Can Karma be reduced if one stops sinning and follows Satvik life?
A devotee (Name hidden) asked like this:
If someone knows there is some problem that a planet can give to the native. If he through his habits changes his behaviour and tries best to live a satvik life won’t his trouble will be reduced?
REPLY:
Our karmic reactions will be moderated to the bearable level if one stops sinning and reforms himself.
If we have to face 3 years of imprisonment in this birth as per our karma, if we reform ourselves and stop further sinning, we may just be given token punishment of a few days or just some defamation without imprisonment.
(Is being beautiful or ugly decided by our karma? READ HERE!)
But to get that reduction or moderation of punishment, just stopping further sinning is not enough. We should surrender to Krishna and promise Him that we will not commit any planned sins in future.
Without the involvement of Krishna, no practice will be complete.
Our dry material detachment will give just mukti, ie, salvation, but only if we surrender to Krishna, we can get Krishna Himself.
In mukti, we lose our identity, but in surrendering to Krishna, we get the eternal identity as a servant of Krishna. We, as a person, will directly serve the Supreme Person Krishna.
Similarly, if we stop sinning, reform ourselves and also surrender to Krishna, we can expect the reduction or moderation of karmic reactions.
In case we don’t surrender to Krishna, but just stop sinning, then, we will not add new negative karma and we will have to face the reactions of all the previous karma.
However, the benefit is that new negative karma will not be added and we have to just face the reactions of our previous births.
Karma can be burnt only by Krishna, not by any material tricks.
To get the mercy of Krishna in getting the past karma reduced or moderated, you should atleast start chanting His holy names.
(Does freely using Pirated Softwares & Games add karma to us? READ HERE!)
If you accept diksha from a bonafide guru and follow his instructions sincerely, you can get your karma reduced and even suspended.
Thus, you can get your karma reduced or moderated by surrendering to Krishna.
But, you should not expect your problems to get reduced even in this birth. In this birth, you can get the problems moderated but the problems will always exist in this material life.
Even sanyasis will face the reactions of the activities of their past lives.
So, even after stop sinning and surrendering some token problems will come and get somehow resolved.
The relief is that you will not be destabilized by the problems you face because of your previous karma. You will come out of those problems successful.
Krishna has assured that His devotees never perish.
So, become a devotee of Krishna, follow devotional practices sincerely and get your karma reduced or suspended or wiped off depending on the level of your surrender to Krishna.
(If Demigods can’t clear our karma, do they just postpone karma? READ HERE!)