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The Hindu view on facts (Karman) as reflected in Bhagavad-Gītā and Upanishads and their role in Christianity
Authors: Fr. PhD Alexandru-Corneliu ARION
Number of views: 589
Out of the four fundamental concepts or pillars of Indian religious thinking the
present paper aims at disclosing the meaning and significance of the law of
universal causality that binds man and cosmos, and condemns the former to an
indefinite transmigration, i.e. the law of karma. This pan-Indian term will be
underlined as it is reflected in the most important Upanishads and in
Bhagavad Gītā, the gospel of Hindu spirituality. On the final part a parallel –
between this concept and the teaching about the role of facts in the process of
salvation according to the Orthodox Christian theology – will be drawn. In
short, karma is a sort of law of causality that makes any action committed by
individual leaving behind it a kind of force that causes the joys and sorrows of
life, as the action was good or bad. According to Orthodox Church’s teaching
good deeds is, along with faith and grace the subjective conditions of
salvation, i.e. personal appropriation by every man of the objective redemption
brought about by Jesus Christ, the God-man. This appropriation called
salvation or sanctification is not simply a gift from God, but a permanent
action that lasts throughout human life. If the law of karma acts implacably
and independently to the will of man, stamping a fatalist character to life and
undermining the human freedom, in Orthodoxy, however, man is not alone, but
permanently assisted by the divine grace. But grace does not work irresistibly;
it respects human freedom, so the facts present an obvious synergetic
character. Therefore, between the Christian teaching on facts and the
philosophy of the act, as it emerges from the Upanishads and the Bhagavad
Gītā is an abysmal distance that comes to differentiate these two religions on
this level as well.