Whether we like it or not, the human form of life is a life of responsibility. For every action that we take there will be a reaction. For example, if we engage in any activity that harms another living being, then we will have to experience in the future the same type of suffering ourselves. Whenever we engage in any type of self-centered activity there will be some type of karmic reaction or fruit that we will have to experience in the future.

The word karma literally means action. The law of karma only applies to living beings who have a human body. Those living beings who are in animal bodies are not under the law of karma.

Unfortunately, many people feel that it does not really matter how one lives their life, how one treats other people. The idea is that there are no repercussions or reactions to the actions that we take now. That soon it will be all over anyways. Or that one can trick life and get ahead by being a criminal, e.g., stealing something.

We have to understand that the law of karma is one of the material laws and will always work perfectly. Sometimes it may seem that a criminal gained a lot when he is not caught by the law enforcement in this world. But no one can escape from the law of karma. Sooner or later, it may even be in the next lifetime, a person has to pay the price for what they did.

The law of individual responsibility is that you are responsible, you are responsible for your activities now. And what you are experiencing now is due to what you were doing previously.

With karmic reactions, both so-called good karma and bad karma, in both cases a person has to take on another material body. As long as the person has karmic reaction in store that has to come back to him, then he needs a material body for that karmic reaction to come back to him with. In other words, for him to experience his good karma or his bad karma, he needs some sort of material body with which to experience that reaction. The spirit soul without any kind of material body, cannot experience karmic reaction, good or bad. So really a person who wants to transcend the wheel of birth and death, they want to get off the wheel of reincarnation. They don't want to reincarnate again. They don't like good karma or bad karma. 

It is important to appreciate that the solution is not that I stop all action. Rather I stop acting for myself. Whenever I act in a self-centered manner, there will have to be some karmic reaction coming back to me. But I can act in harmony with my eternal spiritual nature and not act for myself anymore. The eternal spiritual beings by nature are happy when they can engage in loving service. This is our natural and healthy condition.

In fact, loving service is so purifying that it will actually burn off any karmic reactions that are still waiting there from the past and which one is still meant to experience in the future.

So, we can give up the world of karmic reactions, give up the world of repeated birth, disease, old age and death. We can get on to the platform of spiritual life, eternal life and eternal happiness, eternal loving service of the Supreme and others.