Do you feel that at times everything in your life is going wrong? You did your best and yet everything went the wrong way. You tried making lemonade when life gave you lemons but instead you got dillemmanade! Yes, the dilemma drink of life. And, while sipping this drink, epiphany strikes. Simple. Your misery was your bad karma. Karma is life throwing you the boomerang – what goes around comes around: the bedrock of all the major ancient philosophies of life — Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism and Taoism.
The good news is that there are ways to neutralise bad karma and cultivate benevolent Karma.
Literally translated karma means ‘action’. In reality, our Karmas are tested by our actions. Actions begin from our thoughts. Changing our thinking, therefore can improve our actions. Actions which don’t invoke our bad Karma of the yester life, yet boost good Karma. We do have the power within us to change our way of thinking and somewhere our destiny. Developing a more positive outlook towards life is the beginning.
By replacing greed, envy and anger with more balanced and compassionate thinking; we inflict less grief to ourselves and others. Recalibrating our thoughts to this zen state of mind is easier said than done given what all we have to go through and contend with in our lives — from Donald Trump to demonetisation.
However, there are tools such as meditation and chanting that work towards correcting our brain activity by sending good vibrations. These vibrations can alter the energy aura around us. And taking this a step further, if we keep others in our thoughts while meditating we are able to send this positive energy and goodwill to them and our mindset becomes one of goodwill, our actions become kinder and we start to cultivate good Karma.
Practices such as meditation and chanting require some commitment and strong inclination to start and sustain them.
But salvation can also be discovered in the day to day and proximate. Food, music or the people around us can help us reinterpret our inner being.
Epicureans were not very off the mark. The connect between mood and food is gaining widespread popularity. Secret of Good Mood is Good Food as one of India’s oldest restaurant Karims tells us. Choose organic, local, carb, non-carb, paleolithic, vegan, Jain, Hindu vegetarian, Hindu non-vegetarian if it presses your buttons then you are on the way to good karma.
Some would argue that music will get you there even faster. Music after all nourishes the soul. Why is that all the religious places in the world use music as a means to communicate with devotees, higher power or the inner divine? Good music resonates with positive energy that is infectious and, yes karmic.
And despite many wrong turns, one-way streets or cul de sac in life there was some good karma in your account for you to hear about the Sacred, the festival meant to invoke your inner divine through the various traditions of sacred music, spiritual practices such as healing, meditation and yoga and orientation to good food with Navdanya cooking workshops. A feast of spirituality in one of India’s oldest and most spiritual town, Pushkar. So, nurture your karma through yoga, music and meditation or simply soak up the music and positive energy of Pushkar.
– Sangeeta Matta Verma and Julie Al-zoubi