How would you define "Karma" and "Maya"?

Answer 1

karma is the Sanskrit word for "action". That's basically what it means. There are different types of karma. The karma of your actions, the karma of your thoughts, the karma of your past lives, and the karma of the society or group you live in (group karma). The Law of Karma basically says that whatever you do has an effect on others and ultimately has an effect on you because everything is ultimately connected together (sort of like the Law of Cause and Effect in science). Maya is a term that is used to represent the concept of illusion. Usually what it is refering to in Hindu scriptures in the illusion that we are seperate from everything. That the world of our senses, that this physical world where everything is constantly changing, is the "real" world. By real I mean that this is all there is. That's maya. The reality is that we are all one, we are all interconnected. That everything is a manifestation of God and thus retains it's divine spark and connection to God and everything else in the universe. It is maya to think that how we treat others or what we do to plants, animals, the planet, etc does not effect us. It does. Because we are all one, we are all connected.

That's karma and maya.

Hope that helped.

Answer 2

Karma is basically suffering for the lessons we have not yet learnt, and we stay in the same pattern until we learn the lesson. Maya, I believe, is earthly suffering. Everyone on earth must suffer certain discomforts such as hunger, thirst, tiredness, old age. These are unavoidable physical sufferings. Yet these become almost like nothing when a person learns to let go of all other suffering of the mind.eg. fear, regret, anger, judgement etc.

Answer 3

I would define karma as this. You reap what You sow .Whether it be in this life or the next one ,(depends if you believe in reincarnation too) If we keep making the same bad mistakes ,we will stay in the situation where the same karma keeps happening,people talk a lot about bad karma, but there is good karma too,people will often say ,how come everything comes so easy to that person,mabe they have earn't it. who knows what that person has been through to get that good karma.

Answer 4

Karma is just cause and effect. People have no trouble in believing in cause and effect in the "material" world. So, if I kick the ball then it is going to move across the ground. But people have trouble applying that to the "non-material" world. If I act like a jerk and treat people badly, then I am going to be treated badly. Actually there is no difference between the so called material world and nonmaterial world. That's just our minds trying to understand things so we put labels on things and try to categorize them. Since everything exists together, the more pain and suffering we create, the more pain and suffering we endure. The more we pollute our world, the more pollution we must endure. And the more joy and laughter we create, the more joy and laughter we get to enjoy. Maya is just illusion or delusion. Thinking that something is real when it is not. Usually we think of things like egotism as illusion. Like we think we are so important when everyone else sees us as just another common person. But maya really applies to everything. We like to label things to understand them and of course these labels are always wrong because they can never be the thing itself. We may think our mom is a beautiful wonderful person, and she is, but that doesn't really capture the essence our mom. So when I think of my mom as a beautiful wonderful person, it is maya also, because it is just a creation of my mind and not actually my mom.

Answer 5

I dont know what Maya is but karma is "what goes around comes around". Also basically what you give you get.