So I was listening to commentary about the Buddhist allegory “Journey to the West.” In the story whenever the characters put their adventuring on hold in order to help others their journey becomes ironically shorter than it would have been if they had just continued on their journey without rendering assistance.
So my question is how cynical can you be with karma? If you know that you’re currently running positive can you skip helping others until your balance sheet becomes, well, balanced? Does trying to game the system in this way forfeit your good status?
The wheel is turning and you can’t slow down
You can’t let go and you can’t hold on
You can’t go back and you can’t stand still
If the thunder don’t get you then the lightning will
One drop of wine in a barrel of sewage is sewage.
One drop of sewage in a barrel of wine is sewage.
The Bible says, “God will not be mocked.” In the same vein, Karma will not be gamed.
It ain’t like money in the bank, where, if you have a hell of a lot of it, it doesn’t hurt so much if some is lost. It’s a little more like having a good reputation, where even a little damage really, really hurts.
Trump is doing his level best to prove that Karma doesn’t exist. Unless he’s reincarnated as a dried turd on a mountain path in Tibet, and we’ll never know that for sure.
Not necessarily; think of it as an abstract hypothetical thought-experiment. If karma existed, and had certain properties, what implications would follow? In Buddhist, Hindu, and other beliefs, we have fairly comprehensive descriptions of the idea, and it’s completely valid to explore those.
Sorta like asking, “If you could ask God one question…” or “What if gravity suddenly stopped working…”
It’s Ironic because one would assume that taking a detour on your journey would make your journey longer not shorter, I agree that the story is trying to teach Buddhist values but if everyone listening had a perfect understanding and willingness to follow Buddhist teaching then a story that teaches Buddhist concepts would be worthless.
We don’t need to establish that Karma exists in order to discuss and analyze it, especially in a story, any more than we need to establish the Greek pantheon in order to discuss the odyssey.
Seriously OP, did you read the thread I linked to in post #7? After you get past the early chorus of “karma is bunk” you get some informed commentary on what karma means to the people who coined the term.
It might still be bunk, but as quasi-religious ideas go, this one is more logically consistent than many. Which affords more opportunity to discuss it and its implications intelligently while assuming *arguendo *that it isn’t bunk.