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Do I need to pay for teen second life?

Why do we need to take another birth to pay the karma of past life?

  • We do not remember what we did in our past lives and what we are being punished for. We don't decide where to born, who will be the parents, relatives and lot of other things? If People do really bad deeds, they should get punishment in the present life, not in the next birth. At least they will realize that they did wrong. Getting a new body & soul and paying the past karma is not the solution. If somebody has done very bad and spoiled somebody's life and if we don't see him/her getting punishment for that in the present life, the suffering persons life will be waste. Then its a Endless journey, doing bad/good karma, coming again and again in this World.

  • Answer:

    Thanks Anon for A2A :) Short: Karmic balance is associated with the soul, not body. Multiple births are a means to start afresh - you are born as a child, having no undesirable qualities like ego, greed, etc. So this is an opportunity given to your eternal self to now engage in the welfare of the society and do good Karma. Most people again fall prey to ego, lust, pride, etc and hence keep cycling in the birth/death process. Long: The question description raises various questions. The same were raised in comments on this answer: where I explain the notion of What you sow is What you reap. I would first give an overview and then try to address these questions. Body and Clothes = Soul and Body I will start the answer with a very simple example that would help you better understand the rest of the answer. dehino 'smin yatha dehe, kaumaram yauvanam jara, tatha dehantara-praptir, dhiras tatra na muhyati Translation- As the embodied soul continuously passes, in this body, from boyhood to  youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. A  self-realized soul is not bewildered by such a change. - BhagavadGita As  It Is. Consider the clothes you buy. You do various activities wearing these - you play, go for shopping, sleep, eat and so on. In the process they get dirty, worn out, old, etc. What do you do? If the clothes get dirty, do you keep washing them? Again and again? Or after certain point you change them - buy new ones? Your body remains the same body (as in its the same physical entity), but the outer clothing keeps on changing. It doesn't happen that the clothes that got dirty were washed again and again and again. The same happens with the human life. The eternal entity is the soul, or atman and the physical body is just its clothing, which gets dirty, worn out and old. The soul eventually discards the old body and takes up a new one - fresh, young, energetic. Now, the point to note is that the Karma account is associated with the soul - not the body. So the effects of one's Karma stretches over various births. For eg, suppose you win the Oscar. You are really happy. Now you decide to change the clothes - wear more party-like! The clothes changes, but you still feel happy about the Oscars. Your happiness does not end with the change of dress. Similarly, the Karmic balance is associated with the soul, not the body. Your body may feel its unjustified that the effect of the karma would come in the next birth, but your soul doesn't give a damn - just like your body doesn't care when changing clothes. What is punishment? The question says that "If People do really bad deeds, they should be punished in the present life, not in the next birth". Ok. But how do you know that the person is not suffering in this birth? For eg, suppose X breaks Y's leg, so would you consider X being punished only when his leg gets broken? How do you know X's girlfriend did not dump him? Or maybe he just lost money in shares? There are so many ways that he can suffer - emotionally, mentally, psychologically, financially, etc. If X doesn't suffer physically, it does not mean that he did not get his punishment - it's only that you did not realize this. Why the Karmic Balance cannot be Covered in a single Lifetime? This is because you are always under the influence of ego, lust, materialism and the like. You are free to choose your actions, but they always tend to get influenced by the above factors. The result, you get greedy, attached to results, egoistic, etc. So your negative Karma keeps on increasing. Suppose you commit a sin and bath in Ganges. If you assume it removes all the bad Karma, then after that you should do good stuff, or atleast neutral so that your balance is positive. But this doesn't happen. Even while bathing, you continuously think about how to cheat someone to earn extra money, how to take revenge and so on. So even Ganges cannot wash away your sins. Even after you suffer, you dont let go of ego and other undesirable qualities, and hence you always have some negative balance left for the next life. Why Multiple Births and no Past memories? It's a general tendency to first think negative - in this case multiple births being means of completing punishments. This is not true. Multiple births are a means to start afresh - you are born as a child, having no ego, greed, etc. So this is an opportunity given to your eternal self to now engage in the welfare of the society and do good Karma. Most people again fall prey to ego, lust and hence keep cycling in the birth/death process. But this new birth gives you a chance to avoid ego and do good and improve your Karmic balance. Why the sufferer should not expect culprit to get punished? The questions says "If somebody has spoiled other's life and if he doesn't see him/her getting punished for that in the present life, the sufferer's life will be a waste". No, not at all. Bhagavad Gita says: The person who treats happiness and sadness as same, who is devoid of anger, pride, ego, feeling of revenge, etc - that person is called a learned man. So you should not carry any hard feelings towards anyone. Treat this as an interplay of Karmas of various people. Be positive, think positive and act positive :) What you reap is what you sow: To get more knowledge about Karma, my other answers:

Shikhar Agarwal at Quora Visit the source

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Why do you think it's true?we have to pay for our deeds and karma in this birth itself.1. By Brahmans:The thought was advertised by brahamans to make sure they can use this opportunity to gain some client and get  money. 2.Parents/older generation: if sometimes people don't know how to control the bad behaviour or do not know what to say than its a good analogy as it does not require proof.3.Escapism:This is good to believe as for any bad thing happened ,its easy to blame the deeds in previous birth than interospect and find the problem .So in short I will say the race is long and in the ends with yourself(SCOPE:The current Birth)

Archana Aditi

Never Ever listen to HUMANS. you dont know weather it is true or not! What you can do is be good, do good, and die! No worries!! ;)

Bharath Rama

The concept of rebirth comes from common sense observed law of nature.Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.If you do any deed just a moment before you die,then when should you get the reaction.I think just after death,so in the next life.Reaction is must as nature's law is perfect and so we need to take birth to pay the debts of karma in the past life.

Anonymous

Once I had a discussion with my friend about karma and the concept of rebirth. We concluded something that is easily agreeable than all like soul/body crap! Seriously after death you're gone.  Karma as a matter of fact doesn't exist. Things just happen. They won't happen because of any reason. You get up early in the morning to see incidents like a wife brutally murdered by her husband...mother took away the life of her children...a minor brutally raped in broad daylight...a 2 year old girl died of cancer blah blah...and if you give an explanation that it happened because of her karma or past deeds, there is nothing stupid than believing that. They help you move on and run with others... There is not a single ounce of Karma behind this stuff. This is a gloomy thought indeed but a fact. So, live the way you want to. Coming to the concept of rebirth: I believe it is related to something that you truly believed in...something for which you worked hard all throughout your life. It can be anything may be a principles/morals/technologies/theories/beliefs say like non-violence...or may be violence, or may be technology or whatever. If someone ends up with the same things what you believe in that is what people might be misintrepreting as reincarnation or rebirth. Indeed it's a reincarnation/rebirth of not you but your ideas/ beliefs. You're gone. Your ideas and beliefs if exists, exists --- may be the metaphysical entity called soul...more believable. Not much of a writer. Does it make sense? :D

Anonymous

Short answer : To understand the karmic-theory properly (i.e., as it was meant to be understood) a change in perspective is required. 'Birth' or 'death' is an event when looked at from 'I am the body' perspective. The alternate perspective is 'I am NOT the body' (NOTE: what 'I am' or 'Who am I' is the mystery are all trying to resolve). If one accepts the 'I am NOT the body' perspective, all the questions regarding karma and karmic-theory resolve themselves. Each so called 'birth' becomes the start of another 'role' being played by the 'embodied' in its journey to unravel the mystery of 'Who am I'. Till that answer is found the chain of 'roles' are continued. So, if one wishes to end the so called clutches of karma (and rebirth), IMHO, the simplest, way is to change one's perspective from 'I am the body' to 'I am NOT the body'.

Gopal Coimbatore

Dear you are a elevated soul and you are knowing the meaning of your life and the core of all responsibilities you are suppose to do. You must be knowing to explore a little bit the nature and the task to do, which are in abundance and many lives will pass only wondering to know the possibilities. You have past life natural aptitude to explore all this and great to see a fertile brain is on such job. God bless you.

Prakash Chandra Mishra

Because some kind of bad things cannot be paid in just one life. For example if you kill 2 or more persons. Your life can pay for only one death. Of course I am being very simplistic here, but this is something to think about. It is very complex!

Ronaldo Akamine

Your first misunderstanding is you are saying coming and going. No body comes and goes. No body is ever born. You are simply taking a tiny little bite and trying to define or understand the taste.Taste it fully completely and then you will know the true taste. Such wrong questions will never occur after that.

Kris Iyer

/* * File: Life.java * Author: The God * * Previously, I (The God) was used to write the "lives" in Assembly and C * But, currently I use Java, because it reduces the complexity on hand * * Also, it's platform independent (i.e., Life written for one planet could easily be run on another planet) * */ import java.util.*; public class Life { // This is the main method which remains active throughout one's life span public static void main( String[] args ) { // List of tasks that one performs until his death List<String> tasks = new ArrayList<String>( ); // Each task carries some predefined weight Map<String, Integer> taskToWeight = new HashMap<String, Integer>( ); // Overall value earned by an individual throughout his life int valueEarned = 0; // Predefined threshold value as well as dynamic value which one needs to earn // It is a crucial parameter in determining whether one will have to take another birth or not int valueToBeEarned = Integer.parseInt( args[0] ); . . . // Get tasks performed . . . // Calculate final value earned by this fellow for( String task : taskToWeight.keySet() ) { valueEarned += taskToWeight.get(task); } // Adjust valueToBeEarned valueToBeEarned = valueToBeEarned - valueEarned; if(valueToBeEarned <= 0) { // Congratulations!! // You have been freed permanently from life-death cycle // Exiting from main() return; } else { // Whether you like it or not you will have to have a birth again // By the way, don't worry // I'm clearing all your previous memory, so that you won't perceive it as your rebirth String[] newArgs = { new Integer( valueToBeEarned ).toString() }; // Calling main() again with a hope that you will get rid out of this cycle main( newArgs ); } } }

Anonymous

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