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.
Does karma break the law of impermanence?
I was thinking about this, maybe karma is not conditioned or it is only a by product of conditioned things. Anyone have understanding of this? Thanks
0
Comments
But then karma can be perminent just like imperminence is perminent. But only while there exists anything to have/produce Karma or be imperminent.
But, I dunno..
If you are practicing keeping your mind still and heart open it is unlikely that you will attract karma. But, what you have done in the past, while believing that you had a personal self, and you used your thoughts to determine the world, produced both good and not so good karma. The trick is not to get caught up in karma that you acquired. Continue your practice no matter what comes down. Keep your mind empty nd heart open by meditation, mantras, and chanting. That is the way to break the chain of cause and effect.
You might find it helpful to see Karma in terms of more simple Dharmic terms, specifically dependent origination (Not the 12 Nids).
Dependent Origination tells us that all causes have many effects and all effects have many causes and all causes are effects.
For any change you can think if it will satisfy these conditions. The condition are true always, but what they refer to is not.
Karma is not conditioned, it is the actually conditioning of dependent origination taking place within moral/mental/spiritual systems and their interconnectedness with the rest of reality.
Karma is not a by product of conditioning either, it is the very fabric of causal reality of human lives. In the same way perhaps as gravity is not conditioned by "heavy objects"?
Karma is very easy to see when you see dependent origination, but like DO, it aint majical or mysterious, just deep, man:)
That is my thoughts on the matter:)
Yes, karma is a by-product. Your karma is the sum total of all habits you have established and all mental and emotional imprints you have made. This includes swearing at bad drivers (anger imprint), helping a stranger (compassion imprint), and doing your practice (dharma imprint).
Because we can change our karma (re-program those imprints) by changing where we put our attention and what we choose to encourage within ourselves, karma, too, is impermanent.
Kamma happens. How Kamma actually affects us is in part described by Dependent Origination, which shows us that conditions become effects become conditions ad infinitum in an unbroken chain of causality.
Kamma does not break Impermanence. Impermanence in Buddhism means that there is no solidarity, no phenomena we can experience that does not arise, change, and fall. Kamma is a description of change. "The only thing that stays the same is everything changes."
We confuse the issue in trying to say one breaks the other. One is a description of the ways that things change, and the other is the definition that all things change. Can we see the flaw in the question? If the question is not proper, we'll never receive a proper answer.
That's interesting, so karma and imperminence are aspects of the same "thing"
Imperminence = That things change
Karma = How things change
?
Kamma is change, Impermanence describes that because of this change there is no solidarity or permanence in anything that exists including ourselves, Dependent Origination is how Kamma actually comes to affect us through a causal chain of conditions.
That's about as clear as I can make it.
Imperminence = That all thing's change
Karma = How things change
?
Just trying to cement this.
Yes, I get confused by that.
Karma to me, whatever it is seems to need the moral/mental/spiritual component?
Impermanence: We change, what we think changes, everything in our environment changes. Nothing that we will ever be able to think or to sense will remain as it is. All things are momentary, part of a stream of change flowing forward. Impermanence is what happens because things are changing constantly; nothing can ever be solid, can ever remain constant.
Kamma: The totality of all change that occurs. If we're speaking of our own kamma, then we're speaking of any change that we cause either to our minds or to the physical universe. Kamma literally means action, but as to that it means things we do that affect change.
Dependent Origination: This, often abbreviated as "DO", represents how Kamma (or change) actually affects us. It shows that reality is conditioned by Kamma, that each condition or set of conditions causes the arising and falling.
Change (Kamma) is a constant. How it affects us is the causal chain explained by Dependent Origination. Because of this causal chain, and constant change, nothing we know will ever remain the same.
"The only thing that stays the same is everything changes." may just be part of a song lyric or a folk saying to most people, but it is actually the most succinct way of explaining reality. Change is the constant.
Imperminence: "Nothing that we will ever be able to think or to sense will remain as it is."
That makes sense.
Kamma: "Kamma literally means action, but as to that it means things we do that affect change."
This is kinda lost on me.
You dont have to try and fix that though, I'm just saying. I'll get it one day.
Kamma (change) happens, whether for good or for ill, constantly. There is our Kamma, which we differentiate from other Kamma merely because it helps us understand how *our* actions affect things, and then the totality of all Kamma.
Dependent Origination describes how that Kamma affects the state of the mind and the state of all phenomena in the universe. Each change begets another change begets another change. Kamma is change flowing in constancy, and DO describes how.
Impermanence is the result of both of these. Nothing stays the same except the ways in which they change.
The honest truth is though that I could explain it different ways all day long and we might still be on different pages. That's because we've experienced different conditions that have led us to where we are, and only those conditions make us any different. We're all just trying to find the right combination of conditions that leads to realization, and none of us can say what that combination is for anyone else. We can only follow the guidance of the teachings and of teachers, and apply personal effort toward walking the path and giving up our preconceptions and beliefs.
That you don't see much distinction between the 3 is actually a good thing for now, because as I've said they're all just parts of the same reality.
This pretty much what science says about energy and entropy. Also the more entropy the less energy, the less entropy the more energy. (or vice versa anyway you get the gist)
Impermanence: - That all things change
Kamma: - the way we contribute to that change.
No. These are just the tools we use to fuel our motivations. Kamma is as a result of our evaluation after perception. We then add to that evaluation by making a moral, mental or spiritual (or any other emotional) judgement of that phenomenon, experience or situation.
By adding to the perception in evaluating it, we decide what our response will be.
And thus, we create kamma.
The trick is to evaluate a situation and respond to it, without being swayed by moral/mental/spiritual prejudices or judgements.