{"id":141,"date":"2016-01-02T19:14:22","date_gmt":"2016-01-02T19:14:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/eastmeetswest\/?p=141"},"modified":"2016-01-02T19:14:22","modified_gmt":"2016-01-02T19:14:22","slug":"happy-new-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/eastmeetswest\/2016\/01\/happy-new-year.html","title":{"rendered":"Happy New Year"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Hindu\u2019s believe in the concept of karma. It is the law of cause and effect. They believe that one causes the events of one\u2019s life through their actions and inaction.  The action is the cause such, as if we are respectful to each other and the effect is that others will be respectful to you.  Christians also follow this concept based upon Christ\u2019s famous, \u201cYou reap what you sow\u201d lesson.<br \/>\nThe Hindus further believe that our karma follows us from life to life.   Our station in this life and our challenges which we must overcome are based upon the karma from past lives.  They call this concept the Cosmic Wheel. Our cycle of births and deaths continue because of our karma, until we become God realized and are freed from this cycle.<\/p>\n<p>They believe that we are destined to go around and around on this cosmic wheel until we realize our true relationship with God. I have talked about the so above and below concept before. This is a classic example. We get caught up in the wheel of everyday living far too much.  We diet, or I should say, I diet, all week. I limit my calories from Monday through Friday so much so that an ascetic Monk would be proud.  Yet on Saturday, I go out to dinner and one great dinner and two Martinis later, I am back to square one.  <\/p>\n<p>Let this be the year where we stop emulating Sisyphus.  After all, who wants a life of constantly rolling that rock up a hill just to see it roll down and start the task once again.  Let us stop being good Catholics who live it up during the week only to go to confession on Saturday to clean the slate. (Am I the only one who takes advantage of that lovely rule?)   Let us break the wheel of karma and move forward and become the person spiritually that we are meant to be.  No more of this one step forward two steps back nonsense.  Forever Forward !!!!!  (After this last piece of Christmas Cake)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Hindu\u2019s believe in the concept of karma. It is the law of cause and effect. They believe that one causes the events of one\u2019s life through their actions and inaction. The action is the cause such, as if we are respectful to each other and the effect is that others will be respectful to&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":584,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Happy New Year - East Meets West<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, nofollow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Happy New Year - East Meets West\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Hindu\u2019s believe in the concept of karma. It is the law of cause and effect. They believe that one causes the events of one\u2019s life through their actions and inaction. The action is the cause such, as if we are respectful to each other and the effect is that others will be respectful to&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/eastmeetswest\/2016\/01\/happy-new-year.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"East Meets West\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-01-02T19:14:22+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"douglasdavis\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@Seekerdwd\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Happy New Year - East Meets West","robots":{"index":"noindex","follow":"nofollow"},"og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Happy New Year - East Meets West","og_description":"The Hindu\u2019s believe in the concept of karma. 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The action is the cause such, as if we are respectful to each other and the effect is that others will be respectful to&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/eastmeetswest\/2016\/01\/happy-new-year.html","og_site_name":"East Meets West","article_published_time":"2016-01-02T19:14:22+00:00","author":"douglasdavis","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@Seekerdwd","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/eastmeetswest\/2016\/01\/happy-new-year.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/eastmeetswest\/2016\/01\/happy-new-year.html","name":"Happy New Year - East Meets West","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/eastmeetswest\/#website"},"datePublished":"2016-01-02T19:14:22+00:00","dateModified":"2016-01-02T19:14:22+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/eastmeetswest\/#\/schema\/person\/74b0561da40967894b7244d22cfafd54"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/eastmeetswest\/2016\/01\/happy-new-year.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/eastmeetswest\/2016\/01\/happy-new-year.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/eastmeetswest\/2016\/01\/happy-new-year.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/eastmeetswest"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Happy New Year"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/eastmeetswest\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/eastmeetswest\/","name":"East Meets West","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Douglas Davis","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/eastmeetswest\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/eastmeetswest\/#\/schema\/person\/74b0561da40967894b7244d22cfafd54","name":"douglasdavis","description":"Douglas Davis is a father, husband, writer, corporate consultant and business coach. 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He has recently published an e-book entitled, \"In My Contemplation\" which is available now on Amazon.","sameAs":["https:\/\/x.com\/Seekerdwd"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/eastmeetswest\/author\/douglasdavis"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/eastmeetswest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/eastmeetswest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/eastmeetswest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/eastmeetswest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/584"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/eastmeetswest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/eastmeetswest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":142,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/eastmeetswest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions\/142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/eastmeetswest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/eastmeetswest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/eastmeetswest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}