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Is Poverty Bad Karma?
By
William Quan Judge
First Published1891
THE question of what
is good Karma and what bad has been usually considered by Theosophists from a
very worldly and selfish standpoint. The commercial element
has entered into the calculation as to the result of merit
and demerit. Eternal Justice, which is but another name for Karma, has been
spoken of as awarding this or that state of life to the reincarnating ego
solely as a mere balance of accounts in a ledger, with a payment in one case by
way of reward and a judgment for debt in another by way of punishment.
It has been often
thought that if a man be rich and well circumstanced it must follow that in his
prior incarnation he was good although poor; and that if he now be in poverty
the conclusion is that, when on earth before, his life was bad if rich. So it
has come about that the sole test of good or bad Karma is one founded entirely
upon his purse. But is poverty with all its miseries bad Karma?
Does it follow,
because a man is born in the lowest station in life, compelled always to live
in the humblest way, often starving and hearing his wife and children cry out
for food, that therefore he is suffering from bad Karma?
If we look at the
question entirely from the plane of this one life, this personality, then of
course what is disagreeable and painful in life may be said to be bad.
But if we regard all
conditions of life as experiences undergone by the ego for the purpose of development,
then even poverty ceases to be "bad Karma." Strength comes only
through trial and exercise. In poverty are some of the greatest tests for
endurance, the best means for developing the strength of character which alone
leads to greatness.
These egos, then,
whom we perceive around us encased in bodies whose environment is so harsh that
endurance is needed to sustain the struggle, are voluntarily, for all we know,
going through that difficult school so as to acquire further deep experience
and with it strength.
The old definition of
what is good and what bad Karma is the best. That is: "Good Karma is that
which is pleasing to Ishwara, and bad that which is
displeasing to Ishwara."
There is here but
very little room for dispute as to poverty or wealth; for the test and measure
are not according to our present evanescent human tastes and desires, but are
removed to the judgment of the immortal self--Ishwara.
The self may not wish
for the pleasures of wealth, but seeing the necessity for discipline decides to
assume life among mortals in that low station where endurance, patience, and
strength may be acquired by experience.
There is no other way
to implant in the character the lessons of life. It may
then be asked if all poverty and low condition are good
Karma? This we can
answer, under the rule laid down, in the negative. Some such
lives, indeed many
of them, are bad Karma, displeasing to the immortal self
imprisoned in the body,
because they are not by deliberate choice, but the result of
causes blindly set in motion in previous lives, sure to result in planting
within the person the seeds of wickedness that must later be uprooted with
painful effort.
Under this canon,
then, we would say that the masses of poor people who are not bad in nature are
enduring oftener than not good Karma, because it is in the line of
experience Ishwara has chosen, and that
only those poor people who are wicked can be said to be suffering bad Karma,
because they are doing and making that
which is displeasing to the immortal self within.
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