Karma and Reincarnation

Table of Contents

Editor's Introduction vii
Preface I
Introduction 3
1 Individual Karma: Life and Death I 1
2 Karma: A Definition 28
3 The Varieties of Karma: Marital and Family Karma 40
4 The Varieties of Karma: National, Racial and Geographic Karma 61
5 Towards a Theory of Karma 85
6 Transcending Karma 111
 

Conclusion 129
Afterword 130

Appendix A: Questions about Karma and Reincarnation 137
Appendix B: Other Publications by Dr Hiroshi Motoyama 146

Index 147

 

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Marital Karma: Varieties of Bonding 

The sexual bonding of two individuals who commit to each other as a couple, usually in the form of marriage, is the prerequisite to birth and therefore the foundation of family karma. Generally, it can occur in five different ways:

 

1 Two beings are linked together by the knots of their previous karmic relationship, whether these knots be caused by attachment to their mutual happiness or to their mutual suffering.
2 Two beings unite in the higher level of their individual spirits, in the causal dimension, a level which always remains in an immaculate condition.
3 A unified entity in a relatively high (divine) spiritual dimension splits in two, manifests as a man and a woman on this earth, and the two marry.
4 Two beings are temporarily bound together by materialistic, physical passion.
5 Two beings of deep religious faith are united through the intercession of a Higher Power.
 

The fundamental principle of 'self-attachment' has two basic aspects. The first of these is that the 'self' begins to believe that it is all that exists of its being. The second aspect is that the 'self' believes it is unique and creates the distinction 'that others are different from self''. This is the state of consciousness that most ordinary human beings function within, and is the level upon which the most common type of marital bonding occurs.

As soon as individuals begin to function from the position of 'self', karma is produced. Good and evil, happiness and unhappiness, and a myriad of other distinctions are born. Each of these distinctions is created by the 'self', a 'self' that stumbles blindly onwards, completely unaware of the increasing amount of karma that it is accumulating. The 'self' mistakenly believes that it is acting freely under its own volition, ignorant that the law of cause and effect is ceaselessly working through it. Consciousness, entrapped by the 'self'', is unable to attain self-awakening.  

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