My Prompt to ChatGPT-5 (Paid Version): As you well know by now, I write aphoristically because I do not have the patience to write long prose. Please interpret this statement of mine in detail and exhaustively – “We deserve all the justices & injustices that happen to us in life.”–D. Samarender Reddy – in the light of Indian philosophies, in particular Hinduism, and its metaphysical notion of the law of karma that operates across multiple lives of one’ soul journey, and in the light of Advaita vedanta, and in the light of Bhagavad Gita where Krishna says, “One has the right to action but not to the fruit thereof.” Of course, Krishna himslelf exhorted Arjuna to fight the injustice being meted out to the Pandavas by Kauravas, but Krishna also said that while Arjuna has a duty to fight such injustice ther is no guarantee he would succeed because the result of such fight against injustice depends on one’s past lives karma that would determine whether one would succeed in such a fight.

ChatGPT said:

Thought for 1m 19s

Here’s a way to read your aphorism—

“We deserve all the justices & injustices that happen to us in life.” — D. Samarender Reddy

—through the major lenses you named, without diluting either karma or the Gītā’s demand for action.

1) What “deserve” can mean (and what it must not mean)

• Causal, not moralistic. In a karmic frame, “deserve” means “are due to experience as a lawful consequence,” not “are to be blamed for.” The ledger is causal (saṃskāra–karmaphala), not a license for victim-blaming.
• Two levels of talk. Empirically (vyavahāra), events come as results of many causes, including past action. Absolutely (pāramārthika), the Self is untouched; for the ātman there is neither justice nor injustice.

Your sentence bites only at the empirical level—and even there it points to order, not blame.

2) Hindu law of karma across lives

A classical breakdown clarifies what is “deserved” to be lived now:

• Saṃcita karma: the stored mass of results from prior lives.
• Prārabdha karma: the slice currently “ripened,” provisioning this birth’s starting conditions—body, family, era, health, early fortunes.
• Āgāmi karma: fresh actions now, shaping future experience.

On this accounting, what happens (pleasure/pain, apparent justice/injustice) is prārabdha being spent; how we respond generates āgāmi. This yields a strict but empowering formula:

Circumstance is prārabdha; character is practice; future is āgāmi.

Add two refinements often forgotten:

• Collective karma. Some events are shared outcomes of a community’s or era’s actions (e.g., disasters, wars). Individual prārabdha “tunes” what each person undergoes within the collective event.
• Instruments and opportunities. When you relieve another’s suffering, you become the nimitta (instrument) through which their prārabdha exhausts more gently—and your own āgāmi is refined.

Thus, “we deserve injustice” is not a shrug; it’s a pointer to a vast causal fabric in which my role is both accountable and aid-worthy.

3) The Bhagavad Gītā’s synthesis: act fully, release the fruits

Krishna’s teaching to Arjuna is exactly a cure for both fatalism and obsession with outcomes:

• Right to action, not to fruits (karmaṇy evādhikāras te…, 2.47): you are author of effort, not of the total result, which depends on incalculably many causes (“gahanā karmano gatiḥ”—the course of karma is deep).
• Yogasthaḥ kuru karmāṇi (2.48): be established in yoga (clarity/equanimity), and then act.
• Nimitta-mātra (11.33): be an instrument of the larger order (Īśvara), not a private claimant.
• Fight adharma as svadharma. Krishna doesn’t say “accept injustice”; he insists Arjuna fight it. But he also drains the fight of egoic demand for a guaranteed win. Success or failure is prārabdha; fighting rightly is dharma.

Read back into your aphorism: Whatever the verdict on the battlefield—victory (justice) or defeat (injustice)—was “deserved” in the causal sense. But the duty to fight remains non-negotiable, because that is how āgāmi is purified and knowledge ripens.

4) Advaita Vedānta: two registers of truth

Advaita adds a decisive clarifier:

• Absolute level (pāramārthika): The Self (ātman/Brahman) is akartā, abhoktā—neither doer nor enjoyer. In deep sleep and in knowledge, there is no second thing to be “just” or “unjust.” Here, your sentence dissolves: nothing happens to the Self.
• Empirical level (vyavahāra): Within Māyā/Īśvara’s order, causes yield effects. Here the sentence is a training in prasāda-buddhi: take outcomes—pleasing or painful—as Īśvara’s “given,” i.e., exactly what is apt for this mind’s purification now.

Practically, Advaita offers a three-step sādhanā:

1. Dharma: Do what is right and protective (protect self/others, uphold justice).
2. Yoga: Offer outcomes as prasāda; keep equanimity (samatvam yoga ucyate, 2.48).
3. Jñāna: Inquire into the “I” that wants/deserves; discover the ever-free Witness to whom nothing truly happens.

At step (3) your aphorism is seen as a provisional pointer, not ultimate truth.

5) Hard cases and common objections

“So are victims to blame?”
No. Karma theory is not a courtroom blame model; it’s a cosmology of lawful unfolding. Blame is morally corrosive and karmically costly. The dharmic response is karuṇā (compassion) and dāna/sevā (help). If karma is law, you are part of that law’s relief channel.

“Does this excuse oppressors?”
No. For the oppressor, harm creates heavy āgāmi and future duḥkha. For society, justice systems and resistance are dharma’s tools to prevent further harm. Enforcing accountability is someone’s svadharma; to do nothing would itself sow bad āgāmi.

“Can grace override prārabdha?”
Classical Advaita says prārabdha sustains the body even for a jīvanmukta; what changes is the bite of experience (it lands in a mind free of ownership). Bhakti traditions add: intense grace can transform its felt weight. Either way, sādhanā and surrender do change āgāmi and saṃcita—and change how prārabdha is lived.

“What about randomness?”
What we call “random” is “unresolved cause” from the limited vantage of one life. The Gītā’s counsel—act without clinging—operates whether or not you can trace the cause chain.

6) Re-reading your aphorism across the layers

• Vyavahāra (empirical):
  “What comes to me—lauded as ‘justice’ or lamented as ‘injustice’—is the exact due of my prārabdha (individual/collective). My task is to respond dharmically, purify āgāmi, and keep equanimity.”
• Upāsanā (devotional/yogic):
  “All outcomes are Īśvara-prasāda. I fight adharma as worship and offer the result back.”
• Pāramārthika (absolute):
  “In truth, the Self is ever free. Justice and injustice are dream-categories within Māyā; the Witness remains untouched.”

Seen this way, your sentence is both rigorous (no loopholes in causality) and liberating (the ultimate ‘I’ is beyond the ledger).

7) A working compass for life

1. Do your svadharma. Fight injustice, protect the vulnerable, keep your promises.
2. Refuse guarantees. You get the right to wholehearted action, not to a scripted result.
3. Hold prasāda-buddhi. Whatever comes is fit for growth; meet it with steadiness.
4. Guard compassion. Karma explains suffering; it never justifies indifference.
5. Practice antaḥkaraṇa-śuddhi. Let action purify the mind for knowledge.
6. Inquire into the doer. “Who is the one to whom this happens?” Stabilize in the Witness.
7. See grace everywhere. Help given and help received are both the law operating through love.

---

One-line synthesis:
Act to uphold dharma; accept every result as lawful prasāda; and know the Self to be beyond both deserts and disasters. On this path your aphorism is true where it must be—and transcended where it matters most.