The Karmic Remedy

“The three degrees of karmic intensity which may apply to one, many, or all areas of a person’s life are:

1. Dridha (fixed) Karma
2. Dridha-Adridha (fixed/non-fixed) Karma
3. Adridha (non-fixed) Karma

Dridha Karmas give fixed results because they are so difficult to change that they are practically non-changeable. These karmas, pleasurable or painful, are destined to be experienced because of the intensity of their causes.

Dridha-Adridha Karmas, good OR bad, can be changed through the concentrated application of creative will, though considerable effort is required.

Adridha Karmas are said to give non-fixed results because they are easily altered.

Upaya (Sanskrit for ‘method’ or ‘remedy’) refers to future and current actions that remedy adverse Karmas (that is, that remedy the adverse results of previous actions). When the karma is non-fixed, one may expect immediate change on commencement of an upaya. If the karmas are fixed/non-fixed, results are anticipated after some concentrated efforts, often after a period of forty days. But even for those who do persevere, transformation of fixed karmas may not necessarily be expected during this lifetime, though a slight modification of results will perhaps be secretly anticipated. So long as the upayas are patiently and consistently resorted to over the course of this incarnation, however, they will act as well-planted seeds whose crop of desired results will be reaped during a future incarnation.

Remedies are designed to prevent or to correct undesirable results of previous actions. Often the best remedy of all is to worship an ishta devata, one’s chosen deity. An ishta devata makes it easier to live a life in which you act of your own volition, instead of being perpetually driven by your karmas, or by the karmas of others, to act in frequently undesirable ways. When you worship an ishta devata, your focus restrains the fluctuations of your mind, which permits a little spark of Reality to flow from your deity to you. It is this spark that appears in your awareness as intuition. Though the worship of an ishta devata may seem to some an exercise in idolatry, the deities are really representatives of the One Reality. When you worship a personal deity, you indirectly worship the Absolute One, the Singularity who manifests as the personal deity. The personal relationship you cultivate with an ishta devata plugs you in to a personal relationship with the One Reality, the source of all questions and all answers.

-- Hard de Fouw and Robert Svoboda. Light on Life: An Introduction to the Astrology of India. Twin Lakes, Wisconsin: Lotus Press, 2003. 24-36. [Some editing included.]

Two Basic Mistakes

What do you take to be the character of the religiosity of a society like Japan vis-à-vis a society like the United States or France or England? If Inglehart isn’t picking this up, what precisely is it that he’s not seeing?

It’s very syncretistic. People see no problem going to a Shinto shrine on certain seasons of the year, being married in a Christian-like ceremony, and being buried by a Buddhist monk. This eclecticism is not just apparent in Japan—it’s in all of East Asia; China is similar in that respect. It’s very different from Western notions, which probably come from monotheism. You either believe or you don’t believe. There’s a Japanese philosopher by the name of Nakamura who wrote a book. I’ve forgotten everything about it except one sentence in it in which he says that the West has been responsible for two basic mistakes. One is monotheism—there’s only one God—and the other is Aristotle’s principle of contradiction—something is either A or non-A. Every intelligent Asian, he said, knows that there are many gods and things can be both A and B. Well, those are deep-seated cultural habits of mind, and they make both religion and secularity where it exists take on a very different form.

One of the Pagan Priests

Abba Olympus said this. "One of the pagan priests came down from Scetis one day and came to my cell and slept there. Having reflected on the monks' way of life, he said to me, 'Since you live like this, do you not receive any visits from your God?' I said to him, 'No.' Then the priest said to me, 'Yet when we make a sacrifice to our God, he hides nothing from us, but discloses his mysteries; and you, giving yourself so much hardship, vigils, prayer and asceticism, say that you see nothing? Truly, if you see nothing, then it is because you have impure thoughts in your hearts, which separate you from your God, and for this reason his mysteries are not revealed to you.' So I went to report the priest's words to the old men. They were filled with admiration and said that this was true. For impure thoughts separated God from man."

God-Incarnate Seeks a Guru

John the Baptist, son of the priest Zacharias and his wife Elizabeth, had, in accordance with angel Gabriel’s prophecy begun to baptize people and to prepare them to receive the Light of the Lord Jesus. Lord Jesus was now about thirty years of age, and sought John to be baptized by him on the banks of the river Jordan. John recognised Jesus’s Divinity and asked: “Dost Thou come to me, when I have need to be baptized by Thee?” But the Lord had determined to set an example to mankind: spiritual illumination can be had through a Guru (Preceptor). The moment the baptism was complete, Lord Jesus saw a vision of God’s spirit descending like a dove and alighting upon Him, and He heard a heavenly voice say: “Thou art my beloved son, I am well pleased with thee.”

Even John the Baptist had often declared that Lord Jesus was greater than he. But look at the Lord’s devotion to His Preceptor! He said: “Of those born of women there has not arisen a greater than John the Baptist.” Devotion to the Guru (Preceptor) is the key that unlocks the realms divine: and even the Supreme Being, the Mass of supreme Consciousness, when He descends upon this earth, sets a great example in Guru-Bhakti.

-- Swami Sivananda