Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Karma as a manifestation of divine law and grace - pg. 296 -


The first part of this reflection is merely me trying to contextualize nirvana and moka in relation to karma. Recapping our class work and reading. After that, I get into my questions regarding a specific school of Hindu thought which holds that karma is a principle of liberation (on page 296 for reference).

In class we discussed that in the Buddhist perspective, both “our” world and “the” world are fueled by karma and intentions. These intentions drive the cycle of causality, and contribute to change, which thus informs dukkha / “unsatisfactoriness”. The karmic nature of the world is confined within the cyclical time of samsara, and nirvana, in comparison, is thought to be exempt from causal relations. It is a mental resistant but not an internal one -- it does not depend on sentient beings for its existence. The Buddhist nirvana and Hindu mokṣa seem to share many commonalities- they both exist independent of space and time, they both result in the cessation of change, and they are both free from experience and distress. The differences seem to lie in the path and in the nature of the soul, if returning to some fabric of the universe exists or occurs. In Buddhism, there is no return to an essence. There is only freedom from causality. This brings me to my main question/ point of unclarity: In The Hindu World, Klostermaier discusses the different ways Hinduism has conceptualized the way to freedom, and he states that one school emphasizes liberation through ritual practice alone. This same school understands karma as “one of the manifestations of divine law and grace,” in which “karma is a principle of liberation together with the grace of Siva” (296). That “Bhaskara maintains that karma is a direct means to salvation”  (296). How does this idea of karma relate to our previous definition of karma as causality or action, and as the force that one must forego to achieve liberation (in Hindu terms)? Does karma in this context mean something different? Or does it insinuate the same properties but perhaps is used in a different way? Is it a positive concept or a negative one in the context (to me it seems positive)?

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