Primary Essay: Our Karmic Plate
Our Karmic Plate
Finding Liberation through Practice
Understanding Karma: A Dynamic Path to Freedom
Most of the time, when we think of Karma, we imagine a static, fixed concept, like ‘destiny’ or ‘fate.’ Pop culture understandings of karma often imply that our karma is something happening to us. However, the yogic tradition teaches that we have the ability to dissolve our karma—or create more of it—depending on the fullness of our awareness. As Sri Shambhavananda teaches:
“Meditation is a remedy for our tensions. It helps us peel away layer after layer of misunderstanding, of pain or rejection, and all the things that limit us as we go through our lives. Meditation is about freeing ourselves from this karma, or these accumulated energy patterns and blows that we have taken in our lives. Meditation purifies our accumulated karmas” (SP, 91).
Applying your meditation practice to the karmic circumstances of your life is how you begin to dissolve the bindings of your karma. As we develop the capacity to apply our practice in all moments—good, challenging, and mundane—we start to dissolve our karma one bite at a time. As Swami Rudrananda writes in his book Spiritual Cannibalism:
“We must come to understand that everything is part of perfection and must be taken in in a state of surrender; it must be digested and transcended. Life must be consumed whole—with all its tensions, pain, and joy. Only by surmounting a situation can we achieve the understanding, the nourishment, that that situation offers.”
Karma and Causality
To better understand karma, it’s helpful to zoom out and gain perspective. In the yogic tradition, karma is much like the scientific concept of Cause and Effect, or the Principle of Causality, which states, “Every observable effect must have a preceding cause.” This means that for every phenomenon or change in our reality, there must be some factor or event that initiated it. Essentially, both karma and the law of causality exist to teach us that nothing happens without a prior cause.
The key difference between the scientific explanation of causality and the yogic explanation of karma lies in the source of the causes themselves. While science often focuses on external factors, yogic philosophy points to our samskaras—our deep-seated patterns, impressions, and conditioning on a subtle, causal layer of our being—as the roots of our external reality. As Sri Shambhavananda explains:
“For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Because we live in a certain state—mentally, physically, and emotionally—we create a particular type of energy. We carry the pattern of that energy with us from our past lives into our present lives” (SP, 91).
This means that we carry a certain way of being that continually causes the same reality to take effect. Often, this idea is simplified as the phrase, “We create our own reality.” While this statement can be confusing if taken literally—I didn’t create this computer, I didn’t create the moon—it makes sense when applied to our inner experience. For example, the way you relate to your work on the computer or the way you relate to nature is the true effect you are creating.
Karma as a Call to Practice
Two people can have completely different experiences while performing the same action, like sweeping the floor. At the ashram, I have seen this countless times. For some, it is an act of selfless service; for others, it feels like a chore. Karma exists to motivate us to use our everyday circumstances as opportunities to practice—to bring more consciousness to our actions until we derive joy from our own state of being. As Sri Shambhavananda teaches:
“When we find that state of being that all the scriptures, all the yogis, and all the great teachers of the world have talked about—when we find that internally—we become supremely free. We are able to love more, be more open, and experience life more fully. It is as if we have found another world. The problems don’t go away. Everything is not peachy keen all the time. We have found the way to be—the way to exist in this world—that is enlightened compared to where we have come from” (SP, 92).
Our work with karma is the slow and steady task of applying our practice to the everyday karmic arena in which we live. This can feel overwhelming, as our lives often feel overwhelming. But if we observe our reality in smaller, bite-sized pieces, it becomes easier to approach karma as a force for growth.
The Practice of Digesting Karma
Swami Rudrananda frequently described spiritual practice as the act of “digesting our karma,” by ‘consuming our life whole”. As the earlier quote from Rudi illustrates, food, eating, and growth are recurring metaphors for understanding karma. Perhaps this is because our karma, much like our bodies, is what ties us to our physical existence, as Sri Shambhavananda teaches, “we all have karma that we need to work out”(SP, 94). While food metaphors can be triggering for some, they are used here in a universal and utilitarian sense—because regardless of our personal relationship with food, we all share two simple truths: we must eat to survive, and we all have different tastes in food. These are the only essential ideas in this metaphor. With that said, if food is a trigger for you, then I apologize and hope that you can extract the essence of this metaphor in a way that is helpful for you. I am also open to suggestions for other metaphors that I may be able to use later, please reach out and let me know.
To better understand the subtleties of how Karma is defined in the Yogic tradition, you can imagine preparing a meal. You have a pantry and refrigerator filled with food, but this isn’t just any food—it’s your food, the results of hundreds of past actions performed toward the goal of happiness. Each item in your pantry represents an impression or experience that you’ve accepted or rejected in the past—things you are literally carrying with you. As described in A Sacred Journey:
“Kundalini yoga describes the sushumna, or central channel, corresponding to the spine in the physical body, as the place where our unmanifest karma exists. Your causal body is the storehouse of all your impressions and latent energies” (A Sacred Journey, 39).
Sanchita Karma: The Warehouse of Past Actions
This energetic “pantry” is where your past impressions sit, known as Sanchita Karma—a warehouse of past actions stored in your causal body. As the quote says, this is where our ‘unmanifest’ karma exists, the ingredients of future karmic dishes that we will be served. This karmic pantry extends beyond this lifetime, reaching back to last week, last year, and even past lifetimes.
This is why meditation can often brings up thoughts, cravings, or tensions that seem disconnected from our current context. Trying to analyze these occurrences only creates more thoughts and karmic bindings, which is why we tread softly when analyzing the mind. As Sri Shambhavananda teaches:
“You know how people sometimes do fasts and cleanses to get rid of physical toxins? We also have psychic toxins. They are the old patterns, from God knows when, that we carry around with us…We’ll find ourselves thinking, ‘Oh, it is time for a cigarette,’ even though we don’t smoke. Our job is not to analyze that occurrence, nor to wonder where it came from…If you can breathe into it and release it, it is a kind of a purge.”
The vast and deep pantry of Sanchita Karma is the source of our current reality, just like your actual pantry is the source of your dinner. Not everything from the pantry fits on your plate at once, which is why Linda Johnson writes in The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Hinduism: “Only a portion of our total Karma manifests in any one lifetime.” And even within our lifetime you can probably reflect on thousands upon thousands of different karmic plates you have been served in your life. Each day, even, is a different plate of karma we must consume from dawn to dusk.
Prarabdha Karma: What’s on Your Plate
The portion of karma served to you in this lifetime, or during a single day, is known as Prarabdha Karma. Your current circumstances—your job, relationships, and environment—make up this plate of karma. As Sri Shambhavananda explains:
“Our lives—including whatever job, whatever career, whatever relationship we are in—are all manifestations of our Karma.”
Prarabdha Karma is defined as “That portion of our Karma destined to play out in our present lifetime.” Because of this, it can feel as though our karma is predetermined, like a fixed menu with no room for adjustment. However, the yogic tradition teaches that it is our consciousness that determines the “price” we must pay for our karma. Sri Shambhavananda often reflects in Satsang that a daily meditation practice has the power to scorch many karmic seeds before they can sprout, allowing us to pay a “wholesale price” for our karma rather than “retail.” While Prarabdha Karma may be inevitable, the degree to which it impacts our lives depends entirely on the depth of our spiritual practice.
An ancient metaphor describes Prarabdha Karma as an arrow shot into the sky—eventually, it must come down. Whether it strikes you deeply in the thigh or merely nicks your pinky toe depends on your daily practice. For instance, the Konalani Ashram experienced a significant karmic event in 2020. After years of peacefully running teacher trainings, a neighbor reported to the County that the ashram lacked the necessary permits. As a result, the County shut down the ashram to outside visitors. Under normal circumstances, this could have been devastating. However, a few months later, the global Covid pandemic forced the entire world to shut down. Suddenly, offering yoga teacher trainings online—a concept previously unheard of—became not only viable but widely accepted. The ashram pivoted immediately to online trainings and has continued ever since. As of this writing, we are still in the process of building our new facility and hope to reopen soon. This experience illustrates the profound teaching that while the karmic arrow must land, the nature of its impact is shaped by our practice.
Working Through Karma
One of the most important lessons about working with karma is that no matter how challenging a situation may seem, consistent practice helps us find a way through it. As Sri Shambhavananda teaches:
“Some seeds can’t be completely scorched. These seeds represent Prarabdha Karma. When I see Prarabdha Karma coming my way, I work to pay my dues. Many people see a little bit of trouble coming and freak out. You have to ultimately take responsibility for your own actions, and many people don’t want to do that. They want to indulge in anger and fear and self-pity. You can’t exist in that state and grow spiritually. Growing spiritually has to do with sitting down and using your mantra, using pranayama, using your practice to go beyond that particular difficulty. That’s how you learn how to grow. And so you create what Rudi used to call a mechanism, this inner mechanism that’s capable of grinding up karma. Most people don’t want to grind up karma. They just want all the good stuff, and they don’t want any of the bad stuff. Everyone wants to win the lottery. What matters is the integrity with which you live your life and the ability to take all of life’s situations, all of the dramas, and all of the stuff that’s going on and transmute it into material for spiritual growth. That is the basis of the practice that I do and the practice that I teach” (SBF, 361).
This teaching reminds us that the true purpose of practice is not to avoid life’s challenges but to transform them into opportunities for spiritual growth.
Some of our karma is scorchable, some is inevitable, but no matter what we work the same way. When we take responsibility for our situation internally, and begin to dig into our practice, we start to grow. We turn this mechanism that grinds up our karma. Rudi used to describe himself as a water buffalo at the grinding stone, just using a simple practice, like a water buffalo walking in a circle, and grinding his karma up hour after hour, day after day. Transmuting the roughage of life, like whole barley, into flour that can be used to eat and grow. Karma is a means of understanding the foundational aspects of what Kundalini yoga is all about, when you are willing to work with it.
The Shiva Sutras describe the same work— reminding us that it is not the circumstance that determines our experience of karma, but how we work with it. “For those who are fully aware of God consciousness, all the organs of cognition, organs of action, and organs of the intellect lead them to that supreme state of God consciousness. For those who are not aware, these same organs deprive them completely of that God consciousness.” This means that the same set of circumstances can either create more karma or lead to liberation, depending on the awareness we bring to them. Karma is not synonymous with fate or destiny because our ultimate freedom depends not on external events but on the way we apply our practice to our daily lives.
A fitting analogy is that of a high-level chef creating a meal from an ordinary pantry— that’s some kind of reality show right? In this show we see that a chef’s skill allows them to see the “highest potential” of every ingredient in their pantry, transforming it into something extraordinary. As Shambhavananda often says, they “see what’s possible.” Similarly, through mindful action, we can elevate our lives into something meaningful and transformative.
Different Levels of Karmic Density
But making life delicious requires more than picking out the easy ingredients. We have to consume everything in our pantry, even the less appealing items. There’s a reason certain things have been stored away for so long—they represent aspects of ourselves that we resist or avoid. As we engage with these stored karmas, we encounter different levels of difficulty.
The yogic tradition categorizes Prarabdha Karma into three levels of digestibility.
1. Adridha Karma (Flexible Karma): These are the “easy” ingredients, like potatoes or salad—tasks and challenges that are manageable with minimal effort.
2. Dridha-Adridha Karma (Flexible/Inflexible Karma): These are slightly more difficult, requiring more conscious effort and surrender. They’re the tasks or habits we procrastinate on or resist, like those proverbial peas on the plate.
3. Dridha Karma (Inflexible Karma): These represent the most challenging experiences—those that feel insurmountable without divine grace or the Guru’s guidance. These experiences are placed on our plate by Shiva himself and are designed to test and transform us in profound ways.
Each bite of our karmic “meal” offers an opportunity to grow, no matter the level of difficulty. But when we avoid the unpalatable aspects of life, they don’t disappear. Instead, they are re-stored in our karmic pantry, waiting to resurface. This is the basis of our third type of Karma, Kriyamana karma.
The Tupperware of Kriyamana Karma
As Linda Johnsen explains, Kriyamana Karma is “The fresh Karma we’re producing in this incarnation.” This is to say, the karma we are either pushing aside, or actively producing from actions performed with attachment, aversion or doership. Kriyamana karma is the stuff we are bringing home to put in the pantry, as well as the Tupperwares of left overs we keep pushing to the back of the fridge. Even when we think we’re avoiding something, like pushing aside those peas, we’re still producing karma. This is why spiritual practice requires that we consume the “whole fruit” of our reality. As Swami Rudrananda advises:
“Ultimately all experience can be considered as food that can be encompassed and digested… When we can either digest or surrender everything that we attract, then we are free.”
Karmic Freedom
Every analogy has its limits, and this one has come to an end. Because if we hold onto this visualization too long, it will seem like the individual who eats nothing is somehow free of karma, or the individual who forces themselves with doership through hardship is the winner— neither is the goal of this endeavor. The analogy exists just to illustrate the nature of our work, but ultimately consuming our karma is something that each of us must learn to do within the scope of our lives. It is a middle path of practice, neither too tight or too loose that eventually frees us.
“The doorway to your freedom, or your realization, is opened by working through your individual karma. That means that you do not allow your habitual patterns and reactions to dominate you. It is okay to have a life. It’s okay to have relationships. It’s okay to raise a family. It’s okay to start a business. However, if any of these things suck every bit of your energy and become the purpose of your whole life, you are not having a spiritual life… When you are working for something bigger than yourself or are supporting something much bigger than just you, you will grow much more. I think most of you are doing well. You have good lives, families, and jobs. Some of you have situations where you can be in the Ashram. All of this is very good. One is not any better than another. It is how you use these things, what works for you that counts” (96, SP).
Karma isn’t so much about specific circumstances—good or bad—but rather serves as an impetus to help us take responsibility for our lives and utilize our practice. A steady practice dissolves karma steadily, allowing us to pay a much more affordable “price” for it by scorching karmic seeds before they sprout. Some karmic lessons may be unavoidable, but even they can be transmuted into effects that allow us to keep practicing and moving forward.
Keep Swimmin’
Ultimately, the concept of karma exists to motivate us to use our practice to work with our life circumstances. It helps us take responsibility for our experiences—not to make us feel bad about our challenges, but to empower us to finally move through them.
There is an old story of a frog dropped into a vat of milk. The frog swims around, unable to escape, growing more anxious with each moment. Eventually, another frog appears outside the vat and calls down to him: “Looks like a little old fashioned karma coming down… but if you keep swimming, you’ll find a way.” The helpful frog then shares some quotes from their lineage about the nature of karma, much like this essay. Inspired, the trapped frog chooses to work with their karma rather than sink into despair. And of course, after thousands of mantras and continuous effort, all that internal churning turns the milk into butter. The frog hops out, a little more enlightened than they were before.
May we all keep swimming till our life becomes mo butta’.