Activity and Action

The countries of the world fall into two categories - Karma-bhoomi and Bhoga-bhoomi - countries where the people are devoted to activities with spiritual motivation and countries where the people pursue the pathways of the senses, with no higher purpose to guide them. The categories emphasise the ideals of the people, down the ages. Bharath or India is the Karma-bhoomi, where the people have discovered the proper goal of all activity, namely the glorification of God, resident within and without.

Karma is inevitable; it is immanent in every thought. It is of two kinds: Material and Spiritual, Loukik (connected with this world) and Vaidik (drawn from the Vedas or scriptural injunctions). Karma that merely sustains life is material. The Vaidik that elevates the human into the Divine is based on either the Vedas or on later texts like the Sastras or the Smrithi. They can be any of the three: Mental, emotional or physical. They are also determined by the activities which the individual has adopted either in previous lives or in this. The consequences of acts done in past lives that are affecting this life are called Praarabdha; the Karma that one is engaged in now which is bound to affect the future is called Aagaami; the stored Karma that is slowly being worked out by the individual in life after life is called Sanchitha.