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Karma
ThailandTom
Veteran
I would like to talk about and look at karma in a way that probably has not been done too often before on this forum. When I refer to karma in this topic, I do not just mean one aspect of karma but the whole deal. So that would include the teaching as it spans across multiple life times as well as karma that would be generated and come to ripen in one lifetime.
Now, one of the aspects of buddhism that first came to attract to me was the fact that it seemed there was almost no blind faith involved like there is with many religions. You know, no creator god or gods, no book that cannot be proven to be correct in what it says etc. But then recently I have thought about karma in relation to this blind faith point of view. How can you actually prove that karma exists, that is a natural phenomena that interacts with our life? At the end of the day, karma can only be a theory, a theory that was taught by somebody. I am not saying that I do not think it is correct, far from it, but then it surely requires blind faith along with re-birth. I am aware that people say re-birth can be taken literally or not, or that it is a waste of time putting so much thought into it, but if you start negating such teachings what are you then left with? Negate karma as well...?
Karma is one of the key aspects of buddhism, totally fundamental along with re-birth IMO. To negate both of these things would be to take away a huge part of the dharma so that you are left with something that is not actually buddhism.
Here is one example I was contemplating over not long ago. It was fueled by 'Burmese Days' which is a novel written by George Orwell. But anyway, when you get the chance to gain some merit by doing something considered virtuous, one should jump at the chance as you can dilute any negative karma that you have generated in this lifetime or previous lifetimes. I read on a karma related link a while ago that sometimes positive karma you may have generated in the past, be it this life or not, does not always get a chance to ripen as the conditions are not correct for it to bloom. So by doing virtuous actions you give other positive karma a chance to come into being.
That is all very nice and simple to understand, but that is all surely blind faith. It is not like gravity where you can drop something and say, ''Look, that is the force of gravity effecting that object.'' You just cannot do that with the law of karma. Does it even matter if all boils down to blind faith? I am sure there will be some of the same old answers that suggest people to find out for themselves, or that if you think about it to much it is unskilful etc etc etc. But IMO karma is an aspect too big and fundamental to just not contemplate. Okay re-birth is something buddhists often say these kind of things about, still I consider it to be fundamental and to be a reality even though it is all blind faith, but those of you who say that you do not believe in re-birth as it is mere blind faith, do you say the same thing for karma?
Now, one of the aspects of buddhism that first came to attract to me was the fact that it seemed there was almost no blind faith involved like there is with many religions. You know, no creator god or gods, no book that cannot be proven to be correct in what it says etc. But then recently I have thought about karma in relation to this blind faith point of view. How can you actually prove that karma exists, that is a natural phenomena that interacts with our life? At the end of the day, karma can only be a theory, a theory that was taught by somebody. I am not saying that I do not think it is correct, far from it, but then it surely requires blind faith along with re-birth. I am aware that people say re-birth can be taken literally or not, or that it is a waste of time putting so much thought into it, but if you start negating such teachings what are you then left with? Negate karma as well...?
Karma is one of the key aspects of buddhism, totally fundamental along with re-birth IMO. To negate both of these things would be to take away a huge part of the dharma so that you are left with something that is not actually buddhism.
Here is one example I was contemplating over not long ago. It was fueled by 'Burmese Days' which is a novel written by George Orwell. But anyway, when you get the chance to gain some merit by doing something considered virtuous, one should jump at the chance as you can dilute any negative karma that you have generated in this lifetime or previous lifetimes. I read on a karma related link a while ago that sometimes positive karma you may have generated in the past, be it this life or not, does not always get a chance to ripen as the conditions are not correct for it to bloom. So by doing virtuous actions you give other positive karma a chance to come into being.
That is all very nice and simple to understand, but that is all surely blind faith. It is not like gravity where you can drop something and say, ''Look, that is the force of gravity effecting that object.'' You just cannot do that with the law of karma. Does it even matter if all boils down to blind faith? I am sure there will be some of the same old answers that suggest people to find out for themselves, or that if you think about it to much it is unskilful etc etc etc. But IMO karma is an aspect too big and fundamental to just not contemplate. Okay re-birth is something buddhists often say these kind of things about, still I consider it to be fundamental and to be a reality even though it is all blind faith, but those of you who say that you do not believe in re-birth as it is mere blind faith, do you say the same thing for karma?
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Comments
Personally I find it very inspiring to think of diluting bad karma. My brother once told me that he thought in my family that we didn't learn ways of tweaking our attitude to be resourceful and positive in difficult situations. He was kinda saying we were spoiled 'cause our mom was super selfless in a way. So that had been a negative for him as an adult like a loss of toughness. Both of us have trouble holding jobs, cause jobs suck and we have trouble somehow. Well he does better than me but still he has a hard time.
So I think karma is an attitude sort of a technology of attitude. Does that make sense. Wouldn't it be wonderful if I can be kind to someone? Ok if karma helps then who gives a $%%% if its true or not.
But you have a point that if we analyze it maybe its not true. For that reason I believe its more an attitude thing like I say. If I am sick I cheer up because I am getting rid of bad karma.
Of course like I said in the first paragraph if you or someone else cannot believe it then that is just part of their practice. Can one keep an open mind at least?
To answer you other question, sure people can keep an open mind and to add I do not make up the rules here
I am just curious to know what people think about karma in this sense and thank you for your input Jeffrey
For karma and rebirth it makes sense to me on the level of 'conservation of matter'. long before I had heard of the idea of rebirth I did have the idea that people could not simply exist and then not exist at all, because things can change form however the overall existence did not go away so individuals who are part of that could not seem to totally go away. It made sense when I was 12 and then later when I found out this whole rebirth idea then I really seemed to understand, but it was based on a previous understanding/experience. I am still sometimes in question about one 'soul' going through the birth and rebirth cycle as a unique soul over long periods of time, I am not sure that it needs to be such an individual thing. I have more recently thought about groups of souls that sometimes are manifest in one body and other times in more than one body, in any case that may be my creative writerly focus.
And karma, well my deep thoughts about karma are this. It is in every system of belief that there are consequences to our actions. We can see how children have consequences to their actions and it seems so obvious to us but often they are baffled and angry and confused by it. Only over many years and with consistent feedback about how this works then do they learn how to connect actions with the results. I think (thinking back on my own parenting) that it is common to focus on how negative actions create negative consequences however we often do not pay as much attention to the positives. I have tried to point out to my children and the children I work with the specific positives, such as 'I notice you have alwasy been trustworthy so instead of jumping to a conclusion when the cake went missing I am going to ask you what happened first'. The universe does not always tell us that, but it is also working in our lives as consistently as the negative. Since this is over lifetimes this may not be easy to see how it works and put in some of our own positives, but I think we sometimes we get a moment of feedback from the universee.
ok long enough
@AHeerdt I think at least re-birth requires some belief/blind faith because it cannot be proven as an actual phenomena. There have been studies and many cases where children have so say remembered past lives, but they commonly taken with a pinch of salt by most people. This is where people each have their own path when it comes to buddhism, we should respect the fact we all have slightly different opinions but I personally take the entire package.
There is no way I or anybody right now can prove re-birth is a reality, but I believe in it the same. Karma also requires some faith because as I said in my OP, when I mention karma in this thread I refer to it as an entire teaching that spans over many lifetimes. Cause and effect is simple to see taking place, that is also the simple aspect of karma because you can view it. But we cannot view how seeds that we planted hundreds of lifetimes ago can lay dormant for that whole time and suddenly start to sprout when the conditions are correct.
But it is true that even if it turned out that karma was not exact as the buddha taught, by still doing these virtuous actions of compassion you and those around you are still in a win-win situation.
@person I know exactly what you mean by certain people frequently ending up with similar outcomes despite what they do. I have noticed that in my own life and even within me.
The fact that most adults do not bother to observe and listen to young children, preferring instead to ignore, control, silence, and/or intimidate them, is also an easily observable phenomenon.
But that's just me.
Unlike the theory of linear causality — which led the Vedists and Jains to see the relationship between an act and its result as predictable and tit-for-tat — the principle of this/that conditionality makes that relationship inherently complex. The results of kamma experienced at any one point in time come not only from past kamma, but also from present kamma. This means that, although there are general patterns relating habitual acts to corresponding results [§9], there is no set one-for-one, tit-for-tat, relationship between a particular action and its results. Instead, the results are determined by the context of the act, both in terms of actions that preceded or followed it [§11] and in terms one's state of mind at the time of acting or experiencing the result [§13]. As we noted in the Introduction, the feedback loops inherent in this/that conditionality mean that the working out of any particular cause-effect relationship can be very complex indeed. This explains why the Buddha says in §12 that the results of kamma are imponderable. Only a person who has developed the mental range of a Buddha — another imponderable itself — would be able to trace the intricacies of the kammic network.The basic premise of kamma is simple — that skillful intentions lead to favorable results, and unskillful ones to unfavorable results — but the process by which those results work themselves out is so intricate that it cannot be fully mapped. We can compare this with the Mandelbrot set (see the cover of this book), a mathematical set generated by a simple equation, but whose graph is so complex that it will probably never be completely explored.
Source: http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/wings/part1.html
new karma is created by how one responds,
which affects the direction of past karma,
and creates the direction of future karma.
- Stonepeace