Jundo Tackles the 'BIG' Questions - VI (Karma)

[i_am]

Some thoughts off topic, but related to the above.

Thoughts on Time:
Living in the moment, from moment to moment... Time is just a progression of moments.
In maths, using integral calculus, a curve can be split into infinitesimally small slithers in order to see how something changes over time... from slither to slither.
An hour is split into minutes. minutes are split into seconds, seconds are further subdivided until we reach the Planck time unit and beyond that is... an instant. Which according to the Wikipedia article on time is 'no time at all'.
Therefore, what I read above in "21. contradictions in human freedom" quoted by Jundo makes sense. I have had an experience of being in a moment, moving from moment to moment. It may well have been maya but it seemed pretty real when it happened!

On Energy and Matter:
On a very simplistic level, I believe that matter is energy, energy can not be created nor destroyed (As Shokai says above), and when matter ceases to be what it is, it is transformed into another matter and/or energy. For example, if I burn a rag it turns into soot and heat. For me, on this simplistic level, matter is energy, energy is matter and matter and energy can exist at the same time. Perhaps matter is just a very large concentration of energy. That is why it is dense and heavy?

So, coming onto birth and rebirth:
If a human is a concentration of matter and energy, when it ceases to be 'alive' it rots or it is burned. It transforms into a different type of matter and/or a different kind of energy (for energy and matter are not separate). The 'energy' which makes up all things in the cosmos 'dies' with the passing of the human and is 'reborn' as the heat from the crematorium chimney... and where does that heat go? Who knows, perhaps it makes a molecule of air jiggle a bit and that turns into a wind to blow across the face of the Earth until it passes that 'energy' onto something else.

Nihilistic thoughts:
And if we are all made from matter and energy and matter and energy are one; and the flowers and the trees and the houses and the planets and the sun are all too; and if I can burn a rag and it turns to soot and heat; perhaps we are all dust waiting to happen?
I formed this nihilistic view a few years ago when I was trying to figure out who 'I' was and why 'I' was here. Then I postulated that I was a thing yet a no-thing, I was only a human because I had called myself one and we (as a human race) had decided that's what we were, I was in fact no different from the pretty flower or the dried up dog turd in the flowerbed, we were all made of the same stuff, and we would all end up as dust at some point. Every 'thing' in the cosmos is the cosmos and not separate from it and when 'I' die my 'stuff' (which is made of energy) will be reborn as something else...

Applying this to life:
So, taking what Khalil Bodhi said (above), "I hope I'm not being too forward when I ask this but if there is no rebirth no re-becoming, then why not just wait for death or even hasten its arrival". For me, once we realise that we are just dust waiting to happen, living in an instant from moment to moment and 'THATS IT', we can stop postulating, and get on with living our lives and being happy.

As for Karma, I think its all been said above.

Gassho
Richard

[Joryu]

I Think I'll just keep on row row rowing my boat the best I can.

[Byokan]

Gassho
Lisa
sat today

[Cyd]

Thank you JUndo
some what clear. Though Karma to me
is still a Complicated Topic

Gassho
Cyd
Sat2day

[Seishin]

Just stumbled across this whilst working through the Buddha Basics series. Yet to read all the responses to the op but expect to find them insightful. Deep bows Jundo for your clarity and eloquence on this subject, I have learned much from this thread.

[M.C. Easton]

I, too, just worked through the Buddha Basics talks, and this point really reassured me. My familiarity is more with Theravada Buddhism, and I have to say that the mechanics of a literal rebirth and all the variations on hell for specific sins were things I really struggled to accept about Buddhism. It was, in truth, my only remaining misgiving about jukai. Can I fully commit to a path that in this one regard I so wholeheartedly disbelieve?

Thank you for your great wisdom, Jundo. It has put both mind and heart (not two) at ease. I appreciate your points especially that the Buddha's views on rebirth, hell, etc. were shaped by the society he lived in--just as mine are, too. This does not mean he was wrong about any of it. But his being right about so many other things also doesn't guarantee he was right in this, too. I deeply appreciate your metaphorical reading of "hungry ghosts" and types of heaven, hell, and rebirth as well.

This, my modern mind can embrace and learn from. Thank you.
Deep gassho,
M.C.
SatTody

[Budo-Dan]

Thank you Jundo
Gassho
Dan
Sat2day

[Teiro]

Thank you fort the teaching, Jundo.


Gassho
Teiro

Sat

[Inshin]

I struggle with Karma when it comes to extreme evil. Nazizs, such as Mengele managed to have a successful life, believing they are bringing good to (Arian) humanity and justice for their atrocities was not served as many managed to escape to South America and lead rest of their life's in peace. Slave traders to this day have monuments erected and their descendants profit from huge fortunes that were build on unimaginable suffering. And although you may say that they also had Dukka, it is not even close to the eveil they've caused. The idea of them being reborn as branded animal slaves in industrial farms that resemble concentration camps is tempting, but I have to much compassion for animals to wish the suffering upon anyone. I feel like there's a fundamental error in IT ALL. "God is Love". But I can't imagine that the true love would allow for evil and suffering. Yet there can't be light without darkness. Is our Bodhisattva way deemed for failure? If we manage to "achieve" enlightenment and free all siented beings from suffering what will be left?
Gassho
Sat

[Bion]

I struggle with Karma when it comes to extreme evil. Nazizs, such as Mengele managed to have a successful life, believing they are bringing good to (Arian) humanity and justice for their atrocities was not served as many managed to escape to South America and lead rest of their life's in peace. Slave traders to this day have monuments erected and their descendants profit from huge fortunes that were build on unimaginable suffering. And although you may say that they also had Dukka, it is not even close to the eveil they've caused. The idea of them being reborn as branded animal slaves in industrial farms that resemble concentration camps is tempting, but I have to much compassion for animals to wish the suffering upon anyone. I feel like there's a fundamental error in IT ALL. "God is Love". But I can't imagine that the true love would allow for evil and suffering. Yet there can't be light without darkness. Is our Bodhisattva way deemed for failure? If we manage to "achieve" enlightenment and free all siented beings from suffering what will be left?
Gassho
Sat

Allow me to say I feel you’re equating karmic consequences to appropriate punishment for evil acts. Karmic consequences are impossible to predict. And trying to deem them as good or bad can only be done in relation to subjects experiencing those consequences.. If something bad happens to someone who’s done bad, you as a witness of that will deem it as a good consequence or punishment, but for the person suffering it, their family and close ones, maybe not so much. So which adjective is the correct one? The one you apply or the one they apply?
On the other hand, we can’t possibly understand the emotional suffering others experience regardless of what we can see or observe. You say Mengele had a successful life despite atrocities he committed. How do you know? How do you measure success? Do you know whether someone is suffering from guilt, remorse, whether their personal relationships are strained, or whether they spend their nights sweating from constant nightmares? I think we expect justice or retribution for sins to present themselves in a way we deem acceptable or correct and that only causes us to feel discouraged, hurt, angry, frustrated etc ..

The Bodhisattva way is the way of compassion. That can never fail, because the compassion we show does not depend on what we might get in return for it. And when there’s no suffering left to end, there’ll be plenty good to be experienced. [emoji3526]


SatToday lah

[Jundo]

I struggle with Karma when it comes to extreme evil. Nazizs, such as Mengele managed to have a successful life, believing they are bringing good to (Arian) humanity and justice for their atrocities was not served as many managed to escape to South America and lead rest of their life's in peace. Slave traders to this day have monuments erected and their descendants profit from huge fortunes that were build on unimaginable suffering. And although you may say that they also had Dukka, it is not even close to the eveil they've caused. The idea of them being reborn as branded animal slaves in industrial farms that resemble concentration camps is tempting, but I have to much compassion for animals to wish the suffering upon anyone. I feel like there's a fundamental error in IT ALL. "God is Love". But I can't imagine that the true love would allow for evil and suffering. Yet there can't be light without darkness. Is our Bodhisattva way deemed for failure? If we manage to "achieve" enlightenment and free all siented beings from suffering what will be left?
Gassho
Sat

Even in such cases, Buddhists try to say that there are no "bad people," and only people who are themselves ill within, filled with the poisons of excess desire, anger and violence, division, discrimination and other divided thinking in ignorance which causes them to act badly, and, in that sense, all are victims. I don't know if Mengele and the slave traders paid a price in some future lives, but, even if someone like Dr. Mengele had an objectively "good" life because of material gains, he still suffered in some ways within, I am sure, by the anger and violence which ate at him within, the empty space that is a hell of its own (I think that even a sociopath who cannot feel compassion and empathy for others must still feel some great deprivation or suffering because of that lack).

What is more, I know that there is a view of this life beyond even violence, death, war, in which all is washed away in wholeness, peace and stillness in the realm of the Absolute, and that war, torture and the like are but the doings of Samsara, this broken, beautiful yet often ugly world in which we live, an Illumination which shines right at the heart of all earthly dark and light.

I think that Zen Buddhists came up with a way to see past the ugliness, war and violence even as we continue to live in a world of sometime ugliness, war and violence ... seeing past it all, even while up to our necks in the mud, while also doing what we can to turn war to peace and create goodness and beauty where we can.

Gassho, J

STLah

(sorry, a little more than three lines)

[Zenkon]

Way back in the Original Post on this topic, we say

Karma means our volitional actions ... are causes which have effects good and bad. Our lives are ... the product of past Karmic causes, and our life contains the causes of future effects

I have two thoughts/questions on this:

1. By "effects" do we mean the actual creation of a phenomena or do we mean a change in our PERCEPTION of a phenomena? For example, do we mean that my past "bad" karma will cause an actual even to happen which will have negative consequences for me? Or, do we mean that I will PERCEIVE a future event in such a way as to have negative consequences for me? The difference is the seemingly telepathic Jedi-like ability to physically alter reality vs. the internal mental ability to change the way I perceive things.

2. If Karma causes the future, what about free will? Without free will, why bother trying to change anything if it is all pre-determined? Isn't it more reasonable to think that karma creates a "tendency" for me to experience things in a certain way, and that that tendency can be affected by my learning?

Gassho

Zenkon

sat/lah

[Jundo]

1. By "effects" do we mean the actual creation of a phenomena or do we mean a change in our PERCEPTION of a phenomena? For example, do we mean that my past "bad" karma will cause an actual even to happen which will have negative consequences for me? Or, do we mean that I will PERCEIVE a future event in such a way as to have negative consequences for me? The difference is the seemingly telepathic Jedi-like ability to physically alter reality vs. the internal mental ability to change the way I perceive things.

I do not believe that the ancients made such distinctions. The teaching was that very concrete good and bad events would occur to one, in this or in later post-death lives, due to ones good and bad actions in this or prior lives.

2. If Karma causes the future, what about free will? Without free will, why bother trying to change anything if it is all pre-determined? Isn't it more reasonable to think that karma creates a "tendency" for me to experience things in a certain way, and that that tendency can be affected by my learning?

Free will still holds, and Karmic effects can be changed or counter-balanced in traditional belief. Karma sets the stage, but does not have the final word on the future.

Gassho, J

STLah