Conditioned Response
The Bhagavad Gita says “the course of karma is unfathomable.” And so it is.
In Sanskrit the word karma means action.
A very simple way to interpret karma is that it is conditioned response, the past influencing the circumstances of the present as well as our tendencies to act in conditioned patterns of behavior. We become bundles of conditioned reflexes constantly triggered by people and circumstances into predicted outcomes. Hence karma is considered to be a prison, a bondage. The goal of the spiritual journey is to escape the prison of karma and bring about the true response of our soul which is creativity. The more creative and unpredictable our response to the world, the more we are aligned with the creator of the universe. That’s why the freedom that arises from transcending karma is referred to as liberation or moksha. In knowing our true essence beyond time, space, and causality, we become free of the wheel of samsara.
The Vedic seers made distinctions between different types of karma. The first type is called sanchita karma. This constitutes the entire database of all our past actions. And because the seers did not look on human existence as limited to one physical lifetime, they understood sanchita karma as the vast stockpile of karma that encompasses countless lifetimes in our past.
The second type of karma, prarabdha karma, is the particular actions that are programmed to be experienced in this lifetime. Prarabdha karma is actually a subset of sanchita karma in that it represents a small fraction of the karma from the pile of sanchita karma that is activated and ready to be experienced during the span of a lifetime. These two types of karma represent past actions that will have consequences in our present and future circumstances. This is the part of karma that feels like fate and determinism.
Karma is a prison to the soul, but the action of spiritual practice is karma that can liberate us from it as well. The Bhagavad Gita also says “yoga is skillful karma.” If we learn to act from Self-awareness, every action is an act of creativity and freedom.
