When properly understood is a way to human free will
This concept of karma and reincarnation axiomatic in different and diversified schools philosophy and religion in India except the materialist (Charuvakas). This is very profound philosophy. One can notice that Buddhist do not accept the existence of permanent self or soul and God and Vedantists uphold the existence of God, soul or self, yet both with tremendously diverse views still accept that there is karma, birth and rebirth.
So this idea is common to Indian thought. But strange thing to notice is there is resistance to this idea in the west yet there is no logical argument in the history of western thought. But in the Christian thought or Judaism there is always the belief of some existence after death of the body like immortal soul which further goes to heaven or hell. If this is already accepted or even understand the claim that we do exist after death then this is just an extension of the law of karma and reincarnation. It is not difficult to understand if you believe in existence of self or soul after death then there is possibility of karma and rebirth is almost inevitable.
‘Law of Karma’ is a philosophy of human free will
In fact the ‘Law of Karma’ is a philosophy of human free will but quite often Indians are charged with fatalistic kind of civilization, but if we take a deeper look at karma it is what we ourselves are today is what we have generated in the past but it’s not fixed by some unknown force. That means, what we are experiencing today is what we ourselves created, as ‘we reap what we sow’, this is what actually mean by “what we will be in the future is in our hands today”. So there is always the modicum of free will, but karma can only generate and determines a broad outlines of our lives but how we react to it depends more on individual than karma which does not generate every little movement of our minds or thoughts or direction that life takes.
So we have freedom, wherever there is mind and intellect lit up by consciousness there is freedom. We have the power to make our destiny. This gives the message that, take the whole responsibility upon oneself and work out to your destiny. In the words of Swami Vivekananda on Karma “If what we think, we say and what we do that generates karma if our bad karma is there like tigers waiting to pounce on us, never fear because all the good that you have thought, felt and done is waiting with the power of a thousand angels to come to your help. This is the actual understanding of the law of karma”.
Thank You, Juturi Ravi Kumar Reddy