Does luck exist?
That’s a good question. We were just talking about something like that right? Someone just comes up and insults you, was it your bad luck? Or someone just hits you!
I was a passenger in a motor car, a couple of years ago, and we’re driving along the highway, in Durban, South Africa, in the outside lane. Someone came driving up in the inside lane, next lane over, on our left, and suddenly the person just spun and smashed into the side of our car. Wow! We’re doing 110 or 120 km/h something like that, fortunately the car was a big heavy car and the driver was very together. Otherwise it would have knocked us straight out and who knows what would have happened. So what was that? Was it luck? Well no, it wasn’t. Generally for people it’s our karma. As we were just saying because we acted in different ways in the past now we’re getting the reactions. So in Krishna consciousness we understand luck does not exist. Sorry. What does exist are the reactions to your previous activities. Some of those reactions are good and may appear to just come out of the blue, out of nowhere. Some of them are bad and also may appear apparently to come out of nowhere but they’re not luck they are your karma, reactions to your previous activities. So we don’t accept that there is such a thing as luck. There is just karma.
In Bhagavad Gita I think it’s in the 17th chapter Lord Krishna says that anyone who sees life from the perspective that there is only karma sees correctly. At least on the material platform its karma, the reactions to our previous activities and now we are creating new reactions by our current activities which we are going to get in the future. While you’ve still got reactions to come, they’re waiting to come, you still have to take birth again. If you’ve still got stored up reactions waiting to come you’re going to have to take birth again. Therefore Krishna consciousness is so wonderful and Lord Krishna makes the point in the 4th chapter of Bhagavad Gita, I think it is verse 36. You can have a look. Krishna says that the fire of transcendental knowledge burns up all the reactions to previous activities. Just burns it all up, very quickly, even if you’ve got reactions accumulated for millions of lifetimes. Lots and lots of reactions but in a short time the fire of transcendental knowledge, of Krishna consciousness, can burn up all those reactions, even millions of lifetimes of accumulated karma. Even very quickly, means in a few years. Or even less, even practically no time.
In fact we understand that at least when a person is initiated by a bonafide spiritual master, through the initiation all of your karma is destroyed, all of it. Then when the time of death comes because you’ve got no karma left but rather you’ve been engaged in service and you’ve got some transcendental credits there, Krishna has recognized you as His devotee, and you’ve got no karma left, then at the time of this lifetime, back home back to godhead.
Goloka Vrindavan dham ki jai!
So there’s no such thing as luck, sorry about that.
(Transcribed from a questions and answers session in Mahebourgh, Mauritius on 12-12-2015)