Talk:Cause of Rebirth: Ṛṇānubandhana – Bonds of Past Life Debts

By Vishal Agarwal

To repay someone’s debt from a previous life. This is called ‘Ṛṇānubandhan.’ For example, sometimes, a person is grievously wronged against, e.g., get killed or betrayed. If that person dies with deep bitterness in his heart and with a strong desire for revenge, he might be reborn specifically to take revenge against those who had wronged him. Conversely, we are often reborn to pay back an unpaid debt taken in the last life, so the scales of justice even out. A popular belief is that pets arrive at our household to be served by us because we owe them something in their previous and our current or previous lives. The following two examples will illustrate this cause of rebirth:

Example 1: “In Life Before Life, the past-life regression therapist Dr Helen Wambach confirms from the reports of people whom she had regressed, that some of them were born to their parents because of some karmic tie which had to be settled. She cites the case of a man who knew who his parents were going to be before birth. They had been his children in a past life. In that life, he had deserted both of them when they were young. In this life, he experienced the feeling of abandonment by his parents because they had left him in an orphanage for adoption…”

Example 2: “An interesting case of riṇānubandh in the Swaminarayan Samprādāya concerns Sevakaram, an aged sadhu who fell ill with dysentery on the way to Rameshwaram in south India. Bhagawan Swaminarayan, as Neelkanth, the teenage yogi, came across him and offered to serve him. Neelkanth nursed and fed him for two months after which Sevakram became fit and healthy. During this period, he did not offer Neelkanth any food that he cooked for the sadhu, leaving the yogi to either beg for alms or fast. After recovery, Sevakram still made Neelkanth carry his heavy belongings. Neelkanth then left him to continue his journey. In his next birth, Sevakram was born as Khodabhai, a poor chief of the village of Zinzar in Saurashtra and a follower of Swaminarayan Samprādāya. Once Muktanand Swami, a senior sadhu asked Gopalanand Swami, a great yogi, as to why Khodabhai was so poor. Gopalanand Swami then revealed, “In his former birth, he was Sevakram and had made Bhagawan Swaminarayan serve him. However now let us pray that his status improves.” These blessings later eradicated Khodabhai’s poverty. Two points emerge from this story. One is that although Sevakram treated Neelkanth unfairly, Neelkanth took mercy on him and granted him birth in the Samprādāya so that he would eventually attain better karma samskaras for moksha. Second, by accepting Neelkanth’s seva, without giving him anything in return, Sevakram created a huge karmic debt - riṇānubandh – with Bhagwan, which he paid in his next birth as the poverty-stricken Khodābhāi.”