Karma and the Cosmic Crafter

Joshua

In Buddhism, karma refers to impulses. Based on previous actions we have done, impulses arise in us to act in certain ways now. Karma refers to the impulse that comes into someone's mind to invest in a stock the day before it crashes or before it rises in value. Or, someone may have the impulse to cross the street at just the moment when he or she will be hit by a car, not five minutes earlier or five minutes later. The arising of the impulse at just that moment is the result of some previous action or actions the person did. In a previous life, for example, the person might have tortured or killed someone. Such destructive behavior results in the perpetrator experiencing a shortened lifespan as well, usually in another lifetime. Thus, the impulse to cross the street arose at just the moment to be hit by a car.

Berzin

Notice Berzin didn't say that a person haphazardly walks into a street and coincidentally is hit by a vehicle in a cruel twist of unfortunate chance. That's why karma is often described as causing particular conditions good or bad to arise in people, from SIDS to Bill Gates, from mentally dysfunctional to genius, from famine to surplus. You reap what you sow. I've heard it described in agnostic terms all the way to most of those very people contradicting themselves.

Did the man get a random STD by sitting on a public toilet by chance or did he screw up in the past?

Did the man ignorantly get brain damage from Aspartame and MSG's by chance or did he screw up in the past?

It seems Berzin would say because of the past.. what shapes this? This is an unconjecturable no?

Cloud

What's important is that you know the screwed up mental state that we're in has evolved from everything we've been taught about the world, and the human society itself, since we were children. Karma shows us that we can apply skillful methods of cultivating wholesome states of mind leading to full liberation.

That's what's important. Speculating about karma in other ways just distracts us, and is unknowable. We can't change anything that happened before we were "born", so it is our task to deal with the conditions we've been handed and what we do "now" that counts.

Namaste

upalabhava

valois wrote: »

what shapes this?

Saṅkhāra? URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sa%E1%B9%85kh%C4%81ra"]1[/URL URL="http://www.berzinarchives.com/web/en/about/glossary/glossary.html#xlink_20of_20affecting_20impulses"]2[/URL URL="http://www.buddhanet.net/pdf_file/palidict.pdf"]3[/URL

valois wrote: »

This is an unconjecturable no?

meh. Do you think you are insane now that you have contemplated it?

Jeffrey

You never know exactly whats coming down the pipe regardless of what you can conjecture and the rumination to add to that.

Vangelis

Not everything that happens to you is due to past kamma. Sometimes it really is dumb luck. And it's not that predictable which is which.

Joshua

Vangelis wrote: »

Not everything that happens to you is due to past kamma. Sometimes it really is dumb luck. And it's not that predictable which is which.

Of course. My concern are those times when it isn't dumb luck.

Cloud

Imagine a field, an emptiness, where you haven't yet come into existence (what you think of as you). It is the suchness of formations in this field, the collective karma, that brings you forth.

As long as your mind is in a mode of duality, you consider yourself separate from everything else. As such, there is "your" karma and "all other" karma as conditions for how your life turns out. The only way to change your life is through your own karma; there's no luck involved except to say things that are outside of your own karma.

Joshua

Cloud wrote: »

Imagine a field, an emptiness, where you haven't yet come into existence (what you think of as you). It is the suchness of formations in this field, the collective karma, that brings you forth.

As long as your mind is in a mode of duality, you consider yourself separate from everything else. As such, there is "your" karma and "all other" karma as conditions for how your life turns out. The only way to change your life is through your own karma; there's no luck involved except to say things that are outside of your own karma.

My friend and I were discussing something like this yesterday. This idea is very commonsense but the problem is that I interact with people, thus my karma does to. My impulse to get hit by a car is intertwined with another man's impulse to be there to hit me. It's like a big four-dimensional crafter. The supra-sankhara.

I'm certainly feeling it necessary to take all these threads of mine that are more or less different aspects of the same truth, that many ideas point towards a cosmic consciousness. Until then let me say yet again, it appears that there's a cosmic consciousness at work, that in a non-dual world as you said, I am simply a puppet to the will of the cosmic crafter. Theoretically I could choose not go into the street, but as I don't know the future I'll nearly certainly get hit by the car. That's not the real point, the real point is, as I said, my karma is intertwined with everything in the universe and if any scenarios are methodical consequences of my karma, then many things are methodical karmaic consequences for the X amount of beings in the universe. Surely you see where I'm going with this?

Cloud

Adding a cosmic consciousness to the universe is the same as adding a soul to a human. Do you see where I'm going with this? It's unnecessary and not a Buddhist teaching to boot.

Karma is shared, this is true. If you abuse a child, that child will be tormented and may end up abusing another. If so, are their actions truly their own, of their own karma... dependent upon no one else's? In a very direct way they are also the seed of your karma; you plant that seed within their mind just as we plant seeds within our own minds. The karma we need to worry about is the thoughts, speech and actions we can perform that will break us out of the cycle of unwholesome states of mind... that is all. Anything else is looking in the wrong direction, away from awakening.

We can't know everything, on every level. We need to focus on the path that is working on ourselves; our own minds, knowing that we can't control the world or what other people do. What enlightenment brings us is a state where we no longer have such worries, such questions, such a hole within ourselves to fill.

Joshua

Cloud wrote: »

Adding a cosmic consciousness to the universe is the same as adding a soul to a human. Do you see where I'm going with this? It's unnecessary and not a Buddhist teaching to boot.

Karma is shared, this is true. If you abuse a child, that child will be tormented and may end up abusing another. If so, are their actions truly their own, of their own karma... dependent upon no one else's? In a very direct way they are also the seed of your karma; you plant that seed within their mind just as we plant seeds within our own minds. The karma we need to worry about is the thoughts, speech and actions we can perform that will break us out of the cycle of unwholesome states of mind... that is all. Anything else is looking in the wrong direction, away from awakening.

We can't know everything, on every level. We need to focus on the path that is working on ourselves; our own minds, knowing that we can't control the world or what other people do. What enlightenment brings us is a state where we no longer have such worries, such questions, such a hole within ourselves to fill.

I do agree with what we ought to concern ourselves with, and I typically would, only Berzin here has caused some potential misunderstanding as I feel he's pretty qualified. To use your example together with Berzin's--someone's karma dictates that a person must ruin their car or spoil their day, or be late to work, etc. Another's has dictated that he is going to be maimed or even die. The two karmas seemingly work together by planting 'karma impulses' into each person's mind so the person and the car meet in the middle. As if each karma were aware of each other's meddling. These implications, if in fact true, and though no one can ascertain their true natures, run deep for even what we can ascertain. This really does raise many questions for me.

..

Regarding your bit about a cosmic soul, that's in interesting point of view , I'll have to think about that one. Until then.

Cloud

It's not just your karma and someone else's karma. There's an entire world, an entire universe, of conditions, and these are way beyond our ability to control. Thinking that karma is this thing that decides if bad things are going to happen to you, i.e. you're going to get hit by a car, is the wrong understanding of karma. That gives karma a personality, maybe this is why you're thinking cosmic consciousness, but karma is not a self. It's as selfless as impermanence.

The understanding of karma that is the Buddhist understanding has to deal with how we apply skillful means toward creating wholesome conditions within the mind that lead to awakening. You'll get it eventually.

Cloud

(It is the very fact that we put our expectations on reality that makes us suffer. It is only when we stop trying to imagine what we can't know, or impose our imaginations upon reality, that we can look honestly at what is there in our direct experience and awaken.)

Joshua

It's important to remember that I'm speaking for Berzin's article here and not my own beliefs.

Cloud

Oh well then nevermind. If these are not your thoughts, not your beliefs that you're talking about, it can hardly be helpful for me to say anything to the contrary. After all, I'm not talking to Berzin right?

Then again, others could always learn something from it.

naturelover

Cloud wrote: »

Adding a cosmic consciousness to the universe is the same as adding a soul to a human. Do you see where I'm going with this? It's unnecessary and not a Buddhist teaching to boot.

Karma is shared, this is true. If you abuse a child, that child will be tormented and may end up abusing another. If so, are their actions truly their own, of their own karma... dependent upon no one else's? In a very direct way they are also the seed of your karma; you plant that seed within their mind just as we plant seeds within our own minds. The karma we need to worry about is the thoughts, speech and actions we can perform that will break us out of the cycle of unwholesome states of mind... that is all. Anything else is looking in the wrong direction, away from awakening.

We can't know everything, on every level. We need to focus on the path that is working on ourselves; our own minds, knowing that we can't control the world or what other people do. What enlightenment brings us is a state where we no longer have such worries, such questions, such a hole within ourselves to fill.

Cloud,

When I visited my son on Thanksgiving, it seemed to me that he was psychologically abusing his children the way his father abused him. I live some distance from them so don't see them very much. I talked to other members of the family, mine and his former wife's, and they all pretty much dismissed what I said. Without their help, there's nothing I can do. This pains me, but I've been able to let it go. It's good the hear someone say that I'm going in the right direction.

hugist

In the Iron Age, education was very rare. Teaching the impossible to illiterate Monks know for fasting until hallucination, was even harder. Asking Monks, known for fasting until hallucination, to perfectly remember the impossible was... well impossible.

Cloud

I'm sorry to hear about that situation, nature lover. Too often in life people refuse to see what is there in front of them; we do what we can, when family is concerned, but as you say sometimes there's nothing more we can do.

Perhaps though you planted a seed in their minds, even if they didn't agree with you right away. Right?

Joshua

I can see how my faults originated from my mother's great delusions and selfishness, ones that were inherited into me that I'm battling now to remove. Hers I see from my grandmother who fortunately is doing some soul searching but still retains many faults, the worst ones of course. Hers originate in her terrible parents who died in the grasp of their egocentricity. It's funny to see how the ego perpetuates itself through the generations as a seed of ignorance and stubbornness.