Comforting Thoughts on the Nature of Karma....

[RagAss]

The Karmic wheel takes no prisoners.
It issues no reprieves and
Accepts no requests for vengeance.

The Karmic wheel has no calendar.
It has no ears for pleas of mercy and is
Steadfast in the execution of it's chore.

Pity the sorry soul who induces it's turn.




While the murdering bastards and those who cheer them on in their churches wait for their Rapture,
something very different is taking place on the celestial sphere....

Peace....Rags

[JeffR]

1. Thanks

DU needs one of these reminders about once an hour these days.

Peace.

[babylonsister]

2. The Kharmic wheel - what goes around comes around?

I LOVE this reminder!

[RagAss]

4. Thanks ... me too....

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

3. K&R...

So true.

[RagAss]

5. Thanks Tom...

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

6. Sooner or later...

Bush's karma will run over his dogma.

[StellaBlue]

7. I appreciate the sentiment, but...

that's all it is, sentiment. A platitude. What does around does not come around. Things don't happen for a reason. Things don't always work out for the best.

Tell that to the people who experienced Auschwitz. It would be nice, but it just ain't so. I don't see any evidence.

[babylonsister]

9. Sure, karma doesn't always work, but it does sometimes; I'm

embracing those times.

Yes, perhaps a platitude, but none the less worthy for it!

[StellaBlue]

10. Not to play the devil's advocate

and I am being completely in earnest when I say I appreciate your sentiment, and attempt to be positive and on the side of justice, but...

if it only works sometimes, then it isn't karma. It's coincidence.

[babylonsister]

12. You've got a point. Perhaps because karma involves

being a good person despite the repercussions in your life vs. encountering someone who is a selfish slob who doesn't know what karma is, could care less, and is all about him/her. This could apply in life and politics!
And could also be coincidence.

[Iowa]

23. Good posts by StellaBlue.

I'm retired, but I worked around a great deal of human suffering. Karma is a construct that provides an illusion of justice, but witnessing the suffering of good people soon shatters that illusion.

"No good deed goes unpunished".... "Karma".... I witnessed as much (or more) of the former than the latter.

In the world I lived in, it was a crap shoot.

[pitohui]

28. thanks stella blue

tell it those of us who experienced katrina!

karma is a lie, a damn lie to keep us pacified, it's pie in the sky when we die there will be justice

and yet drownie brownie is making millions on the lecture circuit and caligula jr sits on this throne

there is no justice without human agency

[hopeisaplace]

8. Oh my goodness...

When my kids say something "not so nice" about someone, I always tell
it's "bad karma"...I'm a BIG believer in karma, the law of balance etc.

Thanks I needed that. :)

[Reckon]

11. Just what controls Karma?

Edit: I mean, it must be some force, right?

[lumpy]

25. Perhaps Thought is the force

behind everything.

[Clarkie1]

13. What if it's induced to turn the other way...that would be good, right? nt

[dweller]

14. ah Karma

nothing that you did ... and everything that you do.

dp

[UncleSepp]

36. As you are, so your lot shall be

We live in the world we create every moment. :-)

[AlienGirl]

15. Not always in the way people think it will

As delta-T approaches infinity, P approaches 1.

Seventy years uptime, there are two toddler-age girls playing in a park in Tokyo while their mothers chat. One of the girls used to be--or carries the memories of, whichever suits you best--Donald Rumsfeld. The other used to be a teenage boy in Fallujah, whose life ended in blood and smoke when the bombs fell. They play together, occasionally giggling as if at a private joke that even their mothers don't understand. They hug, getting cracker crumbs in each others' hair.

Tucker

(And that's what I find comforting.)

[babylonsister]

17. Reincarnation? They hug, but what happens when they grow up? nt

[AlienGirl]

19. The point is, there is always a new beginning. No one is ever lost.

No one is beyond hope. There are no monsters. There is no damage anyone can do to you that can't be healed from eventually. There is no one so opposed to you that you would never be able to call them friend.

Maybe they don't meet until they grow up. Maybe they pass by each other without ever seeing each other. Or maybe they meet in a reincarnation workshop on board a cruise ship and become friends knowing the whole history of what has gone before, and they make tasteless jokes about it to each other for the next fifty years. There is always the potential for redemption, and always the potential for healing, and always the potential for friendship.

Tucker

[babylonsister]

20. Wow, and thanks. Oh, to be that forgiving! I thought

the premise behind reincarnation was that you were meant to live the experiences in the next life that you failed to live up to in the previous one.
That's a nice, optimistic viewpoint.

[AlienGirl]

21. I don't think there's a "purpose" to reincarnation

I think it simply is, the way gravity is. What we make of it, like all the rest, is up to us,

I don't think I've ever been called optimistic before. I've just seen a lot of apples fall, is all.

Tucker

[babylonsister]

22. ...

"there is always a new beginning. No one is ever lost.
No one is beyond hope. There are no monsters. There is no damage anyone can do to you that can't be healed from eventually. There is no one so opposed to you that you would never be able to call them friend.

To me, that's a breath of fresh air, and optimistic. So congratulate me on being the first!

:hi:

[AlienGirl]

24. To me, it's just the way the world is

The down side is you don't get revenge. The guy whose former self you'd want to damn to the bleakest pit of Hell is living an unexceptional life somewhere making decent money and usually sleeping just fine, and he's now someone you get along all right with.

The up side is, if you can find him you can bonk him on the head with a giant Mylar balloon.

Tucker

[pitohui]

29. delete EOM

,

[pitohui]

30. hitler isn't lost?

"no one" is ever lost, well eff that then! it just isn't right or fair, i'm sorry, that is wrong

[AlienGirl]

31. Life isn't fair, why would that change given the premise of many lives?

I think reincarnation is a values-neutral phenomenon like gravity. It is because the natural universe is not just that we moral agents must pursue justice in our own actions.

Tucker

[UncleSepp]

35. No, he's got a pretty good sense of direction

Although if he is lost, he won't admit it, and will drive endlessly in the wrong direction. Some things never change, but some things do.

More to the point, nobody means nobody. If there is to be forgiveness for any person, there has to be forgiveness for all people. If we are to forgo judgment of any one soul (since judgment of a soul is not reserved for us), we have to forgo judgment of all souls. That doesn't seem fair, but rightness and fairness are not righteousness and justice. The lost sheep found is treasured more than the sheep who never strayed. This hardly seems fair to the other sheep, does it? What then of the sheep who strayed further than any other? The one thought forever lost, who thought himself a wolf? When he again becomes a lamb, is that not to be valued?

That's what free will is like, and that's what mercy is like. Forgiveness and mercy are far from easy paths, when followed to their ends. It takes a great deal of strength to give up the illusion of power that eternal condemnation gives, or for that matter, eternal reward. In my belief, we are never done, never condemned forever, but also never saved.

[StellaBlue]

16. In a related vein, I have a question about Buddhism

How is this possible?

Tell me if Buddhism does not in fact make both these claims (seemingly contradictory to me):

1 - There is no self, no permanent personality, etc. It is only attachment and illusion, and must be let go of.

2 - There is reincarnation. And karma throughout numerous lifetimes.

How is this possible? This is the main thing that kept me from wholeheartedly embracing Buddhism. I've ended up falling more into Taoism, which is more obvious and logical to me. And minus the superstitious stuff (unless of course you are in a Taoist temple in China or something - I just mean the philosophy doesn't really require any "leap of faith" - which, as far as I can tell, despite claims to the contrary by Westerners, Buddhism does do. I have not seen any definitive, verifiable proof for reincarnation or karma, for instance. Hence my original reply to the OP.

:)

Peace!

[AlienGirl]

18. What would you consider verifiable proof of reincarnation?

There is actually a pretty large amount of evidence for reincarnation out there. Not proof, but evidence. The "minimum hypothesis" that fits the evidence is that somehow living people can access the memories and personalities of dead people, but I find it easier to assume there is some thing which transfers from lifetime to lifetime, carrying our habits and occasionally memories.

Tucker

[StellaBlue]

26. My point is

lack of individual reality (soul/immortal personality/ego, call it what you will) and reincarnation/karma-spread-over-lifetimes are two mutually exclusive assertions of Buddhism.

How can "you" be "reincarnated" as an ant to pay for past misdeeds, when, "you" didn't "exist" to begin with, according to Buddhism.

I could've really gotten into it, but for this logical hang-up.

Taoism is like Buddhism for skeptical skeptics.

[OnionPatch]

27. A book I'm reading now says

that there is something like two of you in a way. There is the ego-centric you, the one that identifies with the body and material issues and it is the one that does not really exist. (Except in your mind? :shrug:) The true you is the essence that evolves and continues.

I'm only on page 27, though, but that's what I got out of a discussion on this topic.

[AlienGirl]

32. Sort of like how people who play role-playing games do it

Each character a good gamer develops will be a unique cohesive individual capable of evolution and change, but none of those "selves" are the gamer.

Tucker

[Lindacooks]

33. Karma takes too long.

Too many murdering bastards are living high on the hog now and have been for years.

[AlienGirl]

34. That's why creating justice is up to people, not nature