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Our past actions
I have been asked this question a few times. If a child is murdered, say shot, did they do something so horrible to die young. I answered our past actions determine our future asfar as rebirth. Is this the right answer?
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Comments
There has yet to be a verifiably right answer about things like that in the history of homo sapiens. It's really impossible to know.
Rebirth is a moral teaching. It is not a science. The Buddha himself never called it ultimate truth (although many Buddhists like to say it is something exacting).
If I insulted someone yesterday and if I get shot today by the person I insulted, clearly my action of yesterday influence my getting shot today.
But generally, if we investigate why a child is murdered, we will generally find the murderer is a psychopath.
Child are innocent but many Buddhists wish to blame problems of children on the children rather than on adults who harm them.
Though yes, clearly bad karma played a role in the child getting shot. That or it was just bad luck, I'm sure not all the hundreds and thousands of ppl that got wiped out in the tsunami of 04 were grave sinners. In hindu traditions, when an untimely death occurs that person is reborn as a human. I don't know if there's any truth in that, since shouldn't they become ghosts if the death was untimely?
To address this directly, your theory and the Hindu theory are equally valid. I would guess that the Hindu theory comes from some sort of belief that at least gives the person a break and lets them come back roughly where they were before. And your theory that they would come back as ghosts is equally valid. In many Western societies, people believe that a death that was not relatively "prepared for" leaves the person in a relatively confused state at the time of death, and leads to becoming a ghost.
My point is, no one has yet been able to do anything but guess. The most use I can get out of the whole thought of karma is the theory that if we do clarifying and nonattachment practices in this lifetime, we should develop momentum toward a less conflicted rebirth. But no one really knows about that for sure either, unless Tibetans or other people who have gone into really serious and complex states and come back and written things like the Tibetan Book of the Dead are to be believed.
There are so many suttas in Buddhism where the Buddha has explicitly talked about the concept of rebirth. He has talked about his own past lives in some suttas. I can get you the names of some of these suttas if you want. The concept of rebirth is an integral part of Buddhism and a reason why we practice. The concept of kamma is closely related to the concept of rebirth and also a reason why worldings are encouraged to practice. If we die today and never born again why bother to practice at all?
I have never come across any Buddhist who take karma as a justification for someone committing an act of crime on someone else. Rather the concept of karma is used as a way to prevent someone from committing a crime by making them realize the consequences of their own actions. This way people won't commit crimes even secretly.
In answering your question, yes possibly it might be a karmic consequence although that is not a justification for the crime. But it might not be too. I have read that "everything that happens to you do not happen because of karma". In fact there are five "niyama dhammas" and karma is just one of them.
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Your answer is just speculative.
.
But something I read elsewhere (where a Buddhist was trying to explain Karma to a non-Buddhist) resonated with me...
"If you really want to view Karma as a Punishment - which it isn't - then consider that it's being bitten on the ass BY our sins, not FOR them".
Which suitably mollified the questioner, and went on to create a really interesting thread....:D
Karma is a process... it has no 'mind' of its own, and whilst we can speculate on the child's history and why they might have been shot and why the murderer did what they did, and therefore their Karma has also brought them to this point - we might as well accept that we have enough on our own plates, dealing with our own Karma, without speculating uselessly on such hypothetical issues....
Karma is where the rubber hits the road, where we're all individually concerned.
Focus on that.
Much more productive and worthwhile.
Probably
I didn't say it's not. If you read the rest of the answer it will be clear
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So true.
As Federica says it is useless trying to rationalize if the child was killed because of a bad karma because it might be or it might be not. Karma is only one of the five "niyama dhammas" discussed in Buddhism. Things can happen to us which are outside of the karmic concept.
I remember a monk once said during a dhamma session that if I was born in a country and there was a bad economic situation due to the new political reforms and I happened to be in the midst of this economic crisis it might not be because of my bad karma. That is why there are five other niyama dhammas introduced in Buddhism. <input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden">