Karma and transmigration
From the Bhakti List Archives
• September 8, 1999
Narayana. Dear Bhagavathas, I was recently listening to a person talking about the greatness of Vedanta darsanas vis-a-vis semitic darsanas. A very simple question that will bowl down semitic darsanas is: If there is no reincarnation (transmigration) - in other words if this is the first birth for all souls (as semitic darsanas maintain), what explains the differences in the just-born babies - some are blind, some are deaf, some are healthy, some are born into poverty etc.. ? Of course, the Vedanta, which maintains transmigration, answers it quite simply: the jiva reaps the fruits of his past karma in this birth. At first sight, this answer seemed adequate and satisfying. However let's intrapolate the question further back - what caused the jivas to do different kinds of karmas in the past birth reaping different kinds of fruits in this birth? The Vedantic answer is: the vasanas (samskaras) accumulated by the jivas in the previous births impelled them to perform different kinds of karmas in the last (previous) birth. So here we have a karma-vasana-karma cycle. Extending it further backwards, if originally all jivas were alike, what caused them to perform different karmas resulting in different vasanas and fruits? I truly don't know the answer to his question. I have heard that karma is anAdi - beginningless. But the question remains: what causes the difference in the karmas of jivas? I feel that, in this issue, the current Vedantic answer is not *substantially* better than the semitic answer. I request our members to give some clarity on this subject. Narayana. Alwar Acharya Vaishnava dasan, P.Srinivasan ====================================================== All beings seek happiness. Undecaying happiness is Narayana. Therefore all beings are indeed seeking Narayana. ====================================================== __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Bid and sell for free at http://auctions.yahoo.com
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