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Word: kar·ma | Function: noun
Pronunciation: \'kär-m? also 'k?r-\
Style: often capitalized | Date: 1827
Etymology: Sanskrit | Context: karma fate
Definition: the force generated by a person's actions held in Hinduism and Buddhism to perpetuate transmigration and in its ethical consequences to determine the nature of the person's next existence.
Dictionary Definitions of Karma
These are definitions of karma which come from various dictionaries and try to capture the core essence of karma.
1. To act, action, activity; whether physical, mental, emotional; internal or external; and done whether in knowledge or ignorance; or by seeming chance, or accident.
2. The sum total of the accumulation of actions and reactions being experienced, due to be so experienced, or being created as events and situations in time, originating from individual and group-collective action.
Group Definitions of Karma
These are definitions of karma which describe the wider aspects of karma: the groups in which individuals are enmeshed karmically.
1. Soul Groups:The smallest, most intimate group of individuals that we most frequently reincarnate with over the span of time. When Souls were created by God, they were manifested side by side, literally cut from the same cloth. Those in your Soul Group are your most powerful and constant teachers and you are theirs.
2. Karmic Matrix :The smaller group of individuals that spend significant amounts of time together. This includes groups of family members, friends, and co-workers. This matrix exists for these individuals to work off and through past life karma.
3. Group Karma: The larger groups of individuals that coexist due to similar affiliations (same community, country, or continent) and are subject to the same global events (such as pandemics, natural disasters, regional accidents, and war).
Temporal Definitions of Karma
These are definitions of karma which describe the time aspects of karma: how karma progresses over time (build up and burn off).
1. Sanchita Karma: the accumulated result of all your actions from all your past lifetimes. This is your total cosmic debt. Every moment of every day either you are adding to it or you are reducing this cosmic debt.
2. Prarabdha Karma: the portion of your "sanchita" karma being worked on in the present life. If you work down your agreed upon debt in this lifetime, then more past debts surface to be worked on.
3. Agami Karma: the portion of actions in the present life that add to your "sanchita" karma. If you fail to work off your debt, then more debts are added to "sanchita" karma and are sent to future lives.
4. Kriyamana Karma: daily, instant karma created in this life that is worked off immediately. These are debts that are created and worked off - ie. you do wrong, you get caught and you spend time in jail.
Personal Defiinitions of Karma
These are definitions of karma which describe the personal aspects of karma: how karma applies directly to individuals' lives.
1. Primal (Seed) Karma: When an individual first incarnated, they received a "load" of karma (unmerited by actions) to propel them on their unique journey through cycles of reincarnation to unfold in Soul awareness.
2. Choice (Action) Karma: After an individual incarnates, they create karma by their choices: through their thoughts, through their words, through their actions, and through their directions (how they direct others to think, speak, and act).
3. Good Karma: From the human standpoint, the positive benefit received in material existence, where one receives pleasing results (such as vibrant physical health, financial success, relationship happiness, etc).
4. Bad Karma: From the human standpoint, the negative blow-back received in material existence, where one receives unpleasant results (such as physical illness, financial failure, relationship heart-ache, etc).
Popular Definitions of Karma
These are definitions of karma which are catch phrases in the popular imagination: these are often how karma is best known.
1. What goes around, comes around.
2. What you bring hate into, you will reincarnate into.
3. Your beliefs-thoughts-emotions create your reality.
4. Everything happens for a reason.
5. What you think about, you bring about.
6. What you bring into the lives of others comes back into your own.
7. You get out of life what you put into it.
8. What comes out of your mouth comes into your life.
9. If I believe and I deserve it, the universe will serve it.
10. What you see in others, already exists inside you.
11. What you send out, comes back to you so what you give, you get.
12. The love you give will come back to you... so radiate love.
Religious Definitions of Karma
These are definitions of karma which religions use to describe the effects of karma: their belief system about karma.
1. General: "actions" or "deeds" which causes the entire cycle of "samsara" (cause and effect driving reincarnation) to unfold through time.
2. Buddhism: any action creates "seeds" in the energy field that, when springing from unloving motives, keeps the individual bound to the wheel of samsara, but when springing from loving kindness, helps to liberate them to nirvana.
3. Christianity: "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." (Galatians 6:7)
4. Confucianism: reciprocity is used instead of karma: "What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others" says Confucius.
5. Hinduism: karma is neither punishment nor retribution: it is the result of the cause and effect of deeds or acts and it governs all life.
6. Huna: karma works on the principle that "energy flows where attention goes" which creates cause and effect through actions and inactions.
7. Islam: "Disasters have spread throughout the land and sea, because of [the sins] the people have committed. [God] thus lets them taste the consequences of some of their works, that they may turn back [from evil]." (Koran 30:41)
8. Jainism: karma is attracted to the energy field of an individual due to the vibrations created by their activities of thought, speech, and action.
9. Judaism: karma ensures that "as long as a person is unsuccessful in his purpose in this world, the Holy One replants them over and over again." (Zohar I 186b)
10. Sikhism: karma ensures we reap exactly what we sow in a precise and infallible manner so that the individual assumes total responsibility for their life.
11. Taoism: karma guides the "continuity of existence without limitation" (birth is not a beginning and death is not an end).
12. Theosophy: the beneficial or harmful effects one creates will return to them.
Secular Definitions of Karma
These are definitions of karma current in the mainstream which define karma without using the "karma" word.
1. We get what we agree to deserve. (Dr Phil)
2. What we fear, we create. (Dr Phil)
3. "Those who dwell in the past, rob the present. Those who ignore the past, destroy the future." (Chinese Proverb)
4. "People pay for what they do, and still more, for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it simply: by the lives they lead." (Edith Wharton)
5. "Though the mills of the God grind slowly, yet they grind exceedingly small: though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness He grinds them all." (Friedrich von Logan)
6. Karma is the operating system software of the Soul and runs the hardware - body, mind, emotions - provided by reincarnation.
7. It is the law of cause and effect.
Scientific Definitions of Karma
These are definitions of karma current in the scientific community which define karma without using the "karma" word.
1. Every action has an equal but opposite reaction. (Newton's Third Law)
2. The scientific method searches for cause and effect relationships in nature. Scientists design experiments so that changes to one item cause something else to vary in a predictable way.
Huna Hawaii: Understanding and applying the "seven principles" of Huna (the hidden knowledge for the deeper connection to one's own inner wisdom) to your life helps you to transmute karma.
1- ALOHA - "To love is to be happy with"
Karma teaches: "Everything begins and ends in love."
Expanding in love, joy, and awareness is why you have come to Earth. Why "Aloha" is so frequently spoken is because it is a reminder of the importance of love. Whether you are giving or receiving love, whether you are being or becoming love, whether you are learning what is like or unlike love, you are always in the midst of love.
2- IKE - "The world is what you think it is"
Karma teaches: "What is and is not like love is the great lesson."
You get what you see because that is what you believe will happen and because of what you have believed in during past lives. If you believe you are rich or poor, that belief will create your prosperity or your poverty. If you believe you are rich but cannot shake being poor, that is because you have past life karma demanding to be healed.
3- KALA - "There are no limits, everything is possible"
Karma teaches: "Challenges creates and drive evolution."
You have come to Earth to be, to do, and to have anything you want. Believing that everything is possible with enough work and putting (what others believe to be impossible, unrealistic, or unfeasible) ideas into action and into reality… that is what life on Earth is all about!
4- MAKIA - "Energy flows where attention goes"
Karma teaches: "What you bring hate to, you reincarnate into."
You are the creator of your life. You create it one thought, one belief, one attitude, and one action or one inaction at a time. What you have hated in a previous life determines the circumstances of your life now as well as how you can transcend the related past life karma.
5- MANAWA - "Now is the moment of power"
Karma teaches: "If now is unpleasing, the past must be healed."
If you are not as healthy, wealthy, or happy as you would like to be, past life karma is most often the cause. The whole point of past life healing is to empower you to create your life now exactly the way you would like it to be. All that takes is healing the related karma.
6- MANA - "All power comes from within"
Karma teaches: "Effects now flow from past actions/inactions."
You are the true power in your universe. Nothing happens to you except that you have invited it in by your past actions and/or past inactions or by present thoughts. No one can think and create for you: only you can think and create for yourself.
7- PONO - "Effectiveness is the measure of truth"
Karma teaches: "We only learn from our experiences."
The only way we know what is true is through our experiences. Experience is the first, best, and only teacher: it is the only one that everyone believes to be absolutely true. The only way one can believe in past lives is to have had their own experience of it.
http://www.healpastlives.com/future/rule/ruadefns.htm