about our daily dealings ?

There is an interesting verse from Chapter 4, Text 17 of Srimad Bhagavad Gita,

karmano hy api boddhavyam
boddhavyam ca vikarmanah
akarmanas ca boddhavyam
gahana karmano gatih

Translation: The intricacies of action are very hard to understand. Therefore one should know properly what action is, what forbidden action is, and what inaction is.

     So there is Karma – an action or deed performed which produces resultant good or bad reactions, Vikarma – actions that are performed through the misuse of one's freedom and for which one suffers in the present life or by going down to take birth in the lower life forms  and Akarma - Actions that free one from the cycle of birth and death. There is also something else called Ugrakarma – actions that are really harmful to a person doing them and also to the whole society and environment.

So Bhagavad Gita advises us that if one is serious about spiritual life and desirous of getting free from this material body, do something good for ourselves and for the whole society, one needs to be careful about the actions one is performing. Because, Karma (Vikarma, Akarma, Ugrakarma) is like a fire, whether you know it or not, it will still burn – if not handled properly.

Karma Cafe

Now sometimes people might get so much bogged down by thinking all these things and they decide to stop doing any work or activity. Infect, this is what Arjun wanted to do. He wanted to renounce work because work means actions and reaction. But Lord Krishna explained him that the very nature of a soul is to be active and conscious. No one can service in this world by inactivity, even if one is inactive, his mind is always actively thinking. Thus one who physically restrains his senses but, mentally thinking about the sense objects is called a pretender and he cannot achieve any good. Lord Krishna in Bhagavad Gita explains, how one should perform his duty without expecting any results, always thinking of him, offering the results to him called Karma Yoga. There is also Jnana Yoga, path of Knowledge and Bhakti Yoga – path of devotional service explained in Bhagavad Gita. Knowing all these will make one not hate Karma but, appreciate it.I recently read a facebook status message which read " Love the Karma ; The guy who to told me off in the parking lot, came for the job interview".