INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

the remaining on earth, before it reaches a human birth and is given opportunities to
consciously improve the future through righteous acts. A middle-aged Sikh woman
exemplified:
It is in the human birth you can recite the name of God and not in other
births. The person who performs good actions, recites the name of
God, like Sukhmani Sahib, and goes to gurdwara, will get rid of sins and
improve possibilities for the future. The person who does not do this
will go back through 8.4 million births. 682
Nearly all divided the concept of karma into two broad categories of good and bad
action, translated into intentional deeds, and emphasized that humans have limited
capacity to know whether their actions will be meritorious or not. Soteriological beliefs,
as the concluding chapter will elaborate further, often involve the notion of the
human soul’s travel to a divine court after death where divine accountants implement
a balancing of karma and God pronounces a judgment that will regulate the soul to a
new rebirth on earth. From a Sikh viewpoint the laws and regulation of karma are
ultimately in the hands of God and only the supreme divine has authority to evaluate
the qualities of human action. Interrelated with the system of karma is also the notion
of a human fate which follows the divine will and order. Everyone must reap the
fruits of the one’s actions judged by God and thus when humans enter the world
their fate will be written on their forehead. The Sikhs speak of this fate in terms of a
divine “writing” (likhna) scripted in the court of God and in which all aspects of a
human life are noted.
These two cosmological factors ‒ the effect of karma and the divine predestination
‒ provide the framework for religious interpretations of current human conditions.
Why people are struck by illness, or in other ways unjustly meet with sufferings,
is the result of karma from previous lives according to the written destiny. Sikhs
will often explain human life in terms of a continuous oscillation between sukh, or
“happiness” when humans experience peace and prosperity, and dukh, or “sadness”
when dissonance and suffering shift the helm of life. Except for guru-oriented individuals
who have received the divine grace and already “burnt” their karma, both
sukh and dukh are inevitable parts of life for ordinary humans. While the former condition
is frequently spoken of as a gift of God, dependent on the divine kindness
(kripa) and will (iccha), the causes of dukh is the consequence of humans’ previous
karma that may be expressed in a variety of ways. All sorts of minor and major
physical and mental ailments, financial troubles, grief and dejection, problems with
one’s partner or others in the society are just a few examples of afflictions encompassed
in the notion of dukh. What appears to be injustice in the social world actually
mirrors a divine justice and order, according to which all creatures will have to suffer
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Others thought they would end up being born as a dog, snake, insect, or face more troubles in
a human rebirth in case God judged their actions as bad.
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Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008