Like a self-fulfilling prophecy… indeed…
It’s more synchronicity than cognitive dissonance as in a lot of cases people still consider coincidences a good thing.
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Karma is complicated. Maybe it doesn’t exist but it sometimes feels real to me.
If it does it got twenty years of mty life. Ft
I agree with Insidemind.
I’m unsure if it exist in the grand scheme of the universe.
But from what I’ve read from the Tibetan Buddhists and lots of other Buddhists sects, I feel it’s safe to say it’s not as simple as some believe.
I don’t think mental illness is the result of Karma though.
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Karma is your luck based on how you live your life. If you live in moderation and go with the flow, your karma will be good. However if you live in excess and go against the grain far too much, you will have bad karma. Bad karma and good karma are sometimes two sides of the same coin. Sometimes they change. They are at times in motion. They are at other times standing still. The knowledge you get from these is to learn how to harmonize with yourself and your environment and/or any higher power you may or may not believe in.
You are projecting your ideas of right and wrong onto a forgien concept that comes from a culture that has different ideas of what and what not to do. If you looked at the actual source and those who practice it as a concept to better understand it, there might be something there you could understand about what you do not understand.
“There is light in the darkness, and darkness in the light. They are both at the same time, and yet neither as well”
OK, we’re, going through this again. I guess it’s a healthy dialogue. There’s many people who would agree with some of the basic points I made in my answer. And believing or not believing is a matter of choice and opinion.
I probably would have a sizable number of people who agree with some of my points. I don’t mind discussing things with you, its good we can disagree and later on still answer each other posts but it irked me months ago when we had a difference of opinion and I was made to feel wrong or convinced to feel wrong (you likely don’t remember) by your arguments and somehow my opinion was made out to be unreasonable or offensive.
But I read it back awhile later and I kicked myself for not defending my opinion more because it was as true as I had said all along. And this is another case. Everybody opinion on this thread is not a comprehensive in-depth definitive answer to this subject. But that’s just the way it is.
Maybe my answer was simplistic but it is mainly correct on a daily day-to-day basis. My opinion is this: that Karma, as most people understand it is not a principle that is a law of physics or has to work. It’s kind of useless to discuss it here though when whole books have been written about it and the concept has been around for centuries.
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It sounds like pure justice will take care of itself.
Is not real. I find it a cruel concept.
Like I said, and I don’t mean to offend when I say this, you are projecting your ideas onto a concept that is foreign to you. We all do it. Just because people agree with you doesn’t make it correct. Like if everyone said let’s jump off a bridge tomorrow to praise the flying tea pot in space. If everyone agrees, does that make it right? There are some things that are true however whether you believe them or not.
But back to what I was saying before. We know things based on the past we inherited. When we encounter something new, our reaction to that is going to affect us and everyone around us, just as everyone else’s reaction will affect you and everyone around them. Our reaction has such long reaching consequences that we cannot begin to comprehend the long distance and lasting effects it will have because the only thing we know is what is in front of us and what we know from our past. If someone is robbing a store, and you take action to kill him, do you even stop to think that maybe this guy has a family to feed and he can’t get on with the paycheck he is making? Most people go into the mode that they are familiar with - “this person is a punk; they need to get a job; what scum, do they even realize what they are doing to the economy? ect”
The “karma” is just the hand you are dealt, it doesn’t have any inherent good or bad about it based on a past life you had or whatever. Some people might think that but people see what they see because they see what they are used to seeing. They can make false connections too just like schizophrenics. When someone looks into the dark, their brain makes images that aren’t there because they are used to seeing something daily, and consistently. So that is the karma they are dealing out into the world, and that is the karma that will come back if enough people believe the same thing. But that is not the thing that makes something right or wrong. Some things are true whether you believe in them or not. So we have to learn to transcend the things we know and understand there are some things that we will just not understand and some things we will and somethings we think we will.
But even back to the “books” concept. The books that may have been written recently do not guarantee your understanding. The ones that were made centuries ago have had some that went through a lot of destruction and erasure due to certain entities that do not want them around. And there surviving ones have not been translated into English. I do not claim to understand the concept completely but if I were to try and teach everyone in this thread, it would have to require literally rewiring their brains, and some more than others. And that is more energy than I think I have to put out.
But the concept of what is good and bad in the yin/yang are always moving. They are always in motion, evolving as we evolve along with our understanding of things. We decide what is right or wrong as a group. But what we believe is right or wrong is always changing. Our memories are added to a narrative once formed and they change every time they are recalled. So every time we recall a memory we might think is right or wrong, our understanding of it changes. So is it so hard to believe that our understanding of right or wrong changes along with it? We all understand things from a certain point of view. Just because one’s point of view does not match up with another’s does not mean either is right or wrong, but yet they might be both right and wrong at the same time. And it doesn’t matter where you are from, what values you have on treating people, we are all in this together. And I don’t mean just schizophrenics or psychosis patients. I mean this whole country. What one person does affects the other and we just need to realize that and understand that we have to harmonize to be able to move past our current cultural tension.
I hope i get reincarnated and come back as a fat cat
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I vote cat 444444444444444444
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Well, I don’t have to agree with you. I never claimed I knew everything about it. But I think most people understand when I say that most people who think about the subject think of it in general terms i.e. you do something bad, something bad will happen to you because of it. And this basic tenet is where my post begins.
By the way, billions of people believe in everything the bible or the Koran or other sacred books says. That doesn’t make it right. That doesn’t mean I have to agree with it or that I have to follow it. And the concept of Karma falls in the same category to me. Or that anyone else has to follow it. People will strongly believe in something that means something to them and means nothing to other people and if thousands of Buddhists or monks believe in Karma that doesn’t mean I have to.
See, this what I mean? Living a good honest life will not shield you from suffering, poverty, violence or umpteen other bad things that are part of the human condition. Living a good honest life has it’s own rewards but it doesn’t guarantee or protect you from other people or life’s tribulations as people who believe in Karma would have you believe.
It’s funny because when I entered the hospital long ago when I was 21 my first thought was that “we are all in this together and we will all help each other”. Well that belief was trashed the first day. We were not “in it together” any more than everybody in high school was in it together. I was practically non-existent in high school and whatever I thought or did in four years didn’t make a dent in what most other people around me thought or did.
My sister told me about a month ago that I was a good kid growing up I was surprised because I thought I was a bad kid. But so I was good. How does Karma explain that I am schizophrenic for 38 years? We have good people on these forums. What did we do to deserve a lifetime of suffering? And almost every human on earth has done a mixture of good deeds and bad deeds. How is Karma (if it’s real) going to sort out who deserves a good life and who deserves a bad life? The monks who live their life following Karma have had zero effect on my life (no disrespect intended). The guy growing a garden in his backyard in Poland has no effect on me even if he went crazy and blew up his own house and his neighbors house with a pipe bomb. Everybody does not affect me.
I’m sorry but I’m not going to pick apart every aspect of your answer to me or point out what I see as weak arguments in a couple cases. But Karma is generally understood by the layman as “you do something bad, something bad will happen to you”. And I’m not buying it.
Both Hinduism and Buddhism base Karma on the belief that people have multiple lives. In this way, a person can live a perfect life in this one but still suffer tremendously, due to their actions of a previous life.
Thinking others don’t get the karma in this life is often the case, but no one gets away with a single thing. It is paid in the next lives, if not paid in this one. Not believing in karma for those that have wronged and go on to live happy and fulfilling lives, is still part of your own bad karma, as it annoys you and makes you feel bad, however, they will pay. We all pay. No one gets away with anything.
Having realised that the bad karma in this life is due to your own actions can give you a sense of peace. Not knowing why you suffer so much can cause you a lot of pain. (Why me?), however, once you have gained the knowledge of karma then you can accept and understand your own pain without knowing the specific action you did as to why. It simply is. In this way acceptance and peace can be found.
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This discussion is getting too heavily into religion so I’ve closing it down.