Sorry if there are any Hindus, Buddhists or Jains here. But... I've heard people say that karma is the universe's ultimate teacher, reminding you that what you sow, you will eventually reap. My understanding is (and I want people to correct me if I'm wrong) karma comes from Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism. The idea that you get punished in this lifetime for fictional offenses in a former life. And the lowest caste in India, the Untouchables, aren't even allowed to complain when they are killed and oppressed. What horrible religious doctrine and what a horrible idea. Christianity and Islam are almost as bad, in general. But not as bad as what I said. Simply shameful.
Primitive Taoists have a different take on karma, and don't view it as related to social justice. An eye for an eye only leaves everyone blind, and my own view is that karma is more about playground poetic justice. For example, Ronald Reagan emptied the mental hospitals, and lied about everything imaginable, then contracted Alzheimer's, possibly due to karma. Not because it was social justice, but because it was poetic justice. Thanks to our occupying a singularity, poetic justice is about 15% more commonplace then you might assume, if our universe made more sense. It's a nonlinear perspective on time and causality, where the future can determine the past, and karma is about harmony in diversity being magically more efficient than lowbrow slapstick.
And there you have it ladies and gentelman!An oppoin and answer to somthing we have never put thought too.
Well said! There are examples everyday of karma in this lifetime. You don't need to wait! Instant Karma's gonna get you! I've doled out enough of that myself... Instances of people voting against their own interests and those of the most needy is not only ignorance, but also karmic debt. The funny thing about karma is that you do good and good things happen to you. Screw someone and it's coming back to you. Thanks to technology karma can flow fast and strong, so beware. Does the name Epstein ring a bell? Whose karma will play out next in this ongoing soap saga? The beauty of karma is that you can't judge it. It is what it is. Non-partisan, non-sectarian, not racist or even classist. As basic as energy in search of equilibrium.
Not all Buddhists ascribe to the notion of rebirth, nor do they believe that karma is fatalistic. Every choice you've made over your lifetime has made you who you are; that's your karma. Every choice you make from now on will determine who you will be; that's also your karma. Try to choose wisely.
I also wanted to say, their view of animals and how they should always be protected and loved is the one thing I always admired about Hindus and Jains.
"All tremble at violence; all fear death. Life is precious to all. Putting oneself in place of another, one should not kill or cause others to kill." Dhammapada 124
Its essentially the same thing Disney and the Muppets describe, where the rules of the playground rule the universe.
The beauty of karma, is that its mathematical, and obeys physics, making it possible to quantify magic, and ensure people like Donald Duck graduate from kindergarten before being allowed to watch Professional Wrestling.
Karma is a Sanskrit word that means action. (Kamma) Karma is the action taken, not the result of the action. The result of karma, or an action taken, is the "fruit" of the action. In Buddhism there is no reincarnation as there is no independent self, or permanent ego, or soul, that transcends death. There is rebirth, but rebirth is the birth of a new ego, not the continuation of one from a previous life. Vedanta, on which Hinduism is based, likewise has no independent self or permanent ego, as in Vedanta all is one.
Karma means cause and effect. If you do negative karma in this life itself, you can see that you can get issues or problems for yourself. So some problems can be sequenced back to past lives. Through certain methods present in the east, I have found that some of my present issues stem from past life errors due to ignorance and misapplication. Reincarnation was a belief in the original christianity as taught by Christ and the likes of Christian theologians like Origen and Bruno had belief in it. Brutal roman persecution in the early centuries wiped out much off Christianity's original theologians and scriptures. Later when the Romans adopted Christianity, they created a standard version for themselves editting the christian scriptures as per their conditioned likes and dislikes, and then forced the same upon the rest. Christian sects like Catharism and Bogomilism which had belief in reincarnation was wiped out by the roman catholics for not accepting their standard version. I had created a thread on the same... Christian sects having belief in reincarnation
"Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought. If with an impure mind a person speaks or acts suffering follows him like the wheel that follows the foot of the ox. Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought. If with a pure mind a person speaks or acts happiness follows him like his never-departing shadow." Dhammapada 1-2
And yet the actions we take in this world determine the quality of our rebirth and what form we will become in our next life. The distinction between reincarnation and rebirth seems like a semantic cover for the hole dug by the "no self" doctrine.
I've met mother nature, she would just laugh at your attempts to apply causality to karma, which is magic. You can think of reincarnation as no different from going to heaven, its just another choice only we can make for ourselves.
Caste system in India is a feudal system similar to that in Europe, Japan and Korea. (Even now, European aristocrats tend to keep themselves distinct from the commoners and marry among themselves as a rule and pride themselves on their blue blood and breeding.) The US which came into existence two centuries back was populated by poor immigrants of the european lower classes escaping tyrannical feudalism and exploitative capitalism in europe , and is consequently looked down upon by the european aristocratic classes as well. The european-americans in turn, themselves looked down upon the African-americans languishing under slavery around them, even though both groups were christians and equal under constitutional laws. Many african-americans were lynched for superficial reasons or mere allegations. The caste system has no sanction in the Vedas, the original Hindu scriptures which preaches the equality and fraternity of all human beings. Majority of the Vedic sages came from the lower economic groups or professions . The Vedic sage, Satyakama Jabala, who composed portions of the Vedas, was the illegitimate son of a prostitute. He was taken as a disciple by his Guru on account of his character and honesty which the Guru perceived as signs of merit even though he was of illegitimate lineage. This shows that a meritocratic structure existed in earlier vedic times. The caste system came up later on as a social system, in order to preserve, consolidate and develop knowledge systems of each profession. Universities were not wide-spread in ancient times, and it was easier for the father to teach his sons and nephews the technical details of his profession. This enabled a certain specialisation of disciplines. For example, mathematics as in the numeral system, zero and basic mathematics used around the world commonly were developed in India. I am not an advocate of the caste system as it is obviously obsolete in today's world, but it had its relevance in ancient times as a practical system. In todays world however, you can choose any profession, and the best universities in the world teaching that course by virtue of enhanced transportation and logistics.
The caste system is not part of the Vedas which are the main religious scriptures in Hinduism. This is the reason why the Arya Samaj, a reformatory Hindu sect which follows only the vedas ( and not the other later texts or scriptures) from the nineteenth century criticizes the caste system as a non-vedic practice and does not follow it. Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism similarly do not endorse the caste system and have expounded similarly the teachings of equality and fraternity of all human beings. However karma is a teaching in these religions as well as the Arya Samaj which means that karma is not related to the caste system which is essentially a feudal or social system to serve socio-economic needs of society back then but is obsolete now.
It puzzled me that Asians had been developing fuzzy logic forever, yet nobody had ever formulated it properly, until desperate ultra polite Japanese bullet train engineers. Similarly, most ideas about karma were poorly formulated and often became obsolete, because they were obviously designed to appease the rich and famous, and not intended to reflect reality as we know it more than superficially. Despite its widespread appeal, with roughly 60% of tribal people endorsing the idea, the concept of karma never really got off the ground, due to money and the guns doing all the driving worth mentioning. Once we have the basic physics, to go along with the modern formulation of fuzzy logic, karma can be automated, breathing new life into the Electronics Revolution.
