Karma survey...

[Tb]

Re: Karma survey...

Hi.

About "good" vs "bad" karma, ponder the following.
A big rock lies on a narrow mountainpath blocking all passage.
A guy comes along, picks it up and throws it away, clearing the path.
The stone he threw away landed on a village at the foot of the mountain, killing a lot of people.
What was good karma/bad karma? (Other variations to the story is around, but you get the picture...)

In my view,

intention is everything in Buddhism, unlike in Jainism. The guy clearing the path, wanting to help others, performed good karma (or neutral, if he just threw the rock because he felt like it). Unintentionally, someone was killed. The consequences of your actions can be good or bad, but the karmic effect is affected by your own intention.

It's the same as with accidentally swallowing a bug, or stepping on a snail. It's not bad karma because it wasn't your intention to kill the bug/snail, it was just an unfortunate consequence.

It's the same with vegetarianism. Living beings are killed when harvesting beans and what not, but the vegetarian's intention is not to kill any being. That's just an unfortunate consequence.

Intention is everything.

"Intention, I tell you, is kamma. Intending, one does kamma by way of body, speech, & intellect. / Nibbedhika Sutta http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipit....063.than.html


EDIT: Hans beat me to it!

Hi.

Yes, intention is the key.

Karma is just action.
The good/bad i see more as two sides of the coin as something happened.
Whether good/bad is up to the ones affected by it, and what they deem to be good/bad.

Mtfbwy
Fugen

[robert]

Re: Karma survey...

A friend of mine many years ago liked to say "you make your own reality". She wasn't a Buddhist, but every time the topic of karma comes up I think of her.

I find karma to be a helpful principle on the whole, personally, but one thing that seems inadvisable is to use it to retroactively explain things that have happened to others. We're not Buddhas (yet) and none of us can really know much about the complex intersection of causes and conditions which led to someone's life playing out in a certain way. Better, I think, to keep it in mind when making present-time choices. Not so much a question of seeking to "create" good karma or living in fear of its opposite. More about being aware of moral causality -- if I make choice A, result B may follow...and is B what I want?

Just my two cents.

Gassho,

Rob

[Rich]

Re: Karma survey...

Hello Folks,

according to my arguably limited understanding of Karma (which just means action), the Pali sources and most Mahayana texts and commentaries I've come across all seem to agree, that Karma does not equal cause and effect as such. Volitional action is needed. Intention is needed to create Karma. I won't bore you or myself with all the different kinds of Karma mentioned in the Abidharma works, suffice it to say that non volitional actions may well lead to very painful consequences, but these consequences fall more under the "shit happens" category than anything else and are not per se Karma.

Leaving all the doctrinal stuff aside for a moment, I personally "trust" in the teachings of Karma, whether these teachings have to have a 100% correlation with the workings of the universe I cannot know, but I do know that I "trust" the map of the London underground when I want to get somewhere, though the map is just a very useful approximation of the complicated reality of tunnels, crossings etc.


Gassho,

Hans

Good point, Hans. Intention brings it to personal level. For me, this intent is trying to be present for the moment, the will to be present, the letting go of thoughts and feelings, trying to just do it. Without the will to the truth, you will be led around by your strong habits of greed, anger and ignorance. To certain situations you will react with anger, to others greed etc. If you have a dog mind, you will become a dog. But the question raised by Adam, does this karma carry over from past, to present, to future lives? I think yes, at least in the past, present and future lives of this life, The most important thing is we can change it right now if we just keep trying, just keep practicing.
/Rich

[scott]

Re: Karma survey...

Hi all, I'm back from about 10 days on the road.

When I think about "karma" and all,

• This universe is causal except at the subtlest levels, but the subtlest levels are beyond time and space and "mind". A physical parallel is quantum vacuum. It fizzes with creative potential, and anything might pop into being, but as they do they are subject to what we would consider normal physical laws. Similarly the universe fizzes with manifestation at the subtlest levels and that manifestation becomes input into the cause-and-effect, space-and-time universe.
• Causality leads things to appear to be substantial. There are interweaving cause-and-effect chains. Multiple causes can lead to a particular effect or a particular cause can have multiple effects, and there are cause-and-effect cycles that regenerate themselves. All of this gives the appearance of sustained things -- like "ganglia" in the mesh of cause-and-effect flows.
• Cause-and-effect flows can be very complex and not obvious.
• Interweaving cause-and-effect flows can and will include things that you feel are part of "you" (they may include some things you consider you and some you don't, but in any case sometimes the primary cause-and-effect components are in what you call "you"). They might be like Jungian "complexes", but I never understood what those are.
• So far everything above is true of rocks, moss, ants and humans. What's different about humans seems to be self-awareness. I don't know where that came from but it means that you can enhance or dissolve complexes. Much of "your" interaction with the mesh of cause-and-effect flows is with external phenomena. If a complex is primarily based "inside" of "you", it could be due to your past responses to externally originating flows leading to the formation of relatively tight cycles.

So, as far as I interpret what I've heard, "karma" is all those cause-and-effect flows going through your experience. There can be "environmental" karma, genetic karma, and self-generated karma, which is the interesting one -- causal cycles that are particularly associated with "you" due to past responses generated in "you". But forget about guilt, that's not the point. All of those flows going through your experience are yours to do with as you will. Karma is an opportunity. "You" can add to it all or you can ease the burden on yourself and -- since anything you emit is someone else's experience, on all levels -- ease the burden for others as well. Every response you make, in every microsecond, to everything going on outside and inside of "you" (that boundary doesn't matter), is a chance for a gift to the universe.

IMHO, FWIW.

Gassho ... Scott

[fendis]

Re: Karma survey...

I am also in the "cause and effect" camp, but I'm not completely sold on past/future lives...

Hey, there's my first post here....so I'll also say "hello."

[JohnsonCM]

Re: Karma survey...

I would have to agree that karma is a "cause and effect" type of occurrence, and that intent is what drives it. Shakyamuni Buddha, in his Dhammapada, said "With our thoughts, we make the world", much like Ghandi's "We must be the change we wish to see in the world". Both statements point to one thing. Your intent, the driving force behind your action, determines the action, and therefore determines its effect on the world. This can also be seen in non-Buddhist law, where a person who is killed accidentally and a person who is killed with intent is the difference between murder and manslaughter. Karma, I feel, has gotten so much mysticism around it that we forget that it boils down to "if I hit my hand with this hammer, it will hurt." That being said, there is still room for delusion to completely derail the train of intent, I'm not 100% on this but I think that people like Mao and Pol Pot probably actually thought that they were doing what was necessary at some level. Which is where the idea of buddha nature or "essential nature" comes into play, whereby we divest ourselves of these delusions and (for lack of a better word) "see" the true nature and reality of what is positive and negative, helpful and hurtful. As for past lives, I don't know what I think about that quite yet. I think you'd have to do some pretty messed up stuff (like Mao and Pol Pot) for it to continue to color your future existence, regardless of your present intent and works.