Social Conditioning and Karma

Most of our behavior is learned behavior. Western sociologists and psychologists debate on just how much of human behavior is learned from our environment (our family, friends, the society we live in) and how much is genetic (inherited from our parents)?

When we raise the concept of reincarnation it swings the debate enormously in favor of everything being learned. Many Eastern traditions have the concept of ‘karma’.

This is a tough concept to express, but it might help to understand by simply thinking of karma as everything we have ever learned in this and past lives.

For example, if a child starts playing the piano at the age of two and nobody in the family is musically inclined, Western science would say he had a ‘genetic tendency’. 

In some Eastern traditions, it would be said that he had learned the skill in a previous lifetime, and it had carried forward as part of his ‘karma’.

There is so much more to karma than that, but if you just hold this simplified idea as you read future posts, it can aid you in understanding what we imply when we start speaking about the differences between personality and Soul.

A woman pondering about our souls and karma.