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Re: social justice

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g_prabhu_srinivas • January 20, 2002 


--- In bhakti-list@y..., "Krishna Kashyap"  wrote:

>karma theory means freedom which is given by God and is dependent on 
>God. how can freedom be dependent?. It is like a cow tied to a 
>pillar with a very long rope. the cow has freedom to move around 
>within the radius equal to or less than the length of the rope, but 
>constrained when it wants to go beyond the radius. Like that a soul 
>has freedom to move about but restricted in certain ways.

the tied-cow explanation is due to sri ramakrishna. but if one were 
to believe that the world is governed by laws of causation (as the 
original poster had supposed to be the theory of karma), one has to 
rule out any external agency - including god - having the ability to 
govern our fate. consequently, this was the impetus that buddhism and 
jainism needed to bring the concept of atheism, fatalism and the non-
existence of the hindu trinity. in my humble opinion, this is a very 
wrong way of looking at the theory of karma.

karma consists of three parts - one accounting for our initial state 
(which is irrevocable - which is commonly referred to as "fate"), 
another accounting for our past (which can be eradicated by prayers), 
and the last part accounting for our future actions (which is 
completely in our hands and is in no way related to "fate"). this 
last part of karma is the exercise of our free will and proves that 
it is god and not "fate" that is omni-potent.

regards,
prabhu.





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