Karmic Turn?

[paige]

I think that a lot of guilt and remorse is really a way of trying to keep the past alive. That the reason I keep re-playing events and agonising over what I did or didn't do is that part of me still hasn't really accepted that I can't go back and change it. Forgiveness means giving up all hope of having a better past.

If I've planted beans in the Spring, then I won't harvest melons in the Fall, that's all there is to it. But that's OK. I messed up, and things didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped. So what next? Dig into the dirt, but not too deeply. Then, plant new seeds.

[Gregor]

Nice Paige.

[Bansho]

Hi Harry,

Isn't 'karma'/ 'kamma' etc just a simple explanation of the universal law of cause and effect?

Well, it's certainly related, but it's not that. Kamma/karma is volition which manifests itself as an action by means of body, speech or mind and is conditioned by the presence or absence of greed, hate and delusion. It's not a physical law.

Gassho
Ken

[Bansho]

Hi Kenneth,

I didn't mean to suggest that it was just a physical law, our condition proves that the universe is not just a physical place (to my mind :-) ).

Yes, absolutely.

But can't the concept be applied to every phenomena?

Nope, not if that concept is to be referred to as karma. Let me try to give an example. Take for instance the Tsunami which cost hundreds of thousands of lives in southeast Asia a few years ago. Were all those people killed and injured just victims of their own 'bad karma'? No, of course not! That was a phenomena which had nothing to do with karma. However, how the survivors reacted to that catastrophe had very much to do with karma. Did they do their best to help others in need? Did they turn to burglary or somehow try to take advantage of the situation at the costs of others? That's karma, their intentional (re-)actions based upon that specific (physical) situation. The karma produced in that situation, the karma produced as a reaction to that and to that and to that and so on and so forth, whether good or bad, will contiunue to affect the lives of those inhabitants for generations to come. It's not cause and effect in a physical sense, but there's nothing mystical or esoteric about it either, neither does it require the concept of reincarnation to be understood.

Gassho
Ken

[Bansho]

The quite popular idea of a karma organized universe seems flimsy.

Yep, as are so many popular ideas about it...

Gassho
Ken

[Jundo]

Nope, not if that concept is to be referred to as karma. Let me try to give an example. Take for instance the Tsunami which cost hundreds of thousands of lives in southeast Asia a few years ago. Were all those people killed and injured just victims of their own 'bad karma'? No, of course not! That was a phenomena which had nothing to do with karma. However, how the survivors reacted to that catastrophe had very much to do with karma. Did they do their best to help others in need? Did they turn to burglary or somehow try to take advantage of the situation at the costs of others? That's karma, their intentional (re-)actions based upon that specific (physical) situation. The karma produced in that situation, the karma produced as a reaction to that and to that and to that and so on and so forth, whether good or bad, will contiunue to affect the lives of those inhabitants for generations to come. It's not cause and effect in a physical sense, but there's nothing mystical or esoteric about it either, neither does it require the concept of reincarnation to be understood.

Gassho
Ken

This is wonderfully said, Ken. It is one good way to look at Karma and I can see it.

Yet, of course, in many traditional forms of Buddhism: Tsunami = Victimes paying a Karmic debt from past lives. I cannot see that so easily.

Gassho, Jundo

[Bansho]

Hi Jundo,

Yet, of course, in many traditional forms of Buddhism: Tsunami = Victimes paying a Karmic debt from past lives. I cannot see that so easily.

No, I can't see that either. That has lots of ugly implications and is a rather naive but dangerous misinterpretation of the Dharma.

Gassho
Ken

[will]

Kvon.

Might I add that you should trust your practice. Don't worry too much about Karma. If you understand it then you do. If you don't then you don't. Trust in your practice and your Zazen. If you do this with all your heart and sit when you really don't want to. When you want to sleep, when your head hurts, when you can't stop quivering and crying, when you are so full of anger and tension you are going to explode, when your happy and feel good. Sit. Just do it. Sometimes it is sooo hard. I know. But if you do this, the only thing I can see is benefit. So don't worry about Karma. Also like Jundo said in different words: we are capable of anything, so it is important to remember that. To know where the trouble begins.

Zazen is deep. It will go deeper than anything we could possibly imagine.

Take Care

Gassho Will

[Janice]

Karma is cause and effect in action. But karma is often presented as a sort of bank account or balance sheet. In an interdependent world with everything acting on everything else simultaneously, I wouldn’t want to be a karma accountant.

I agree with an earlier post that suggested karma is both individual and collective. We are part of a dynamic system that responds to so many factors that we are not even aware of.