Sri Chandrashekarendra Saraswathi, the 68th Shankaracharya of the Kanchi
Kamakoti Peetam. The Maha Periyaval of Kanchi was also referred to as
Paramacharya .
Below is a beautiful incident in which Maha Periyaval the concept
of Karma to a foreigner Devotee..
Once a foreigner interested in the
philosophy of Hinduism was waiting for
darshan of Mahaperiyaval at Kanchi to
clarify his doubts Shortly when he met Him and without wasting any time, he put
forth his question.
“Swamiji, I understand all your concepts, value them
but for one particular faith (i.e) same soul taking various births, papa,
punya
being carried forward to the next births
etc…Can you please make me comfortable
on this aspect?”. Because, in all our religions, we get the reward for what we
do in this birth only. (
i.e) if we are honest,
God is pleased and blesses us
with benefits and we are dishonest, we get punished by Him.
At this
point, Maha Periyaval asked him, whether he owns a car and if he could do a
favour of collecting some statistical information within Kancheepuram using his
vehicle. The guest readily agreed, at the same time wondering why his question
was not answered spontaneously.
Please, Swamiji, go ahead, “What is the
service you expect me to do now?”.
Periyaval said, ‘Please go around 10
maternity centres within Kancheepuram and collect the data of children born
within the last 2 days – Child’ s gender, health condition,
parents name,
status, educational qualification, time of birth.
The man said “Fine,
this is
nothing` and immediately rushed in his car and within a day he was back
with all the exact statistics in front of Mahaperiyaval. He went through the
statistics, about 15 children were born in 10 hospitals of which 8 were female
and 7 male infants, out of which 3 children had malnutrition defects, 2 children
were the the first children of highly rich parents and were born in luxury
hospitals while 4 were children of
Labourers who already had
few
children.
Mahaperiyaval now looked at the gentleman and
started him
asking few questions:
Do you think any of these children have been honest
/
dishonest within 2 days of their birth? Probably they could not even recognize
their own mother. So, they have neither earned papa or
punya in this birth, So
According to your concepts, all these children should be living exactly
identical to each other, but not so practically – some are ill, some are
healthy, some are born to rich parents, some are born to poor parents, Remember
all children born in the same day, same
longtitude, latitude, you can’t blame
their horoscope which is going to be almost identical….
The gentleman was
dumb folded!
Then Maha Periyaval said ` It is here the concept of
previous birth erupts! All these children have taken their present birth
according to their deeds
(karma) and the resultant papa,
punya which they have
assimilated in their previous births.
Sanatana Dharma was smiling at the
gentleman through Maha Periyaval.
