Can we control our Destiny ?

Karma is categorized into three types: सञ्चितकर्म Sanchita (past lives karma accumulated), प्रारब्दकर्म Prarabda (part of sanchita to be experienced in current life) and आगामिकर्म Āgāmi (current actions shaping future karma). Often we wonder do we have control over our destiny ? In other words: where does Spiritual practices fit into this karma’s eco-system.

Parthaja (fictional character) volunteered to help me build a context around him to explain how destiny works. He had a sweet morning cravings and had to visit nearby mart to pacify his sweeth tooth. While all he needed is one confectionary, he couldn’t help but also purchase eclairs and ice-cream temptingly adorning nearby shelf.

His sweet cravings are results of his previous snacking habits, which we can call Sanchita karma. ‘Visiting’ store to purchase sweet is Prarabda karma (i.e natural reflexes of one’s ingrained thoughts and emotions). Purchasing ‘more’ sweets than what he originally intended is his Āgāmi karma.

Spiritual practices we do regularly helps develop discriminatory power that, in above analogy, lets us give higher preference to our health (ie Atma) instead of yielding to momentary pleasure of tongue (worldy pleasures) there-by helping us ‘mitigate negative Prarabda karma, positively influence Sanchita karma and avoid Āgāmi karmas’. Even with discrimination, some lack will-power which may still land them in store to buy a candy but atleast they acknowledge need to stop entertaining sweet cravings and not fill their cart, i.e help mitigate Āgāmi karma.

Other possibility when Parthaja continues to polish his sweet tooth in-discriminatorily to a point that he’ll be forced by his Doctor to stop eating sweets permanently in addition to other restrictions due to onset of severe health issues. Doctor here is our Karma who’s job is to remind us the limits of our mortal frame and lets us carry-over these desires on to next life to work them out.

Astrological alignments are but an indication of Sanchita and Prarabda karmas. We have certain amount of control on Prarabda and a possibility to avoid Āgāmi through Sadhana and Divine grace.

Doing spiritual practices for self-aggrandizement is like Parthaja praying to God to keep him healthy so he can continue indulging in his taste buds. This we know is ignorance but ironically is also the path many people choose placing them right within the vicious birth-death life-cycles.

This is one among many habits that we’ve accrued over lifetimes. Just when we think we mastered one habit we uncover another needing our attention. Sri Vidya is one path where we get to open each door personifying attachments one-by-one until we reach the sanctum-sanctorum Bindu sthana of singular non-dual state of Sat-Chit-Ananda.

~ Swami Pranava