Karma - Karma and Emotions

Karma and Emotions

The modern view of karma, devoid of any spiritual exigencies, obviates the need for an acceptance of reincarnation in Judeochristian societies and attempts to portray karma as a universal psychological phenomenon which behaves predictably, like other physical forces such as gravity.

Sakyong Mipham eloquently summed this up when he said;

Like gravity, karma is so basic we often don't even notice it.

This view of karma, as a universal and personally impacting emotional constant, correlates with Buddhist and Jungian understanding that volition (or libido, created from personal and cultural biases) is the primary instigator of karma. Any conscious thought, word and/or action, arising from a cognitively unresolved emotion (cognitive dissonance), results in karma.

Jung once opined on unresolved emotions and the synchronicity of karma;

'When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate.'

Popular methods for negating cognitive dissonance include meditation, metacognition, counselling, psychoanalysis, etc., whose aim is to enhance emotional self-awareness and thus avoid negative karma. This results in better emotional hygiene and reduced karmic impacts. Permanent neuronal changes within the amygdala and left prefrontal cortex of the human brain attributed to long-term meditation and metacognition techniques have been proven scientifically. This process of emotional maturation aspires to a goal of Individuation or self-actualisation. Such peak experience are hypothetically devoid of any karma (nirvana).

As Rabindranath Tagore most eloquently explained about the heat of human emotions;

Nirvana is not the blowing out of the candle. It is the extinguishing of the flame because day is come