Karma and the Law of Attraction
(By Tsem Rinpoche and Herman Rodrigues)
Most people understand Karma in its most basic definition: You get what you give. We hear a lot of catch phrases by people who say, “What goes around, comes around”, and so on. Most people believe that karma comes from the fact that our actions alone cause our results, but this is only true on a very superficial level, because action is not the only factor that influences our karma. If you ask a real spiritual seeker or a person who has achieved a certain level of understanding on this subject, he is bound to tell you that it is the mind that is responsible for our karma. Whether good or bad karma, we will talk about that later but for now, it is important to understand that karma is a result of our thoughts too. Our actions are just a bridge between our thoughts and our manifestations.
How does one activate negative karma, we ask? This is not a question that can be easily answered. A few things need to be taken into account about the mind, and then, the answer becomes quite obvious.
The mind plays a very important role in the manifestation of a certain circumstance or event that we may term as being negative or positive. A lot of you may find this to be similar to the Law of Attraction, but in my opinion, the Law of Attraction is a very basic law, and most or almost all of the teachers of the Law of Attraction do not understand the law really well. They just have a superficial understanding of it, and so they will always teach their students or clients on how they can control their thoughts and make them positive so that they attract circumstances which are of a like nature.
As much as the Law of Attraction is true, my opinion is that if we have a proper understanding of Karma, and combine that with our knowledge of the Law of Attraction, we will have a profound understanding of life and the way things work. The problem is that most people who practice the Law of Attraction do not consider karma at all – this may serve as a quick fix to a temporary problem, but in the long run it may prove to have severe implications. The Law of Attraction only helps us with our worldly problems of wealth, relationships and health, but what happens after we die? Can your Law of Attraction coach help you with what you will attract after you die? There is no way that could be possible, and this is exactly why we need to understand the Law of Attraction through the lens of karma.
A lot of new thought teachers tell you that if you think positive, you will attract a positive circumstance, but this is not the entire truth because it does not explain the reason why a small child may suffer from a dreadful disease or be born in a poor family. The truth is that if you think positive, the very thought of thinking and therefore acting positive for a prolonged period of time opens up your positive karma from a past life, and that is how your circumstances actually start to change and you start attracting positive results.
When you are in a state of “let go”, or if you feel good and optimistic for a prolonged period, what you are actually doing is making way for positive karma from a past life which matches your vibration (positive) at the moment and helps you with the manifestation process. This is the first thing to consider.
There is a catch to this though. The thought of attracting a positive circumstance is not the only deciding factor of whether you will attract what you want or not; it also depends on whether you have accumulated enough merit or positive karma in your current or previous lives to deserve that positive circumstance. If you do not have the merit or positive karma, you can sit there and think all day about attracting that dream job, or increasing your wealth or getting healed of a disease; there is no way you will be able to manifest the desired circumstance simply because you do not have the good karma or merits to achieve what you want. This is when you need to take action.
So to give you a better understanding of what I’ve just said, or to sum the whole thing up, just remember that a positive mindset, or the mindset that says, “I can do it” along with inspired action and an understanding of Karma is what will determine our results.
This is exactly why the Law of Attraction does not always work for everyone. There are individuals out there who sit and think positive thoughts for months, try their best to feel good, and put in every effort possible, but yet their circumstances do not seem to change. The reason is – nobody told them that they also need to take positive action because they may not have the merits to actually attract the results they wish to achieve.
On the other hand, we also have people who take no action and yet attract positive circumstances. They have their finances in place, they have great friends, and everything worthwhile that life has to offer. Why is it so? This is because they have done enough positive actions in the past to help them manifest positive circumstances now, but once their positive karma gets depleted, they are on the same page as most of us: Living a life of mediocrity. Therefore the Law of Attraction can be really harmful if we lack understanding of our mind and karma. As a matter of fact, placing all the emphasis on the Law of Attraction to change a circumstance can also result in creating more negative karma.
Hence, our understanding of karma and the mind forms the basis of the Law of Attraction. Therefore, mind training teachings are a very important part of Dharma practice, and every fortunate student of the Dharma is introduced to these teachings as part of their spiritual journey.
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The famous saying “What goes around, comes around”, karma in short is action and every action is preceded by our thoughts. Hence what we think continuously about something will eventually lead to action and the result. Its our mind that is responsible for our karma. Reading this post it has helped me and many of us to understand that we create our own reality or karma. I have book marked these so as i can read it time from time to remind myself. still plenty to catch up.
Thank you Rinpoche for this profound teachings with folded hands.
Thank you for sharing writing this article to explain the difference between the Law of Attraction and karma. To some degree, the Law of Attraction has some logic in it. If we are an angry person, we will attract people with the same energy. Why would a person who is calm hang around with an angry person?
When we have more understanding of the law of karma, we can easily accept our whatever we experience, good or bad, is a result of our action. When we accept, there will not be anger in us, we are able to let it go and not thinking things are unfair. If we want to be happy, we have to create the cause for it. Be kind, be nice and be generous always.
“Think & Grow Rich” & “The Secret” was my favorite books!I feel so positive & energetic after reading these books, just feel that we can achieve anything if we really believe & apply the law of attraction. But deep in my heart, I always feel that there is something missing, something incomplete about the law of attraction. I didn’t understand why some people were born so poor, yet some people are born in a rich family. I didn’t understand why some people work so hard & so positive yet so many bad things happen to them.
All this myth ended when I understand the law of Karma. The law of Karma complete the missing part of the law of attraction. It’s our positive & negative karma that also influence our life. The truth is always didn’t sound so great!But after understand the truth, I become happier! As from now on, I am not only cherish when good things happen, but also be grateful when bad things happen. As stated by law of Karma, it’s purification of our negative karma
WE need to understand the law of attraction by understanding karma first.
According to the law of attraction, we need to think positive in order to attract positive circumstances. However, positive thinking may not be the only factor at play. Sometimes , thinking positive alone may not work. You may sit there thinking positive about your dream job and nothing happens . When you examine it from the karma angle, you will realise that karmically you may not have created the causes or you may not have the merits to land the dream job! Examining it from another angle, you may find that thinking positively overtime may also help positive karmic seeds to open for you to realise your dream job after all.
In another situation, you may encounter success for a period of time. Then, after a while, your ”luck” seems to have run out. Deeper examination of this will show that, it is a case of your good karma or merits having run out.
Hence it is important to train you mind to think positively. However, at the same time, we must have to have a deep understanding of karma.
This is the 2nd time i read this article. Mr. Herman have clearly pointed out on karma which is related to action. It is true that the things or success we hopes if we do not put any effort into it, it will remain as just a thought in our mind. It will not manifest.
Thus, a lot of people think the Law of Attraction will make the person success. But, in actual is their effort in action which gave them the result.
Thank you Herman for this write -up
Thank you Herman for sharing this article. Totally agree with you. Law of attraction only leads us to think positively, then good things will come to us. Whereas karma is a lot more complicated than that. To my level of understanding, karma is accumulated, just like what you mentioned in the article, it’s from our uncountable previous lives. Karma will manifest. Nothing can keep us away from karma, not even law of attraction. But law of attraction is a guideline when our karma manifest.
Thank you again Rinpoche and Herman. This is a wonderful article. It opens up our mind to let us think deeply, not everything we think positive will turn out good. So, when things don’t turn out good, don’t blame, coz’ it’s our karma 🙂 _/\_
Thank you Mr.Herman for your explanation of karma and law of attraction. Prior to this article I never have thought of the differences between the law of karma and law of attraction.It is very insightful and interesting.to understand the difference makes us realise not waste time and practice dharma before our karma catches up with us when we run out of merits.
Buddhist philosophy is not a fad, and the fancy of the moment, given its enduring nature it has lasted for over 2600 years, many dedicated practitioners of the path have attained various levels of enlightenment. Buddhism remains a tradition that has inspired many people, to go beyond their mundane existence and just taking care of their current needs and desires, and truly explore the space that is accorded to one on the spiritual path. Who knows where one can develop their minds to, if we get in touch with authentic lineages and teachers?
I too have felt the Law of attraction, can work up to a certain level, without supportive conditions and karma, some things cannot manifest the way we wished it for. One of the techniques is people visualize abundance, and contentment, and for the people who could manifest it out, they will proclaim it works for them. But for the people who don’t manifest it out, despite much visualization to actualize it what could have gone wrong.
For me it can only be due to insufficient merits and karma for the very thing we wish to manifest to manifest.
The Law of Attraction was such a hit a few years ago. So many people were talking about it, and so many books on it. I was very drawn to it too, but I too had a few aspects which I don’t quite understand.
I have heard from someone that many Tibetans do not like to receive gifts, because that would mean they are exhausting their good karma. I feel it is the same as what is explained here. If we keep on living on the good karma we have collected previously, then eventually we will deplete the good karma. Therefore, it is very important for us to keep collecting good karma, and even better to collect merits.
Thank you Herman for this short but logic article. It makes a lot of sense.
This is really well explanation on why sometime we put so much effort to do something but we can get desired result . Karma is really a unseen object but it really exist .Good motivation (selflessness and benefit others)must apply on our daily action to enable us to collect positive karma or merits. We do well today but we might not get desired result because of our previous life negative karma.That is the reason why we keep doing good deeds with right motivation to purify our negative karma from previous life.
I did get benefits from this inspiring write up.
Thanks Rinpoche and Herman Rodrigues.
With folded hands,
Jason
Karma is indeed a complex matter and many of us think we can understand it, perhaps on a superficial surface level, but even then, many of us, me included, often live as if we are immortal to the workings of karma. It could be that it stems from ignorance and lack of understanding the depth of it that we often act the way we do because if we knew what karma encompasses, most of us would not act, speak or think like we do.
The below paragraph I found was very powerful for me from the article:
“The thought of attracting a positive circumstance is not the only deciding factor of whether you will attract what you want or not; it also depends on whether you have accumulated enough merit or positive karma in your current or previous lives to deserve that positive circumstance.”
We need to have a positive potential that can be tapped into, or opened, for us to receive the same. This is a result from the karma that we have created; good karma, that will ripen and enable us to further in our spiritual and dharmic pathways, or negative karma. where the potential opened drags us further away from our spiritual practice, and we lose valuable time, opportunities, moments, in furthering our practice.
Every moment that we are breathing, we collect karma, whether through our actions, our thoughts, and our speech. However, the mind is the “control unit” of it all, which dictates all 3 faculties and we talk, think or act accordingly. Therefore, the mind (along with motivation that stems from the same mind), dictates what karma we create for ourselves, and Herman has coined it wonderfully that the mind training teachings are so important, because in transformation of our minds, we work towards reducing the suffering that we go through because of our karma.
Thank you for sharing this, Mr. Herman Rodrigues.
I wasn’t really a Buddhist before this. I used to not believe much in Karma etc. but i do believe our Karma or destination back then very much depends on our own actions. I was brought up to think if i do good and being a good person, i will have good life which is also the universal believe for Karma believers. But then during the course of my life, i do notice there are also some people that i do notice are doing bad things but seems to be enjoying life and vice versa some good people dies off early in their life while even babies were born in difficult conditions. My mind were being brought to find out more. The believe in Law of Attraction doesn’t make sense to me much after i become more and more familiar into Buddhism to be honest because i believe even if we think we are not going to die, we will definitely be dying. So for this simple fact i did not believe much into this. What i do believe is that we have to apply not only our thoughts but also our actions into creating the cause for good things to happen to us. We cannot run away from aging, sickness and death but we do can create good things to happen to us during the course of our lives by creating the cause for positives to happen.
Thank you Mr.Herman for your explanation of karma and law of attraction. Prior to this article I never have thought of the differences between the law of karma and law of attraction because to me they both are the same after reading this write up it do give an idea what are the differences , but I think the most important is not the differences is our motivation when we want something good to happen to us, a lot of this worldly persuade is very selfish motivation because they do not actually improve our mind in fact some this success do bring a person more suffering i n the end like wealth for instance some people misuse their wealth and power to inflict harm to others , so the best way is to have the Dharma so that one motivation will more towards others .
Dear Herman,
Thank yo for your article on the Law of Attraction and karma. I agree totally, that the Law of Attraction has to do with, and indeed must be thought of within the context of Karma. To sum it up, everything is dependently arised ie everything that is “attracted” by the thinking and action must have an original cause similar to the results. If we want to attract wealth, there must be the karma for wealth to begin with. Since, we are in the human realm, we must have a very mix karma of the positive and negative and I dare say in all possibilities.
Hence, how the law of attraction work is to create the condition for these karma to manifest. Also, if we want physical manifestation, we need to have the physical conditions. So, I agree that by just thinking, it is not enough. We need to act. So if we want wealth, we can attract wealth by giving. It is no coincident that the first perfection in Tibetan Buddhism is “giving”. These positive action has the added benefit of creating the causes of positive karma and merits as well.
Hence, I definitely think that Dharma practice encompasses the “Law of Attraction”and is far superior and complete for this and future lives.
Thanks again.
Pastor KH Ng.
I have read some articles on the Laws of Attraction but have not actually related it to the workings of karma and such. Your post made the connection for me and it does make a lot of sense that without the karma and merits for the positives to materialise, it would never happen. Hence, why karma explains the disparity of the world so perfectly, with or without the Laws of Attraction.
Thank you for summing it up so well, Herman.
I’ve read this article on the day when it was posted. Nothing really hit my mind….
But when I read it again today, I saw the similarity between this article and the teaching here https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XlBAH_oqTX0. It was Rinpoche’s teaching based on a book by H.H. Dalai Lama. If I’m not mistaken the title is ‘ The Meaning of Life’. It teaches us on how we can actually manipulate the circumstances that we are in now and liberate ourselves through ‘controlling’ our mind. It gives hope to everyone, including me. Hope this will benefit someone as it has benefited me in numerous ways. Eventhough I am stepping further in samsara now with my current situation but I will not lose hope. No matter how many difficult situations that we have to face, never abandon our spiritual teacher. Law of Attraction does help so as being positive. But of course, with a better understanding on karma, it will be great. Namaste.
Thank you Rinpoche for always be there for us no matter what we have done or are doing.
Thanks to you Herman for this article.
Thanks for the great article.
Karma and the Law of attraction works together. I may not have the full understanding of Karma but the fact remains that you are who you are because of the actions you have taken in your previous lives and current life. This led to your current situation. We can change our current situation by always doing good deeds and positive actions so that we can generate merits. When the time is right or the Karma for the situation is ripen, then we will see results. This also goes the same if we do negative actions and therefore a negative result may be obtained.
We should always train our mind to be positive so that it will motivate us to take positive actions to achieve the goals we want. Our mind is very powerful. We in this lifetime are able to generate positive merits to purify the karma we have accumulated in out past lives. The best is that purification is done until the effects of the bad karma is at minimal. We really do not know how much bad things we have done. We can’t change that but we can start to change now.
感谢这篇文章的教诲
对，如同文章中的开头部分一样，我们大多数人对于“业力”的认知，从一开始就是，我们做什么就会得到什么，如：我们常常说的好心有好报恶有恶报等等，然后呢？我们对于“业力”的定义就往往地停止在这个部分就没有在往更深入探讨了。
文章尤其提到一个很棒的部分是，人们常说您要保持乐观积极，那么你就可以吸引好的事情发生了，然而倘若用这个定义，那么我们该怎么解释身怀恶疾的小朋友们呢？他们那么小总是笑嘻嘻的没有烦恼的，那么他们是因为什那么年纪轻轻就被“苦”给缠住呢？
在佛教中，我们相信轮回转世，那么我们也必定经历了无数的转世，在如此多的转世中，我们肯定的造下了无数的“业”无论善恶，所以说既然我们现在的恶业还没有开出来的时候，我们不应该松懈下来，就觉得我平时偶尔有行行善，就已经足够了，因为即使我们这一世无风无浪，倘若我们是相信“轮回”的，那么你能保证下一世，不会因你这一世已经把善业给耗尽了，而恶业开始显现呢？
祈愿我们每一个人都能够了解到关于“业力”是非常强大的，只要我们还在“轮回”当中，我们都是抵挡不过大大小小“业力”的影响，祈愿每一个人都能够得到多杰雄登护法的护佑，帮助我们不好的“业力”暂时不要现象，也让我们不要再结下更多不好的业力，使我们都能遇见上师教导我们正确的方来累积更多的福德资粮，净化我们不好的恶业，生生世世如此直至证悟，脱离轮回之苦。
谢谢
Jerry
個人認為，「吸引力法則」比較像是追求目標或夢想的催化劑，要抱持正面的想法，去牽動接下來的行為，從而達到正面的效果。但一切的前提就是要付諸行動，這個法則才有“可能”幫助你實現願望。
會說“可能”，是因為這個法則不適用於所有人，而『因果』卻絕對適用於任何人。
簡單來說就是當你認識了佛法、認識了因果，你根本不需要『吸引力法則』。
“The mind is responsible for our karma”
This is very true. A lot of us practice superficial dharma/action but what happens after death is indeed very scary if we do not believe in karma. I have the great fortune to listen to teachings of my lama, Tsem Rinpoche on karma many times and also I have the great fortune to witness many death. Many will find that morbid but that is when you see death in so many facets that you actually start questioning yourself and your mind.
The mind is actually a very scary “instrument” thus in this life where we have the human body that we can actually start practicing “letting go” of our worldly attachment that it will have more positive results during death then negative.
For example, if you are filled with anger and bitterness in life, during death, if these were not let go, the results after death can be very bitter cause the last thoughts before you die (which is anger) will cause you to be born in the lower realms. And that applies to all the samsaric attachments.
Below is another powerful teaching by Tsem Rinpoche on Karma and it’s Mindstream which explain more in detail on how karma and the mind is very much related.
https://www.tsemrinpoche.com/tsem-tulku-rinpoche/buddhas-dharma/discovering-yourself-a-teaching-on-karma-mindstream.html
Thank you for the sharing.
It is interesting to see the the article that incorporate karma into the law of attraction.
Yes i agreed that everything that we get or experience now are the result of the actions from our past. But definitely our thinking is also playing a significant role when we face a problem. A positive person will always face the difficulties positively, and definitely the way they handle the difficulties will be better compare to a negative thinking person.
But as a Buddhist that believe on karma, the three things that we need to do for us to gain result in our dharma practice are:
1. Stop creating new bad karma
2. Confession practice to purify our bad karma accumulated from our past lives
3. Accumulate merits
Thank you
I used to believe in Law of Attraction and was a fan of “The Secrets” book. I used to have the perception of by just thinking positively i will get what I want. After learning the teachings on Karma and how it’s interrelated to our thoughts and actions, I realised the very fact that why most of the time things don’t work on me is because i merely stop at just “think” and no action. That’s the very common mistakes people make, could be due to laziness and ignorance. Yes good to have dream but dream doesn’t work unless we work on it. Same logic.
Karma is the Sanskrit word for action, so how would the mind create the result? Our mind has to combine actions therefore the result, positive or negative. Or what we call the Law of Cause and Effect.
Thank you for sharing this, Mr. Herman Rodrigues.
(Found this useful post about the Law of Karma on this blog that may further explain how Karma works:)
https://www.tsemrinpoche.com/tsem-tulku-rinpoche/buddhas-dharma/12-little-known-law-of-karma-that-will-change-your-life.html
To fully accept the law of Karma, one has to believe in reincarnation. Why? Because if we do not believe in reincarnation, many things that happen to us now will not make sense. Every thought we have will become negative, positive or neutral Karma depending on our motivation, it might not ripen in this life but it will ripen in many life times later. Like a seed, in order sprout, it must have the right condition such as the water, sun, soil, temperature etc. The seed we sow today, might not sprout until after we die.
Once we believe in reincarnation, Karma starts to make sense. When we believe in Karma, we will become aware of our behaviour and action because what we do determines the results we are going to get. If we want to have good result, we better do good with good motivation. Whatever bad we have done, we might not see the results in this life time, but we definitely will suffer later.
There is no so call Destiny, we are the master of our lives, we can decide how our future looks like by embracing Karma.
A very good teaching on Karma from Rinpoche can be found here:
“Discovering Yourself: A Teaching on Karma & Your Mindstream” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nsd64zyTgAs
This is such an interesting article. For me like most people I thought karma is the action and I didn’t think that it’s also the mind that is responsible for our karma.
Just heard from a friend about ‘Instant karma’ where 2 guys just walk out from the shop after eating without paying and left in a motorcycle. Next instant they got hit by a truck and got killed.
This is both karma in mind and action.
Therefore whatever we do now will be a result of what will happen in our future lives too.
I think the Law of Attraction does not apply to good or bad karma as it teaches one to think positive and one will be happy without thinking about the future lives.
Merits is another factor we need to consider as merits enable us to create the negative karma to good karma. Having said that the motivation need to be pure to accumulate much merits.
Karma has no menu. You get served what you deserve. Very appropriate
The Law of Attraction forms part of the greater and universal Law of Cause and Effect commonly known as Karma. The teachings on Karma are presented by the different Buddhist traditions. One such teaching is as presented in the Lamrim or the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment.
The workings of the Law of Cause and Effect is too intricate and profound for us to comprehend fully. Only a fully-enlightened Buddha has the omniscience to know completely
its nature and workings.
Buddha had taught the essentials of Karma and its implications. Understanding and realising Karma is necessary for us to traverse through samsara to overcome all our challenges arising from our past negative karmas. It is important to live our lives in accordance with Karma so that we avoid creating causes of suffering but instead create causes of happiness such as the eight freedoms and ten endowments of precious human rebirth. The importance of understanding and acceptance of Karma and putting this understanding into practice immediately cannot be stressed enough. In addition to that, in this degenerate time, we need a powerful, benevolent and fully-enlightened Dharma Protector such as Dorje Shugden to help us along the way to ultimate happiness.
Dorje Shugden skilfully helps us to clear the path by manifesting favourable conditions and temporarily holding unfavourable conditions from gathering so that we have the opportunity to accumulate merits, purify our karmas and transform our minds. There are extensive information for anyone who wants to know about Dorje Shugden here at http://www.dorjeshugden.org and on this blog https://www.tsemrinpoche.com.
Thank You Herman Rodrigues for explaining the general misconception and wrong views about The Law of Attraction and the importance of understanding the workings of Karma.
May all sentient beings have the opportunity to understand, realise and put into practice the teachings on karma as taught by Buddha Shakyamuni.
This is such a great article for me to understand more on the differences on Karma and the Law Of Attraction. I think our thoughts and our actions has to work together in order to attract good things, and doing Dharma work is the best way out for manifesting our good and bad Karma. Many of us will normally just sit, pray and doing nothing to wait for good things drop on us but that is a wrong mindset as we get served what we deserved. and of course the motivation it has to be positive or else its just a zero practice for us.
This is a fantastic article that i can share with my friends, great teachings and easy to understand. Thank you Rinpoche, xx
Thanks Rodrigues for the sharing.
This article gave me a clearer picture to differentiate the Karma and Law of Attraction.
The Karma concept had be planted into my mind since I was at my young age. My grandmother was a “Ma Jie” who came from Guangdong，China. She told me many stories about the Karma and taught me to be a better person and help people who are in need so that we can have a better life.
This concept has been extended after I attended Sunday Dharma Class, read the dharma books. Through dharma I realize the bigger scope of Karma because it’s related to our pass lives and continue to multiply and extend to our future lives. Through dharma some unanswered equation had been answered, through dharma I gain self-realization and started to practice setting a good motivation together with good action.
Thank you Rinpoche for bringing dharma easier for us.
Reading this article reminds me of a joke from my younger days about how a man kept asking God to let him strike a lottery. After numerous prayers over a period of time, the man got angry and stated scolding as he had not struck the lottery by then. God then answered him,”Please help me to help you and go buy a lottery ticket”.
So, all the positive thoughts remain just that, positive thoughts. There must be positive actions (Karma) to complement it. All the positive thoughts only create the circumstances for the Karma seed to ripen. One still has to take action to realize it. If one can understand Karma, then one will work to restock the positive karma and work to realize the circumstances created, ensuring a continuity of all things positive. And, the wonderful thing is that, this Karma goes beyond this life into future lives.
So, yeah, I do agree that the Law of attractions is only half the equation. Thanks for sharing.
Read through Law of attraction. Make me realized, no matter what we wish to achieving in this life it all base from our illusion mind of attachment. when we believe only in law of attraction to make us feel happiness in this life, it will lead us facing cause and effect end of our day and experiencing result of the our negative karma life after life.
Very well said by Mr.Rodrigues about the though of attracting a positive circumstance is not the only deciding factor of whether you will attract what you want or not; it also depends on whether you have accumulated enough merit or positive karma in your current or previous lives to deserve that positive circumstance. I totally agrees with this statement. Just seat quietly having good though without action. Did not create the cause having good karma or merits to achieve what you want.
Is important to understand well about law of the karma. Our though with good motivation plus positive action, will create merit to purify negative karma has follow us life after life.
If you have questions on
1. why the Law of attraction not working on you or someone…
2. why some people work little but they still enjoy the great things…
This article will answer your questions well.
During KFR team discussion, we spend time on does Karma apply to your thoughts even there is no action performed, the answer is YES. Thought is just like you have planting a seed, thoughts give birth to intentions, and intentions give birth to honorable or dishonorable actions.
By understanding the Karma will lesser my suffering in long term. When i realised i am suffer, i will always remind myself that i have created a cause from my past life or this life. So it is a awareness to remind me to do more good things.
“…karma is a result of our thoughts too. Our actions are just a bridge between our thoughts and our manifestations.”
I have heard Rinpoche mentioned this many times before that our actions and speeches start with a thought. Motivation makes the action that is deemed as positive karma or negative karma.
I have to remember this and keep reminding myself to be wary of my thoughts. And ask myself why or what motivates me to speak or act.
I believe by having positive thoughts and doing positive actions we attract positive people and positive things to happen. Same as by having positive thoughts and doing positive things hence collect positive karma at the same time attract positive karma to ripen. same goes to negetive thoughts and actions that collect negetive karma and attract negetive karma to ripen.
2 people thinking the same thoughts or doing the same action doesn’t mean the result will turn out the same. This is because each of them have different karma and merits, hence this will lead them to various results. Hence law of attraction doesn’t work all the time.
It’s very important to understand how karma works. It make sense from this post that if one just think positive and without any positive action it will not change a thing in our life. Law of attraction is just for short term which may not even show result but by understanding karma, we understand why things happen to us now is due to what we have done before and for a change in our future we need to act now and this is a long term benefits that practically need us to be realistic with our positive thought to transform to positive action.
There is one important point to understand from this post is how our positive karma open. Through letting go and consistent of positive action ‘making way for positive karma from a past life which matches your vibration (positive) at the moment and helps you with the manifestation process.’
“Understanding of karma and the mind forms the basis of the Law of Attraction. Therefore, mind training teachings are a very important part of Dharma practice, and every fortunate student of the Dharma is introduced to these teachings as part of their spiritual journey.”
Yes, totally agreed with this statement. But how about those people who have faith in different religions. Is the “Law of Karma” applicable for all, for those who are not a Buddhist? Personally, I think it’s their Karma if they are not able to believe in Karma.
It’s a nice piece of article which has led me brought up some questions in mind and I’ve discussed with my Dharma sisters and brothers.
Thank you.
Thank you Mr. Herman Rodrigue for this article that explained the difference between the Law of Karma and Law of Attraction. It provide a logical explaination of why Law of Attraction is not sufficient to produce result for some people.
The Law of Karma have much more in depth explaination on cause and effect. It is also very good that it mentioned that Law of Attraction can be harmful if we lack the understanding of Karma.
As mentioned in the article, most people find Law of Attraction is similiar to Karma, but on a deeper level, they are quite different.
Thank you again for this wonderful article.
Khoo
Thanks Rinpoche and Herman Rodrigues for the article.
Law of Attraction is always taught in new age spiritual method to solve problem, my experience is, sometime it works, sometimes it doesn’t; in the end I gave up to use this method as the result is not consistent and not convincing.
I agree with Herman that Law of Attraction works with the understanding of karma, that we also need to have enough merits and good karma to attract what we wish for.
Nevertheless, Law of Attraction is one of the method to make people’s life better. For example, cancer patients who are always negative and angry would have a shorter life and those who are always positive and happy, they stand higher chance to live longer. There’s an explanation that with law of attraction, the happy patients attract more positive energy to get better.
However, with understanding of karma, the situation can be even better that one accept his/her sickness cause by his/her previous actions, and one will understand how to have a better life and future life with the current situation.
We might not able to explain every situation from the karma’s point of view (as we can’t see past life and its complexity), but by understanding it we know what seeds to plant for a better future.
Thank you!
Some people believe that heaven and hell is a state of mind. Some people believe that heaven and hell are physical “places”. In my opinion, our mind has the ability to be liberate us from suffering and experience eternal bliss and it also has the ability to entrap us in suffering and experience eternal agony. Are we our mind? Are we in control of our mind? And if not then who or what is? Does our mind control our karma or due to our karma we think in a certain way? In a way it’s almost resemble the “chicken and egg” situation.
Regardless of how or when it came to be, one thing for sure is that if our karma is linked to our mind then it is within our control, our actions are our own responsibility. If due to our karma we are habituated to think in a certain, then we can implant new thoughts into our mind to create new habituations and therefore alter the course of our karma. Hence, the importance of mind training as part of dharma practice.
For me the Law of Attraction is too simplistic and incomplete in providing any explanation to how our life journey pans out. Karma provides a more complete explanation.
Thank you Herman.
It’s good to have read this post and get a better understanding. It is concise and easy for people to understand especially those who have no idea about both law of attraction (like me) and karma.
I always told myself to train my mind to be better so I can be a better person everyday. I never thought of law of attraction at that time as I didn’t know.
It is true, the law of attraction is only a temporary solution. What is important is while we are alive, what have we done to generate the merits and positive karma that we can ‘bring’ with us after we die. Therefore, like what you said, mind training teachings are extremely important for our spiritual journey and not just based on law of attraction.
Thank you Herman for this thought provoking article. It really helped by understanding how Law of attraction work,and how law of karma holds a big factor in whatever we are doing.
It is important for us to collect more merits in order to achieve what we want. If we do not have enough merits and created the good cause for it, no matter how much we try Law of Attraction, it will lead us to no where. Even those who may achieve what they had through law of attraction, is depleting the good karma, and at the time of death the law of attraction cannot help us at all.
Hence when we understand the law of Karma, we will open ourself to do more positive action to collect more merits to support ourself or love ones when they needed the most.
Thank You Herman for this fantastic artice on karma and Law attraction.
“The thought of attracting a positive circumstance is not the only deciding factor of whether you will attract what you want or not; it also depends on whether you have accumulated enough merit or positive karma in your current or previous lives to deserve that positive circumstance.”
It is thought provoking and i thank you Herman for sharing such inspiring article. I love the way you said that we need to have enough merits collected to be able to attract anything. Karma is rather complex you gave me in simplest form to understand. _()_
Noce read on the Laws or Attraction and how important is it to understand the Karma and the mind to form the basis of it.
I didnt really thought of it that way till i read this. Really let me understand more on why different ppl achieve different lvl of positivity.
I am blessed for now to always have what i wanted and always thought it was the laws of attraction. Believe and u shall get.
Now i know its more so the good merits i have in the past and that this life i should continue to accumulate good merits so and hopefully that my positive circumstances will continue.
Great article.
Thank you Mr Herman for this very interesting and well thought on the Law of Attraction vs Karma. I have been introduced to Law of Attraction years ago and have been practicing it to be a more positive person. However, it is with the understanding of the law of karma as you have mentioned that makes me more effective eg to be on action to create the cause for good karma rather than just sit and pray without doing any thing.
Besides, if we are doing a lot of good things and making a lot of positive thoughts via law of attaction but we do not see the good results, we still need to understand the law of karma that it is whether we have the good karma to support the manifestation of all the good things too. If we do not have the understanding of karma, it may lead us to blame the situation or finding faults on things.
You also point out a very good point that The Law of Attraction do not really talk about what happens after we die. It is more important what we are doing now to create merits so that it will be able to determine where we are heading to after our death as Buddhist believe in reincarnation.
I fully agreed with your conclusion that “our understanding of karma and the mind forms the basis of the Law of Attraction. Therefore, mind training teachings are a very important part of Dharma practice, and every fortunate student of the Dharma is introduced to these teachings as part of their spiritual journey.”
Life is short and while I am so fortunate to have Rinpoche as my Guru, I must strive to learn and practice what he is teaching and keep practice it to transform my mind.
Thank you!
Our mind is important. What the mind thinks it becomes. Mr Rodrigues is right in pointing out that our mind in the root of manifestation of certain circumstance or event that we may term as being negative or positive. We can label this method as the Law of Attraction, which advocates positive thoughts attract circumstances which are of a like nature. Law of Attraction does help with uplifting us from negative perpetuation in the mundane world. But it lacks the ascendancy over the profound understanding of life and the way things work. As such, I am incline to believe that people who practice Law of Attraction heavily tend to negate the fact of Karma, because they cannot grasp the gist of Karma – it operates not just in this lifetime but over many, many lifetimes, past and future. We must take the responsibility of our previous actions and make the changes to correct them. In my humble opinion, Law of Attraction (positive thinking) is just about one of the means to the end.
Thank you Rinpoche and Herman Rodrigues for this interesting article that allow me to ponder deeper on Law of Attraction.
Humbly, bowing down,
Stella Cheang
Thank you Herman for this interesting article. It is true that the Law of Attraction needs to be combine with understanding of karma to be effective. Thinking positive thoughts don’t necessarily guarantee a positive result. We need a positive karma bank to bring about the positive result and thus positive actions are needed. I have never paid much attention to the Law of Attraction before and you have brought it up so interestingly.
Look forward to your next sharing.
Thank you Herman for this interesting article. Coincidentally I was thinking about the law of attraction today.
I agree that we should learn law of attraction through karma. For example there is no point just thinking that we will get healthy but we did not do anything about it or eating excessively on unhealthy food.
We experience what we have as a result of our own creation. Hence our mind is very important as it determine our action. We should always have a positive mind set and set positive motivation as it will then produce good positive result.
Thank you for this article. For me the Law of Attraction proponents have not been very attractive (haha), mostly because of the extremely narcissistic nature of wanting to attract everything you think you want that you think would make you happy. The Law would be quite impressive if it were presented thus: I wish to manifest every last thing that would make every last being absolutely and irreversibly happy! When we want as much for others as for ourselves the fulfilment of all wishes, we won’t care about attracting to ourselves the very best.
It is believed that everyone has its own Karma to contend with. We are all heirs to our own karma, as we experienced the results of what we have created. Basing on the belief of the law of cause and effect, we get what we experienced while alive, and what kind of habits we have, are believed to be due to our karma. Hence, we are all heirs of our karma. Karmic seeds inevitably ripen in accordance with their cause, i.e virtue leads to Joy and non-virtue to Sorrow. Karmic seeds never lose their potency. Realizing that the law of karma holds true both within this life, and one’s present life to the next, one should carefully guard one’s acts! The Dharma tells us that nothing is more powerful that the mind. It is our mind which creates our personal reality. Through meditation it is said we have a tool to the mind directly. Knowing it, we begin to take control. By training the mind with meditation, we produce and sustain mental attitudes and physiological states. We put efforts to create purification practices to try to effect the strength and weaknesses of a karma. It is said that if purification excercises are done truly and properly, the said karma may not ripen at all, or it may ripen in a weak manner. Thank you Mr. Herman Rodrigues for sharing your honest thoughts on this interesting articles of yours.
It was very interesting reading this article, Mr. Rodrigues. What stands out for me is your explanation that the Law of Attraction must be seen through the lens of Karma.
So true, as in your illustration why and how come that a child be born with huge problems when he had done nothing negative. Therefore it must be the play back of negative actions or causes from previous lives.
It is also very clear that the Law of Attraction does not happen nor develop results if there are no action to make way for its manifestation. The important bridge whereby our minds thoughts are manifested into some form of Karma, positive or negative. Everything begins at the mind.
It is very impactful that you mentioned that in this life we accumulate merits so that we are able to build on our positive karma and purify our negative.
Thank you very much for this very interesting post.
Based on what he recounted of the Law of Attraction, it does not consider karma. In that way, you can also say that it does not consider the consequences of what we attract or what we ask for. Sometimes triggering the karma to get what we want, does not actually give us what we need and so on an ultimate level, causes damage in the long run. How? Because when we attract those things we ask for, which we think are positive, it could actually be setting in motion further events which are destructive to our spirituality. So I think Herman hit the nail on the head.
One thing I think we can take from all of this is that everyone wants to be happy. The Law of Attraction exists because people are looking for a way, a path to be happy and so its proponents exist because they fulfil something, which is the demand for teachers to show others how to find happiness.
It is very true that when we believe in the law of attraction, there is nothing much that we can do except to constantly wish for the best. Yet, when we believe only in the law of attraction and not the law of karma, there will be nothing that we will be able to do for our afterlife but only doing something for this life.
What Herman has written is very true and logical. When we have things that go smoothly now, it does not mean that we have that forever. But it is just so because we have accumulated good karma in our past lives to have what we can “enjoy” today. Once we run out of that karma that we accumulated, without generating new merits, we will never be able to sustain what we have. Thus, when we constantly generate new merits for our lifestyle, we will be able to achieve what is necessary for our afterlife and what we “aim” to achieve in this life.
Seldom we think of the negative side of life, but only when we do think about it, will we be able to face the truth and facts of what will happen when we do not do the right things.
Thank you Herman for such an article that makes us see the truth of what is going on.
Interesting stuff Mr Herman. The law of attraction does have some basis in the law of causality or karma. You brought out interesting points on how this actually work from the standpoint of karma. I like how you said that it has its limitations in the fact that it cannot help you in the time of death. The truth of the matter is, when we get a lot of material success, we deplete a lot of our good karma and hence, what’s left is the bad karma that would naturally spring forth.
The law of attraction doesn’t really delve into the basis of karma, which is the fact that it originates from the self-cherishing I. Hence, whether we experience good or bad karma, it never fail to swing back and forth, back and forth. The law of attraction does nothing to help us overcome this grasping and attachment for the pleasant and aversion for the unpleasant.
It may superficially seem to give us some sort of control to experience more pleasant situations but in the end, we still swing back to the unpleasant no matter how hard we psyche ourselves. That’s because it does not deal with transcending karma and seek liberation from suffering. Buddhists believe ordinary pleasures are just a disguise for more suffering and the idea is not so much as starve ourselves of sensual pleasures but to go beyond that and see its true nature. That’s how powerful and liberating the Buddha’s teachings are.
Thank you Mr Rodrigues 的分享，最精彩的是最后一段。不是不报，只是时辰未到。 这可是真的。
常常会听到说，谁谁谁。。。做了那么多伤天害理的事还是那么的风光。。。为什么我们每做什么。。。今天会是这样。。。
这怔怔就是所分享的， 如果我们想过的好， 就要做好事累计功德，埋怨，看不过眼。。。改变不了现实。就譬如说。。。我很穷，每天在佛菩萨面前说。。。如果能给我中彩票就好了，我用一生去问，佛菩萨很慈悲给了我一个机会可以中大奖， 可是。。。我没钱去买彩票，结局是什么？
如果我每天努力工作，机会来临，我们一定会有成果的。不要放弃，今天的坎坷路，是将来回味时的甜。
Thank you Mr Rodrigues for this great and inspiring article, which elucidates what is so fundamental for us to fully understand – the mind and karma and how they work to create happiness or suffering for us.
This article shows us very clearly the power of karma in determining if we encounter positive or negative situations and experiences. It is not merely developing positive attitudes or mind-sets, like what is taught under the Law of Attraction, that will bring about positive situations or circumstances.
The mind(or our mindstream) is where all the positive or negative karmic imprints or seeds from actions of the past are stored. Actions that create positive or negative results are actions of the body, speech and mind- not just actions of body or speech.
After reading this article, my thoughts are that we need to concentrate on training the mind to focus on accumulating merits and good karma, which are the causes for positive circumstances and situations to arise for us. We should avoid negative actions, actions that hurt and harm others, because they will create negative karma and result in our experiencing negative situations and circumstances in life -like being poor, losing one’s job or having a serious illness.
In other words, we need to develop minds of kindness and compassion – minds that are always seeking to help and benefit others – and not selfish minds that are perpetually embroiled in negative(or harmful)actions to secure ‘benefits’ for self.
Thank you Rinpoche for the explaining the differences between karma and the law of attraction. I am very surprised to see books written solely on the subject of Law of Attraction and merely repeating chapters and chapters on how thinking positively could yield positive results and making a ‘parking space’ appear out of nowhere. It takes more than just the basic positive thought and it has to go with positive actions accumulated through time to reap the results. Even that good results can be depleted just like a pail of clean water, getting lesser after each use.
With folded palms,
Thank you Rinpoche.
Dear Herman,
You’ve summed this up very well. I haven’t really much paid any credence to the Law of Attraction before, as I didn’t really know much about it but your explanation given the frame of reference of karma, makes me understand it. From your explanation i can see the dangers that one can fall into if one follows the Law of Attraction, but i do think that coupled with an understanding of karma it can be useful for some people.
If you think positively, and are practicing the Dharma, eg. the purification of negative karma and the accumulation of merit, i can see the benefits of the practicing the Law of Attraction. But as you so clearly mentioned the Law of Attraction is used to gain things in this life, which as we Dharma practitioners know, is not the ultimate goal. I wonder if the Law of Attraction can be used in a Dharmic way? What do you think?
Hey there Pastor! Sorry for replying you after so long but anyway here’s what I would say: Yes from my own experience I can say that the Law of Attraction can be used to attract circumstances and situations that can bring us closer to the dharma because the material and spiritual world are not two separate things. This whole world and everything in it is one whole.
The only reason I didn’t mentioned the LOA and spirituality in the article is because people normally use the LOA to gain material needs.
I would also like to add that the people who generally use the LOA for material gains are not on the wrong track if they have an awareness of the temporary pleasure that their material wants would give them – To give a different perspective or a better understanding of what I just said, I would say that if a person desires for material things like money and uses the Law of Attraction to gain money in life just so that he can gain a first hand experience of what it feels like to have millions of dollars and then move beyond it, then the person is using the LOA in a very effective way towards moving to enlightenment. So unlike a lot of people who use the LOA just for the sake of money, this person is using it to gain money and then move beyond it which may look a little ridiculous but the positive side of it is that his mind will be completely free of the attachment of money just because he has had a first hand experience of what it feels like to have a lot of money and then give it up. A beggar can say that money is not good and speak against it, and directly move towards working on his spiritual side, but deep down he may still want to possess money which ultimately is going to affect in the long run towards spiritual goals. The Joy of having lived a wealthy life and then throwing all your wealth away one fine day in search of God is something of a totally different level – isn’t that what Gautam Siddhartha did as well? 😉