karma paradox

MJ-12 · February 24, 2003, 19:36:12

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gerble king · February 25, 2003, 00:07:12

Karma is not an abstract idea when viewed over one life cycle. It is simply the culmination of your deads and how they now affect you. Suppose that you were a total butt to people in general all your life. Now suppose you need help from others, well its not likly to happen. Now suppose that you have been kind and helpful to others, when you need help you will probably get it. This is just one example of karmas concreteness and Im sure that you can think of many more. Now supposedly your actions carry over with your from life to life and then the concept must get more abstract. This is just my view of it I hope your found it worth while reading.

lateralus897 · February 26, 2003, 10:09:19

gerble king, I think i'm getting what you're saying. You're saying basically that like attracts like? if you were to help people, people owuld help you. And this could apply to the many aspects of personality as well?

yoki_h · February 26, 2003, 13:29:48

Karma from my understanding is more than doing good and receiving benign actions in return ,it involves our whole life and most of the people who touch it. It is part and parcel of the evolutionary process and as such is our teacher.As we reincarnate over a period of life's we set up pattens within these are stumbling blocks . Our karmic lesson often involve these and those closest to us ,the same mistakes reapairing time and time again
What is a no no for one person is allowable to some one with less understanding, in other words there are varying shades of black and white. As pain and hardship seem to teach us compassion and many other hard won traits ,again I would say who are we to judge what is right and what is wrong
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Fenris · February 27, 2003, 05:56:06

I dont see it as being a concept of punishment or reward, simply a process in which the quality of energy you produce returns to you.

Adept_of_Light · February 27, 2003, 08:41:31

Hello lateralus897,

Good and bad in my view are human creations as you've stated. Prior to humans existing what was good and what was bad if there was nobody around to reach such conclusions? Besides, even as humans, concepts of good and bad have changed and continue to change due to cultural influence, time, politics, majority/minority groups etc. Even if you were to be able to stop time, and considered the perspective of all humans on Earth, you'd likely have just as many different opinions about if any one event or action was considered good or bad, not to mention how far on the scale each part of good or bad was to be identified. What I'm trying to get at is that our human perception and labeling of things acts as a filter upon the ultimate reality which trancends such limited and erroneous concepts. Likewise, karma is not about good or bad as we may often attempt to oversimply.

In my view, karma is closer to an action/re-action model, rather than more detailed definitions as to whether each action is good or bad. Consider that no energy can be created or destroyed, only transformed... If enlightenment is to become one with everything/ALL/God, then if any one part of that everything could be destroyed, the ALL would no longer be ALL but a fraction of what it was... likewise, if something in addition to the ALL could be created, then the ALL no longer is all/everything, for something stands outside of it.

If one can swallow such concepts, then it can be understood that existance as a whole strives toward a state of equilibrium. Such equilibrium, would encompass all ranges of forces/energies/planes, and only exist if each action were to be opposed. If any action were to go unopposed, equilibrium would never be reached.

So in conclusion, to escape the karmic cycle, one must cease to act. No action implies no reaction and then one has reached the ultimate state of self-equilibrium or nirvana. However; most of us have already performed too many actions in this and previous lives, and thus in order for us to approach a state of equilibrium, we must oppose those actions so as to nullify the overall result (be these good or negative actions).

One more thought on good/bad, karma and persuit of God. Do not mistake that a saint (an endless good-doer) is one with God, for if God is to represent everything, then from the perspective of good/bad, the saint has only seen 1/2 of God. Still, knowing 1/2 of God is more than most of us can claim at this moment

It is in the stillness of mind and inaction that meditation resides - and such is the foundation for the persuit of nirvana.

Adept_of_Light

goingslow · February 27, 2003, 10:20:07

Good and bad are creations? So murdering random people isnt good or bad its just is? If i raped and murdered your mom it wouldnt be good or bad in any universal sense only a made up human one? If i went out of my way to hurt people emotionally and physically it isnt good or bad?
I think all that is good theory, like everything just is and no one's making judgements but us. But deep down we know some things are good and some things are bad in a universal sense. Not just one created by society. I think individuals may thing rape is good if it turns them on but people who really search down to something higher realize its a "bad" thing. But if its all arbitary human made up rules that no higher power cares about why not just rape kill steal murder afterall theres no real good or bad.

goingslow · February 27, 2003, 10:23:56

Plus to say real nirvana is not striving to do good but to be inactive is one of those "i dont get involved with your problems or try to help you because i dont want any karma on me" ill just be an apathetic observer so that i can look after my own karma.

Sorry but thats a lot of intellectual theory and none of us are put on this earth to do absolutely nothing in order to preserve our karma. That type of detached emotion thing falls short...im sure lots of apathetic observers like that philosphy though. "Really being spiritually advanced isn't helping people like mother theresa" its living a life of inaction in order to make sure you dont mess up your karma. I think there are higher emotions and empathy is one of them. I dont think this is only a human emotion i think it also is higher in a real way than hate. Not just a human constructed way.. i dont think spiritual nirvana is the quest to be detached from all that makes us human.

Tom · February 27, 2003, 12:03:30

In one of the Buddha's previous lives, he was the captain on a ship carrying 500 merchants. One of the passengers decided to kill everyone and take everything including the boat. At this time the Bodhisattva who became Buddha saw this intention through clairvoyance and chose to kill the passenger who would have killed everyone. This not only prevented the deaths, but it also kept the one merchant from having to take on all of that bad karma and going straight to hell. This was still an act of killing, but because of the motivation behind the action here is what the consequence of the killing was: Buddha got a tiny splinter stuck in his foot and had to pull it out.

Good and evil only exist in our minds. A pair of opposites, with no reality. Fine. When you can physically walk on water, touch fire without being burned, move physically through solid objects, appear in several places at once, and restore the dead to life then for you it will no longer matter if good and evil are the same. Until then it is just a nice theory. As for people who advance that far, they have had to develop compassion in equal parts with their wisdom and so their natural tendency is to continue to choose good.

Change is constant. It is not possible to hold still and remain inactive forever. Not even nirvana allows this.

lateralus897 · February 27, 2003, 17:21:54

Adept_of_Light, wow, thank you. You definitely seem to know what you're talking about. I have a much better grasp on the concept of karma now. There's nothing you said I can disprove, and the null action = nirvana is a new theory I've never heard before.

goingslow, I think that if that doesn't sound that great, and doesnt make sense to us, we need to realize that once we surpass this physical dimension, the logic/thinking we do here no longer applies. Think about that. That's why I cannot disagree with theories like this one.

goingslow · March 01, 2003, 16:28:51

I see that as a contradiction in terms.. saying "you have to remember our logic and thinking aren't there" when we're coming to that conclusion out of a sort of logic and thinking.

Its just like any other theory it takes something we dont know about or understand and tries to make sense of it. Instead of saying good and evil are fighting it just states there is no good or evil and that angels arent good or evil. Its no more of an advanced theory just because it states angels are apathetic beings just as likely to do evil as good because it doesn't really exist.

Again i dont think its wrong or right but like any other theory its based on your own logic and beliefs. And how you apply that to understand things in another dimention.

Just because its different doesn't mean its right. And i really dont think losing everything human is the ultimate goal. But thats also my theory.. Like i said i believe there are universal good and evils they're not all human created. Someone said what hitler did wasn't evil because they were enjoying it.. etc. etc.. i think in a universal sense outside the fact im getting enjoyment out of being evil it is wrong.
I see rationalizing that it wasn't good or bad but just was is a bunch of intellectual bovine excrement that sounds good because you're detaching yourself enough from the subject to dismiss the fact none of those people who were abusing the jews would like that being done to them. So its not evil if they do? but evil if its done to them.

I do believe in at least one golden rule.. do onto others as you want done onto you. And i dont think thats a human creation.. but the very fact people dont like being tortured.. says something about torturing being evil or bad. But i guess it would be easier for me to think thats a human creation and torturing isn't bad or evil... it just is.

Adept_of_Light · March 02, 2003, 01:20:42

Dear goingslow,

quote:
Originally posted by goingslow

Good and bad are creations?
So murdering random people isn't good or bad its just is? If i raped and murdered your mom it wouldnt be good or bad in any universal sense only a made up human one? If i went out of my way to hurt people emotionally and physically it isnt good or bad?

Yes, they are *human* created word-concepts so as to identify and define into a common language a particular type of event.
If we were to compress the age of the Universe into a single year, humans would have existed only for a few seconds. During the other millions of seconds, there were no such concepts as good and bad.

Part of the problem here though is perspective... the eye of the beholder - trying to interpret good and bad from a single human point of view. Such approach negates 99.99999999% of the rest of what exists and its perspective upon any one event.
From a sub-atomic level what meaning has good/bad or a murder? From a macroscopic viewpoint (whereby the entire Universe is taken into account), of what real significance is any event such as someone being murdered? From the perspective of a rock 100,000 light-years from Earth, of what importance is the murder of a single human being? A murder will only matter to Egoistic humans , and even then, only to those who were made aware that a murder took place.

Even to an abstract ideology such as karma, a murder shall not change the underlying primordial laws upon which it functions.

It is in my view, illogical to try to make sense of transcendental concepts such as karma from limited human perspective alone.

I am not saying your observation isn't valid and holds no value; it is and it does, but only from your perspective. Or from the perspective of any one Egoistic human being observing the event.

My point was, the laws of karma transcend limited human intellect and thus using vague and extremely limiting labels such as good and bad does not aid the neophyte in coming any closer to a more objective understanding of its reality.

If we choose to remain within the confines of our own mind-intellect, we shall! But with such a choice the enigmas of existance outside ourselves shall forever remain just that - irresolvable, incomprehensible enigmas. It is only when we transcend the mind that we may catch a glimpse of the ALL.

lateralus897, if you found some of what I regurgitated in my first post interesting, perhaps you might like to look at the unparaphrased source of my ramblings.

http://bobert1.home.mindspring.com/kybalion.html

Best wishes,
Adept_of_Light

Adept_of_Light · March 02, 2003, 02:00:48

Dear goingslow,

quote:

Plus to say real nirvana is not striving to do good but to be inactive is one of those "i dont get involved with your problems or try to help you because i dont want any karma on me" ill just be an apathetic observer so that i can look after my own karma.

What was meant by being inactive in reaching nirvana is two-fold:

Temporary Nirvana:
1) That one must sit physically still in meditation. But in addition to an inactive body, another major pre-requisite is an inactive mind or mental state. More accurately, a state of mind whereby no thoughts exist... only absolute emptiness. If you are capable of being successful in such a practice, you may reach a temporary state of nirvana... by temporary I mean that the experience will be finite and shall come to an end after some limited amount of time... be this a few seconds or several minutes. From the perspective of the person experiencing such a sublime state, time is in actuality totally inconsequential. It is only when the experience ends that the concept of time regains any meaning.

Permanent Nirvana:
2) To attain such a state, indeed one must have nullified all their karmic debts. Such a process may or may not involve helping other humans. That experience shall be different for every individual, but chances are that if one is to live many, many life times before reaching this state, it is only probable that both doing some good and helping others will be part of the equation. States of permanent nirvana are reserved for Ascended Masters such as Christ, Buddha, Krishna, Lao Tsu, etc.

quote:

"Really being spiritually advanced isn't helping people like mother theresa" its living a life of inaction in order to make sure you dont mess up your karma. I think there are higher emotions and empathy is one of them. I dont think this is only a human emotion i think it also is higher in a real way than hate. Not just a human constructed way.. i dont think spiritual nirvana is the quest to be detached from all that makes us human.

Being spiritually advanced may or may not include helping people like Mother Theresa; the path of each human soul is different regardless of how much we may strive to be like our mentors and spiritual teachers.

Living a life of inaction has nothing to do with messing up your karma. It is impossible to live as a human and not affect either positively or negatively your karma. Only an ascended Master incarnated on this Earth may stand outside of karmic law while still being perceived as taking action.

Spiritual nirvana is not the quest to be detached from all that makes us human, however; it is the quest to become detached from our Egoistic selves, our physical and emotional senses, such that we may transcend ourselves and become one with GOD.
Once that has been achieved, we will have created an attachment with everything and everyone and absolutely nothing will stand outside of that experience - ourselves included.

Kind regards,
Adept of Light

pod3 · March 12, 2003, 17:30:23

We still judge the reality of something by the evidence of it, don't we?

And do people still ask if we should say that ethics are manmade and that righteousness is the same thing as the common good?

Such problems exist in your language skills, only.

rodentmouse · March 17, 2003, 15:56:52

i think all living beings are born with the innate laws of right and wrong, rules which we are not conditioned into beleiveing and laws which society and upbringing do not teach.

these fundamental, innate laws of our minds are i beleive Karma.

a baby is not taught that hurting someone is a bad thing, i think that being told that its wrong by socety only reinforces the "rule" that it was already programmed with at birth.

this is how i think karma works, when we do something bad we know in our gut that its wrong, but we do it anyway, e.g. from peer pressure --then the fact that we know we consiously did a wrong act will stick with us until we balance it out with a consious selfless act.

supposing i was in the army, and was forced to shoot an unarmed soldier of the other side, and thought "he deserved it" i think by our innate programming of right and wrong, somewhere deep down, my TRUE self is telling me that i have done wrong.

the me who killed the soldier will intuit the feeling of guilt somewhere deep inside, but he will try to push it to the back of his mind and deny, by telling himself he "killed the enemy", but his true self knows that he killed another human being.

basically, i think karma is a built in mechanism which we have no choice in altering to suit our beleifs, i certainyl dont beleive its some consious universal energy which is aware of everyones actions.

i think people who beleive they did a "fundamental" wrong action for the right reason are deluding themselves and are just not in touch with there real motives which are a deep rooted trait of there personality which will always be there convincing them that "bad-is-good" until they recognise the trait and try to eliminate it.

lateralus897 · February 24, 2003, 18:35:14

I support the belief that good and evil do not exist. That they are human creations and exist only in our minds. However, I also believe in karma, which states that good actions are rewarded, and bad actions are punished. How does karma determine what is good and what is bad? Is it the intention of the action? If it is, someone's mind is bound to be taught that killing is a good thing. Can anyone explain this for me?

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karma paradox

Tom