4 Facts of Hinduism

These four facts--karma, reincarnation, all-pervasive divinity and dharma--are the essence of theVedas and Agamas and the fabric of every Hindu's life. Speak of them to all who will listen. They are the heritage of all souls.

Karma

According as one acts, so does he become. One becomes virtuous by virtuous action, bad by bad action.

Yajur Veda, Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 4.4.5

Karma literally means "deed" or "act" and more broadly names the universal principle of cause and effect, action and reaction which governs all life. Karma is a natural law of the mind, just as gravity is a law of matter. Karma is not fate, for man acts with free will, creating his own destiny. The Vedas tell us, if we sow goodness, we will reap goodness; if we sow evil, we will reap evil. Karma refers to the totality of our actions and their concomitant reactions in this and previous lives, all of which determines our future. It is the interplay between our experience and how we respond to it that makes karma devastating or helpfully invigorating. The conquest of karma lies in intelligent action and dispassionate reaction. Not all karmas rebound immediately. Some accumulate and return unexpectedly in this or other births. 

Reincarnation

After death, the soul goes to the next world, bearing in mind the subtle impressions of its deeds, and after reaping their harvest returns again to this world of action. Thus, he who has desires continues subject to rebirth.

Yajur Veda, Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 4.4.6

Reincarnation, punarjanma, is the natural process of birth, death and rebirth. At death we drop off the physical body and continue evolving in the inner worlds in our subtle bodies, until we again enter into birth. Through the ages, reincarnation has been the great consoling element within Hinduism, eliminating the fear of death. We are not the body in which we live but the immortal soul which inhabits many bodies in its evolutionary journey through samsara. After death, we continue to exist in unseen worlds, enjoying or suffering the harvest of earthly deeds until it comes time for yet another physical birth. The actions set in motion in previous lives form the tendencies and conditions of the next. Reincarnation ceases when karma is resolved, God is realized and moksha, liberation, is attained. 

All-Pervasive Divinity

He is the God of forms infinite in whose glory all things are--smaller than the smallest atom, and yet the Creator of all, ever living in the mystery of His creation. In the vision of this God of love there is everlasting peace. He is the Lord of all who, hidden in the heart of things, watches over the world of time.

Krishna Yajur Veda, Shvetashvatara Upanishad 4.14-15

As a family of faiths, Hinduism upholds a wide array of perspectives on the Divine, yet all worship the one, all-pervasive Supreme Being hailed in the Upanishads. As Absolute Reality, God is unmanifest, unchanging and transcendent, the Self God, timeless, formless and spaceless. As Pure Consciousness, God is the manifest primal substance, pure love and light flowing through all form, existing everywhere in time and space as infinite intelligence and power. As Primal Soul, God is our personal Lord, source of all three worlds, our Father-Mother God who protects, nurtures and guides us. We beseech God's grace in our lives while also knowing that He/She is the essence of our soul, the life of our life. Each denomination also venerates its own pantheon of Divinities, Mahadevas, or "great angels," who were created by the Supreme Lord and who serve and adore Him. 

DharmaDharma yields Heaven's honor and Earth's wealth. What is there then that is more fruitful for a man? There is nothing more rewarding than dharma, nor anything more ruinous than its neglect.

Tirukural 31-32

When God created the universe, He endowed it with order, with the laws to govern creation. Dharma is God's di vine law prevailing on every level of existence, from the sustaining cosmic order to religious and moral laws which bind us in harmony with that order. Related to the soul, dharma is the mode of conduct most conducive to spiritual advancement, the right and righteous path. It is piety and ethi cal practice, duty and ob ligation. When we follow dharma, we are in conformity with the Truth that inheres and instructs the universe, and we naturally abide in closeness to God. Adharma is opposition to divine law. Dharma is to the individual what its normal development is to a seed--the orderly fulfillment of an inherent nature and destiny.

Karma & Relationships

In relationship, more accurately with intimate/committed relationship there is karmic compatibility. This means that both people have the same unresolved/unhealed/incomplete energy (not in every way of course – but in significant areas). It’s that pesky Law of Attraction again.

This ‘karmic’ energy usually manifests as a polarity, one person holds one end of the spectrum and the other person the opposite. In  manifest behaviour/characteristics, it then looks very different – opposite in fact. The relationship then dances around the ‘appearance’ of this duality as the two people seek resolution within themselves. When one steps out of this dance and chooses to find healing within themselves and without the drama of the dance (assuming it hasn’t been possible to find it there) the other is gifted by this the opportunity to do the same – or not. If not, they will invariably attract someone else to do the dance with again in the same energy polarity.

The side of the polarity held may change. For example abandoner/abandoned, in a new relationship the abandoner may switch to the abandoned polarity. Of course both are always present and this is the point of it all to reconcile them within oneself and become whole. A little less abstractly let us look at how abandonment wounding polarizes in relationships.

To experience abandoning there also has to be an abandoner. One person will predominantly hold one or other of these polarities. The abandoner may have a pattern of consistently ending relationships, sometimes threatening it, or acting it out over and over again. Other behavioral patterns will also be present, formed by the layering of other wounds and scripts arising from denial of the core wound.

The fear behind abandoning is being abandoned, and abandoning is a survival strategy to avoid what is feared. I’ll abandon you before you have a chance to abandon me. As a survival strategy this avoids the experience of being abandoned, but it is probably felt anyway as one relationship after another falls apart. Victimhood being a central script of separation consciousness, the abandoners mind will probably create stories of being abandoned to deny the motivating feelings behind their own pattern.

The abandoned is terrified of being left and does everything they can to avoid triggering the abandoning. In the experience of being abandoned by the abandoner, they may go into a survival strategy of completely withdrawing and disconnecting, they simply disappear into themselves. This, in turn, is experienced as abandonment by the abandoner – the very thing they hoped to avoid. Or they may do whatever they feel will placate the abandoner, saying and doing things they do not feel.

It is easy to see how it is that the abandoner holds in themselves the denial of abandonment. How, though, does the abandoned hold the abandoner within them? The answer when I realized it, freed me from the victim-hood of abandonment.

We cannot be abandoned unless we have already abandoned ourselves.

I cannot be abandoned unless I have already abandoned myself. When you realize what this means, not with your mind, but in your being, then you too will not fear the feeling of abandonment, because you will stay with yourself and feel it. In time, with practice, feel it and hold yourself in love, until you know the truth that you have never been abandoned.

An added complexity to this is when there is ‘personal karma’ meaning that some significant part of the creation of this karmic energy was between the same two people in other lives. This makes the whole situation much more sticky. In such  instances the karma makes the relationship sticky, meaning it’s hard to break out of even when dysfunctional. This can be because our soul wants the karma complete and will keep us in the fire to burn it off. Unfortunately we are not taught how any of this works and spend most of our energy  resisting the process and perpetuating the polarity of the karma we hold in the relationship, and suffering.

When we are able to shift our understanding to see and accept this, we liberate ourselves from ever being a victim, and understand that from this wider soul perspective, we constantly serve each other to create the experiences that will facilitate our healing and evolution. In the end there is no blame, and these roles are undertaken from a deeper place of love and karma in relationship is a gift.