Student Notebook
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Page 3 of 10
Karma and SamskaraIf you know that everything sprouts from the mind -- all action -- then mastery of action results in fearlessness. However, mastery of action without knowing that it all stems from mind results in a continued and misguided belief in the field of action. Hence, fear of repercussion remains. Knowing that all arises from the mind -- everything is a mental projection -- then understand that desire for action will cause you to create a world and a body to inhabit so that you can have relations with objects. Thus karma is born.
A more advanced spiritual person gets the results of his or her karma right away. Those who are not advanced, their karma accrues in the background and rises up gradually and at all the inauspicious times. These beings are not making the conscious connection between the act and its results. They aren't meditating or studying the scriptures.
Samskaras are mental impressions that have gone deep enough to manifest in the next life. And you can figure this out by examining your mind now. What are you averse to, attached to -- how do you react to events? This discrimination is similar to how a farmer looks at his soil and sees what needs to be added or taken out. A psychologist will give you a pill, but will that get rid of your subtle mental impressions? More likely it will cause an impression of it's own, called addiction....
In Yoga Psychology you juxtapose your human nature against your stainless nature, and then perceive the nature of mind and character from a totally new perspective.
Habit is a result of samskara. In the current lifetime a samskara gets awakened, and habits form from that. The knowledge of this fact takes away the tendency to engage in praise and blame. People are just being pushed by samskaras. But Indian Philosophy goes even farther than this by looking at origins and inceptions, and discovers that there is that primal inception that is free of this. There is a Consciousness that is separate from the consciousness that is brooding, studying, even meditating. This drossless Gold of Consciousness is what is going to free you. The "I" goes on thinking itself to be stupid or brilliant in turns, but both of these are lies. Consciousness verily looks on, untouched.
Your choices are limited by your past samskaras until that moment when you truly recognize that mind can go to freedom or bondage of its own accord. Those limitations are really what point to relative free will.
Having made this analysis of the mind's samskaras, one can choose which to water. Am I going to water my worthlessness or my potential for spiritual realization?
The camel eats thorny bushes and loves the taste, even though they make his gums bleed. And so he fosters this desire for thorny bushes during his brief spell on earth. Dying with this desire unsatisfied, he returns for more pleasure and pain of the palate. And this is why there are so many camels, horses, cows, trees. Yes, the tree has a problem too; its desire is in its seeds. It wants to make more of itself. Buddha didn't want to produce any more bodies. "Architect of the Universe -- I have seen thee. I will make no more bodies, not of wood, of stone, of flesh and blood...not even of wise concept."