Karma means “action” or any
action that
brings a reaction that binds us to the
material world. Although the idea of
karma is generally associated with
Eastern philosophy, many people in the
West are also coming to understand that
karma is a natural principle, like time
or gravity, and no less inescapable.
For
every action there is a reaction. If we
cause pain and suffering to other
living
beings, we must endure pain and
suffering in return, both individually
and collectively.
We reap what we saw, in this life and
the next, for nature has her own
justice. No one can escape the law of
karma, except those who understand how
it works.
To understand how karma can cause war,
for example, let’s take an illustration
from the Vedas. Sometimes a fire is
started in a bamboo forest when the
trees rub together. The real cause of
the fire is not the trees but the wind
that moves them. The trees are only the
instruments. In the same way two
nations
are not the real causes of the friction
that may exist between them, the real
cause is the karma generated by the
world’s supposedly innocent citizens.
According to the law of karma, the
neighborhood supermarket or hamburger
stand has more to do with the threat of
war than anything else does. We recoil
with horror at the prospects of nuclear
war while we permit equally horrifying
massacres every day inside the world’s
automated slaughterhouses.
The person who eats an animal may
say “I
haven’t killed anything” but when
buying
neatly packaged meat at the superstore
you are paying someone else to kill for
you, then both of you bring upon
yourselves the reactions of karma.
Can it be anything but hypocritical to
march for peace and then go to
McDonald’s for a hamburger or go home
to
grill a steak or have ‘Chicken tikka or
chicken biriyani’? This is the very
duplicity that George Bernard Shaw
condemned:
We are living graves of murdered beasts
Slaughtered to satisfy our appetites
We never pause to wonder at our feasts
If animals like men could possibly have
rights.
We pray on Sunday that we may have
light,
To guide our footsteps on the paths we
tread.
We are sick of war; we do not want to
fight,
And we gorge ourselves upon the dead.
Ahimsa allows the animal to live a
natural evolutionary progress. However
if it is killed it will need to return
to live out the rest of its life in
that
same species.
Those who understand the laws of karma
know that peace will not come from
marches and petitions, but rather from
a campaign to educate people about the
consequences of murdering innocent
animals not to mention unborn children.
God is the life giver and only he
decided when to take it back……
