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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Karma
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irish_lord99
Shipmate
# 16250
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Posted
So, Karma: "the idea that the intent and actions of an individual influence the future of that individual"*... is it real? Is there any basis for it in the scriptures or Christian Tradition?
Is Karma a component of most religions, sort of a universally recognized phenomenon?
Is it all bullocks?
For my part, if there's anything to it, I just can't see it in my own life. Wretched sinner that I am, I still try to be good to others, give to those who beg, donate to charity etc. Yet it's been a pretty shit couple of years, and sans a new line of work, not going to get any better any time soon.
Then again, maybe I'm more of an asshole than I think and I deserve my lot in life. Or maybe I've been blessed and I'm just ungrateful. Maybe both. The point being, I don't think we ever see our own situation clearly enough to rely on anecdotal evidence to support our beliefs about karma. I'm looking for something more substaintial.
It does seem to me that a lot of people who harm others do well, while many who treat others well do poorly. It seems to me that the world is tailored to allow the ruthless to succeed while the kind are subjected.
What do you all think?
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*According to the all-knowing Wikipedia
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"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." - Mark Twain
Posts: 1169 | From: Maine, US | Registered: Feb 2011
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Raptor Eye
Shipmate
# 16649
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Posted
In a sense it is incorporated into Christianity, if we accept the heaven/hell scenarios. The purgatory idea may be even closer to it.
Bad things wouldn't happen to good people, or vice versa, if there were a direct cause and effect.
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Be still, and know that I am God! Psalm 46.10
Posts: 4359 | From: The United Kingdom | Registered: Sep 2011
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saysay
Ship's Praying Mantis
# 6645
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by irish_lord99:
It does seem to me that a lot of people who harm others do well, while many who treat others well do poorly. It seems to me that the world is tailored to allow the ruthless to succeed while the kind are subjected.
What do you all think?
I agree with this. When I was taught about Karma it was in the context of a religious studies class studying Hinduism and Buddhism.
Karma wasn't about being rewarded in this life for your past action, but accepting that you were born into a particular caste because of your actions in a past life, and understanding that your only hope of being born into a higher caste in your next life was to do good and put up with whatever shit the higher castes wanted to heap on your head.
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"It's been a long day without you, my friend
I'll tell you all about it when I see you again"
"'Oh sweet baby purple Jesus' - that's a direct quote from a 9 year old - shoutout to purple Jesus."
Posts: 2943 | From: The Wire | Registered: May 2004
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
I think you can see arguments both for and vs. karma in Scripture, as well as in our experience of the world. Pro-karma are Scriptures about "reaping what you sow" and where God explicitly causes a particular consequence as a reward/punishment for certain behaviors. Similarly, I think we can all see examples in our own lives where our circumstances are directly related to our choices. Treat people like c**p and you're likely to have difficulty in your relationships, treat people well and people are likely to want to help you out when needed.
Conversely we have the example of Job or John 9:1-3 where we are explicitly told that someone's suffering was unrelated to any sin or other choice they had made. And we all know good people who suffer all sorts of evil they don't deserve. Sometimes it is other people's sin that impacts us, not our own. Sometimes it just appears to be sheer rotten luck.
So I guess I would say that "karma" is one of many factors at play in the world, but not the only one that impacts future outcomes.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
saysay wrote:
quote:
Karma wasn't about being rewarded in this life for your past action, but accepting that you were born into a particular caste because of your actions in a past life, and understanding that your only hope of being born into a higher caste in your next life was to do good and put up with whatever shit the higher castes wanted to heap on your head.
I've often thought that, in a cosmic sense, Hindu ideas are fairly humane, because they give you infinite shots at getting a better life. Rather than the Christian schematum where(for example) you fail to accept Jesus as your personal saviour and burn in hell for all eternity.
But, in the here-and-now terrestrial sense, the Christian idea is a little more humane, because you're not being consigned to a crappy social status for things that you supposedly did in a past life, but which you have no memory of and no one can prove.
Not that Christians haven't come up with other ways to justfiy treating people like crap.
[ 21. February 2015, 19:19: Message edited by: Stetson ]
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
The Buddhist* view of Karma is not as linear or direct as either the Hindu version or the stereotypical Western interpretation.
Karma means action. It is the deed, the potential; not the result. It is not the sole influence on one's situation. Like much of Christianity, free will and present choice are important.
Ultimately, it is the person you are and the path you choose.
*Buddhism and buddhists are as variable as christians and Christianity so there is no perfect answer.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Alt Wally
Cardinal Ximinez
# 3245
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Posted
Much of what we are and what we do is not under our conscious control. It does not come about from any choice that should or could have a karmic effect. All around us is randomness and chaos, ready to unfold at any moment. If I space out while driving and hit a pedestrian, is that karmic payback for me? for them? Do good samaritans who get murdered for their efforts have something that could explain that what happened to them was karma? Sometimes you just are in the wrong place at the wrong time. Karma is BS in my opinion.
Posts: 3684 | Registered: Aug 2002
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
It's true to a certain extent that "what comes around goes around," but that's because justice is part of the character of God, and is therefore reflected in the universe he created. But with sin having screwed up everything, a lot of that justice is hidden from our eyes; much of it won't come until the next world, and tons of it landed on God himself, in the person of the crucified Christ. I can go this far with the "reap what you sow" idea; but it seems to me that most people who invoke karma non-humorously, in my experience, are going further.
They are postulating that there is some sort of automatic, impersonal force that causes actions to be requited; and since they are leaving out the factor of God-as-a-personal-agent, the actions that flow from the deficient worldview are bound to be skewed. For example, we caught a lot of shit for being infertile for years and years; any number of people (Buddhist and animist background) came right out and told us that we must have done something bad to cause this curse. And they often said so right after they had had major personal experience of our altruism! ![[Hot and Hormonal]](icon_redface.gif) ![[Mad]](angryfire.gif)
There are probably a lot of karma believers who are just better people than I; but I know of myself that, if I were to subscribe to this very attractive idea (who doesn't want an easy explanation for evil!), I would immediately become a ... well, a jerk. I would attribute my blessings to my own good behavior, and become ungrateful and proud; I would attribute other people's disasters to their unknown sins, and become a judgmental asshole. Seriously, I would do this, because I have the widespread human tendency to think well of myself and poorly of others.
Christianity restrains me. It reminds me that there is in fact a Person, a God, who is noticing and reacting to things; and that his judgments and his repayments are beyond my figuring out--"My ways are not your ways, and my thoughts are higher than your thoughts." This forces me to say humbly, "Well, I don't know," when someone asks why a disaster happened to so-and-so; and to be thankful for my own undeserved blessings, conscious of the many evils I have done that I seem to have escaped punishment for.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alt Wally:
Much of what we are and what we do is not under our conscious control. It does not come about from any choice that should or could have a karmic effect. All around us is randomness and chaos, ready to unfold at any moment. If I space out while driving and hit a pedestrian, is that karmic payback for me? for them? Do good samaritans who get murdered for their efforts have something that could explain that what happened to them was karma? Sometimes you just are in the wrong place at the wrong time. Karma is BS in my opinion.
To repeat for emphasis.
quote:
Karma means action. It is the deed, the potential; not the result
I am not asking you to believe anything, but it would be more constructive for discussion if you appeared to understand that which you dismiss.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Alt Wally
Cardinal Ximinez
# 3245
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Posted
quote:
Within the Buddhist system of belief, the term karma is used in two senses:
On the specific level, karma refers to those actions which spring from the intention (cetanā) of a sentient being. Karmic actions are traditionally likened to a seed that will inevitably ripen into a result or fruition (referred to as vipāka or phala in Sanskrit and Pali).
On the general level, contemporary Buddhist teachers frequently use the term karma when referring to the entire process of karmic action and result.
Wikipedia goes on to detail the full range of meaning and usage around the term Karma beyond the narrow, literal meaning of action. It is described in this page and this as both cause and effect. Our past, conscious intentional actions become the basis of our future state. There are theories as outlined in the Wiki page that this can even be passed from one person to another.
Stephen Batchelor appears to be of interest, and I had not heard of him before.
Posts: 3684 | Registered: Aug 2002
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Porridge
Shipmate
# 15405
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Posted
The aspect of karma that appeals to me (insofar as I understand the idea) is the implicit recognition that ultimately we cannot know the full effects of our actions, and that it is therefore not particularly meaningful to assess our actions as "good" or "evil." They're likely to be both.
For example, if I saved A from drowning, it's tempting to suppose I'd have performed a "good deed." But what if A turns out, down the road, to be a sociopathic serial killer? If s/he had drowned, B, C, D, E (A's victims), etc. might have been spared. While I'm not responsible for what A does, my action in saving A still has consequences even if I can't predict (or never learn afterward) what those consequences are.
A melodramatic example, to be sure. But we're all complex mixtures of intentions, hopes, guilt, fear, vanity, cravings, ambition, despair, anger, delight, and love, and we rarely can see past the ends of our own noses. We're pebbles tossed into the water; is there a shore somewhere in the distance? Do our ripples reach it? How do we know? We're only pebbles.
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Spiggott: Everything I've ever told you is a lie, including that.
Moon: Including what?
Spiggott: That everything I've ever told you is a lie.
Moon: That's not true!
Posts: 3925 | From: Upper right corner | Registered: Jan 2010
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
But you wouldn't want to use our inability to know all future ramifications of our actions as an excuse to ignore moral responsibility, I'm sure. I mean, some outcomes are sufficiently predictable that a person who failed to consider them when choosing a course of action would be blameworthy.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
Alt Wally,
If you read even as much as you link, you can see that karma is not as simple as your examples. I am not saying learning more will change your mind, everyone's religion is mental when viewed from the outside.
If you care to learn more,I would not recommend Stephen Batchelor, he is a bit...closed-minded in his approach.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Porridge
Shipmate
# 15405
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
But you wouldn't want to use our inability to know all future ramifications of our actions as an excuse to ignore moral responsibility, I'm sure. I mean, some outcomes are sufficiently predictable that a person who failed to consider them when choosing a course of action would be blameworthy.
I'm suggesting that moral responsibility is an elephant, and we are the assortment of blind people who have individually got hold of the beast's ear, tail, leg, and so on.
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Spiggott: Everything I've ever told you is a lie, including that.
Moon: Including what?
Spiggott: That everything I've ever told you is a lie.
Moon: That's not true!
Posts: 3925 | From: Upper right corner | Registered: Jan 2010
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crunt
Shipmate
# 1321
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by saysay:
quote:
Originally posted by irish_lord99:
It seems to me that the world is tailored to allow the ruthless to succeed while the kind are subjected.
I agree with this. When I was taught about Karma it was in the context of a religious studies class studying Hinduism and Buddhism.
Karma wasn't about being rewarded in this life for your past action...
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Posts: 269 | From: Up country in the middle of Malaysia | Registered: Sep 2001
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crunt
Shipmate
# 1321
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by crunt:
quote:
Originally posted by saysay:
quote:
Originally posted by irish_lord99:
It seems to me that the world is tailored to allow the ruthless to succeed while the kind are subjected.
I agree with this. When I was taught about Karma it was in the context of a religious studies class studying Hinduism and Buddhism.
Karma wasn't about being rewarded in this life for your past action...
Very short edit window (as many before me have said)
Anyway, Karma.
Karma as the popularly held idea of 'goes around comes around' is similar to the idea that mum 'is together with dad again' after she dies, in that it is a belief firmly expressed by otherwise non-religious people.
I too heard about karma in a religious studies context (western professor) and the idea there was that karma is neither 'good' nor 'bad', it just 'is'. Karma, in this context is like some kind of eternal ectoplasm that sticks to your soul. The idea is to avoid it (impossible!). however, advanced souls can become free of the effects of karmic action.
I have never heard of this approach to karma outside of a religious studies context. Peaople I've spoken with about karma from a variety of backgrounds (Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Islamic, Secular) all tend to hold on to the idea of karma as some kind of inevitable 'goes around comes around' system of reward and punishment during this life and/or over several lifetimes.
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QUIZ: Bible
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Posts: 269 | From: Up country in the middle of Malaysia | Registered: Sep 2001
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Ricardus
Shipmate
# 8757
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Posted
I read a book some time ago* which said the early Nestorian church along the Silk Road used the concept of karma to explain original sin.
* The Jesus Sutras by Martin Palmer. A fascinating read.
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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
Posts: 7247 | From: Liverpool, UK | Registered: Nov 2004
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
I expect that Karma is convenience developed to explain that those who are suffering, poor etc are suffering and poor etc due to their own damn faults.
I also think it is probably a side effect of having a brain capable of putting together cause and effect. It is undoubtedly at base, untrue that Karma exists, except as one's own behaviour and communication establishes circumstances where some things are more likely than others. Those who are kind by disposition are likely to act more kindly toward others, and 'pull' for kind behaviour in return. Those who are confrontative pull for anger and confrontation.
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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Porridge
Shipmate
# 15405
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
I expect that Karma is convenience developed to explain that those who are suffering, poor etc are suffering and poor etc due to their own damn faults.
Certainly it sometimes gets used that way (so does the similar-but-common misconception about evolution), particularly by those of us (i.e., just about everybody) who seldom see past our own noses, and who are dead certain that the tusk we've latched onto is in fact the whole elephant. Most of us have probably abused some teaching or other at some point in precisely this way. That doesn't mean the teaching is worthless, even though our misinterpretations of it might be.
As to this, though . . .
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
I also think it is probably a side effect of having a brain capable of putting together cause and effect [even where they don't connect or exist][My addition] . It is undoubtedly at base, untrue that Karma exists, except as one's own behaviour and communication establishes circumstances where some things are more likely than others. Those who are kind by disposition are likely to act more kindly toward others, and 'pull' for kind behaviour in return. Those who are confrontative pull for anger and confrontation.
Again, my own sense is that "what goes around comes around," or a form of cosmic payback for one's individual actions/choice misses the point, and your notion that we "get what we look for" is more accurate.
Karma's not so much a directed process of retributive justice as it is a teaching/learning tool: there's a lot more to the elephant than just that tusk.
[ 22. February 2015, 16:36: Message edited by: Porridge ]
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Spiggott: Everything I've ever told you is a lie, including that.
Moon: Including what?
Spiggott: That everything I've ever told you is a lie.
Moon: That's not true!
Posts: 3925 | From: Upper right corner | Registered: Jan 2010
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
Multigenerational karma in terms of thing like the grandchildren of holocaust survivors and Indian Residential School survivors exists, but within one human's life? I doubt it.
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
I expect that Karma is convenience developed to explain that those who are suffering, poor etc are suffering and poor etc due to their own damn faults.
Kinda like Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, etc.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
Alright, that might have seemed a bit defencive. And, perhaps, it was. But the point still stands. Points actually.
First that religion is humans' attempts at understanding the why of existence and the mechanisms of the universe. One of them may be correct, but none of them is inherently more rational than the others.
Second, many religions, if not most, contain similar. What you reap, so shall ye sow. I am not arguing that it is correct because of this, just that it seems to be a fairly universal concept.
The biggest differences being the time frame and who/what adjudicates. As often argued within the same framework as between.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ChastMastr:
I think Lamb Chopped sums it up for me.
Many people approach karma in the way she describes, many don't.
Many people say of similar bad situations that "It is God's will".
That is better? That God personally decided that a bad thing should happen to you?
But, perhaps, that too is a misinterpretation.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Snags
Utterly socially unrealistic
# 15351
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Raptor Eye:
In a sense it is incorporated into Christianity, if we accept the heaven/hell scenarios. The purgatory idea may be even closer to it.
Bad things wouldn't happen to good people, or vice versa, if there were a direct cause and effect.
I may have a poor understanding of karma, but I would have thought that ideas of karma are almost antithetical to Christianity. Certainly in the sense of the idea that the good and bad you do (or intend) somehow accrues to you against the future. Set against a basic premise of salvation by faith in the personhood/actions of a third party, not oneself, it would appear there's no karma in there at all. In fact, from a conventional Christian viewpoint, we're getting the opposite of karma.
Cue flood of corrections to my pop-culture distorted thumbnail understanding of karma, I suspect
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Vain witterings :-: Vain pretentions :-: The Dog's Blog(locks)
Posts: 1399 | From: just north of That London | Registered: Dec 2009
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Alt Wally
Cardinal Ximinez
# 3245
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
I am not saying learning more will change your mind, everyone's religion is mental when viewed from the outside.
My reply was inappropriate in its wording. I apologize for that.
I find karma and rebirth to be an extremely difficult idea to agree with, and not because it conflicts with some other theological belief I hold. I feel as though it is a position that posits absolutes about the causes and effects of our actions, but I don't think those absolutes hold up with the nature of reality as we know of it. I also have trouble with the idea of rebirth, and as I recall this was (or is) actually a somewhat contentious point and subject to a good deal of speculative thinking. The idea of what the "self" is, or what self at all there is to be subject to karma and rebirth seems like the most hard to understand aspect of the belief to me.
In the Dumoulin introduction to Buddhism I also recall him emphasizing karma and rebirth as a popular aspect of folkloric Buddhism; with lots of tales of heavens, hells, spirits, etc. involved.
[ 23. February 2015, 19:15: Message edited by: Alt Wally ]
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alt Wally:
My reply was inappropriate in its wording. I apologize for that.
No worries. I apologise for the tone of my response.
quote:
Originally posted by Alt Wally:
I find karma and rebirth to be an extremely difficult idea to agree with,
It is a concept that some Buddhists also have trouble with. Indeed, Buddhism ranges from those praying to gods to those who treat it as purely a philosophy.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
This is just to briefly note that Buddhist "rebirth" is not Hindu "reincarnation". In the Hindu system, the individual "soul" (atman) does not die, but reincarnates into a different body. In Buddhism there is no "soul" (anatman). Consequently that's not what happens. The idea is more that every individual is a centre of karma, a hub of cause and effect. Upon death, that hub itself dissolves but the cause and effect chains kicked off by that hub continue to reverberate through the world. And (somehow...) one of the things they do is to kind of refocus into another being, perhaps a bit like a karmic resonance. That means that the being that arises is not the being that has died, but it is also not an unrelated completely new being. The latter being is at least partially a consequence, a causal child, of the former one. So in Buddhism it is not really the individual, the "soul", that survives past death, but rather the karma itself, the cause and effect chains that kind of pulse (focus into a birth, defocus upon death) through a sequence of beings.
While this is all stated in a language that sounds rather "scientific", and while "karma" indeed can denote the kind of causality that we care about in physics, it should be clear that the rebirth picture is 1. supernatural and 2. faith-based. The kind of causality that does all that marvellous focusing and defocusing of (sapient) beings is not the kind of causality that one finds in physics. One has to assume some kind of added "personal dimension" within which all this causal resonating into new beings does happen. The physical causal power of a person, as we all know, disperses rapidly upon death. That's basically what we mean by death... And about this "personal dimension" we know rather little, other than that it somehow gets the job of rebirthing done. It's not like we have deep mechanistic insight there. So this is basically where Buddhism becomes a religion, proposing supernatural entities to faith which we cannot hope to nail down much further.
Hence karma, while including physical cause and effect as a subcategory, is a broader concept. It is decidedly not simply an "objective" description based on "observations", but the primary vehicle for the religious (supernatural, faith-based) content of Buddhism.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
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