Karmic Accounting – The 3 Karmas
All actions have a result. In particular, dharmic actions produce a non-perceptible result called ‘punya’. Whereas adharmic actions produce non-perceptible ‘papa’. This punya and papa gets stored in your invisible ‘bank account’ to be paid out later in life. Punya will manifest later in your life as unexpected pleasure, and papa as pain. So are pleasure and pain experienced by you? Are they perceptible? Yes, of course! But is the cause of this pleasure/pain perceptible to you? No, because punya and papa is not possible to see (adrsta). That’s why the Veda has to teach us about punya and papa, else we would not know it’s there.
So, how many types of punya/papa (Karma Phala) are there? Tattvabodha unfolds 3 types:
1. Sancita (collected in the past)
Sancita Karma Phala is all the unexperienced punya/papa accumulated by you due to actions you did over countless previous lifetimes, which are stored in your karmic ‘bank account’ waiting to be experienced by you in future births. This sancita ‘bank account’ of punya/papa can only be exhausted through you experiencing pleasure/pain. How do you experience pleasure and pain ? Through you’re the medium of your physical body. Therefore you require a physical body, to experience fructifying punya and papa. So sancita is the reason why you take birth in the 1st place! i.e. sancita makes you take birth in order to experience pleasure and pain, in order to exhaust your stored up punya/papa (sancita karma phala). But in this karmic bank account, only a particular set of punya/papa is ready to manifest before birth. Just like if you plant 100 different seeds in the soil, after some time, only a particular set of seeds are ready to fructify, not all the seeds. So the set of karma phala ready to fructify and become the cause of birth in this physical particular body is called ‘Prarabdha’…
2. Prarabdha (already begun)
Prarabdha Karma Phala is just a sub-set of Sancita. This sub-set is the Sancita karma phala which is ready and ripe to fructify, just like a seed becomes ready to fructify after some time. Once this set of punya/papa is ready to fructify, it will generate a particular birth into a physical body for you (subtle body). So prarabdha will determine: birth body, parentage, location of birth, time of birth, death, health conditions, financial conditions, cultural environment, spiritual environment, etc. This is all determined by Prarabdha. This explains the disparity between different beings from birth. Some are born healthy, some are not. Some are born wealthy, some are not. Why? Prarabdha. This doesn’t mean you cannot change your prarabdha, no not at all. You can certainly change prarabdha with your free will – we must try to better ourselves as best we can and use our free will positively. Once all prarabdha has been experienced or ‘exhausted’ as pleasure and pain in this life, what happens? Death. Then you (subtle body) move onto your next birth according to your next set of prarabdha.
3. Agami (coming in the future)
Too further complicate this already complex karmic equation – as we experience life (due to prarabdha), we are simultaneously doing more actions in the world. These actions being done right now, will produce results in the form of Punya and Papa. This punya/papa was not from your past ‘bank account’ of sancita or prarabdha. It is new punya/papa being created now in this life. This new punya/papa is called Agami Karma Phala. Agami goes and joins sancita, at the point of death.
The above 3 reveal an endless karmic cycle (samsara):
sancita > prarabdha > birth > pleasure/pain, actions and new punya/papa > death > sancita > prarabdha > birth > etc (repeat)
When does this cycle end? When I gain Moksha and become a Jivanmukta (http://advaita-academy.org/blogs/who-is-liberated/).
Om,
Aditya.
