Issues with karma
Karma is the idea that past actions both negative and positive circle back to impose or influence on current or future prospects of an individual.
My issue with karma is the idea of personal continuity. Are we always the same in essence from one moment to the next? Karma in this sense doesnt permit the ability to change for the better or for the worse. This is a form of unjust eternalism. Type-casting as it were.
However problems also occur if we consider the contrary - that our essence does in fact change with the progression of time. The individual who committed the deed is not the same who receives the resulting karma. This is the opposite extreme - nihilism/ annihilationism- the person we are from moment to moment is fundamentally different/changed. And so karma should not apply to this ever changing individual and be just in doing so.
The third option is that karma doesnt a). Apply to a specific person or b). Depend on their prior actions/ deeds. In this case, negative or positive deeds and actions from random instigators impact other random people at various unrelated times by chance. This leads one to believe that morality and ethics wouldnt at all apply and that Justice in a universal sense is false- its an everyone for themselves or dog eat dog world scenario and that all actions are justified as the consequences would be random and not necessarily affect to original doer.
None of these three scenarios seem particularly reasonable or palatable. So I struggle to assume a notion of universal karma.
I welcome you to discuss your personal takes and interjections
My issue with karma is the idea of personal continuity. Are we always the same in essence from one moment to the next? Karma in this sense doesnt permit the ability to change for the better or for the worse. This is a form of unjust eternalism. Type-casting as it were.
However problems also occur if we consider the contrary - that our essence does in fact change with the progression of time. The individual who committed the deed is not the same who receives the resulting karma. This is the opposite extreme - nihilism/ annihilationism- the person we are from moment to moment is fundamentally different/changed. And so karma should not apply to this ever changing individual and be just in doing so.
The third option is that karma doesnt a). Apply to a specific person or b). Depend on their prior actions/ deeds. In this case, negative or positive deeds and actions from random instigators impact other random people at various unrelated times by chance. This leads one to believe that morality and ethics wouldnt at all apply and that Justice in a universal sense is false- its an everyone for themselves or dog eat dog world scenario and that all actions are justified as the consequences would be random and not necessarily affect to original doer.
None of these three scenarios seem particularly reasonable or palatable. So I struggle to assume a notion of universal karma.
I welcome you to discuss your personal takes and interjections
Comments (55)
The idea is rather simple: Deny both eternalism and nihilism and what you end up with is pure uncertainty/doubt - is there a soul? Is there not? What's the most rational course of action? That there's hell or there's no such thing? Pascal's wager!
Karma is simply an extension of known laws of ethics: what goes around comes around, one good turn deserves another, a taste of one's own medicine, you reap what you sow, you get the idea, tit for tat, quid pro quo, a law encapulated in the word "reciprocity".
Think of karma as an assumption in a conditional proof/reductio ad absurdum proof - it, in the end, needs to be discharged and for this we havta have souls.
Well, if only! The buddhist view is basically that children with bone cancer have bone cancer due to what they did in a previous life. Them having cancer is karma.
There is a much darker side to buddhist beliefs many prefer to ignore.
Buddhism, to my reckoning, is agnostic as to the existence of souls, souls that are a prerequisite for the claim that children suffer because of the bad karma they accumulated in past lives.
The point to Buddhism is not to claim knowledge for that's impossible given the givens, but to play around with doubt. The results are better: Buddhists are generally more peaceful than Christians, Moslems, etc.
Yes. The idea of karma is rather similar to 'the Secret' and 'the power of positive thinking' in the way it gives comfort to greed and privilege.
Quoting Agent Smith
You say peaceful, I say apathetic, complacent, and fatalistic. Not all, but much of Buddhist tradition, like Christian tradition is concerned with maintaining power relations in society. One says you deserve your misery in this life because of your past life and the other that your misery in this life will be rewarded in the next.
Quoting Benj96
It should also be pointed out that Buddhism has always accepted the reality of karma - that all volitional consequences have actions - but not that any person, or anything, has a fixed essence or unchanging self. Heres a primer https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/karma.html
The general message in every religion is one of peace and love. Some seem to need more reforming than others not denying that. A bullet to the head is still a bullet to the head. The gun it comes from generally doesnt matter too much.
Seconded. It's meaningless to discuss "karma" without reference to a particular doctrine of karma (there are several of them).
I gave three of interest. Eternalism. Nihilism or absurdism. Have a read over the post again and see what you think :)
It seems you're implicitly trying to figure out which doctrine of karma is the right one, yes?
That's a misconception of Buddhism. Being of skeptical nature, it never claims to know stuff (with certainty); it simply brings to our attention possibilities and then we're left on our own how best to deal with what could be rather than what is.
Kinda like Pascal's wager, we must err on the side of caution: Karma maybe real or not, but it's better to assume it is. You know, just in case. The same line of reasoning applies to everything else.
It appears that, in congruence with the Oracle of Delphi who is alleged to have warned "surety brings ruin", Buddhism endorses doubt/skepticism as a better; don't we, after all, recommend "a healthy dose of skepticism" to all?
Coming to the suffering of children; it's simple and rational to infer that pediatric illnesses must be caused by something not in this life (Bartricks, in another thread, argues that children are innocent and ergo, antinatalism) and hence in the process of sense-making a hypothesis emerges - karmic debt from past lives.
This - our misfortunes are our own doing - doesn't imply that those who're in a tight spot should be left to the mercy of bad karma. They need to be given all the help they [s]deserve[/s] need!
Buddhism doesn't have the concept of crusades/jihads (holy wars). Violence is only permitted, but not advocated in Buddhism. A last resort of sorts, for cornered cats.
For karma, there's got to be an eternal soul. Anicca, if real, precludes such an entity. Inconsistency detected!
However, if we remind ourselves that Buddhism isn't about knowledge, but about ignorance, the inconsistency becomes a feature and not a bug.
Myanmar. Plenty of instances of violence there openly encouraged by buddhist monks.
Go back several decades and in the UK muslims would pretty much never get involved in violence. The doctrines dont matter too much when corrupt leaders of institutions wish to flex for political gain. Religious institutions are political institutions.
Good points! All I can say is this: Buddhism, unlike other religions, doesn't have a loophole that could justify initiation of violence. It does sanction self-defense (black's move in chess).
I was interested in this topic because the philosophical position of karma and past lives is something that is often swept under the carpet. I think viewing misfortune in this life as some kind of penance for misgiving in some imagined previous life is an abhorrent idea that essentially has some people categorised as deserving their fate by simply being born with some form of disability or other.
Yes indeed, Burmese buddhist nationalism has been a pretty horrible stain on the religion. So to the involvement of Japanese Zen Buddhists in World War 2. Although none of that invalidates the basic idea of karma, which in my view is a logical and consistent basis for ethics.
Quoting I like sushi
Totally agree, but I think as soon as it's used for justification of the suffering of others, it's a misreading of the principle. Also the rationalisation of disability or illness as 'bad karma' is, I think, pretty abhorent all around. When understood as a regulative principle for one's own actions it's a very different story.
As I already mentioned to you disease in children begs for an explanation if we are to consider them innocent of any wrongdoing (for obvious reasons) in this life. The principle of sufficient reason would require us to posit a previous life whose bad karma has now come back to bite these unfortunate people.
That said, this if you care to notice is just a hypothesis; if one feels that justice should be served and you find karma abhorrent, the onus is on you to come up with an alternative hypothesis. Can't eat your cake and have it too, oui monsieur?
It is especially silly when based on a steadfast belief in reincarnation from one body to another.
Where is having the cake and eating it? I dont quite understand what you are getting at with that line?
It justifies it, because it justifies everything, by making justice a property of nature. And that means that any amount of exploitation is justified.The dogma of karma comforts the fortunate and privileged and blames the afflicted and exploited for their misery. It is entirely natural and commonplace for the privileged to come to believe they deserve their privilege, and karma is simply the Indian version of godswill and the white-man's burden. It fits right in with the caste system, and helps to sustain it along with rampant toxic sexism. I am not the expert, but my suspicion is that the doctrine does not come from Buddha himself, but is an accretion that probably predates him. rather like Roman cultural accretions to Christianity unconnected with the reported words or deeds of Jesus.
Incorrect. In the Buddha's day, meritorious karma was accrued by performing the appropriate ritual sacrifices, and for the laity by supporting the Brahmin priesthood. The Buddha kept the basic principle but attached it wholly and solely to the qualities of intentional actions and their results. For him, a brahmin is not an hereditary privilege but the mark of true virtue. It's a bedrock principle of Buddhism from the beginning, although I agree that when it is used to rationalise fatalism it has been misappopriated. Again see what Bhikhu Thanisarro has to say on it (he's an American monk alive and practicing today) https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/NobleStrategy/Section0005.html
('The first will one day be last' - some famous religious teacher.)
Quoting unenlightened
Not the way the Buddha taught it. It's one of the main reasons Buddhism did not survive in India. There's been a political movement towards Buddhism amongst the Dalits (outcastes) in the 20th Century because it's outside of the caste system.
This is almost what I was suggesting - that karma functioned already in society to maintain privilege, and early Buddhism attempted to undermine this function. Nevertheless, the old fatalism persisted in the name of Buddhism, just as the Roman Empire persists in the Catholic Church. The usual story of the establishment perverting the spiritual insights of spiritual leaders.
Excellent point! Gracias señor!
Karma indeed justifies exploitation by convincing people that they deserve it. However, to play the Devil's advocate, I'd say this: There's a long lead time between suffering, even of the severest kind, and the awareness of it & the will to end it! This too is karmic in essence i.e. our wish to put an end to our pain occurs only when/after our karmic IOUs have been paid off. In other words, sticking to the issue of exploitation, the need to improve our state of affairs marks the beginning of a debt-free life, karmically speaking.
To cut to the chase, the need for liberation from dukkha (dissatisfaction) of all kinds, including but not limited to exploitation, is nothing but good karma.
We all want that justice should be served, but when justice is served, we recoil in disgust! What gives? This is our bad karma for we fail to see the light. I'm gonna get roasted for this.
Your attachment to the karmic explanation stinks. What is this 'our pain' you speak of? I want my pain to end immediately. You speak of our pain by way of appropriating the pain of others and then use the notion of karma to justify your complacency about it.
You're on target, but in my defense I'd ask for an alternative explanation for childhood suffering. Why do innocents, sometimes, go through hell? What hypothesis do you offer? Remember PSR (the principle of sufficient reason).
Do evil and you're born in a condition/in circumstances that are not conducive to your well-being, this in turn makes you unable to see the light of Buddhism and you sin more. This means your next life is even worse and you sin even more...so on and so forth until you find yourself in the center of jahanam. :fear:
[quote=Jesus]Inasmuch as ye do it unto the least of these my children, ye do it unto me.[/quote]
This is the radical karma of Buddhism, that since the self is an illusion, you yourself are the Buddha and the tyrant and the innocent sufferer, and to alleviate the suffering of another is as commonsensical as for the right hand to bandage a cut on the left hand.
Good call! Count me in! Be warned though I don't usually put my money where my mouth is. Apologies! Medici, cura te ipsum. I can't help when I myself am in need of help. I would be the laughing stock of the very cosmos. Nevertheless, I do my bit (when I can).
Alhamdulillah!
Quoting unenlightened
I'm not under any llusions as to what karma is or is not. It seems to provide a fairly good albeit unpalatable explanation for evil - recall the problem of evil, a thorn in the side of Christianity, an irresolvable inconsistency vis-à-vis an omnibebevolent deity.
Indeed, as I said already, established religion is always the perversion of spirituality. Jesus spoke of 'the Father', not of 'an omni-benevolent deity', and a glance at the Old Testament does not give the impression of omni-benevolence at all, but more of an arbitrary tyrannical vindictive jealous and cruel god. More like a Roman Emperor than a crucified carpenter. 'God is good' is another justification of the status quo by the powers that be. The ultimate demonstration that God is good is that he has put the white man in charge of the world.
You seem to be well aware of the facts. However, it's worth questioning the motives of people/critics who deny the authenticity of the Biblia Sacra and then when it suits them, quote passages from it to prove their case. Double standards any which way you look at it? You can't have the cake and eat it too, oui monsieur?
That said, you're on the right track as far as I can tell. An omnibenevolent deity is incongruent with facts as they stand. I feel sorry about that and, on behalf of those who insist God is all-good, I must tender a heart-felt apology to the world and the cosmos itself.
G'day señor!
To an extent, but only to an extent. There are clear differences one can find between the teachings of Jesus as recorded in the bible and other sources such as the Gospel of Thomas, and the doctrines of Popes and moral philosophers; the same goes for all the religions. There is an original transformative insight, and people are attracted to what they see from the outside of that, but they do not themselves have the understanding, and thereafter things become more and more distorted. Rich men like to hear that they can enter heaven with their laden camels, and they will employ a priest who will explain that it is so, and Jesus meant something else.
And of course the fake news merchants of the day will have put their own messages into the mouths of the great and the good as well. One has therefore to look for a consistent message amongst the millennia of distortions and additions. Or start again from scratch to seek an insight of one's own.
I would express the OT this way: if the nature of this world is able to completely annihilate any human effort to do something good, to improve, to be more generous, altruist, whats the point of making any effort in trying to be better? I mean annihilate at all levels, including the very person who is trying to be better. In other words, we have absolutely no evidence that anything good causes anything else good.
My answer is that the motivation to be or to do anything good cannot rely on anything objective. It can only be a choice, based on the whole of ourselves, our humanity, our emotions, our sensitivity, without excluding some reasoning.
"Distortion" is the key word here, oui? Bad karma, the severe case of the sniffles you get on the day before an important exam!
That is the reason why many 19th and 20th century Buddhist advocates would claim that Buddhism is 'scientific', where karma is portrayed as a causal law on a par with Newton's laws of motion - which of course it can't be, as there's no way of measuring it. But I still believe the idea provides a naturalistic basis for ethics.
It I immediately sends us to religions and spiritualities because it is entirely religious in nature. The concepts of cause and effect arent religious, karma is entirely religious.
Indeed, what could be more natural than a social hierarchy and subjugation of the underclass.
Figures.
//even found a ref!//
Wage, is fundamentally a method for assigning a quantitative value to a good deed. Next, in the basic principles of economics, comes a proposal of a harmony between the value of a good deed, wage, and the value of property, capital. The problem is that these two values are not necessarily compatible, as they most often are derived from different ideals, yet they are quantified by the same monetary scale. Economics can only be successful if the two are related to each other as the means to the same end, but capital generally has a different source from wage. And Karma would probably be better measured as a form of capital rather than a form of wage.
:lol: I dont need to imagine a world without religion. Only fucking fools cant imagine such a world though, I would say.
Could I start a company selling good karma and buying bad (karmic) debts à la Jesus Christ? This is an already established practice albeit on a small scale in some Himalayan communities (casting a wide net here)! :chin:
The consequences of unintentional actions are just as real as intentional ones. It's amazing how twisted up people can get over simple cause and effect.
Quoting Benj96
Depends on what you mean by "essence". Each person is an amalgam of various characteristics. Just because one of those characteristics changes does not mean that we are not the same person. After all, what it is that is changing? To even assert change is to assert that there is something with an identity that changes. And what type of changes are we talking about if not the perceptions we have of the world as a result of our actions?
Is karma only related to how the consequences of our actions affect other people, animals, or anything else in the world? Other people's reactions to the consequences of our actions are just as real as falling of your bike when not riding it correctly or being bit by the snake you are harassing, and can change us just as much as being socially isolated when you steal from someone.
You'd be bereft if it happened - nothing to kvetch about.
Quoting Harry Hindu
With the significant caveat that they're out of our control.
It is, needless to say, a preposterously silly view that has no evidence for it at all. Indeed, all the evidence points in the other direction. The world seems to be an unjust place in which the distribution of harms and benefits has nothing directly to do with the morality of one's behaviour or character traits. Some bad people thrive, some don't; some good people do, some don't. And note one example - just one - of a good person having an awful time would refute the theory.
And note too that as we are born innocent then all the harms of childhood are unjust. To posit a past life in which one has done wrong and for which those harms are the deserved consequence is simply to have ignored the evidence in favour of one's theory.
It is no accident, I think, that believers in the Karmic worldview also believe that it is crucially important not to think. For the view simply does not stand to reason. This is not to deny that inculcating the view in people may have moral benefits: it will motivate those too dumb to scrutinize it to behave well. But the existence of moral reasons to believe or inculcate a view is not evidence that the view is true.
Religion is only a small, and rather silly when you think about it, part of the world.
Imagine a larger world
It may prove hard to do
Other things to kvetch about
With no religion, whoo-hoo!
[quote=Ms. Marple]Most interesting.[/quote]
The Greek notion of metempsychosis doesn't include karma (moral causation). Everybody reborn is given a fresh start, there being no such thing as a karmic debt that carries over from the past life.