July 16, 2026
Karma belongs to the collection of the world’s most used and most misunderstood words. It has become synonymous with punishment, with cosmic revenge, with a bill life presents to those who “deserved it.” But if karma were only that, it would be a cruel and arbitrary law. And existence is neither cruel nor arbitrary.
Karma is pedagogy. It is the instrument existence uses to teach us how to live.
You’ve probably noticed that certain situations repeat in your life. The same kind of relationship that always ends the same way. The same conflict at work, only with different people. The same difficulty with money that keeps coming back, no matter how much you earn. The same fight with the family that resurfaces every year, on different dates, with different pretexts, but with the same bitter taste at the end.
And most disconcerting of all: you move to another city, change jobs, end that relationship that clearly wasn’t working. You start over. And there it is again. The same pattern, with another face.
This isn’t bad luck. It’s karma at work.
Sanskrit is one of the oldest languages in the world, the sacred language of India, used for more than three thousand years in the philosophical and spiritual texts that laid the foundations of much of Eastern thought. And in that language, these repeating patterns have a name: samskaras. They are marks engraved in our inner structure by everything we have lived, thought, felt, and done. Experiences that left traces. Fears that became automatic responses. Beliefs that settled in so early they seem to be truths about the world, when in fact they’re only stories about ourselves.
The water of life always flows down the same channels, because the channels have already been carved. That’s why, even when the scenery changes, the pattern appears again. Because the pattern wasn’t out there. It was inside.
And here’s what changes everything when it’s truly comprehended: karma isn’t the pattern that binds you. It’s the invitation for you to see it clearly. Every difficult situation that repeats is existence pointing, with precision, to what still needs to be comprehended, healed, transformed. Not as punishment. As school.
You don’t need to follow any spiritual tradition to recognize this law. Mother Teresa of Calcutta spent her life serving without expecting anything in return and lived with a peace that disconcerted those who knew her. The father who never managed to apologize to his children carried a loneliness that stayed with him to the end. You can call it karma, consequence, cause and effect, you reap what you sow. The law is the same. What changes is what you do with it.
This is one of the most honest questions there is. Someone acts dishonestly and, apparently, nothing happens. Someone acts generously and feels they receive nothing in return. And so they conclude: this law doesn’t work. Or worse: there’s no point in doing good.
Karma has its own timing. Not yours.
The seed doesn’t open on the day it’s planted. It germinates in its own time, in the right season, when the soil is ready. We reap what we plant, but not always in the same season, and sometimes not even in the same lifetime.
Understanding this isn’t a threat. It’s a relief. It means that every act of your day is building something. That nothing is lost. That every gesture of love, of patience, of honesty, every time you choose to respond differently from the old pattern, is planting a seed that will germinate in you, in the people around you, in the world you’re helping to create.
We have a power we often forget: the power to create our own reality. Not in a magical way, but through the quality of what we plant in every act, every word, every thought. When we’re asleep, we use this power to create repetitions. The same cycles, the same pains, the same patterns. When we begin to awaken, we can use it for something else: to create what is good, joyful, and prosperous. To leave trails of love and comprehension instead of more accumulated karma.
The golden question isn’t “why is this happening to me?” It’s: “what am I planting now?”
Namaste,
Sri Prem Baba
