Your view of karma

[Fifty]

See how we're slowly moving towards tactic 6 on my outline? Soon karma will just be the principle that some stuff causes other stuff. OMG HOW DEEP.

Given the premises assumed by Eastern philosophy (which is why it has to be done in this context for discussion to be meaningful), I do not see any way karma can be dismissed as irrational.

Something's being conditionally rational does not make it rational. If there really are powerful voices in my head telling me to eat my own feces or they'll kill me, then its conditionally rational for me to eat feces (i.e. rational if the antecedent of that conditional is true). Doesn't mean it isn't crazy or irrational!

 

[Camikaze]

I voted 'Other'. I just believe the first option, and the second one is a bit exclusive. Sure, as a general trend, doing bad things will not lead to more good being done to you, and doing good things will not lead to more bad being done to you, but good things certainly happen regularly to bad people, and bad things happen regularly to good people.

 

[Xyan]

See how we're slowly moving towards tactic 6 on my outline? Soon karma will just be the principle that some stuff causes other stuff. OMG HOW DEEP.



Something's being conditionally rational does not make it rational. If there really are powerful voices in my head telling me to eat my own feces or they'll kill me, then its conditionally rational for me to eat feces (i.e. rational if the antecedent of that conditional is true). Doesn't mean it isn't crazy or irrational!

When something is found to be conditional rational, then the right course of action is to examine the conditions. Dismissing it without examining the conditions is just lazy.

 

[Perfection]

When something is found to be conditional rational, then the right course of action is to examine the conditions. Dismissing it without examining the conditions is just lazy.

Anything that would make Karma conditionally rational is certainly wrong.

 

[holy king]

of course kharma can only be a load of crap, but i'm really curious now: What exactly is it?
xian was kind of vague.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Buddhist definition of Karma for yuor reference:

Potentials in the inner, unconscious realm of life created through one's actions in the past or present that manifest themselves as various results in the present or future. Karma is a variation of the Sanskrit karman, which means act, action, a former act leading to a future result, or result. Buddhism interprets karma in two ways: as indicating three categories of action, i.e., mental, verbal, and physical, and as indicating a dormant force thereby produced. That is, one's thought, speech, and behavior, both good and bad, imprint themselves as a latent force or potential in one's life.This latent force, or karma, when activated by an external stimulus, produces a corresponding good or bad effect, i.e., happiness or suffering. There are also neutral acts that produce neither good nor bad results. According to this concept of karma, one's actions in the past have shaped one's present reality, and one's actions in the present will in turn influence one's future.

This law of karmic causality operates in perpetuity, carrying over from one lifetime to the next and remaining with one in the latent state between death and rebirth. It is karma, therefore, that accounts for the circumstances of one's birth, one's individual nature, and in general the differences among all living beings and their environments. It was traditionally viewed as a natural process in which no god or deity could intervene. The Hindu gods, in fact, were subject to the same law of karma as people, having become gods supposedly through the creation of good karma. The idea of karma predates Buddhism and was already prevalent in Indian society well before the time of Shakyamuni. This pre-Buddhist view of karma, however, had an element of determinism, serving more to explain one's lot in life and compel one to accept it than inspiring hope for change or transforma-tion. The Brahmans, who were at the top of the Indian class structure by birth, may well have emphasized this view to secure their own role.

The idea of karma was further developed, however, in the Buddhist teachings. Shakyamuni maintained that what makes a person noble or humble is not birth but one's actions. Therefore the Buddhist doctrine of karma is not fatalistic. Rather, karma is viewed not only as a means to explain the present, but also as the potential force through which to influence one's future. Mahayana Buddhism holds that the sum of actions and experiences of the present and previous lifetimes are accumulated and stored as karma in the depths of life and will form the framework of individual existence in the next lifetime. Buddhism therefore encourages people to create the best possible karma in the present in order to ensure the best possible outcome in the future.

In terms of time, some types of karma produce effects in the present lifetime, others in the next lifetime, and still others in subsequent lifetimes. This depends on the nature, intensity, and repetitiveness of the acts that caused them. Only those types of karma that are extremely good or bad will last into future existences. The other, more minor, types will produce results in this lifetime. Those that are neither good nor bad will bring about no results.

Karma is broadly divided into two types: fixed and unfixed. Fixed karma is said to produce a fixed result—that is, for any given fixed karma there is a specific effect that will become manifest at a specific time. In the case of unfixed karma, any of various results or general outcomes might arise at an indeterminate time. Irrespective of these differences, the Buddhist philosophy of karma, particularly that of Mahayana Buddhism, is not fatalistic. No ill effect is so fixed or predetermined that good karma from Buddhist practice in the present cannot transform it for the better. Moreover, any type of karma needs interaction with the corresponding conditions to become manifest.

This might enhance Xyan's post.

Some of the basic assumptions underlying the idea of karma
• Creation is not Real, but transitory and impermanent
• Creation is the illusion of separateness
• Souls exist and experience many different individualities as entities within creation (birth & rebirth as varied life forms in nature)

For many those assumptions will make no rational sense, but if you are going to talk about karma, you need to be aware that they are lurking all around.

Hindu and Buddhist views on karma are not the same so any single explanation will be incomplete. Within creation the soul experiences itself as an individual, separate entity. The soul accumulates the impressions of experiences it has as that entity. This binding of the soul with experiences of separateness continues life after life. The various experiences of a soul reinforce its identity with its current life form. The purpose of the soul is to remove all those impressions of experience so that it can experience its unfettered self and to do so the soul must balance each experience with its opposite. Karma is the universal law that binds and unbinds our actions to our souls. As one’s karmic past brings one to a situation in the present, one chooses how to act. Those actions (words and thoughts too) can bind the soul further on a particular path of experience or perhaps loosen an existing binding. When a soul is free from all its experiential bindings, it is liberated from the illusion of creation to experience Reality as it actually is.

 

[GoodGame]

My poll vote: Other---Karma is food for thought, but we're all food for worms.

 

[warpus]

BirdJaguar, I can't make sense of a single sentence that you just wrote.

 

[cardgame]

BirdJaguar, I can't make sense of a single sentence that you just wrote.

Neither can I...

 

[Birdjaguar]

BirdJaguar, I can't make sense of a single sentence that you just wrote.

Strange. It does make sense to me, but then I know what I was trying to say. Should I rerwrite each one out differently? Or are there expressions that you cannot make sense of in this context?

 

[Fifty]

I agree w/ warpus and cardgame. One useful thing to clarify would be to explicitly define every major term you use, using the most clear, obvious, and simple language you can.

example of a good definition (not saying this is the def you will use for this term, just giving a general example of a good defintion):

Creation: Every physical thing that exists.

example of a bad definition:

Creation: That which is transitory and illusory.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Here is a redo of the assumptions Warpus. I will work on the rest. this is very simplified as you will see if you read the links.

Some of the basic assumptions underlying the idea of karma
• The fundamental nature of existence is Emptiness or selflessness (Buddhist)or Brahman (Hindu)
• Creation (the physical universe) is not Real, but transitory and impermanent. Everything in it comes and goes, appears and disappears and changes over time. People are born, grow old die, and decompose. Steel rusts, mountains are built and erode, chemical mix and change, suns burn and then don’t. All things change. No thing within the physical universe is permanent.
• Within Creation, the physical universe, things appear to be separate and distinctive from one another. I see myself as a separate entity from the people and things around me.
• Souls exist and inhabit life forms. In those forms they experience life as that entity. Upon the death of a life form, its soul transmigrates into another life form.

For many those assumptions will make no rational sense, but if you are going to talk about karma, you need to be aware that they are lurking all around.

EDIT: Bolded sentences are from my original post.

Hindu and Buddhist views on karma are not the same so any single explanation will be incomplete.

Within creation the soul experiences itself as an individual, separate entity. Underlying Hinduism & Buddhism is the idea that Brahman or Emptiness is all that truly exists on a permanent basis. The physical universe, though, appears to be divided into many distinct and separate entities (from quantum particles up through life forms, planets and stars). The soul experiences this separateness and its own individuality.

The soul accumulates the impressions of experiences it has as that entity. If a soul is experiencing life as a person, then the experiences it has as a person are “impressed” upon the soul, attached to or associated with it. Millions of experiences are thus accumulated. Some associations are stronger and more meaningful than others; some are good and some are not so good.

This binding of the soul with experiences of separateness continues life after life. Many of the experiences reinforce the notion of individuality and separateness from the other people and things of the physical universe. In life after life the collection of experiences continue to accumulate.

The various experiences of a soul reinforce its identity with its current life form. The greater the accumulation of experiences a soul has as a particular life form, the more it identifies with that life form.

The purpose of the soul is to remove all those impressions of experience so that it can experience its unfettered self and to do so the soul must balance each experience with its opposite. Since all that is actually Real is Brahman/Emptiness, the real goal of the soul is to experience that fundamental state. To do so it has to rid itself of the false impressions/experiences of separation that it has accumulated as part of the physical universe. When it does so, it will experience itself as Brahman or as the Buddhist Emptiness state. The process of ridding itself of accumulated experiences is one of balancing out opposite types, experiencing all that is possible so in the end all are gone. In both Hinduism and Buddhism selflessness can speed the process because it undermines the sense of separate identity that has accumulated around the soul over time.

Karma is the universal law that binds and unbinds our actions to our souls. Karma is the process that “manages” the accumulation of experiences and the shedding of those that are ready to go. It looks back at where you have been and and brings you to your present, based on your past actions. One’s past experiences create one’s present and then you choose (or not) how to move forward. Accumulations of selfish or unkind actions may well lead additional situations where one is tempted to act selfishly and further bind one to such experiences in the future. Kindness and selflessness can have the effect of speeding up the process of shedding experiences that keep you further from Brahman or Emptiness. Then once the soul is completely free from its experiences as a separate and isolated entity, it will experience Brahman or Buddhist Enlightenment. The Illusion of individuality and separateness that is the physical universe disappears and one experiences Truth.

I hope that this is clearer. Keep in mind that this is a very simplistic description of two very complicated religions, but I've tried to put karma in its proper context.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

And karma is the principle that your actions affect your experience of this existence?

 

[aelf]

Here is a redo of the assumptions Warpus. I will work on the rest. this is very simplified as you will see if you read the links.

Some of the basic assumptions underlying the idea of karma
• The fundamental nature of existence is Emptiness or selflessness (Buddhist)or Brahman (Hindu)
• Creation (the physical universe) is not Real, but transitory and impermanent. Everything in it comes and goes, appears and disappears and changes over time. People are born, grow old die, and decompose. Steel rusts, mountains are built and erode, chemical mix and change, suns burn and then don’t. All things change. No thing within the physical universe is permanent.
• Within Creation, the physical universe, things appear to be separate and distinctive from one another. I see myself as a separate entity from the people and things around me.
• Souls exist and inhabit life forms. In those forms they experience life as that entity. Upon the death of a life form, its soul transmigrates into another life form.

For many those assumptions will make no rational sense, but if you are going to talk about karma, you need to be aware that they are lurking all around.

Just to chip in a little, there are Western philosophical traditions that sort of bridge 'East' and 'West', especially Idealism, from which Schopenhauer is the most pertinent that I know.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I am editing into the post above.

And karma is the principle that your actions affect your experience of this existence?

We'll get there.

Just to chip in a little, there are Western philosophical traditions that sort of bridge 'East' and 'West', especially Idealism, from which Schopenhauer is the most pertinent that I know.

Yes, there are. You can even find elements of it in Islam (sufism).

 

[warpus]

Thanks for taking the time to clarify!

• Creation (the physical universe) is not Real, but transitory and impermanent. Everything in it comes and goes, appears and disappears and changes over time. People are born, grow old die, and decompose. Steel rusts, mountains are built and erode, chemical mix and change, suns burn and then don’t. All things change. No thing within the physical universe is permanent.

I agree that everything in this world changes over time (I mean, even we do), but I don't understand how that implies that stuff isn't real.

I mean, in 5 minutes I'm going to be a different person than I am now - skin cells are going to die and fall off - some brain cells are going to die - hopefully some new ones will be created after I have finished my beer - cells in my body are going to move around - i'm going to have new memories and i might even forget some stuff. So yeah, over time stuff changes into new and different stuff. But it is still real! I don't see how stuff changing implies that stuff isn't real.

• Within Creation, the physical universe, things appear to be separate and distinctive from one another. I see myself as a separate entity from the people and things around me.

Yeah, nobody is going to disagree with that.

Within creation the soul experiences itself as an individual, separate entity.[/B] Underlying Hinduism & Buddhism is the idea that Brahman or Emptiness is all that truly exists on a permanent basis. The physical universe, though, appears to be divided into many distinct and separate entities (from quantum particles up through life forms, planets and stars). The soul experiences this separateness and its own individuality.

What does that last sentence mean?

 

[aelf]

I agree that everything in this world changes over time (I mean, even we do), but I don't understand how that implies that stuff isn't real.

I mean, in 5 minutes I'm going to be a different person than I am now - skin cells are going to die and fall off - some brain cells are going to die - hopefully some new ones will be created after I have finished my beer - cells in my body are going to move around - i'm going to have new memories and i might even forget some stuff. So yeah, over time stuff changes into new and different stuff. But it is still real! I don't see how stuff changing implies that stuff isn't real.

It's wiki, but I don't think it's untrustworthy on this:

In the first volume of his Parerga and Paralipomena, Schopenhauer wrote his "Sketch of a History of the Doctrine of the Ideal and the Real". He defined the ideal as being mental pictures that constitute subjective knowledge. The ideal, for him, is what can be attributed to our own minds. The images in our head are what comprise the ideal. Schopenhauer emphasized that we are restricted to our own consciousness. The world that appears is only a representation or mental picture of objects. We directly and immediately know only representations. All objects that are external to the mind are known indirectly through the mediation of our mind.

So there's one angle.

 

[warpus]

I agree that the terms and phrases we have for things in our minds are simply approximations of an "ideal" reality.

But still, the actual reality is real. It's the approximations you could argue about not existing.

 

[aelf]

I agree that the terms and phrases we have for things in our minds are simply approximations of an "ideal" reality.

But still, the actual reality is real. It's the approximations you could argue about not existing.

I think the problem starts with whether you know anything that you perceive is actually real. You know, Descartes et al. The preliminary conclusion is you can be quite sure you (and the ideas in your mind?) exist.

But I suppose such questions, though interesting, are not really relevant to our lives. I think the more important question is whether material reality what you really want to be concerned with. According to Schopenhauer, the way in which perceive things lead inevitably to conflicts of interest and suffering. And nothing good lasts, hence the idea that material happiness is fleeting. I believe that's the source of some people's quest for spirituality, to find answers that transcend the seemingly absurd and temporal nature of material life.

I don't know if that's really relevant, but I think that provides some context as to how to approach 'spiritual' ideas like karma. Obviously, you can find no empirical evidence for such. But, IMO, it has a lot to do with your experience of life.

 

[Birdjaguar]

It has been rewritten.