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Karmic retribution for Hitler?
fivebells
Veteran
I'm just starting out with this post-mortem rebirth stuff, and I have a few questions about it. For starters, what kind of karmic consequences could Hitler be expected to have faced in his next life? Say he was on a good track initially, and it all went horribly wrong, so he could expect to be reborn as a human being on the basis of earlier good behavior, but would still have to be punished: after all, he earned the spite of just about everyone since 1945. What sort of life would he be leading today? Do you think he could be a Palestinian in a Jordanian refugee camp who, due to the housing shortages there, has to share a room with a guy with massive flatulence? I think that might start to give him some idea of what he put those poor people through in the showers...
1
Comments
ironic? but wouldn't that be ultimate punishment? Lol
However, I would like to expand it.
The history of human kind is full of ‘’Hitler’s’’ characters plus the crowds of people who followed or at least kept silence to their ‘’wrong doings’’.
What would be the answer then?
I would love this.
Are you saying that: evil is very easily replaced with goodness?
Look at the evolution and the laws which govern it.
At least humanity in the 21 century is questioning their motives.
At the same time the ‘’animal world’’ before humans had much better values/ Kill to survive, reproduce DNA or protect ‘’territory’’/
Humans expanded territory to some crazy level, kill very often for a pathological pleasure and created ‘’concentration camps much more evil then during the Hitler era’’ for humans and animals.
i imagine, if karma "made sense", he would be some sort of persecuted minority. i've seen films on homosexuals in muslim countries where it is punishable by death, and i think to myself, "i am truly blessed to live in this time and place."
If Hitler was reincarnated, it wouldn't be the same little twisted man who rode to power and became the living embodiment of evil (and if Hitler had been killed, someone else would have just stepped in and carried out the extermination policies, you know). It would be someone else, living an entirely different life. So here's a question: suppose you could somehow track down the reincarnated Hitler and he's living a tortured life. What do you tell this man, when he cries out, "But I didn't do anything! I don't know any Hitler! I never hurt anyone! Why am I being punished?"
What do you tell the innocent man, being punished for something someone else did. For according to Buddhism, he is NOT the same man that lived back then, because it is not the same mind.
Also, what makes you think that YOU are not the reincarnated Hitler? How would you know? Do you remember what you were, where you were before you were born? Or is it because you're innocent. Like the man above us.
Better to just practice compassion for everyone. No exeptions. Not even for the Hitlers of the world.
(One could just as justifiably ask: why /would/ he be given a clean slate in a new rebirth? Where's the justice in that? The Buddha taught that the purpose of karma carrying over to the next rebirth was for morality. If everyone gets off scott-free, why try to lead a moral life?)
for the record, i don't really believe in reincarnation and i still live a moral life. to be the cause of suffering for others creates suffering for myself in this lifetime, i can see that clearly and i need no threat of future repercussions in my next lifetime to make me strive to develop compassion. anyone who has experienced suffering at the hand of another person's actions/words should naturally strive not to cause this feeling in others. i also don't really worry about justice. i don't think that the world is truly eye for an eye or fair at all, it doesn't really bother me. i think it's best not to worry about it.
Another point is that we have no idea who "he" was in previous lives, and when karma from those lives would ripen. This is why karma's called an imponderable--too many factors at play, too many dice rolling at the same time.
It might be interesting to examine the lack of love, warmth, and resonance that Hitler had in his life. I'm not a huge history buff, but what I remember is that he grew up with siblings that died, moved around a lot, had a really crappy dad, a mom who died early in his life, was unable to go to school for what he loved, failed as an artist, and was addicted to war and hatred. He was surrounded by yes-men who were pulled into his charisma, and he spent his life convincing people to hate the same people he hated and eventually died by shooting himself in the head in a hole in the ground.
Isn't his one life terrible enough? When you look at the loving arms that support you, the dharma you can relate to, the compassion that flows through you... is it so impossible to simply feel sorrow for the whole of his life? The man, the actions, and the results as one potent blemish on the evolution of human society, of which he and millions of others have been victim? Its really sad, but doesn't belong on his shoulders alone... he was just one of our many lost and confused brethren.
Lebensraum was more precisely (and politically viably) carried out by the US government under the banner of "Manifest Destiny." Remember that "the holocaust" is only the second biggest holocaust in the history of humankind, not the first.
Anyway, repercussions of your karmic actions can ripen at any time, it is totally unpredictable to an unenlightened being. Maybe Hitler will have have been reborn due to his karma he generated 1,000 life times ago, maybe his karma he generated will affect him in 1,000 life times, it is impossible for us to know.