Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
If Karma is real why do horrific things happen to good people?
And likewise I can imagine places with far more favorable conditions!
I think it would depend on the life of the dog. Our dog is pretty darn happy and spoiled rotten. She sleeps in the sun all day, plays whenever she wants, has no work whatsoever (except to protect her home and family from the wiles of the white-tailed deer). She has a pretty cozy and easy life. A wild dog or a stray, not as much. So it would depend. I always thought it would be fun to be a flying squirrel...
People who are bringing the question down to "why do bad things happen to good people?" - a justice and fairness thing are REALLYYYY simplifying what I am getting at. That was not my question or point at all.
Based on what I have heard from Buddhist nuns - good actions bring good karma and neutralize bad karma. A life dedicated to good deeds and compassionate living seems to be one of great merit - as such a lot of negative karma would be neutralized. For example, Buddha in a past life tried to murder his brother (or cousin or someone) and so his brother attempted to kill him but the boulder only dropped on his foot because of all his good karma. So why is this not the case for this yogi/Buddhist guy? Enlightenment is supposed to neutralize karma. You know, maybe it's the case of too many voices INTERPRETING what they think karma actually is and what it means but just making it more confusing because they don't get it.
Also I struggle that a compassionate and deeply kind mind could have once been a murderer. But I suppose that it makes sense in a way, we evolve over time and based on how much compassion I have developed in this life time, I could see how people could develop that over many life times.
Thanks for the comments but most frustrating Buddhist idea ever.
@karasti said:
Interesting that you vinlyn find it unfair, while I find it comforting. I have no problem at all with the idea of karma carrying through many lifetimes. This person might not remember what I did and why I am suffering for it 1,000 years later, but I think on a deeper level my consciousness does and it opens a door to another level of understanding if you choose to go there. If you learn how. I don't mean learning how to see your past lives or anything, but learning how to see the gifts in everything, even the most challenging thing imaginable.
In a sense, that's why I see it as unfair (although that may just be the way it is). I guess as an educator, I always see an experience as an opportunity to learn. People have thought my comment odd, when after some really bad experience in life I would say, "I learned a lot from that."
I remember in my early years of teaching I had a Thai (Buddhist) roommate for a couple of years. At one point he refused to speak to or acknowledge me for a full week. In close quarters it was bizarre. After he finally thawed, I asked him why he refused to speak to me for a week. He refused to answer. Result, nothing learned.
It takes time. I think it's easy to see that pretty much no one here has a true understanding of what exactly karma is and how exactly it works. I think it's pretty fair to extend that to most of the rest of the humans on the planet as well. We don't know. That is why it's so confusing.
But I think it's a stretch to say that a few years of compassionate action (as in the case of Kayla Mueller) are enough to neutralize bad karma. Because we don't know how this works out, how can we see someone who was working for good and assume they are neutralizing so much. We don't know the weight of one action versus another and so on. She was quite a young person who did a lot in her short time here, but relatively speaking to rebirth and lifetimes and even going beyond to possibly births outside what we consider human lives on our planet...it's not even a drop in the bucket.
Yes, we are supposed to investigate the teachings, any teachers, ourselves. But I'm not sure Buddha meant that we should attempt to investigate someone else's life, or their possible karma.
I'm kind of confused by your reaction. You said it was not your point or question at all, but the very title of your post is basically why do bad things happen to good people. You posed the question and then are disappointed with how people answered it? So what exactly are you looking for? Karma is one of the hottest topics here, because it is so confusing and everyone has their take based on their tradition and where they are in their practice and evolving understanding. I'm not sure what you were expecting.
0
federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
@Vanilli read, mark, inwardly digest then have a choice of three options:
Study, research, understand accept and live your life by it.
Study, research, understand, reject and leave aside as not valid for you (always knowing that for others it resonates).
Study, research - fail to digest and/or understand, so leave aside for now; maybe things will become clearer later. it doesn't matter, it's not a race....
0
federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
edited February 2015
@Vanilli said: > Thanks for the comments but most frustrating Buddhist idea ever.
>
Yes, but don't worry about it.
You're not supposed to tie yourself in knots over it - the Buddha expressedly told you NOT to do that.
Forget other people, forget what happened before, (Can you change it? No.) forget what will happen in the future (Can you predict it? No.)....
Your mission, - whether you choose to 'accept' it or not - is to be primarily concerned about, and to live your life as well as you can with the tools that you have.
YOUR life.
Nobody else's.
Yours.
So, just go to it.
It really boils down to that, simply put.
Purely from an analytical standpoint, the issue of karma over several lifetimes is probably why so many people see Buddhism as a fatalistic religion. In other words, no matter how perfect a life I lead in this lifetime, I'm going to suffer because of something I did in a lifetime I don't even know existed. Therefore, I am helpless with the vicissitudes of life.
I think most people who only glance at Buddhism see "life is suffering" and back away. I did. Several times. It took a while before I cared to delve into that that meant and of course it makes sense now. But whether you read a book or look online, that is one of the very first things you see-the four noble truths. And if they aren't explained well, they look very fatalistic. I doubt most get into the complexities of karma and rebirth.
The idea of living a perfect life now and still being punished for something in my distant past (other lives or this one, either way) doesn't bother me because of my belief in rebirth. I am not trying to work through everything in this life time. I've been working on it a while and I probably have a while left to go. I'm ok with that. I don't expect this brief life to hold everything. I don't really think of things in terms of "Why should I bother "being good" if I can still be punished for what I did wrong eons ago?" because that's not why I try to be good/compassionate/loving/etc. It's like thinking you can spend 20 years eating a crap diet, and then hope for amazing results after one week of a good diet. You do it anyways, because once you understand, you realize it's better for you even if the results aren't apparent right now.
You know, any discussion about karma, past life and future good and bad karma and such, always makes me think of astronomy and the description of the solar system. It is an almost perfect analogy.
In ancient times, learned people knew the Earth was a planet and that some of those lights in the skies were other planets and that the planets and sun all revolved around each other in a huge celestial dance.
But due to the importance of humanity and Earth as unique and special, these learned people insisted the Earth was at the center and everything else, including the sun, revolved around us. It made sense. It even sort of fit observations of the sun and moon moving across the heavens.
But as we learned more about the universe, we kept discovering things that didn't fit. Some of those stars turned out to be traveling in strange patterns. We called them planets and people like Ptolemy constructed elaborate, hugely complex models to explain how it all fit with the Earth sitting in the center. Nobody could understand the models, but we were assured very smart people had it figured out.
But then someone said, you know, if you stop insisting people and the Earth are at the center of the universe, it suddenly becomes very simple again. Copernicus and Galileo tried to explain how simple it was, but for a very long time people refused to listen, because it upset their assumption that the universe was designed with people at the center of it all.
My own opinion, for what it's worth. Karma isn't actually the vastly complicated, imponderable thing we insist it must be. We're just looking at it from the wrong viewpoint. The minute you have to add in past and future lives and accumulated good and bad merit and intention versus action, you're trying to force reality to fit your desires and expectations. Something to think about.
7
federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
I remember reading a quote in one of Lama Surya Das' Trilogy books, which resonates with me to this day: It is penetrating with its pinpoint accuracy, and stunning simplicity.
"Karma means you don't get away with anything. And it all counts."
providing you bear and keep in mind that Karma is Volitional, Deliberate and Intentional Action, the above is a blazing sudden shaft of sunlight, penetrating a room that has been in darkness for decades...
When dealing with the issue of Karma, we stumble with three hurdles: the fact that many causes interplay to bring about an effect, the limitation of our intellect to reach out and fathom every single cause, and the uselessness of our expectation for retributive justice to reward or punish given actions.
It's unrealistic of us to ask for life to make sense: sometimes it simply doesn't. Or we can't figure it out.
2
silverIn the beginning there was nothing, and then it exploded.USA, Left coast.Veteran
All I care is getting to the bottom line...does anybody who thinks they know what karma is able to do the math on it? I break out in hives just thinking about balancing my checkbook...I dropped off my tax papers to my tax lady today and told her maybe in another life, I will be competent in crunching numbers. I won't read much about karma because I don't have a snowball's chance in hell to understand it.
@Silver, other than rebirth, there is probably no other topic on Buddhist forums that is discussed more often than karma. Let's face it, nobody knows how it works or even if it works. Frankly, I see it as a matter of faith (gasp!).
I agree karma is a matter of faith but some people have their own personal connotations of the word 'faith' as VERY negative.
0
silverIn the beginning there was nothing, and then it exploded.USA, Left coast.Veteran
@vinlyn said:
Silver, other than rebirth, there is probably no other topic on Buddhist forums that is discussed more often than karma. Let's face it, nobody knows how it works or even if it works. Frankly, I see it as a matter of faith (gasp!).
Well...considering my allergy to math, I have more faith in that than I do such things as karma. As naïve as I've been known to be, there's a limit to what I put my faith in. Even the Buddha dude insists that we find out things for ourselves. I honestly don't know what all the Buddha said about karma - I don't remember any mention of it in my favorite book, OPWC.
my teacher says karma is just a view. like 'the sun rises in the east'. Nagarjuna pointed out that karma cannot be real if the self is not real and vice versa (lost an awesome website that google won't lead me to )
3
DavidA human residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Ancestral territory of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Neutral First NationsVeteran
I can see karmic rebirth as a matter of faith but not karma itself. I see karma as causation and whether it is anything more than that remains to be seen.
Personally I have no faith in rebirth but could see how it would make sense.
Then again I don't have faith in any of my beliefs if they can even be called beliefs.
When I was brand new to Buddhism, I asked a teacher at a local sangha about karma. I asked my question based on my very limited understanding that karma was some kind of magical cosmic justice that required a belief in reincarnation. The answer that I got was not very satisfactory, but correct for me at the time, was that my preconceived notions were not going to help me and that karma was complicated.
Buddha's teachings boil down to two things - Identifying and transcending human suffering.
To explain why things are the way they are the Buddha said something like - Because this is, that becomes.
Karma is action and the results of that action. It is simple cause and effect, which is not so simple. It is the causality which creates the "me" of this present moment. Reborn from actions of all previous moments. Not magic that requires belief in some form of eternal-ism (a permanent me) to be true.
I think this teacher explains it well including the relevant implications to Buddha teachings -
"Our thoughts are our karma. Our likes and dislikes. There are hundreds of likes and dislikes, a thousand opinions, ten thousand concepts about how things are that have been conditioned by previous experience.
All these likes and dislikes drive us from action to action, creating more karma, more causes for future results.
There is little you can do about what arises in the mind. What arises is karmically conditioned by what has gone before.
The sooner we notice the arising of thoughts and moods and realize they are just karmic fruits of the past the easier it is to let go.
In the course of life certain things are karmically given, one of which is that with every object of mind there arises karmically conditioned feelings of attraction or repulsion or, at times, indifference. Out of this liking and disliking comes craving, which forges the grasping that conditions the next link in the karmic chain. It is the clear recognition of the feeling of liking and disliking, without reaction, that cuts the karmic chain. Gradually we get so that we can watch liking and disliking with clarity. This clear seeing may be experienced as pleasant although the object noticed is unpleasant. When awareness is strong, grasping is weak. When grasping is weakened, volition toward unwholesome actions has less intensity.
Developing awareness means not only knowing that we're involved in a certain action, but also recognizing the motivation. But such motivations are not something to ponder. We either see it in the present moment or we don't. It is not 20/20 hindsight or the analytical mind that uncovers the karmic root of the moment. We just watch our mind."
from A Gradual Awakening by Stephen Levine.
Best Wishes
6
silverIn the beginning there was nothing, and then it exploded.USA, Left coast.Veteran
@federica said:
I remember reading a quote in one of Lama Surya Das' Trilogy books, which resonates with me to this day: It is penetrating with its pinpoint accuracy, and stunning simplicity.
"Karma means you don't get away with anything. And it all counts."
Lama Surya Das is the person who brought me to Buddhism (A JuBu too - sweet )
(My) Life is too short to worry about who's definition of karma is right.
I'm more concerned about getting through the Bardos so next life I can be a famous rock star with a shite load of money and can be lazy
j/k
4
DavidA human residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Ancestral territory of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Neutral First NationsVeteran
That's a good question @vinlyn. From my standpoint presuming my mind training will benefit in next lifetime I am motivated to try hard at e.g. meditation. Wow maybe even in this life! And maybe just a coping method or ritual.
I think we always assume you are born forward in time.
What if you are not?
What if you are reborn after the earth has been destroyed? Now that would be really bad karma!
1
DavidA human residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Ancestral territory of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Neutral First NationsVeteran
What if we are all rebirths of each other?
Someone could already be living a few of my lifetimes.
@Vanilli said:
People who are bringing the question down to "why do bad things happen to good people?" - a justice and fairness thing are REALLYYYY simplifying what I am getting at.
Sorry, @Vanilli, it was probably the presentation and the title which misled us.
I lost count of how many times people, especially newbies, bring up this kind of perplexed question on karma.
Some people have this weird notion that if you're good enough, nice enough, only good nice things will happen to you.
It reminds me of this story I heard about a very orthodox young Jewish man who had been brought up with very black-and-white ideas about God and justice.
On the way to the gas chambers in Auschwitz, he looked up, expecting that somehow, someway, the skies would open and God would bluster in to save his people from certain death.
When nothing happened, he bitterly said: "God doesn't exist."
So, if anybody feels cheated by the mistifying workings of karma, try believing in God and see how things hold up when nasty things happen to nice people on a minute-to-minute basis.
Based on what I have heard from Buddhist nuns - good actions bring good karma and neutralize bad karma. A life dedicated to good deeds and compassionate living seems to be one of great merit - as such a lot of negative karma would be neutralized. For example, Buddha in a past life tried to murder his brother (or cousin or someone) and so his brother attempted to kill him but the boulder only dropped on his foot because of all his good karma. So why is this not the case for this yogi/Buddhist guy? Enlightenment is supposed to neutralize karma. You know, maybe it's the case of too many voices INTERPRETING what they think karma actually is and what it means but just making it more confusing because they don't get it.
Pure speculation. Actually, nobody can know with certainty and not everything can be taken in a literal way, either.
In Buddhism there are also legends and metaphors.
It is as if you really believed that we descend from Adam and Eve.
Incredibly enough, some people do.
Also I struggle that a compassionate and deeply kind mind could have once been a murderer. But I suppose that it makes sense in a way, we evolve over time and based on how much compassion I have developed in this life time, I could see how people could develop that over many life times.
Yes, sounds nice, but also belongs within the realm of speculation.
We can't aspire to figure it all out. And reality does not always add up to fit nicely into the way we would like things to be.
As poet Rainer Maria Rilke used to say, until you can find all the answers, love the question.
There is a lot of material to read on karma.
What some Buddhist nuns say is not enough if you really want to delve deeper into the question.
4
federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
@vinlyn said:The only flashing red light about faith, to me, is when someone can't tell the difference between faith and fact.
This is not a logical statement.
If something is (established and verified) fact, one does not need faith. Because it is already there in all its truth.
If something is taken on Faith, there is an element of question, and curiosity to be yet satisfied.
Also, define 'faith': Faith as in 'Hope', or Faith as in 'Confidence'?
No, not semantics. Confusion in your statement, which on the face of it, does not make sense.
0
HamsakagoosewhispererPolishing the 'just so'Veteran
edited February 2015
How @Cinorjer put the issue of understanding karma as similar to our early understanding of our world and the cosmos helped me put 'karma' in a better context, being fairly newbie myself.
Perhaps our natural homo sapiens egocentricity will just make karma appear to be inconceivable until we are 'ready' to let go of our self-centric world view. But how hard is that? I don't know the half of how self centric my world view is.
A major cause of that is I'm primed by evolution to care very, very much about my self and that includes indulging in delusion if that maintains my important self's importance.
The more 'important' I am to myself, the greater my inability to grasp the concept of what karma actually IS, how it works. Perhaps?
Edwin Hubble dealt humanity another blow about as powerful as Copernicus and Galileo did. We understood our Earth and solar system to be part of a greater entity called a galaxy, the Milky Way, and this galaxy thing comprised the entire Universe. Hubble is best known for showing proof the Milky Way is far from the whole universe or the only galaxy AND that the universe is expanding at a faster and faster rate of expansion. So Hubble dealt the human-centric preference another blow.
The Keppler telescope found thousands of exoplanets that pretty much follow the types of planets in our own solar system, though a theoretical water planet, which we don't have, has tentatively been noted. The same chemical elements make up these exoplanets and and their stars. They formed in essentially the same way as our own solar system, and those that appear to have liquid water on them were bombarded by water carrying ice comets as gave Earth its oceans. We are made of the most common chemical components known all over the 'visible' universe, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and carbon, just like plants and algae, which only follows that any life on an exoplanet will be based upon these same most common elements and perhaps may follow similar evolutions, up to and including human-like creatures.
We are realizing the truth in the Buddha's teachings more and more as technology enables us to 'see' more and more of what's out there (and in there). We aren't important, even remotely, except to each other, but no matter how important I am, my loved ones will carry on after I die, even if my death is gruesome or unfair. I'm not THAT important even to those who love me dearest.
To ask 'why do bad things happen to good people' stops making sense as a question TO be asked if you are willing to consider your widest possible context. Perhaps a martyr's death is not bad karma? Perhaps this young woman's death is NOT a tragedy, in the great scheme of things? To call what happened to her 'bad karma' might be a sign we lack comprehension of what karma is. And our human brain works hard to put our Self front and center in spite of evidence to the contrary. Perhaps only from a Self-centric point of view is this young woman's death actually 'bad'.
I don't spend much time in that high-falutin' place and am angry and shattered for her family like the rest of us. But trying to discover 'karma' in her death might just be wrong contemplation? I don't mean this in a 'thou shalt not' kind of way.
Very recently, @Rowan1980 opened a thread called "Interesting writeup on karma," inspired by an interesting article from "Elephant Journal."
Same question, another take.
In line with a comment @Hamsaka made a few entries above, finding yourself in certain places in the world at certain moments in time, makes for too many variables conspiring for the best effects of karma to be able to sprout in a positive way.
No matter how much merit I may have accumulated over lifetimes, being a woman, Western, in Syria, our days... well, you get the idea.
0
DavidA human residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Ancestral territory of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Neutral First NationsVeteran
We can't even find a self in this life but we want to try to trace it back through other lifetimes?
Good luck with that.
4
federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
DavidA human residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Ancestral territory of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Neutral First NationsVeteran
I think I take TNH at face value in his poem Call me by my True Names. The only way rebirth makes sense to me personally is if I take the middle way between the two truths as my view and consider DO.
If we are all unique expressions and perspectives of an ever-changing process then it seems to me that any and all lives lived through one or any is just a matter of perspective.
I always liked this quote from Richard Bach:
"The mark of your ignorance is your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls a butterfly."
And because I know someone will bring it up, no, it doesn't mean we don't do anything to fix problems. It just means that we don't understand what comes of them and judge them based on a very small period of time. I don't think karma OR rebirth work on a linear scale, and I certainly don't think they know anything of the human construct of time.
1
DavidA human residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Ancestral territory of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Neutral First NationsVeteran
Some karma works on a linear scale. My toe only hurts from the stubbing once I've stubbed it. Stubbing my toe is due to not being mindful and is my karma for good or ill.
I am going to go as far as to say that neither Karma nor rebirth matter if we are true to the Dharma. Is not everything but the present moment just illusion? We may as well discuss balloons and unicorns.
@federica said: This is not a logical statement.
If something is (established and verified) fact, one does not need faith. Because it is already there in all its truth.
If something is taken on Faith, there is an element of question, and curiosity to be yet satisfied.
Also, define 'faith': Faith as in 'Hope', or Faith as in 'Confidence'?
No, not semantics. Confusion in your statement, which on the face of it, does not make sense.
Response: It's perfectly logical. I have talked with Christians who state as FACT that the Bible is the exact word of God, and some who actually believe it is FACT that God literally wrote the Bible.
We have folks right on this forum who have stated factual belief in Buddhist cosmology and Buddhist "characters".
I have known many Buddhists in Thailand who will tell you -- as fact -- how Siddhartha was conceived with a white elephant entering his mother's womb, who accept as fact that all the Buddha footprints in Thailand (and there are hundreds) are truly the footprints of Buddha (often just because some Thai King said so), and people who will relate to you how Buddha's horse flew off into the sky (I forget exactly how that goes).
Far too many people in any religion -- including Buddhism -- accept things as fact, when those things may really only be accepted as faith...or even fable.
@Amthorn said:
I am going to go as far as to say that neither Karma nor rebirth matter if we are true to the Dharma. Is not everything but the present moment just illusion? We may as well discuss balloons and unicorns.
I think that's a very good point.
But, humans are human, and man has always pondered what seems to be imponderable, and often -- sometimes over time -- great discoveries have been made in doing so. So thank goodness.
But in Buddhism, part of Dharma is Buddha's teachings, and part of his teachings include Karma. It doesn't mean we have to focus on it, by any means. I certainly don't and I doubt most people do. But it's still in there.
Also, fact isn't as stable as we like to believe. It changes pretty consistently. Fact used to include the world being flat, that the earth was the center of the universe, that smoking was good for you, Darwin's theory of natural selection and heredity. Many, many things are presented as fact when we have since learned different because our powers of observation have changed. I'm sure they will continue to change and we will find things we accept as fact now to not be right. Some people believe GMOs are unhealthy, science has yet to find reliable ways to prove that. So which is right? Are they healthy or not? The facts depend who you ask. People who choose not to vaccinate their children believe they are using facts to make those decisions. So do the people on the other end. Which set of "facts" is correct? Some are backed up by science, some are not. Some WERE backed up by science and unequivocally proven incorrect later on. Facts don't have all the answers.
2
federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
@vinlyn said:Response: It's perfectly logical. I have talked with Christians who state as FACT that the Bible is the exact word of God, and some who actually believe it is FACT that God literally wrote the Bible.
That is incorrect.
I was always led to believe that FACT relies on evidence, and that the evidence has to be either indisputable or beyond "all reasonable doubt".
Those Christians may wish to believe that the Bible is factual, but this is merely opinion, not fact.
Thy can insist all they like, but without concrete evidence, it's a flawed premise.
We have folks right on this forum who have stated factual belief in Buddhist cosmology and Buddhist "characters".
Could you point out who, exactly?
Personally, I have no recollection of anyone adamantly insisting such beliefs and refusing to be swayed or persuaded it is merely a belief of their own...
I have known many Buddhists in Thailand who will tell you -- as fact -- how Siddhartha was conceived with a white elephant entering his mother's womb, who accept as fact that all the Buddha footprints in Thailand (and there are hundreds) are truly the footprints of Buddha (often just because some Thai King said so), and people who will relate to you how Buddha's horse flew off into the sky (I forget exactly how that goes).
Again, they may see it as fact, but it's conjecture and faith in something they have been led to believe.
Far too many people in any religion -- including Buddhism -- accept things as fact, when those things may really only be accepted as faith...or even fable.
Then there's a world of difference between what you see as fact, and what is ACTUAL Fact. Peoples' beliefs do not establish fact. Evidence, proof and demonstrable situations, define Fact.
In actuality, we may be saying it differently, but you are agreeing with me.
No, I will not state who on this forum does that...that would be inflammatory, and there's no need to go there. In fact ( if I did so independently, you'd probably reprimand me. You can have fun figuring it out.
1
federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
It would only be inflammatory if it was a groundless accusation. It wouldn't be inflammatory if you were merely repeating what they said, with link/reference.
I'm agreeing with you?
I don't entirely see how, but if that's the way you look at it, that's ok by me....
Comments
And likewise I can imagine places with far more favorable conditions!
I think it would depend on the life of the dog. Our dog is pretty darn happy and spoiled rotten. She sleeps in the sun all day, plays whenever she wants, has no work whatsoever (except to protect her home and family from the wiles of the white-tailed deer). She has a pretty cozy and easy life. A wild dog or a stray, not as much. So it would depend. I always thought it would be fun to be a flying squirrel...
People who are bringing the question down to "why do bad things happen to good people?" - a justice and fairness thing are REALLYYYY simplifying what I am getting at. That was not my question or point at all.
Based on what I have heard from Buddhist nuns - good actions bring good karma and neutralize bad karma. A life dedicated to good deeds and compassionate living seems to be one of great merit - as such a lot of negative karma would be neutralized. For example, Buddha in a past life tried to murder his brother (or cousin or someone) and so his brother attempted to kill him but the boulder only dropped on his foot because of all his good karma. So why is this not the case for this yogi/Buddhist guy? Enlightenment is supposed to neutralize karma. You know, maybe it's the case of too many voices INTERPRETING what they think karma actually is and what it means but just making it more confusing because they don't get it.
Also I struggle that a compassionate and deeply kind mind could have once been a murderer. But I suppose that it makes sense in a way, we evolve over time and based on how much compassion I have developed in this life time, I could see how people could develop that over many life times.
Thanks for the comments but most frustrating Buddhist idea ever.
In a sense, that's why I see it as unfair (although that may just be the way it is). I guess as an educator, I always see an experience as an opportunity to learn. People have thought my comment odd, when after some really bad experience in life I would say, "I learned a lot from that."
I remember in my early years of teaching I had a Thai (Buddhist) roommate for a couple of years. At one point he refused to speak to or acknowledge me for a full week. In close quarters it was bizarre. After he finally thawed, I asked him why he refused to speak to me for a week. He refused to answer. Result, nothing learned.
But, as I say, who knows how it works.
It takes time. I think it's easy to see that pretty much no one here has a true understanding of what exactly karma is and how exactly it works. I think it's pretty fair to extend that to most of the rest of the humans on the planet as well. We don't know. That is why it's so confusing.
But I think it's a stretch to say that a few years of compassionate action (as in the case of Kayla Mueller) are enough to neutralize bad karma. Because we don't know how this works out, how can we see someone who was working for good and assume they are neutralizing so much. We don't know the weight of one action versus another and so on. She was quite a young person who did a lot in her short time here, but relatively speaking to rebirth and lifetimes and even going beyond to possibly births outside what we consider human lives on our planet...it's not even a drop in the bucket.
Yes, we are supposed to investigate the teachings, any teachers, ourselves. But I'm not sure Buddha meant that we should attempt to investigate someone else's life, or their possible karma.
I'm kind of confused by your reaction. You said it was not your point or question at all, but the very title of your post is basically why do bad things happen to good people. You posed the question and then are disappointed with how people answered it? So what exactly are you looking for? Karma is one of the hottest topics here, because it is so confusing and everyone has their take based on their tradition and where they are in their practice and evolving understanding. I'm not sure what you were expecting.
@Vanilli read, mark, inwardly digest then have a choice of three options:
Study, research, understand accept and live your life by it.
Study, research, understand, reject and leave aside as not valid for you (always knowing that for others it resonates).
Study, research - fail to digest and/or understand, so leave aside for now; maybe things will become clearer later. it doesn't matter, it's not a race....
>
Yes, but don't worry about it.
You're not supposed to tie yourself in knots over it - the Buddha expressedly told you NOT to do that.
Forget other people, forget what happened before, (Can you change it? No.) forget what will happen in the future (Can you predict it? No.)....
Your mission, - whether you choose to 'accept' it or not - is to be primarily concerned about, and to live your life as well as you can with the tools that you have.
YOUR life.
Nobody else's.
Yours.
So, just go to it.
It really boils down to that, simply put.
Purely from an analytical standpoint, the issue of karma over several lifetimes is probably why so many people see Buddhism as a fatalistic religion. In other words, no matter how perfect a life I lead in this lifetime, I'm going to suffer because of something I did in a lifetime I don't even know existed. Therefore, I am helpless with the vicissitudes of life.
I think most people who only glance at Buddhism see "life is suffering" and back away. I did. Several times. It took a while before I cared to delve into that that meant and of course it makes sense now. But whether you read a book or look online, that is one of the very first things you see-the four noble truths. And if they aren't explained well, they look very fatalistic. I doubt most get into the complexities of karma and rebirth.
The idea of living a perfect life now and still being punished for something in my distant past (other lives or this one, either way) doesn't bother me because of my belief in rebirth. I am not trying to work through everything in this life time. I've been working on it a while and I probably have a while left to go. I'm ok with that. I don't expect this brief life to hold everything. I don't really think of things in terms of "Why should I bother "being good" if I can still be punished for what I did wrong eons ago?" because that's not why I try to be good/compassionate/loving/etc. It's like thinking you can spend 20 years eating a crap diet, and then hope for amazing results after one week of a good diet. You do it anyways, because once you understand, you realize it's better for you even if the results aren't apparent right now.
You know, any discussion about karma, past life and future good and bad karma and such, always makes me think of astronomy and the description of the solar system. It is an almost perfect analogy.
In ancient times, learned people knew the Earth was a planet and that some of those lights in the skies were other planets and that the planets and sun all revolved around each other in a huge celestial dance.
But due to the importance of humanity and Earth as unique and special, these learned people insisted the Earth was at the center and everything else, including the sun, revolved around us. It made sense. It even sort of fit observations of the sun and moon moving across the heavens.
But as we learned more about the universe, we kept discovering things that didn't fit. Some of those stars turned out to be traveling in strange patterns. We called them planets and people like Ptolemy constructed elaborate, hugely complex models to explain how it all fit with the Earth sitting in the center. Nobody could understand the models, but we were assured very smart people had it figured out.
But then someone said, you know, if you stop insisting people and the Earth are at the center of the universe, it suddenly becomes very simple again. Copernicus and Galileo tried to explain how simple it was, but for a very long time people refused to listen, because it upset their assumption that the universe was designed with people at the center of it all.
My own opinion, for what it's worth. Karma isn't actually the vastly complicated, imponderable thing we insist it must be. We're just looking at it from the wrong viewpoint. The minute you have to add in past and future lives and accumulated good and bad merit and intention versus action, you're trying to force reality to fit your desires and expectations. Something to think about.
I remember reading a quote in one of Lama Surya Das' Trilogy books, which resonates with me to this day: It is penetrating with its pinpoint accuracy, and stunning simplicity.
"Karma means you don't get away with anything. And it all counts."
providing you bear and keep in mind that Karma is Volitional, Deliberate and Intentional Action, the above is a blazing sudden shaft of sunlight, penetrating a room that has been in darkness for decades...
It's unrealistic of us to ask for life to make sense: sometimes it simply doesn't. Or we can't figure it out.
All I care is getting to the bottom line...does anybody who thinks they know what karma is able to do the math on it? I break out in hives just thinking about balancing my checkbook...I dropped off my tax papers to my tax lady today and told her maybe in another life, I will be competent in crunching numbers. I won't read much about karma because I don't have a snowball's chance in hell to understand it.
@Silver, other than rebirth, there is probably no other topic on Buddhist forums that is discussed more often than karma. Let's face it, nobody knows how it works or even if it works. Frankly, I see it as a matter of faith (gasp!).
I agree karma is a matter of faith but some people have their own personal connotations of the word 'faith' as VERY negative.
Well...considering my allergy to math, I have more faith in that than I do such things as karma. As naïve as I've been known to be, there's a limit to what I put my faith in. Even the Buddha dude insists that we find out things for ourselves. I honestly don't know what all the Buddha said about karma - I don't remember any mention of it in my favorite book, OPWC.
I think "faith" can be a very negative thing. I think "faith" can be a very positive thing.
The only flashing red light about faith, to me, is when someone can't tell the difference between faith and fact.
my teacher says karma is just a view. like 'the sun rises in the east'. Nagarjuna pointed out that karma cannot be real if the self is not real and vice versa (lost an awesome website that google won't lead me to
)
Personally I have no faith in rebirth but could see how it would make sense.
Then again I don't have faith in any of my beliefs if they can even be called beliefs.
https://soraj.wordpress.com/2008/06/24/emptiness-of-karma/
^^^ Just coz Nagarjuna was a mahasiddha and some called him 'the second Buddha' is it real or just karma?
I think the basic observation that actions have consequences is observation. But beyond that, it's certainly faith.
All actions have consequences, but not necessarily on the person committing the act(s).
When I was brand new to Buddhism, I asked a teacher at a local sangha about karma. I asked my question based on my very limited understanding that karma was some kind of magical cosmic justice that required a belief in reincarnation. The answer that I got was not very satisfactory, but correct for me at the time, was that my preconceived notions were not going to help me and that karma was complicated.
Buddha's teachings boil down to two things - Identifying and transcending human suffering.
To explain why things are the way they are the Buddha said something like - Because this is, that becomes.
Karma is action and the results of that action. It is simple cause and effect, which is not so simple. It is the causality which creates the "me" of this present moment. Reborn from actions of all previous moments. Not magic that requires belief in some form of eternal-ism (a permanent me) to be true.
I think this teacher explains it well including the relevant implications to Buddha teachings -
"Our thoughts are our karma. Our likes and dislikes. There are hundreds of likes and dislikes, a thousand opinions, ten thousand concepts about how things are that have been conditioned by previous experience.
All these likes and dislikes drive us from action to action, creating more karma, more causes for future results.
There is little you can do about what arises in the mind. What arises is karmically conditioned by what has gone before.
The sooner we notice the arising of thoughts and moods and realize they are just karmic fruits of the past the easier it is to let go.
In the course of life certain things are karmically given, one of which is that with every object of mind there arises karmically conditioned feelings of attraction or repulsion or, at times, indifference. Out of this liking and disliking comes craving, which forges the grasping that conditions the next link in the karmic chain. It is the clear recognition of the feeling of liking and disliking, without reaction, that cuts the karmic chain. Gradually we get so that we can watch liking and disliking with clarity. This clear seeing may be experienced as pleasant although the object noticed is unpleasant. When awareness is strong, grasping is weak. When grasping is weakened, volition toward unwholesome actions has less intensity.
Developing awareness means not only knowing that we're involved in a certain action, but also recognizing the motivation. But such motivations are not something to ponder. We either see it in the present moment or we don't. It is not 20/20 hindsight or the analytical mind that uncovers the karmic root of the moment. We just watch our mind."
from A Gradual Awakening by Stephen Levine.
Best Wishes
^ ^ ^ Ooh, that's the clearest explanation I've ever seen.
eta: Let's just say it's the only one I've read that made sense to me.
Lama Surya Das is the person who brought me to Buddhism (A JuBu too - sweet
)
(My) Life is too short to worry about who's definition of karma is right.
I'm more concerned about getting through the Bardos so next life I can be a famous rock star with a shite load of money and can be lazy
j/k
@Vinlyn;
See, what you said in your last post is what makes me feel that rebirth isn't quite as linear as it may seem.
What if you're reborn into the Inquisition?
That's a good question @vinlyn. From my standpoint presuming my mind training will benefit in next lifetime I am motivated to try hard at e.g. meditation. Wow maybe even in this life! And maybe just a coping method or ritual.
I think we always assume you are born forward in time.
What if you are not?
What if you are reborn after the earth has been destroyed? Now that would be really bad karma!
Someone could already be living a few of my lifetimes.
Nah...Brad Pitt and I couldn't be alive at the same time then.
Sorry, @Vanilli, it was probably the presentation and the title which misled us.
I lost count of how many times people, especially newbies, bring up this kind of perplexed question on karma.
Some people have this weird notion that if you're good enough, nice enough, only good nice things will happen to you.
It reminds me of this story I heard about a very orthodox young Jewish man who had been brought up with very black-and-white ideas about God and justice.
On the way to the gas chambers in Auschwitz, he looked up, expecting that somehow, someway, the skies would open and God would bluster in to save his people from certain death.
When nothing happened, he bitterly said: "God doesn't exist."
So, if anybody feels cheated by the mistifying workings of karma, try believing in God and see how things hold up when nasty things happen to nice people on a minute-to-minute basis.
Pure speculation. Actually, nobody can know with certainty and not everything can be taken in a literal way, either.
In Buddhism there are also legends and metaphors.
It is as if you really believed that we descend from Adam and Eve.
Incredibly enough, some people do.
Yes, sounds nice, but also belongs within the realm of speculation.
We can't aspire to figure it all out. And reality does not always add up to fit nicely into the way we would like things to be.
As poet Rainer Maria Rilke used to say, until you can find all the answers, love the question.
There is a lot of material to read on karma.
What some Buddhist nuns say is not enough if you really want to delve deeper into the question.
This is not a logical statement.
If something is (established and verified) fact, one does not need faith. Because it is already there in all its truth.
If something is taken on Faith, there is an element of question, and curiosity to be yet satisfied.
Also, define 'faith': Faith as in 'Hope', or Faith as in 'Confidence'?
No, not semantics. Confusion in your statement, which on the face of it, does not make sense.
How @Cinorjer put the issue of understanding karma as similar to our early understanding of our world and the cosmos helped me put 'karma' in a better context, being fairly newbie myself.
Perhaps our natural homo sapiens egocentricity will just make karma appear to be inconceivable until we are 'ready' to let go of our self-centric world view. But how hard is that? I don't know the half of how self centric my world view is.
A major cause of that is I'm primed by evolution to care very, very much about my self and that includes indulging in delusion if that maintains my important self's importance.
The more 'important' I am to myself, the greater my inability to grasp the concept of what karma actually IS, how it works. Perhaps?
Edwin Hubble dealt humanity another blow about as powerful as Copernicus and Galileo did. We understood our Earth and solar system to be part of a greater entity called a galaxy, the Milky Way, and this galaxy thing comprised the entire Universe. Hubble is best known for showing proof the Milky Way is far from the whole universe or the only galaxy AND that the universe is expanding at a faster and faster rate of expansion. So Hubble dealt the human-centric preference another blow.
The Keppler telescope found thousands of exoplanets that pretty much follow the types of planets in our own solar system, though a theoretical water planet, which we don't have, has tentatively been noted. The same chemical elements make up these exoplanets and and their stars. They formed in essentially the same way as our own solar system, and those that appear to have liquid water on them were bombarded by water carrying ice comets as gave Earth its oceans. We are made of the most common chemical components known all over the 'visible' universe, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and carbon, just like plants and algae, which only follows that any life on an exoplanet will be based upon these same most common elements and perhaps may follow similar evolutions, up to and including human-like creatures.
We are realizing the truth in the Buddha's teachings more and more as technology enables us to 'see' more and more of what's out there (and in there). We aren't important, even remotely, except to each other, but no matter how important I am, my loved ones will carry on after I die, even if my death is gruesome or unfair. I'm not THAT important even to those who love me dearest.
To ask 'why do bad things happen to good people' stops making sense as a question TO be asked if you are willing to consider your widest possible context. Perhaps a martyr's death is not bad karma? Perhaps this young woman's death is NOT a tragedy, in the great scheme of things? To call what happened to her 'bad karma' might be a sign we lack comprehension of what karma is. And our human brain works hard to put our Self front and center in spite of evidence to the contrary. Perhaps only from a Self-centric point of view is this young woman's death actually 'bad'.
I don't spend much time in that high-falutin' place and am angry and shattered for her family like the rest of us. But trying to discover 'karma' in her death might just be wrong contemplation? I don't mean this in a 'thou shalt not' kind of way.
Very recently, @Rowan1980 opened a thread called "Interesting writeup on karma," inspired by an interesting article from "Elephant Journal."
Same question, another take.
http://www.elephantjournal.com/2015/02/karma-its-not-about-what-we-do/
In line with a comment @Hamsaka made a few entries above, finding yourself in certain places in the world at certain moments in time, makes for too many variables conspiring for the best effects of karma to be able to sprout in a positive way.
No matter how much merit I may have accumulated over lifetimes, being a woman, Western, in Syria, our days... well, you get the idea.
Good luck with that.
(I posted that link already.....)
But it's good that both of us thought of it.
I think I take TNH at face value in his poem Call me by my True Names. The only way rebirth makes sense to me personally is if I take the middle way between the two truths as my view and consider DO.
If we are all unique expressions and perspectives of an ever-changing process then it seems to me that any and all lives lived through one or any is just a matter of perspective.
Crap, I'm the walrus joo joo ja joob
I always liked this quote from Richard Bach:
"The mark of your ignorance is your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls a butterfly."
And because I know someone will bring it up, no, it doesn't mean we don't do anything to fix problems. It just means that we don't understand what comes of them and judge them based on a very small period of time. I don't think karma OR rebirth work on a linear scale, and I certainly don't think they know anything of the human construct of time.
Sigh. Fine, they aren't limited to a linear scale or our ideas of time.
Response: It's perfectly logical. I have talked with Christians who state as FACT that the Bible is the exact word of God, and some who actually believe it is FACT that God literally wrote the Bible.
We have folks right on this forum who have stated factual belief in Buddhist cosmology and Buddhist "characters".
I have known many Buddhists in Thailand who will tell you -- as fact -- how Siddhartha was conceived with a white elephant entering his mother's womb, who accept as fact that all the Buddha footprints in Thailand (and there are hundreds) are truly the footprints of Buddha (often just because some Thai King said so), and people who will relate to you how Buddha's horse flew off into the sky (I forget exactly how that goes).
Far too many people in any religion -- including Buddhism -- accept things as fact, when those things may really only be accepted as faith...or even fable.
I think that's a very good point.
But, humans are human, and man has always pondered what seems to be imponderable, and often -- sometimes over time -- great discoveries have been made in doing so. So thank goodness.
But in Buddhism, part of Dharma is Buddha's teachings, and part of his teachings include Karma. It doesn't mean we have to focus on it, by any means. I certainly don't and I doubt most people do. But it's still in there.
Also, fact isn't as stable as we like to believe. It changes pretty consistently. Fact used to include the world being flat, that the earth was the center of the universe, that smoking was good for you, Darwin's theory of natural selection and heredity. Many, many things are presented as fact when we have since learned different because our powers of observation have changed. I'm sure they will continue to change and we will find things we accept as fact now to not be right. Some people believe GMOs are unhealthy, science has yet to find reliable ways to prove that. So which is right? Are they healthy or not? The facts depend who you ask. People who choose not to vaccinate their children believe they are using facts to make those decisions. So do the people on the other end. Which set of "facts" is correct? Some are backed up by science, some are not. Some WERE backed up by science and unequivocally proven incorrect later on. Facts don't have all the answers.
That is incorrect.
I was always led to believe that FACT relies on evidence, and that the evidence has to be either indisputable or beyond "all reasonable doubt".
Those Christians may wish to believe that the Bible is factual, but this is merely opinion, not fact.
Thy can insist all they like, but without concrete evidence, it's a flawed premise.
Could you point out who, exactly?
Personally, I have no recollection of anyone adamantly insisting such beliefs and refusing to be swayed or persuaded it is merely a belief of their own...
Again, they may see it as fact, but it's conjecture and faith in something they have been led to believe.
Then there's a world of difference between what you see as fact, and what is ACTUAL Fact. Peoples' beliefs do not establish fact. Evidence, proof and demonstrable situations, define Fact.
In actuality, we may be saying it differently, but you are agreeing with me.
No, I will not state who on this forum does that...that would be inflammatory, and there's no need to go there. In fact (
if I did so independently, you'd probably reprimand me. You can have fun figuring it out.
It would only be inflammatory if it was a groundless accusation. It wouldn't be inflammatory if you were merely repeating what they said, with link/reference.
I'm agreeing with you?
I don't entirely see how, but if that's the way you look at it, that's ok by me....
I'm not clear what you're addressing. Could you clarify? Thanks.