Why Karma Feels Unfair

Sometimes the usual questions don’t get ignored or forgotten in the schedule of life. They keep bothering you till you find a satisfactory answer to them. Questions like:

How do we really believe that there is something super intelligent behind the creation of everything? Why can’t it simply be that things exist without any reason? Maybe everything just happened randomly and continues because of certain laws that we did not create and cannot change.

How is everyone so convinced about the law of karma but doesn’t know how it works? Why can’t it be just us trying to connect events after they happen because we are uncomfortable with randomness?

The answer I got started with the foundation of all these questions. That is my identity. I am concerned about a super intelligent being and the law of karma because I am impacted by them. So, who am I referring to? I am referring to this body. It gets the results of karma because of its actions.

A follow up question would be: how do you map the results of past life karmas to this body? Is there a continuity in this body across lives?

Like salt when dissolved in water becomes invisible and then returns to its form when heated, this body also takes the form that we see today and goes back to its original form when it decays.

The body is made up of flesh, bones, and muscles. But how has this body been formed? From the food eaten by the mother when the body was in the womb. Then how did the embryo form? From the sperm and ovum of the parents. And how were they formed? Again, from the food eaten by them.

If you follow this slowly, it all points to one thing. We are made up of food that has taken different forms. So, when we die, we become food again. The body does not remain as it is. It breaks down and becomes indistinguishable from mud.

This mud then supports various life forms that become food again. Seeds grow into plants and trees. They bear flowers and fruits, and this becomes food for living beings. That food again supports the formation of another body.

So, what looks like an isolated event of getting one body is actually part of a continuous cycle. The forms keep changing, but the underlying material keeps moving. In that sense, it is not entirely a new body every time, but a body made from the same underlying material, appearing again and again in different forms.

We go deeper and ask, if the material itself is not isolated and keeps continuing like this, can we say that whatever happens through it, like actions, simply disappears? Every action we perform does not feel like it ends and leaves nothing behind. It seems to leave some kind of impression, even if we cannot see it directly.

If the body is part of a continuous flow, then these impressions are also part of that flow. Seen this way, karma is not something imposed from outside. It is the natural continuation of actions within this cycle.

This also explains certain experiences in life. There are things that happen which we cannot clearly connect to what we are doing right now. These are not isolated events. They are part of a longer chain which is not fully visible to us.

If there are laws governing how material forms change and continue, and laws governing how actions unfold into experiences, where do these laws come from? These laws are precise. They do not randomly break.

For any material to stay in its form, there are forces holding it together. Every form has some balance that keeps it as it is. If this order is consistent everywhere, then what sustains it?

If such consistent order exists, it cannot be without a basis. For a creation to exist, there has to be a creator. If these laws are so precise and do not deviate, they must be governed by something super intelligent that allows them to function in the same way again and again.

For that to be possible, that intelligence has to be part of everything it governs. Otherwise, it would not be possible to govern it. The same intelligence that created the universe has created you and me. It is present in you and in me.

Otherwise, we would have reached chaos long ago and would not have sustained this order for so long.

Hari om!

-acintya