The Importance of the "Now"

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The concept of hell as “a prison-house” (Ham. 1.5.19) of “sulphurous and tormenting flames” (Ham. 1.5.6) has intrigued and frightened people for centuries. Fictional characters are no exception. Hamlet, in particular, seems very concerned with the prospect of facing the consequences of one’s actions in the afterlife. In Act 3, he is afraid Claudius will be forgiven if he dies while praying (Ham. 3.3.77-83). In his famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy, Hamlet concludes that fear of the afterlife is what prevents man from committing suicide and escaping the miseries of an earthly existence(“Hamlet”). Hamlet is also consumed by the idea of death itself- its equalizing nature, its universality, the physical process of decomposing bones and flesh into dirt. But his emphasis on the universality of death physically only underscores Shakespeare’s illustration of the variety morally. The number of different ways in which the characters in Hamlet face death demonstrates the Buddhist/Hindu principle of karma, or the law of cause and effect.

Karma is a term often used in the face of calamity, but the actual definition is neither positive nor negative. Karma is, to put it simply, the law of cause and effect. Karma is a cosmic principle that states that what happens to a person is a logical consequence of their actions. In the perspective of karma, God is not the determiner of fate, but the dispenser of fate, which is indirectly dictated by a person’s own voluntary or involuntary actions (Das). Some people, including Hamlet himself, argue that “there is special providence [even] in the fall of a sparrow” (Ham. 5.2.233-234), that fate controls everything, that fate simply plays a game with people’s lives in which they are powerless pawns. Ho...

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...://www.hamlethaven.com/ophelia.html>.

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