karma? real or not ?

....shell....

does anyone actually believe in this? you know the whole what goes around comes around thing...do wrong to someone and wrong will be done to u?

18AD

I think the main idea of karma is to learn from your experiences so you can develop as a person.
For example, if you're prone to spilling things, be more weary of your surroundings.
If you always get into arguments, maybe it's something in yourself that brings this on.
I guess an important part of it is to see that what you do/how you do it has an effect on your surroundings.

The idea that it has to do with punishment and reward doesn't really fit. I think it got a bit mixed up with a view of god somehow.

A funny anology I came across some time ago was "don't pee in the pool you're swimming in."

All the best.
AD.

Feelgood

Karma is real....

Just watch My Name is Earl....:D

Thomas_S_Hunterson

It's bull

Whispered

18AD wrote: »

I think the main idea of karma is to learn from your experiences so you can develop as a person.
For example, if you're prone to spilling things, be more weary of your surroundings.
If you always get into arguments, maybe it's something in yourself that brings this on.
I guess an important part of it is to see that what you do/how you do it has an effect on your surroundings.

The idea that it has to do with punishment and reward doesn't really fit. I think it got a bit mixed up with a view of god somehow.

A funny anology I came across some time ago was "don't pee in the pool you're swimming in."

All the best.
AD.

+1

scorplett

OK, first and foremost, opinion or otherwise, Karma is a principle underpinning the faith of millions of people in the Dharmic and Vedic based faiths. To say it is bull, while maybe an opinion, is totally not on. That would be akin calling any faith, or principle of faith 'bull'. Sure it might not fit in a given persons own spiritual belief and gnosis. But that doesn't give you the right to carte blanch trash a cornerstone principle of a whole collection of religious beliefs!
Sean_K: Saying it is bull without other comment is against the forum rules!
Consider yourself reported for religious intolerance!

Secondly, the true concept Karma is nothing to do with right and wrong. It would possibly be closer to the concept of original sin in ways. But they are sins carried over from previous incarnations and also incurred in this one, that are born from all selfish acts.
In the Vedic and Dharmic faiths, it is believed that everyone is born with Karma. It is then up to that individual to do virtuous things that then build up dharma. Eventually dharma counteracts karma and the end goal is to cease the souls constant cycle of reincarnation.
To be honest, the above explanation doesn't do it justice. The principles of karma are very complicated and not easily explained.
I would suggest looking at the Gita http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/gita/agsgita.htm or other sacred texts of Hindus, Buddhists etc in order to learn more about what karma, and dharma actually mean as the pop-culture new age concept of it is generally way off the mark!

Asiaprod

scorplett wrote:

Sean_K: Saying it is bull without other comment is against the forum rules!
Consider yourself reported for religious intolerance!

Welcome to your Karma. Your comment, what little of it there was, is against the charter. Your Karma has been awarded an infraction. I trust your next comment will contain more content and will be in keeping with the charter. Have a nice day Sean_K.
Asia

Thomas_S_Hunterson

Asiaprod wrote: »

Welcome to your Karma. Your comment, what little of it there was, is against the charter. Your Karma has been awarded an infraction. I trust your next comment will contain more content and will be in keeping with the charter. Have a nice day Sean_K.
Asia

lol:rolleyes:

Apologies

I'll try and make them a bit longer in future then...and less blunt.

Shiminay

I've always been a believer in "what goes around comes around" (or rather "what goes around is all around" for the Trailer Park Boys fans ) which would touch on Karma but like Scorplett said, is probably the more "new-age" inperpretation of it, so I couldn't say for certain. In general though, it's not a bad way to live your life I think people will agree.

6th

I dont buy into karma at all. So many people do wrong in this life and get along without problems. Saying that it will get them in th enext life or whatever aint worth a damn to me or the family & friends of the victims of these people.

Equally good people get bad crap sometimes, are they to think its karma for something else they did? Just a challenge put to them by their god/s or life itself?

Karma is a nice idea to get try get people to watch how they act - but for me its nothing.

Oryx

Im kind of in two minds about this. I do think that if your a nasty person, your bad deeds can come back and bite you on the ass, simply because if you live badly, you tend to put yourself in a position to be treated badly. But it doesnt alway happen, and karma may just be a way for the victims of such people to feel a little better.

That said, Ive seen people whove treated others badly have the strangest bad luck later on. It could be coincidence but it makes you wonder.

In terms of karma causing you to come back as a worm in your next life, this is not part of my belief pattern. I think it works differently.

6th

KtK wrote: »

That said, Ive seen people whove treated others badly have the strangest bad luck later on.

No moer than the bad luck that regualr everyday people have though, right?

Oryx

6th wrote: »

No moer than the bad luck that regualr everyday people have though, right?

Well no, I didnt think so. But Id rather not post it here! It was probably coincidence like I said but it was a big 'un.:)

Nevyn

6th wrote: »

No moer than the bad luck that regualr everyday people have though, right?

Oh a lot more then that.

6th

But what about good people who have awful things happen, is that karma? Just life leasons?

Does karma just affect some people? Its always sounded a bit hit and miss.

Bad things happen to good people, bad things happen to bad people ..... doesnt seem to be any intelligence behind it.

Nevyn

It is often played out over serveral lives.
It is not as simple as do good things have good things happen to you and do bad things have bad things happen to you.

18AD

For anyone interested there is a practice known as karma yoga.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma_Yoga

In my opinion a similar idea is represented in the mystic tradition as lust of result.
http://www.thelemapedia.org/index.php/Lust_of_Result

It's also common in zen.
Washing the plates after dinner. Cleaning your clothes. Eating your food...etc...

Good luck.
AD.

....shell....

....shell.... wrote: »

does anyone actually believe in this? you know the whole what goes around comes around thing...do wrong to someone and wrong will be done to u?

Do you want to talk about the idea of what goes around comes around, or do you want to talk about karma? Very seperate issues, like.

Jackie laughlin

Some alternatives:
1. Evil can be random. This is popularly expressed as "**** happens!"
2. Good will triumph because God will balance the books in the afterlife.
3. Good will triumph because you'll keep on living lives until you live a good one.

By the way, I think - like Salman Rushdie - that people must be free to offend.

Jackie laughlin

I most certainly did not type those asterisks above!

scorplett

Jackie laughlin wrote: »

By the way, I think - like Salman Rushdie - that people must be free to offend.

I have to say that I would totally agree with this. However, there are essential concepts that I would add here. Mainly that if you choose to offend, that you accept that there are consequences, whatever shape they take. That said, not offending equally has it's consequences.

Dave!

Thaedydal wrote: »

It is often played out over serveral lives.
It is not as simple as do good things have good things happen to you and do bad things have bad things happen to you.

What are you basing this on? Or is it just a personal belief with no supporting evidence? Just curious.

I think karma is bull. There's no foundation for it and no reason to believe it. It appears to have the same appeal as other religious and spiritual beliefs in that it makes it appear as though things happen as part of a "bigger picture". If someone dies, depending on who you ask, they go to heaven, or are reincarnated, or something else. If they do something good, they'll be rewarded, if they do something bad, they'll be punished. It's a nice idea, but it has no basis in fact I'm afraid.

(BTW, this is based on the 'karma' idea of "do bad, and bad will be done unto you". It may be different from any "official" or technical definition of karma. I do not know enough about that to comment)

Rev Hellfire

Not sure I'd but much store in karma beyond the obvious if you treat people badly you can expect it to be reciprocated. But that’s just basic human nature, treat others as you would wish to be treated and they are more likely to comply.

Anything else is just circumstance in my view.

heirenach

I think karma is the evolving of the spirit, through many lives to get to a higher state of being ?

nobodythere

I haven't studied much on karma but have heard it's often mistranslated and underexplained, and so i will try to give my interpretation:

First, I'm going to define two things:

1. the 'material' realm, which is finite, meaning that to take something from one place is to remove it from another, i.e. to take something for yourself is to deprive another of that thing.

2. the 'spiritual' realm, which is infinite, e.g. love and compassion, you can give these things without taking them away from the other person.

It's not so much that if you do bad things bad things will happen to you, but that if we do bad things, bad things will happen to us.

why? imagine this finite material world as a bunch of objects, all we can do is move them from one person to another, we can't make any more of these objects (well we can but there is always a limitation to how many). Investing your happiness in this material realm inevitably causes greed, war for resources etc. People in turn, feeling the injustice of being deprived of this material wealth become a part of this greed and begin a circle of actions and reactions (see 'dependent origination') that we call 'karma'.

You continue on in this world through your children, as do others, and though they do not have our memories or personalities, our qualities are transferred to them. If you partake in this 'negative karma', starting or continuing circles of greed, you leave it to them and in that way 'you' continue the suffering into your 'next life'.

You yourself may not experience the suffering you have caused, but it will be experienced by someone somewhere.

I think (not sure) it was siddharta buddha who said that there are two kinds of actions, those that tie to you to the material world and those that liberate you.

i think to be liberated is to invest your happiness in the infinite spiritual realm rather than the material one.

obviously karma is not as simple as to whether it exists are not. We can see on other levels that for every action there is a reaction.

Karma is action. Literally, that's what the word means. Actions have consequences. That's the idea of what it's about. Some short reaching consequences, some long reaching.
Has absolutely nothing to do with "what goes around comes around"
Read the bhagavad gita for an in-depth discussion of it

As for buddhism, the idea of labelling karma good or bad is just how we view particular actions, it's not that karma itself is "good" or "bad"

knird evol

maybe if you saw an evil person prosper, you might be forgetting that in all the other facets of their character and spirit they are miles ahead of you. They might have or temporarily have a moral deficit but could have will of iron, belief, power and detachment that might for at least a time allow them to avoid the consequences of harming someone else.

CerebralCortex

I thought karma was if you expressed a want or need openly be it in the positive or negative it would eventually get around to you through the universe being universelike I guess.

LaVidaLoca

"OK, first and foremost, opinion or otherwise, Karma is a principle underpinning the faith of millions of people in the Dharmic and Vedic based faiths. To say it is bull, while maybe an opinion, is totally not on. That would be akin calling any faith, or principle of faith 'bull'."

Why is that not on?

If I am to have any sort of discussion with a religious person about these ideas, I have to be honest about what I think about them, or there's no point. The Virgin birth (to take one among many examples) is , in my opinion, "bull", I'd only be lying for the sake of politeness if I said otherwise.

Now on Karma, I think there is a misunderstanding of this concept between cultures. Westerners tend to think it means something like "What goes around comes around", when it is actually bound up very tightly with Hindu concepts of reincarnation, the caste system and ones position in it. It is not the equivelent of "As you sow so shall ye reap"

Shiminay

One might argue that if you can't debate in a civil and respectful manner, then you shouldn't. Saying what someone believes in is "bull" is more than a bit disrespectful. There are more creative and less insulting ways of going about it.

Princess J

CerebralCortex wrote: »

I thought karma was if you expressed a want or need openly be it in the positive or negative it would eventually get around to you through the universe being universelike I guess.

I'd have to say I sort of agree with this. I haven't read up much on "karma" but I do think that you get back what you put out there, whether it be positive or negative. And I think alot of it is down to self belief and how you value yourself.
For example, based on my own experiences - I had a very abusive relationship for several years when I was younger. It took me ages to get past the whole "Why me?" of it all. Eventually I realised - I allowed this person to treat me so badly, in a sense I brought that treatment upon myself. Not because I was treating other people badly, but because I was treating myself badly - I didn't believe I deserved any better.

As soon as I started to believe I deserved to be with a person who worshipped me and treated me like a queen I met a wonderful man who is perfect for me and we're very happy together. I drew him to me simply by believing I deserved him.

Sorry if this is totally off the point of the thread.

hiorta

Karma may also be understood as 'cause & effect' or 'reaping what you sow' -a Natural law.
There is no escaping the effects of what we do, although the motive would qualify the outcome.

Húrin

Karma as I understand it, is an outrageous affront to justice.

The people in this world who are hungry and enslaved (probably about a quarter of all people) have not done anything to create the conditions they are subject to. These conditions are imposed by oppressors.

Nevyn

I only have a problem with karma when it's teaching are used to keep people down trodden either by external pressure or by themsleves by saying they deserve the misery of thier life and should not seek to better themselves.

hiorta

If Life is understood from the very brief earthly viewpoint, then karma is entirely unjust.
But, when seen from the eternal viewpoint, it reveals breathtaking Divine justice.
Consider those born in possession of a 'gift', isn't that so unfair, or has it been earned?


A quote from the Ramala teachers:
'The essence of the Law of Karma is that everything in Creation is held in perfect balance.
There can be no such thing as inequality.
Karma is a teaching process in which you learn from what you have done. It is YOU who created those ripples on the pool of life and they must, in turn, affect YOU.
The purpose of Karma is not punishment, rather more a process of balance and education'

Húrin

hiorta wrote: »

If Life is understood from the very brief earthly viewpoint, then karma is entirely unjust.
But, when seen from the eternal viewpoint, it reveals breathtaking Divine justice.
Consider those born in possession of a 'gift', isn't that so unfair, or has it been earned?

I can see how it is just if reincarnation is also assumed to be true. Which I don't think is true.