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SUTRAS
THE NATURE OF KARMIC BONDS
119
give our negative emotion the opportunity to dissipate - our karma a chance to dissolve - and prevent possible repercussions any premature, impulsive action of ours may have.
Knowing that karma will affect us for at least a minimum time before its influence ceases, gives us vital information about its mechanism of dissolution.
If in the above example we would act spontaneously on our negative impulse and hurt the other person, we would attach ourselves to more karma of the same kind. Thus the very basis for our negative emotions would be reinforced and the reoccurrence of our uncomfortable feelings inevitably programmed for the future.
Yet if we know that any negative emotion is nothing other than the activation of our own karma and that this karma will affect us only for limited time, we can easily wait patiently until this time is over. When - after the respective period has passed (in this case 10 hours) - we notice that our negative emotions are gone, we then have confirmation that the tinge of our feelings is our very own responsibility and that it is useless to attribute the cause of our negative emotions to someone else.
Karma may not necessarily be active during the entire minimum period it is bound to our interactive karmic field.
SUTRA 19 214- Ret ll 93 11 Namogotrayorastau (19) - Karma that determines form and features of our body (nama)
and - Karma that determines the status we carry in our social envi
ronment (gotra) will remain bound to us for a minimum of 6 hours and 48 minutes (8 muhurtas). (19)
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