Talk:Interfaith Perspectives:Distinction between New Age and Dhārmic Notions of Karm

By Vishal Agarwal

The first distinction is that New Agers, Buddhists, and Jains believe that Karm is a self-operating mechanism—meaning that the universe is intelligent enough to ensure that we all reap the fruit of our respective Karm and not those of others. Therefore, they do not subscribe to the Hindu and Sikh view that it is the Divine who administers the Law of Karm.

The second major difference between New Agers and Theosophists, on one hand, and the Dharm-based systems on the other, is that the former support a notion of “collective,” “group,” or “national” karm, whereas the latter advocate an entirely individualistic understanding of Karm.

A modern Hindu scholar describes the notion of collective karm as follows:

“It is also believed that just as each person incurs karm through his or her actions, actions performed as groups also give rise to collective karm that would impact their collective future. According to this belief, nations, organizations, and associations also incur karm because of the collective actions and decisions of the people who are part of them. If a nation is oppressed by another, people belonging to the nation that is acting as the oppressor incur bad karm and have to repay for the actions of their country through their own lives. The same is the case with groups and nations that follow a policy of religious intolerance or economic exploitation. We should realize that environmental pollution and degradation is a direct result of our indiscriminate exploitation of natural resources and the mass annihilation of millions of innocent animals, whose consequences we suffer in the form of natural disasters, greenhouse effects, new diseases, and scarcity of raw materials.”

However, Hindu Dharm rejects the notion that there is a group, collective, or national Karm. A modern Hindu teacher explains why Hindus reject the doctrine of collective karm:

“There is no such thing as collective karm in the directly causative sense anywhere in the Vedic worldview or scriptures, but only in the coincidental retributive sense. In other words, there is no such concept as ‘shared karm.’ Rather, it is possible for an incidental grouping of individuals to experience their individually accrued karm at the same place and time.”

“By both definition and logical necessity, karm is, and can only be, operative on an individual basis, and upon each particular Jīva (an Ātman who is presently in illusion), by his free will works containing ethical content. Thus, each individual is solely responsible for his actions and the resultant effects of those actions.”

“However, what does periodically occur is the manifestation of individual karm occurring simultaneously among several individuals comprising a group of people in such a manner as to make it appear to our vision that several people are experiencing the resultant effects of their karm at the same particular place and time. Even if you have several individuals all experiencing their karm at the same time and place, the individuals’ respective karm would be the result of their actions in previous lives, and not the result of some action they all performed collectively.”

“Experiencing karm in unison is more an instance of indirect and unrelated correlation of karmic events, and not ever because any group of individuals somehow ‘shared’ karm. The idea of ‘collective karm’ would directly negate the meaning of free will on the part of the person performing materially motivated action, and consequently producing karm, thus rendering the entire Vedic worldview null and void both metaphysically and logically. For this reason, there is no such thing as ‘shared karm.’”

The texts of Āyurveda do mention that natural calamities such as droughts, floods, pollution of air, water, and land, and the destruction of a country through war are results of the collective deeds of multiple individuals. However, these references are not developments of deep philosophical thought but rather reflections of popular belief. Therefore, it is safe to conclude that the concept of collective Karm is foreign to the Hindu and other Dhārmic formulations of the Law of Karm.