The popularization of the concept of Karma in Western societies could be traced again to the work of the 19th Century orientalists beneath the affect of Theosophists of the interval. The primary recorded utilization was in 1827 by H. T. Colebrooke in an article revealed within the Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society. Nevertheless, Karma has at all times been a central tenet within the historic teachings within the East, each within the historic traditions of Hindus in addition to within the philosophy of the Buddhist reformers of Hinduism. It’s a timeless instructing that has caught on within the West, and which now turn into a part of the vernacular in English. The favored definition – as in Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary – defines karma (typically Capitalized) as: the power generated by an individual’s actions held in Hinduism and Buddhism to perpetuate transmigration and in its moral penalties to find out the character of the particular person’s subsequent existence. Robert Crosbie offered this rationalization for Karma:
“Philosophically, we have to assume either that this is a universe of law or a universe of chaos, chance, accident. In fact, we know perfectly well that it is not a universe of chance, because everything we use and understand we see to be under law; and where something befalls us, the cause of which we cannot discern, we none the less assume a cause and try to find it. We cannot even imagine an effect without a cause. The first thing that the student has to learn to perceive in everything and in every circumstance is the reign of law. We recognize law in part, but not in full, as it should be recognized. Mistaking our own nature, by the very power of that nature, we set in motion causes that produce the results we now feel, and then call those results by such terms as “future,” “destiny,” “likelihood,” or the “will of God.” The operation of law to most minds means a fate which befalls us wherein we are benefited or afflicted, but over which we have no control, and in producing which we had no hand. Yet the operation of law can be easily understood. It has been enunciated by all the great Teachers of the past as meaning action and its consequent reaction. Let us remember that these are not two separate and unrelated things – Cause and Effect, Action and Reaction, are the two aspects of one and the same thing. In Sanskrit, both these aspects are included in the one word, Karma. Karma has been recognized in the Christian scriptures, with which we are most familiar, in the expression, “In any respect a person soweth, that shall he additionally reap.” By consequence, we should easily see that whatever a man is reaping, that he must have sown. Once we get the conception that actions do not produce themselves, that law does not operate of itself, we can see that we cause actions and experience their reactions; that it is we who set up causes and feel their effects. Cause and effect, action and reaction – the operation of law – are seen to be in ourselves, not outside. There is no action unless there is a being to make it and to feel its effects. Everything that happens to any being has its antecedent cause, and that cause lies in some past action of the being himself. In other words, law rules on every plane of being, and every being of every grade is under that law.”
