The Principle of action and reaction
Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Human minds don’t find it a super difficult concept to grasp. Punch a bag with some force, and the bag will exert the same force back on your hand which may cause some pain if there are no gloves. Throw a ball to a wall with some force and the wall will also exert the same force on it, which causes it to rebound. All these causalities are perceived in a temporal framework, where an immediate reaction follows an action. Moreover, there is no information storage about an action to generate a reaction at a later appropriate time. Most physical realities around us function with these two basic principles. First, reactions always follow actions; second, reactions immediately follow actions.
Let’s introduce another layer to this principle where information about an action is stored and instead of producing an immediate reaction, an appropriate time is chosen to produce the reaction. Under such circumstances, a vast amount of information is stored about all the actions, and in a specific circumstance, a reaction is delivered. It’s easy to deduce from our mind faculties that an algorithm is certainly required to deliver such reactions. The most important function of this algorithm is to identify an appropriate time to decide which stored actions to choose from and then deliver a reaction. Let’s hold on to this thought of this algorithm and we shall refer it back after some time. Let’s proceed with an example where action-reaction is not immediate.
Consider planting a seed with a desire to get fruits. If we track down the origin of this action, we can make sense of the causations that have happened at so many levels. It begins with an intelligence to feed the body(bodies of family members). This intelligence resulted in a desire to have access to fruits. The desire created thoughts about planning to sow a seed and take care. These thoughts charge vital energy within the body that transforms into necessary physical actions for this act to occur. The same intelligence that led to planting a tree could also have led to a completely different direction of stealing fruits from neighbors, hunting an animal, and many more possibilities. The point of contention should be what leads to fixation on any particular outcome out of so many possibilities.
Cause of an action
In a very gross form, we can understand this in terms of the quality of origin of this action. The quality here is not a judgmental anecdote as to what is right or wrong, but a mere difference that results in different outcomes. For simplicity let’s assume that intelligence information (00) eventually leads to planting a tree, (01) leads to stealing from neighbors, (10) leads to hunting an animal and (11) leads to no action. Here it’s the same intelligence of feeding the body but the quality of each of them is staggeringly different. What is causing the trigger of any of this information to result in an action? Who is deciding what quality of intelligence information should be triggered?
Modern-day science can answer this with the help of personality tools. Fair enough it’s acceptable but two important questions that need to be asked are
a. What leads to this personality?
b. What about so many occasions where the actions are not aligned with the personality?
Since we have come so far with the premise that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, the trigger of any of the above intelligence information must be the effect of another cause. Now let’s refer back to our thoughts on an algorithm as discussed in the second paragraph. There is a repository of so many previous actions which have not exhausted out and at such an appropriate time where the intelligence to feed is sought then one of the particular intelligence information(00,01,10 or 11) is ensued as an effect of one of the stored causes.
This my friends is the law of Karma. As mahatma Gandhi once said,
“After inventing the law of karma, the god was able to retire”
All information about our past actions in this life or before is stored in this repository unless it gets exhausted. The information about mental actions is stored since any physical action needs an action in the mind as the trigger. Given a specific condition as input, the algorithm then chooses an action for which there should be a reaction, or as explained in Vedas; a karma ripens to give its fruit. The reaction then governs what intelligence information need to be triggered.
The physical realm is also functioning according to the law of karma, which mostly would give a reaction within the physical world in the current life based on your actions, but the law of karma under discussion in this article is the one which acts on a higher realm of mind that dictates what actions one does. Both of them have the same law but act in different realms.
Invitation for self-discovery
When we start to understand that our actions are also a consequence of our karma then it opens a box of innumerable questions that can lead us to our inward journey. We start to openly think about the existence of previous lives. We raise the questions like Do we have free will? Does everyone have a destiny? Who/what decides when karma is ripe to bear fruits? If it’s about countless births and deaths, then what is the purpose of the life I am living now and so on…
Above is a simplistic attempt to comprehend the vastness of this law, but in truth, the sophistication and enormity of this law are far from realization just by reading. The real answers would eventually reveal to us once we start to practice mindfulness, meditation, or any other forms of spiritual practice to find ourselves…
Best wishes for your journey inside.
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