karma reflection 🪞

Do you believe in karma?

“You have a right to perform your prescribed duties, but you are not entitled to the fruits of your actions.”— Bhagavad Gita 2.47

Do I believe in karma?

The only karma I know—and perhaps the karma I do not yet understand—is the palm of my own hands.My palms carry lines that appear to tell a story, yet I sometimes wonder whether those lines are meant to remain forever.

Every time a lesson or obstacle appears in my life, it feels like another line being drawn into the story. How I respond to it determines whether I have truly understood what has been placed before me.

When I overcome one lesson, the obstacle disappears, and another one appears.Then the pattern repeats.Sometimes the same lesson returns in a different person, a different relationship, a different place, or a completely different situation.

It may look different on the outside, but something within it feels strangely familiar. Perhaps life keeps presenting the same lesson until I stop reacting to it in the same way and finally understand what it is trying to teach me.Once that lesson is understood, the direction changes.

A new step appears.A new situation arises.A new version of myself has to respond.Maybe karma is not a punishment waiting somewhere in the future. Maybe karma is simply action continuing from one moment into the next—what I do, how I think, how I respond, and what I create through those actions.

The palm lines may remain or disappear, but they are not the karma itself.The real karma is what I am doing right now.

Yesterday’s action has already become part of the past.

Tomorrow’s action has not yet arrived.

What remains in my hands is this moment—and what I choose to do with it.

So perhaps karma is not about escaping a repeated lesson.It is about becoming conscious enough to respond differently.

And when the lesson is complete, I do not need to carry it forward. I can take the next step.

“Therefore, without attachment, constantly perform the action that must be done; for by performing action without attachment, one attains the Supreme.”— Bhagavad Gita 3.19