karma blues

‘a priori’

I love this term!  Is this a philosophical explanation of karma?  Does your past decide your future?  Is your future nothing but your past?

A little excerpt taken from Wikipedia.

Eighteenth-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant  states, “although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience”^. According to Kant, a priori knowledge is transcendental, or based on the form of all possible experience, while a posteriori knowledge is empirical, based on the content of experience.

Kant states, “… it is quite possible that our empirical knowledge is a compound of that which we receive through impressions, and that which the faculty of cognition supplies from itself (sensuous impressions giving merely the occasion).”

Thus, unlike the empiricists, Kant thinks that a priori knowledge is independent of the content of experience; moreover, unlike the rationalists, Kant thinks that a priori knowledge, in its pure form, that is without the admixture of any empirical content, is knowledge limited to the deduction of the conditions of possible experience.

The literal meaning of karma is action. Action in this case needs to be defined not as an impulse at the physical level, but an impulse at a subtle or psychological level. Hence, thinking is action. Everything that you think creates vibrations and leaves impressions. The Buddha said that one’s whole life consists of one’s thoughts. This is the best definition of karma I have ever found. You caused the life that you are now living. You may think that the reality that you have created is very ugly, but at the moment you created it you thought that this was the best that could be accomplished. That’s why you created it. When did you create it? You created it in a number of previous births. The desire to create this reality was so intense that you ended up creating it. Nobody was responsible but you. Why did you do this? You did not know any better at the time you created it.

Once a psychological reality becomes a material reality, it is very difficult to undo it. I am not saying it is impossible, only very difficult. At the thought level, the reality is like water, but at the material level, it has become like ice, very solid and very real. It takes time to diffuse it. The reality that has become material is called prarabdha in Sanskrit.