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How Do You Know For Certain Karma Exists
AllbuddhaBound
Veteran
I have pondered Karma and its' existence for some time. I am not sure of it. I would like to hear instances where people have experienced evidence that proves it exists.
I wonder about Karma for people who can be heartless and they just appear to continue without a care.
I wonder about decisions made by countries, such as mine. There have been decisions made that are warlike in this country, yet we seem to plug along happy with our situation. We have not been made accountable for the wrongs we have done, yet countries which have only struggled to survive, and not been aggressive, continue to suffer.
I could also mention several other "developed" nations that have been very aggressive and selfish, yet it seems to continue on as if nothing has happened.
For the Karma believers, what has happened that makes you believe in it?
I wonder about Karma for people who can be heartless and they just appear to continue without a care.
I wonder about decisions made by countries, such as mine. There have been decisions made that are warlike in this country, yet we seem to plug along happy with our situation. We have not been made accountable for the wrongs we have done, yet countries which have only struggled to survive, and not been aggressive, continue to suffer.
I could also mention several other "developed" nations that have been very aggressive and selfish, yet it seems to continue on as if nothing has happened.
For the Karma believers, what has happened that makes you believe in it?
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Comments
Pain.
Boom! Karma.
There is a consequence to every action. It's just physics. It might not meet your personal, internal standard for justice, you might not even be able to see it, but it's undeniably there.
Think of that super boiled water - water boiled above 100 degrees. It doesn't bubble, or look like it's boiling at all. It looks like a regular glass of water. It appears that heating it has had no effect on it whatsoever, and the you disturb it... BIG boom. It was boiling all along, you just couldn't tell.
That said, I have had some experiences that make me take stock in the idea more seriously. I can think of a few examples, although I can't certify that they are related, to me the relationship is clear in retrospect.
In it's simplest rendition one might say "you reap what you sow" ... that is "you get what you give" ... and to truly receive something, you must give or provide to someone else first. But you know, it's more about the intention behind it, if you give people rides to help them out you will [in the future] reap a nice ride, a car, cool tractor when you need it, whatever..
Again, I'm hesitant to share and seem like i'm tooting my own horn, but if it helps someone look more seriously into Karma then I think it is worth it.
Once, I was out on the town in Pittsburgh with a close friend. The weather was pretty nice. This nice girl walking in front of us and one of her sandals went Snap! The string/cord on it broke and she was down a left-sandal. I had just got this pair of slip-on shoes that were rather comfy and, having read a bit about Buddhism in the days prior I was deeply motivated to give her my shoes. I was like "here" and I stepped out of my shoes. She was mostly in disbelief and tried to refuse accepting them. But I said take them and just started walking away. My friend caught up to me and was like "uh she's still just looking at us in shock." I didn't bother to turn around and actually had a really fun time avoiding broken glass and walking bare foot home. My friend took off his shoes and did the same, because he is an awesome friend.
When we got back to my friend's pad my friend said that he was moved by what happened and straight-up gave me his favorite pair of shoes on the spot. They fit perfectly and I was really thankful.
Nowadays there are way more shoes in my house than I remember buying, there is quite a variety of footwear here, and only recently did I start to piece together that the episode had a large role to play, at least to me it fits in perfectly with my experience.
Karma is like that; it's also something you can't contemplate to figure out, but it can be very clear in retrospect. The original intention wasn't to get more shoes to cover my feet, but to help someone in need. Stay alert and Give. Life is too short for anything else.
By how we look at suffering it creates a different outcome.
So play with the conditions and you get a different effect.
For instance if one at stress in the body with the lens of loving-kindness then the stress starts to break down and dissolve. Not only this the self sense becomes more amorphous.
If one were to have aversion towards the stress then the stress solidifies and intensifies. The self sense also becomes more solid.
The key insight is dependent origination. Everything depends on conditions, thus empty of inherent existence.
This seeing and insight if cultivated and deepened can lead one towards total cessation of fabrication, which is freedom.
The ontological status of Karma is irrelevant. What is comes down to is what works?
There are three models on can use. God or predetermination. Chaos or Nihilism. Karma or causality.
All are ultimately empty of inherent existence. Only one leads if used properly to the cessation of fabrication.
Choose wisely, practice hard.
I don't believe countries as a whole gain karma. They aren't, in themselves, conscious entities. The people make the decisions in those countries, absolutely. Just being president doesn't exempt one from karma. But the country as a whole, no. I would hope not. Why should I be punished because I live in a country where congress voted to go to war and I got no say?
To give one real-life example, I got into an argument with my girlfriend not too long ago. While angry, I said something mean to be hurtful because I was hurting. Afterwards, I felt very bad about doing so because of the harm my angry words had caused. In this case, my unskillful action of saying something out of anger (kamma) resulted in both of us feeling hurt and unhappy (vipaka); so I can definitely say that, having fabricated an injurious verbal fabrication, I experienced feelings that were painful, "like those of the beings in hell" as per AN 4.235.
So for me, it's not so much believing in kamma as seeing it in action (no pun intended). I don't think I can sufficiently answer this part beyond saying that, from the Theravadin perspective, (1) kamma primarily deals with individuals and not collectives and (2) it doesn't always ripen right away. The precise working out of the results of kamma, however, are difficult to determine due to the complexity of causality and the myriad of causes and conditions, both internal and external, that go into our experience of the world.
http://newbuddhist.com/discussion/9779/another-good-and-interesting-book-liao-fans-four-lessons/p1
For me these questions don't need to be answered since we already know the answers...
"Open your heart and free you your mind and the Truth will be presented to you"
So if you've ever experience an effect of an action you've got Karma !
Plus I've seen in my own life where I change my attitude or behavior and sometime later situations and outcomes change.
But I'm just a silly, gullible, illogical person who sees what he wants to see.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Exploring-Karma-Rebirth-Nagapriya/dp/1899579613/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1352848846&sr=1-6
I think the concept of karma can get very complex, and different schools of Buddhism will differ on the small print, but this book made sense to me.
I don't know if this helps, OP, but it's all I've got.
Do we try to help? If we do help them, then we're just prolonging their suffering because they need to burn off their bad karma, so out of compassion we should just let them starve?
Nope, that doesn't sound right to me. Karma isn't some cosmic force of justice - like a God - who dishes out punishments; there's more to it. Some views are very mechanical; I heard a Tibetan monk saying that if our wallet gets stolen, it means we have stolen a wallet in this, or a previous life. That doesn't make sense to me either.
I had it explained to me early on by a geshe that karma isn't the same as fate. Say someone is drowning we could say thats their karma and let them drown. But he said if we jumped in and saved them then that would also be their karma. So inaction or apathy towards suffering isn't correct. I took that teaching to heart and have come to the idea that karma depends upon past action but it only comes to fruition based upon current circumstances. Or for example we may have a lot of positive karma to be wealthy but if we sit on our butts and don't get an education or work or even buy a lottery ticket it probably won't ripen.
Isn't there a sutra where a couple of dog ascetics asked the Buddha what they would be reborn as if they practised really hard at being dogs.
And the Buddha replied, "A dog probably!" (paraphrased).
But the old Brahmanical thinking was that they could burn off their negative karma by tough ascetic practises, like dog asceticism, so that they would get a better future rebirth.
However, it seems the Buddha rubbished this.
Can anyone help me with more detail?
Eh?
The Buddha taught that this wasn't so, and linked karma to intentional actions (and in Buddhism, thinking is an action too).
I'm such a bad student though; I'm feeling very vague. Maybe I shouldn't be posting at all here 'cos I know only a surface knowledge of stuff that I've actually formally studied.
Take what I say with a pinch of salt.
Apologies.
There are infinite white and black seeds and transformation karma is making the black seeds go down and the white ones ripen. (unrelated to skin of course.. you could say green or red seeds).
Exactly because there are infinite seeds only practicing to make good karma will not reach us to enlightenment. But we have to make good karma to give us a life which we can practice the dharma in, 'dharmic karma'.
But my teacher said she did a vigil with another Tibetan nun. They couldn't talk with each other through the vigil but the nun appeared to have a flu. At the end the nun commented pleasantly "got rid of a LOT of bad karma there". So in this example, too, I think it is mind training. The kind of karma we want to make is to practice the dharma in this life or the next. All the rest cannot drown out the infinite red and green (or black and white) seeds in our timeless consciousness.
Do you think the bad people who aren't suffering noticeably are not suffering? Is a rapist or genocidist or whatever really happy? Or are they just a mad dog?
Can you prove this? Unlikely.
But here's a story:
In the 1960's, folk music was hot and everyone who could had a guitar to strum and sing along with their friends. I was in high school and I didn’t have a guitar but my sister, who was working her way through university, had a cheap guitar she would let me borrow. It had a tinny sound and the strings bit painfully into your fingertips when you chorded ... but it was a guitar.
Christmas came and my sister had no money to buy gifts. So she gave me her guitar. She had tears in her eyes, partly because she was so happy to give me something I wanted so much, but also because it was her own guitar she was giving away.
Six months later, she was walking down the sidewalk when she walked by some guy loading up his car. He was moving, driving 3000 miles across-country, and he could only take what would fit into his little MG sports car. His guitar did not fit in. He asked my sister if she would take it ... for free.
Of course she would. She took the guitar home and when she opened up the case, it was a Martin Classical guitar, with soft nylon strings that never bit into fingertips and the sweetest richest dulcet sound you’ve ever hear. Today, that guitar would be worth over $4000.
Really now ... just what are the odds that it was my sister he gave this guitar to?
I could dismiss this story, except that I too had an instance of unselfish giving (of something I was very attached to) and 2 weeks later got the same item, only 4x better, given to me.
Coincidence twice?
Kamma is one of 5 types of causation in Buddhist thought, collectively known as Niyama:
kamma niyama: ("action") consequences of one's actions
utu niyama: ("time, season") seasonal changes and climate, law of non-living matter
bīja niyama: ("seed") laws of heredity
citta niyama:("mind") will of mind
dhamma niyama: ("law") nature's tendency to perfect
So we can say karma as a general "actions have consequences" can be observed, is almost self-evident, and we can be certain it exists.
But from above, we can also see even the monks and experts on the Dharma sometimes confuse karma with cosmic justice. If even they let their desire for justice in the world define their belief, then what hope does the average lay person have to understand what karma really means?
It's a natural desire to want justice in the world. We want bad people to be punished and good people to be rewarded (actually, what we really want is justice for others and mercy for ourselves, but that's a different topic). But karma as cosmic law of punishment and reward in this life does not exist. If karma as certain cosmic justice was true, there would be no innocent people in prison. Karma would not allow it. Only the willfully blind cannot see this.
We would like to think the rich and powerful businessman who casually fires hundreds of people and ruins their lives so he can get a few more million dollars he doesn't need will get slammed by some sort of punishment. Certainly people who do bad things increase the chance of having bad consequences. Most likely, he'll die in luxury, after the best medical care money can buy, in a mansion, surrounded by loving family. And no, he won't even suffer guilt. He's justified his actions like we all do. So where's the karma?
Then it must mean karma as justice works across multiple lives. He'll be reborn poor and suffer the fate of his victims. But that means he was born rich in this life because he was a good man in the last. Funny, how the rich and powerful in the world don't show any special kindness and compassion toward others. Just the opposite, in fact. That also means if you're born poor, deformed, in a bad situation, then you deserved that because you've been a bad person in your last life. That's insane! See where karma as justice, as good actions lead to reward and bad actions lead to certain punishment leads us?
The solution is in the Dharma. Believing Karma is ultimate justice that brings bad things to bad people eventually is not really about justice, it's about wanting revenge. Instead, desire for the suffering to stop. I don't want to punish the wicked, I want them to stop hurting people.
But at the same time, he did say things like living a life being very stingy produces conditions for a rebirth in a life of poverty. Living a life being harmful to other living beings, produces conditions for a rebirth into a life of sickness. Living a life full of hatred and ill will, produces conditions that cause rebirth in ugliness. It's not a "cosmic justice force" like a God dishing out punishment, but it does acknowledge that negative actions have negative effects, which are not necessarily limited to just this lifetime. If one believes in rebirth, it's not that far fetched to think that negative actions in this lifetime can produce negative effects in this lifetime, as well as in the next.
Why do people never imagine that rebirth is a fresh start? That we're all born with a clean slate? That when you're reborn, it's another chance to get it right and the circumstances of your birth are random because it doesn't matter? Why do you insist that the mistakes and bad decisions from some past life have to accompany you?
When I look at a baby, I see something new to the universe, a fresh miracle in the making. That baby has not made a single action to produce karma. Where is the karma? Where is it hiding, where is it stored with this baby's name on it until the universe gets around to dishing it out?
If you must believe in rebirth, then believe it's a fresh start. A new opportunity to get it right this time. Good or bad, rich or poor, we all die in the end. We all get the same fate. It's what binds all of us together. So let rebirth do the same.
To me, it's a stream of consciousness continuing moment to moment, and the individual "forms" it seats in over many so-called lifetimes are not really all that separate from one another. But I definitely have no problem thinking of each human rebirth as a precious opportunity, and in that sense even a precious "fresh start." A fresh start, to me, doesn't seem incompatible with the image of an unbroken stream of consciousness.
Frankly, I like the idea that some cosmic force is in charge of this stuff
I like that we don't get to decide what is just and what isn't, because I reckon we just get it wrong too often.
Maybe I think of karma like a cosmic babysitter, I'm not sure
At the beginning of the practice, the best we can do is try to plant as many skillful seeds as possible. In the middle, we try to plant as many skillful seeds as possible and tend tho them while also trying to weed out the unskillful ones. And at the end, we learn how to stop planting seeds altogether, freeing ourselves from a compulsory life of farming altogether and entering a proverbial Garden of Eden, where we can live our lives and experience the world peace, without fear of planting the wrong seeds.
That's quite an illustration for the video to freeze on (Samsara --> Hell), lol.
To me, the problem with karma is not the general concept, which absolutely makes sense, but exactly how it works. This problem is most evident in the different views of what karma is. Yes, particularly in the East, there is somewhat of a school of thought that karma is some sort of what you refer to as comic justice. There are many others who see karmic results of what happens in your own mind (the flaw there is that there are amoral people who never suffer consequences for their wrong acts). Some believe karma only acts (or should only act) in the present life, while others see it working over multiple lifetimes...which seems immensely unfair to me). I could go on.
We never come to any conclusions about karma, and undoubtedly never will...and that's the problem with karma. I am reminded of one of the principles of keeping principals out of legal trouble -- make sure your teachers or students clearly know what the expectations are and how the system works. And the lack of the same principle with karma is its weakness...as is true for many religious principles in Buddhism and across various religions.
The idea of people suffering in any way now because of something they did 750 years ago, doesn't make a lot of sense to me at this point, so it doesn't come into play in my daily life or practice, because what can I control about that? Nothing. Plus it's exhausting to think about. What did my 4 year old son do in a past life that he suffers from diabetes now? What about my oldest who has Asperger's? Did their dad die at 35 because of some past life karmic ribbon? Or did he just die because he messed up his life, was a drug addict and took the wrong cocktail one day? It's not something I can comprehend well, past life karma, so I just don't worry about it much. I worry about right now, and that's about it. I enjoy reading about past lives, but as a deep Buddhist topic, it's not a place I've gotten to yet to study it in depth. Does it even matter if my son is diabetic because of something he did in a past life? The fact is he has it and he will deal with it for the rest of his life. Why, doesn't really matter. All i can do is teach him to be a good, kind, compassionate person and hope he carries on with his life in a positive manner.
So if something good happens I can know that it is a seed ripening and that it won't last forever.
If something bad happens I can know it is a seed ripening and that it won't last forever.
Either way I have a chance to make new karma today. Everything counts.
So I use karma pragmatically. If I have a car I don't know how the engine works. I just drive it to where I want to go.