Confused ji,
I have been meaning to reply to this post for sometime but have lacked the time and energy to write my thoughts down though they have been in my head for sometime. Perhaps I was wrong to bring in worldly examples at the beginning but I do not reject them completely as on a superficial level I think thoughts such as those in day to day working are productive in improving manners. We can never really know a persons motivations but that is no reason not to encourage courteous and considerate manners. However, my understanding of karma goes much deeper and it is something I think about an awful lot, especially recently.
I truly struggle with relating karma to past lives as there are just too many pitfalls in this approach. On many levels it also encourages a sense of defeat and gives people an excuse out of their situation. The belief seems to act as a scapegoat rather than a push for improvement. In the example of the bad businessman, you say, "happiness, honor, praise and respect which he receives, would in fact be the result of some good karma done in the past." I do not understand this as you are relating his worldly happiness and praise to good karma. My understanding about karma is more spiritual because you have already said that we do not really know the intentions of the people giving this praise etc and we do not know how lasting or deepfelt that happiness is. I will explain further a little later.
I have spent much time with people with learning difficulties on both a professional and personal level. People will often say they must have bad karma from a previous life to be born like that. However, I can't buy this as many of the people I know are inspiring and more contented than I will ever be. Most people equate being born into comfortable home, healthy, few hardships in life with previous good karma. Again I cannot agree as this is judging from worldly levels and not spirituality. Different communities have different ideas of what is good and what is bad and these are sometimes opposites so how do we judge good and bad karma in those situations? Premature babies have no time to earn any karma for their next birth so what happens to them? So many holes and question marks, the list of possibilities is endless.
The thing that puzzles me most is when I think about Guru Arjan Dev ji. According to conventional wisdom, on one hand Guruji must have had the most incredible good karma to be a Guru. On the other hand there must have been bad karma there for Guruji to be martyred after enduring the most painful horrendous torture. I cannot reconcile those 2 things.
For this reason I understand karma to arise from our actions in this life and we have control over that karma. The result of karma is also the ability to rise above bitterness, lust, attachment, greed, revenge, anger, ego while dealing with the world. Good karma allows us to always do the right thing and deal with the consequences as doing the right thing is usually tougher. Above all good karma allows us to feel the connection with Waheguru. Whether I believe in reincarnation or not, I'm not sure but I don't believe it is relevant to karma in this lifetime as we have full control over how we behave and think should we choose to exercise that control.
I cannot agree with this. As human beings we should always strive to be better people. If we just accepted the way things are and didn't try to correct out faults the world would be an even worse place than it is. I do not understand how on any level striving to be a better person with better qualities can be bad? More important is how you go about it and that is where counterproductive actions can be taken. That should not stop us from trying to develop good qualities but make us wary of how we are doing it. Attachment will only arise if you are making the changes for worldly praise and to massage your own ego, not if you are truly trying to do seva in the broadest sense of the word. This world drags us down so it is a constant effort to rise above it. Merely accepting my limitations rather than trying to deal with them would only result in me drowning as the fight would be too tough. Accepting my natural greed, anger, lust, attachment and ego rather than tackling it would take me further away from Waheguru.
