Mystic Mantra: Is life a bitter pill?

Seeker: Sadhguru, you have told us many times that if we have bitter experiences in our lives, it is because of our past doings. What type of activities should we do today to avoid future bitterness? Sadhguru: The bitterness of any experience is not in what has happened. The bitterness of any experience is in terms of how you have received it. What is very bitter for one person could be a blessing for another. Once, a grief-stricken man threw himself on a grave and cried bitterly, hitting his head against it.

“My life! Oh! How senseless it is! How worthless this carcass of mine is because you are gone. If only you had lived! If only fate had not been so cruel as to take you from this world! How different everything would have been!”

A clergyman who overheard him said, “I assume this person lying beneath this mound of earth was someone of great importance to you.”

“Importance? Yes, indeed,” wept the man, wailing even louder, “He was my wife's first husband!”

The bitterness is not in what is happening. It is in how you are allowing yourself to experience it. Similarly, whatever the past activity or karma is, is also not in terms of action, but in terms of the volition with which it is done. What awareness means is, there is no volition. Where there is no volition, there is no karma. You are simply doing what is needed. In every given situation, simply whatever you see as needed, as per your awareness, as per your capability, you just do it. You build karma only with volition; whether it is good or bad, it does not matter. The strength of your volition is what builds karma.

People ask me, again and again, the same question, “What's your mission?” When I tell them, “I have no mission, I am just fooling around,” they think I am being frivolous. They don’t understand this is the deepest statement that I can make about living in the world because there is no particular volition — just doing what is needed, that’s all. In this, there is no karma.  Whatever you go through, there is no karma. Whatever you are doing is just happening, as it is needed. So karma is only in terms of your need to do something. When you have no need to do anything, and you simply do what is needed, there is no karmic attachment to it. It is neither good nor bad.