I was asked the following question:
Why are some people lucky and some not? What is luck? As I contemplate my life, both past and present, I realize I’m a very “lucky” person. I have been so fortunate. Good fortune just seems to drop in my lap. Some people I know haven’t been so fortunate. Why am I so lucky?
To which I respond:
Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as luck. Life has two components: Karma and Dharma.
Karma is quite simply action. The laws of karma (action) are simply the laws of cause and effect. The effect is not always immediate. It can take even more than one lifetime for the fruits of your action to affect you. The effect can be there for an entire lifetime or a period of time or in a moment. What we think of as good luck is more accurately viewed as the result of some action in the past for which the effect is happening.
Dharma means life in harmony with nature. As you evolve, you live more and more in harmony with nature and thereby receive the support of nature. As with karma, that is often called luck.
It is not so easy to know what is karma and what is dharma or lack of dharma in your life. This is particularly true because of the time lag between cause and effect. You can be a very dharmic person but experiencing the unpleasant effect of a much earlier karma. Or you may be a person living a non-dharmic life but being carried by a wave of fruitful karma from long ago. This is one reason why the puzzle of life is not so easy to unravel.
So if you are lucky this lifetime, do not squander it. As the saying goes, make hay while the sun shines. Meditate, look deeper, live a good life, and evolve.
I love how you clarify life’s puzzles.
Very interesting
Beautiful and sobering
This makes me wonder about “bad luck,” or challenging events in life. At first, it’s easy to think “I/they must deserve it.” The “punishment and reward” mentality is pretty dominant these days. But it’s not exactly true. If you push a tree branch aside, it will snap back when released. That’s just cause and effect. We don’t necessarily “deserve the pain,” but we did cause the reaction… we set a chain of events into motion. It also seems easy to get into the mentality of “I just have to take my karma.” I like how you remind us that though it may be our karma to be in the path of a moving train, we can still jump out of the way. And if we jump into a bee’s nest, there will be a different effect than if we jump into a pile of leaves. How we handle our karma any given moment creates the karma we will see the effects of further down the road.
I say this because it helps me when I’m dealing with challenging life events. I can tend to freeze up mentally and emotionally, like a deer in the headlights (or train lights!). I start an inner litany of how “I don’t deserve this.” It’s easier to see my way through the situation if I shift away from blaming — myself or anyone else. It’s just the train that’s coming towards me. I’m not innocent but I’m also not a horrible person. But neither is the point anyway. Just jump off the tracks… and maybe watch for when I start walking into another problematic situation.
So much can be said on this subject! Such as:
Most of your karma is between your ears and in your heart. People of think of karma as outside of themselves. But how people think and where people go emotionally is mostly karma….. pretty easy to see in other people. .. not so easy to see in yourself. People usually view their issues as their ‘truth’…
Also, as Joy Anna mentioned… karma will play out, but you can side step it or move it to other levels where the effect is hardly felt. This includes how you behave in situations as well as doing meditation, havans, pujas, etc. The laws of karma are basically just physics. However, as with engineering, you can deal with karma wisely.
This is a beautiful explanation. I believe I’m one of the lucky ones who have allowed myself to accept God’s gifts.
The gifts are there for the taking if I just allow them to happen. The very fact I was “carried” to you and Mount Soma is proof. I believe everyone involved with Mount Soma is lucky. It’s truly profound what life has to offer.
My meditations along with these blogs have allowed me to understand this.
Just simply fantastic to have had enough “luck” saved up to allow me to experience the Brahmarshi effect. My random and brief moments of clarity today are worth more to me than pretty much anything. That is one way I measure how much I am living my dharma however always remembering…neti neti neti
In your “Fundamental Principles” blog, you wrote “Please learn the meditation I teach FOR FREE. Overcome any and all resistances to doing that. Those resistances are your karma. Overcome your karma. I am pouring my heart out to you in hope that you will move forward with your evolution” (better not to try to paraphrase). If the laws of karma, which I see (now) are the laws of action, they also apply when action means choosing not to take action? Is that what it means when you say “Those resistances are your karma?”
neti, neti,
Resistance comes in many forms… and yes, non action is certainly one. Rebellion, opposition, denial, etc. etc. can also be forms of resistance.
I appreciate the fuzziness of the pictures you paint and the value I extract as a student. Thank you Brahmarshi
Richard,
I smiled at the word “fuzziness”. A scientist would call it a multi-variable equation… but in life, when things can not be coldly calculated with a math formula, it certainly is experienced more as “fuzziness”. We are taught to want concrete answers, but except in extreme cases, life isn’t concrete… it is fuzzy.