Palmistry and Karma

I've known the names of the major lines on the palm for 15 years now. 12 years ago I read my classmates palms and told them some general stuff about their personality, past and future. I had enough of a palmist vocabulary that students from all corners of the class came to me when no teacher was around and stuck their palm under my nose to hear the soothsayer speak. My reading wasn't specific enough to justify a charge, though. Come to think of it, it was 5-10 sentences of generic crap. But, my point is, my interest in the subject dates way back. I've read most of the free tutorials on the web, followed discussion forums and joined online communities dedicated solely to the subject, and picked up all the tit-bits I could whenever my uncle or his friends spoke about it. I did everything short of reading an authorative text cover to cover. I just don't have absolute faith in the accuracy of a reading or the surety that the prediction will actually become truth.

Inspite of my lack of faith, I still lookup my palm to learn what it has in store, if it actually does, for my future. I glance at my palm, every so often, to make sure my fate line, my faint apollo line and the markings on the mount of Jupiter, I like to call a star, are still there. If I sense a degradation in color, depth or length, I reorient my palm in space to make for light and shadow adjustments. But if that doesn't work, it calls for some desperate measures. I lick parts of my palm so its moist again and the lines seem pronounced, and if that doesn't work, I need to fold the portions of my palm to lengthen and deepen the lines that caused the emergency in the first place.

Will I actually acheive what I think my hand says? I wonder. My reading of my becoming a visionary leader (that might be a slight exaggeration, but I like to flatter myself) might be totally out of line, but a bigger question here is, is my future already laid out? In other words, does my current thought and action decide my future, or is future already determined? Is it somewhere in between, i.e. are the major events laid out, and the day to day details left for us?

To some extent the future has been predetermined for each one of us and no amount of efforts can change it. I didn't have any say in quantity or quality of the I.Q., physical fitness, external appearance I was bestowed with, nor could I choose my race, caste, parents, or gender. I won't expect a child born to a poor family in the 3rd world during a famine to play the Wimbledon, but I won't be surprised if he struggles for livelyhood while he grows up. On the contrary, I won't be surprised if a child born to athletic and wealthy parents in a developed nation plays good tennis in elementary school and someday does reach the Wimbledon. We don't start with the same set of resources in the first place.

The causality principle (i.e. every cause has an effect and every effect has a cause) must hold without exception. It must because I know our creator has a reputation of being just. Now, I see a man, in his early forties, go around, shake hands, make speeches scripted by professional writers and become the president of the most powerful nation. I see another man in his early forties who goes around, greets people, gives speeches he wrote on his own, and he also employs his whole mind and body for social reform of his backward community, still all he gets is rebukes and threats from the local authority. So the same actions lead to different results, is that possible? Did a different set of actions than what we saw, of shaking hands and making speeches, cause the results? Are we possibly mismatching causes and effects?

Karma explains the rest. All actions will be rewarded sooner or later, with interest. If I squish an insect to death, I shouldn't be surprised if I die a violent death in some future lifeform. There is an orthogonal component I should have included in the above analysis, desire or intention. The two persons had completely different goals in mind. We all move towards what we desire deep inside. If we don't attain it this lifetime, we'll be born in the future in a situation more suitable to fulfill our desires. Srila Bhaktivedanta Swami Maharaj, founder of the International Society for Krsna Consciousness, once mentioned to one of his disciples on his early morning walk alongside Venice beach, California, when he saw surfers riding the waves in the cold water, that the surfers will become dolphins and sharks in their next life because of their passion and obsession with the ocean. I absolutely trust him. Like I trust PhDs in computer science when it comes to research at my workplace, I trust saints in the affairs of life and death. Certainly, we each have our own destiny.

What about freewill? This is how I understand it: our destiny presents us with tendencies, resources and opportunities, but our freewill selects the actions to perform from the theoretically infinite possibilities. That should explain the variety in lifestyle, culture, and beliefs across mankind. We began the cycle of life and death with different desires and through the process of living we exercised our freewill in different ways. That's why life today is so diverse.

Back to my palm. I still need to find someone who knows palmistry well and is willing to be straightforward and forthcoming in his reading. Meanwhile, I am in wait and watch mode. You might call it blind faith in destiny or just inertia, but I can justify my procrastination. I want to be an entrepreneur, but I guess the time hasn't come. When and if the time comes, I'll know, the drive will be deep or the opportunity too good and obvious to miss. In the meantime, I should carefully control my desires and cautiously perform each act I do, however trivial, because I will be held accountable and might have to pay dearly in the future.