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JANUARY, 1982
111
oneself or others (paritāpikikriyā) should be absent during penance, fasting and other religious observances. Otherwise, they will only lead to the influx of undesirable karma. Further, the religious observances should not involve any passion, pride, show, desire to accumulate good karma (punya), fear of undesirable karma, etc.
Pseudo-karma (nokarma)
In addition to the karma particles, there are pseudo-karma (nokarma). These basically constitute the environment and circumstances of a worldly soul such as home, school, temple, books, teacher, economic and political atmosphere, climatic conditions, medicine, etc. Sometimes, these prove to be the determining factors (nimitta) in certain events in the life of a worldly soul. Some pseudo-karmas are part of the environment of a living being that happen to be present just by chance, in many instances. Some are accumulated by the worldly soul as stated in Gommațasāra Karmakānda : (2)
dehodayeņa sahio jīvo āharadi kamma nokamamam padisamayam savvangam tattāyasapindaovva jalam
3
Due to the association of the body, karma and pseudo-karma are attracted by the soul every moment towards the entire body like a hot ball of iron in water.
The pseudo-karmas have been described in detail in Karmakānda, gāthās 69-86. The pseudo-karmas are not karmas but they appear to play the role of karmas. In other words, sometimes the course of events taking place in the presence of pseudo-karmas may lead to the delusion of fruition of karma particles. Thus many events in the life of a living being could be caused just by pseudo-karma and a person may incorrectly assume that such events are the consequences of karma. Let us consider a few examples. In a train accident or a natural disaster, all the people involved may feel that it was caused by their karma which may not be true. A student failing an examination may blame his undesirable karma while it could be just the mood of the examiner which may be responsible for his failure. A businessman making a profit or suffering a loss may feel that the profit or loss is the result of his karma but it could be due to the change in the economic or political factors beyond his control or just by chance. In the case of a person arriving late for an interview and not getting the job, it could be the traffic or rain storm and not his karma. A person may accumulate large amount of wealth as a result of a few intelligent decisions or some favourable chances or
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