Basically (as others have said) the classic concept of karma as expressed in in formal Hinduism/Buddhism is that it affects rebirth and that the results of either good or bad karma are not reaped in the present lifetime.
The idea that you have referred to as the “hippie” understanding of karma is really just a fuzzy, popularized misrepresentation. According to the views of real Hindus and Buddhists, Mengele may not have paid in this lifetime but he will spend many many, many successive lifetimes working out his bad karma as a dung beetle or a fecal bacterium before he can even be human again.
Personally, I don’t believe in karma either, though.
The 60’s “hippie” movement did not express any belief in Karma that I know of, while the “flower children” promoted peace and love they were not above breaking the law to achieve their goals.
American type Karma as I have described it above is generally held by the “New Agers” and “Pagan” movements of recent years. Near death experiences point out the “You will reap what you sow” as truth.
An example might be one who is bigoted against a certain race or religion will return in their next life as a member of the hated group. Not as punishment, but to walk in the shoes of those they hated for understanding.
People always come back as people, it would serve no purpose to do otherwise. This is the current beliefs of spiritual groups.
Well, many can remember their past lives, and there is a lot of very good documentation on the subject. From what I experienced you don’t have to come back to earth if you don’t want too, but most do. The perspective is much different from the spiritual than from here.
There is a well documented story of reincarnation in India. It is usually included in most large reincarnation books because so many people witnessed it, some were Americans.
Briefly, a very young boy recognized a salesman new to his village as his cousin in a previous life. The cousin owed him money and the boy demanded his money. Shaken by the event the salesman admitted owing money to the person the boy said he was in his previous life. The incident was investigated by the whole village including the visiting foreigners.
When the young boy was taken to the village of his previous life, he quickly, without any help, went to the house he had lived in and named the people living there who were his previous relatives. Then he went into the back yard and dug under a tree to find a tin filled with coins he had buried in his previous life.
I can’t show anyone reincarnation is true, or provide any proof beyond the writings of others. So it is something you believe or not. Science can provide no proof that consciousness resides in the brain, so anything is possible.
When I had my near death experience I learned this was my 59th reincarnation. Slow learner I guess. I feel I am doing much better this time around, at least now I know what it is I am trying to accomplish.
I feel there are some serious misconceptions here.
As so often is the case some people have dived into discussing a subject w/o understanding the concept in the first place.
Karma is part of a pair of words that mean action-reaction.
It is not something you can believe in any more than you can believe in gravity. It is simply a description of how things ARE.
Westerners seem to think karma is the eastern non-personal equivalent of their big nobodaddy up in the sky delivering justice.
Well, it’s got nothing to do with this, it does NOT mean retribution.
Karma simply points to the fact that forces and stories set in motion don’t simply come to an end, they carry on.
Being compassionate will produce compassion (in the long run) being violent will produce violence (oh, my, DO US-Americans have something coming to them). And yes, these forces do have a tendency to return to their source one way or another.
But this is never a clear tit for tat.
Please leave the idea of reincarnation out of this, it only gets far more complicated. Before discussing reincarnation you would have to get clear on the puzzling question of WHO or WHAT exactly is supposed to get reincarnated, which leads us to the even more important question WHO lives in the first place.
Or to quote a famous koan: Who is hearing this sound? No superficial answers allowed.
IMO reincarnation is not a buddhist idea anyway, it was merely inherited from Hinduism. The old guy refused to answer questions about this, probably because he felt it only leads to speculation and really is irrelevant. Who are you is the real question.
Yes, flying into the wild blue yonder is refreshing, cleans out the cobwebs of our old static beliefs. Knowledge comes from outside the boxes we have built for ourselves or allowed others to build.
Can’t remember how many times I forced myself to study things I didn’t believe in. I have never regreted it.
From what I understand, karma is a result of how in harmony one lives with dharma. If it is dharma for someone to be “evil”, then that person will end up with beneficial karma, which will result in a “better” placement in the next cycle of birth, if that person is “evil”.
Karma means Action, doing your Duty, and has nothing to do with results. to know more, read the Bhagavad Gita . the Bhagavad Gita says that a person must do his/her duty, and not think of hte consequences. like Arjun, who is in the battleground, facing his enemies, who are actually his half-brother, with whom he has grown up. Krishna tell him that he must fight regardless of who his enemies are, as that is his duty as a Kshatriya (a warrior) Prince. He is not to be bothered by the results. basically, Karma places our actions/duties over everything else.
by placing onus uponthe results of your actions, you miss out the concept entirely. and if the dictators die peaceful deaths at 95, they will be reborn into a hard life. hope this helps.
I am pretty damned sure that what you are referring to is Dharma, which correponds losely to “duty” or “fate”; Krsna told Arjuna to fight because that was his dharma. (Karma is pretty much the way people have “understood” it here.)
“The universal moral law of Karma provides justice and order to a beginningless and endless universe.”
I brought this quote from the link in the above post.
Trying to define Karma is a little like trying to define God, it depends on who you ask. Words do not describe much, they only communicate general meanings.
“Thoughts soar like eagles while words trudge along in pursuit.” Webster
Ya know, what goes around surely does come around. I don’t claim to understand the mechanism, but I’ve seen thr turth of it enough in my life to accept it.
no, i meant Karma. Krisna told Arjun to fight, because it was his karma. The battleground of Kurukshetra was divided between the Pandavas, who were on the side of Dharma, and and the Kaurvas, who were on Adharma’s side. Krsna told Arjun that he had to protect the Dharma, even if meant killing his brothers, and he called it Karma yog. in fact the third, fourht and fifth chapters of the Mahabharat are the Karma Yog, Gyan-KArma-Sanyas yog and the karma-sanyas yog. The concept of Karma is supreme in the Mahabharat. and this is where the college term paper is wrong. the Mahabharat has nothing to do with Dharma. Rather it is about Karma to uphold the Dharma.
The principles of Karma answer many of the ‘unanswerable’ questions that westerners have about the universe. What’s the meaning of life? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why did that child die young? Assuming you believe in a god of some sort, there must be an answer to such things. Karma, AFAIK, fits the bill to a tee. But of course you must accept reincarnation to truly understand how Karma works. With previous lives, you can thus understand why ‘good things happen to bad people’. Now don’t forget - early Christianity contained Reincarnation. Jesus spoke about reincarnation. The church removed all references to reincarnation at the same time they started charging for sin redemption. You don’t know what happened in your previous life, thus you don’t know what you need to ‘balance out’. Most of the eastern religions focus on balance (yin/yang, etc). Karma is also so balanced. While, in this context, there isn’t really a ‘good’ or ‘evil’, they are simply experiences. The goal of life - to experience ALL there is to experience, balance your karma, and return to God (and stop reincarnating). In some sense, you need to balance out the ‘good’ karma with the bad. I’m sure the American slave holders and slaves exchanged roles each generation. You abuse, then you need to be abused. It’ll all impressions on your soul, neither bad or good. You simply have to experience all that there is to experience.
