The Road to Hell

 The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

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I am going to challenge that cliche with what I am learning about karma. 

First of all, let's look at Hell in a non-traditional way. Let's look at it as the symbol of the consequence received for unwholesome actions, the effect of unhealthy causes.  Let's look at is as the intense  suffering we endure because of the choices we make that don't honor these lives we are living now and see it , not as an actual  place we may go to after we leave these incarnations, but what is also happening as we live and breathe in these bodies. Let's look at the Hell on earth, and lets look at it in terms of Karma. 

And though we are striving to someday be  non-dualistic in our view of all that is, we are going to use the dualistic term of "good" that is so important in this cliche, to represent anything that is wholesome, healthy, or  skillful. Okay? 

So is the road to Hell (to karmic suffering) paved with good intentions? In other words ...are wholesome  intentions useless in keeping us from suffering the consequences of our actions?  

No.  We need to remember that....although karma denotes action of body, mind, and energy, it is not about action alone...karma is much more fundamentally about volition.  page 26-27. 

 Intention (another name for volition)  is far from inconsequential. It is essential in determining  if you are experiencing a hell on earth or a heaven on earth. It determines your degree of suffering. 

Our western society tends to minimize the importance of intention. We tend to  praise or punish the result of action more than we do the motivating factor beneath the action.  We are ingrained to believe it isn't so important to know why we do or don't do something, as long as we do or don't get it done. Intention then is useless, the finished action is everything.

The law of karma as explained by Sadhguru, however,  states that the reason why you do something  is even more important than what you actually end up doing.  If intentions are good(wholesome, intended in  service to all, coming from a loving heart) they will take us to heaven ( peace, joy and bliss) and away from suffering. If intentions, on the other hand,  are wrought with ill will towards self or another, motivated by selfish greed, or dishonesty,  they will lead to hell. 

It doesn't matter so much how your actions turn out, as does  the volition beneath the action. For example we may be conditioned to believe that taking another's life is a sin...and a sure ticket to Hell (both in this life and in the  afterlife). We accumulate karma with both.  The mother who instinctively kills an intruder to protect the child the intruder is after out of love and instinct, however,  is not accumulating as much karma (closer to hell), as would the person who spends years  meticulously planning on killing his wife because he hates her and he wants her inheritance, even if he doesn't follow through with the act.  Love is a healthy ,wholesome, and skillful  volition when it comes to karma.  Hate and selfish greed isn't.  The mother had "good" intentions and though she committed an act of murder that she will no doubt suffer internally for, she is not heading to hell (accumulating a lot of karmic consequence...i.e. will likely not be punished legally) . The man who, though he did not commit the actual act physically, committed murder a 1000 times in his head had "bad intentions" and intentions like this are what paves the road to hell. It is also important to note that  how our plans or actions physically turn out, how they are received by another,  is not as important as the mental and emotional motivation beneath them. 

How the recipient of your hatred reacts is not the point. The accumulation of karma is determined by your intention, not merely by its impact on someone else. page 27 

Karma is an inside game, an internal one. When we do injustice to another we hurt ourselves more than we hurt them.  The intruder in the above scenario is killed by the protective mother, therefore released of a certain karma he was carrying and the wife is not harmed by the hateful, greedy husband yet to follow through with his plans. He, however, is inflicting great internal suffering on himself whether he knows it or not. 

...allowing the bitterness to grow and multiply within has even deeper internal consequences. Intention motivated by a personal agenda always accrues more karma...page 28

And what about the  moral, law abiding citizen who puts everyone's needs above their own but at the same time are lost in self hatred and condemnation, constantly berating themselves.  They are not hurting anyone or outwardly hurting themselves even,  yet they are creating a hell on earth for themselves.  They are accumulating great karma which manifests as the consequence of depression. 

if you perform only negative mental karma, there may be no external consequence, but you experience a deeper level of internal suffering. page 28

Though we are taught, in western culture, that the bad things we do may need to be punished with hell fire in the afterlife and suffering here on earth, and though we may come to understand karma in terms of how close we are to that hellish punishment ...the karmic consequence is not a punishment...it is just Life working itself out through us.  Life is not sitting behind a big courtroom bench with a gavel in its hand saying..."Okay that was "bad" and it  brings you a few steps closer to hell...and that was good...and that brings you a few steps closer to heaven".   Life is just doing what Life does. Ultimately life is neither suffering or bliss. It is what you want it to be. It has no inherent quality. page 34 

Life doesn't care about your personal karma...it just has to flow and find its way around  and through us in anyway it can.  If we are closed up in suffering, it has to push through us and that hurts (Hell).  If we are open in our love and freedom...it flows much easier through us.  And we suffer less.(Heaven) . Life doesn't care. You, on the other hand, do.  Whether you allow yourself to be consciously aware of it or not...you know what will close you and what will open you in terms of body, mind and energy action. You know what will create suffering and what won't.    You know what will take you to karmic freedom and what will take you to karmic prison .  What will take you to heaven and what will take you to hell: Your Intention!!!

I would like to rework the above cliche now:

The road to hell is paved with unwholesome, Self/God/Life - denying intention. And the road to Heaven is paved with Love. 

Yeah...you may have some work to do to get rid of the  negative habits of intending wrongly you have accumulated...you may have to do the work of becoming more aware and conscious of these habits...you may need to commit to intending  differently from an open heart of Love, here on in.  But would you not rather be paving the road to heaven than the road to hell? It can be done.

All is well. 

Sadhguru ( 2021) Karma: A Yogi's Guide to Crafting Your Destiny. New York: Harmony Books