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How does karma operate?

How karma evolved from superstition into prfound philsophy/religion.

From reading about karma I seem to have come to the conclusion that karma started as a superstition of ordinary people without learning and the gift of putting words together by combination and permutation.

Men who would be leaders of other men, i.e., with the bug to take charge of other people's mind and heart, adopt this superstition and embellish it into an apparently unfathomable notion and internally leaking construct of why you are plagued with the troubles of life and your limitations of birth.

Man is a reflective animal, and from the beginning of consciousness and intelligence he has found out that if you do something bad to someone he will get even with you. That is evolution, the law of self-preservation, the golden rule in the negative formulation: Do not unto others what you don't want others to do unto yourself.

This common self-preservation rule of human social interaction leads to the logical notion that supposed someone thinks that I have done something bad to him but it is not true or not as I had really intended, then wouldn't he also try to get even with me?

There then is the rise of the superstition, a belief not founded on logic and evidence but fear, first fear of fellowmen's revenge on you for any and every offense you do to them, then the fear got elevated to unknown forces of nature like the tsunami and earthquake and lightnings and thunders, which unknown forces of nature are given or endowed by man's imagination with personalities.

What is a personality? A personality is the complex of features in a being whereby the being can be emotional, free to choose what he wants or does not want, to exercise biases and entertain prejudices, notwithstanding his intelligence and use of reason.

So we have the superstition of karma, the notion that something or someone must be angry with me for whatever offense I might have caused him, or even that someone is just mean and likes to play sadism with me just to entertain himself to glory in his power.

Eventually, the would-be leaders of men in Hindu societies and then in the peoples who would be followers of Gautama, developed the common superstition of karma into a most intricate and complicated and complex and consequently a most confused doctrine by which people should live under and observe, in order to in the grand scheme of things get liberated from evil or suffering, even on the cosmic dimensions of being and non-being.


Yrreg
 
An example of karma from eating flesh meat.

When you read about karma from Buddhist authors, they are those who are totally unminful of how things can be so absurd because they have the gift of blind faith; and there are those who know how things can be so absurd, and you will notice their coping mechanisms as you read, namely, humor and apologies.

As you read these more open-minded authors you will notice that there is an undercurrent but obvious strain of humor in their expositions of karma and the no-self and rebirths, or and both you will notice how they assume an apologetic stance, admitting that the whole matter is so complicated and complex and confused.

Here is one example of karma from a writer with blind faith.

[ Paragraphing by Yrreg ]

http://online.sfsu.edu/~rone/Buddhism/Buddhist Diet.htm

......

When we kill, we increase and perpetuate the bad karma of the killing karma. This bad karma will come back to us in this life or the next, but certainly has a more immediate affect on the being that we have just killed. Spreading the killing karma affects the whole so much that it collects and perpetuates, eventually leading to wars in the future.

When a person dies, their soul can split up into several animals - a flock of sheep, a hive of bees, a hill of ants, etc. When one takes the life of one of these animals, they are actually taking part of the life of the human that once was.

The Shurangama Sutra tells how a person who eats a sheep may become a sheep in the next life, and how the sheep might become a person. In a repetitive cycle, "they eat each other" (Shurangama Sutra, 80).

There is no hierarchy of sentient beings; although each are at different levels, they are equally important. So, killing an animal is really an act of murder; eating the animal is cannibalism. Following this line of belief, we can see why many Buddhists practice liberating animals, or saving animals that are destined to be slaughtered. The Buddha recommended this practice:

Whenever a Bodhisattva sees a person preparing to kill an animal, he should devise a skillful method to rescue and protect it, freeing it from its suffering and difficulties. (12)

(One theory for the rapidly increasing human overpopulation is that due to modern mass market meat, animal testing, industrialization and science, we are killing more animals than ever before. These beings that are killed may come back as humans, thus increasing the human population).

I have briefly summarized the reasons behind the Buddhist diet, founded on the moral precepts. I urge the reader to consider these ideas; as Dharmachari Saaramati adds, ......
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See? now you know why human population is increasing by leaps and bounds, on geometric proportion.


Yrreg
 
...

So, if you lead a vicious moral life you will get your comeuppance in some future life, similarly also with a virtuous life you will land into good steads in the future. Yrreg
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Yes, but it always should be born in mind that neither is desirable, due to impermanence. All forms of conditional happiness carry the seeds of misery, and that misery is craving. All conditional elements of a person are annihilated upon death. The unconditional elements, however are not. This forms the basis of retribution, and right practice. The whole point of a layman's effort is to aquire some apprehension of the difficult (for most) natural state of joyfulness of an unfettered soul, but it is often impossible for people to tell, much less apprehend which is superior and inferior, especially if their conscience weighs a ton.
 
See? now you know why human population is increasing by leaps and bounds, on geometric proportion.
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Now there's a charming idea, livestock brutally killed on a factory farm being reborn into third-world countries. That stupid, useless, aggressive cow that ended up as a Big Bacon Classic you are eating might have been reborn as a future Ayatollah in Iran.
 
kurious_kathy said:
How does karma work? There's no such thing, but a man does reap what he sows. And what ever you dish out to others you can expect it back ten times over, good or bad.
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Hey, you forgot women: this certainly seems to be true with your compounding stupidity over time. There's nothing wrong with philosophical disagreements, but please, at least attempt to hold yourself to some standard of decency, and try not to contradict yourself, lest your posts be labeled deliberate trolls as people can't comprehend how someone with an IQ of 50 can type in complete sentences.
 
Still no concrete account of how karma operates.

I have to confess as readers might have noticed that up to the present I have not brought up the question how exactly karma operates, as like in the concrete assembly line processing of say digestion in an animal like man.

In man there is an input of all kinds of matters, nutritious and beneficial to health, and junks of all sorts which if they are useless can even be harmful and deadly.

It is for the digestive system of the animal or man in our particular concern to sort out the good stuffs and assimilate them into the body's constitution for keeping alive, healthy, and active, while rejecting the bad stuffs pronto before they wreak irremediable injury and even death.

We all know from elementary science how digestion works, first everything has got be screened by the oral cavity of man and treated with saliva; anyway if people don't want to chew their foods and just want to gulp them at once to the next station of the digestive tract, the foods have got to get to the stomach -- if they land elsewhere like the lungs cavity, then you will be in trouble, no digestion but even suffocation and death can follow.


No, I have not found any such concrete account of the operation of karma among the established Buddhist sources I have read so far. What they do is go around and around with words. How does Karma work? By dependent origination. How does dependent origination work? By universal interconnected causation? How does universal interconnected causation work? By karma.

The more daring theorists among Buddhist writers talk about karma residing in a man's thought, or more broadly in a man's consciousness. Okay, now what happens to his thought and consciousness upon death. Very simple, it passes right away to his next rebirth, whether as again human or as a cow or an ant; if as a cow or an ant, then he just has to wait until that rebirth comes about wherein he comes back as human -- for the human rebirth is the only kind of rebirth where you can work out your bad karma and store up good karma.

Where is man's thought and consciousness while he is in transition from one rebirth to another in the passage which we know to be death? No trouble here, the question is not relevant, because it is founded upon a false assumption, namely that there is a period when the man's thought or consciousness is without any host like another human or a cow or an ant -- which are all sentient beings.

The fact is that when death occurs the thought or consciousness of a sentient being, in our case a man, right away without any intervening time passes to another sentient being that is coming forth just then, and that is the rebirth of the deceased man.

That seems to make some sense; except that Buddhist theorists have to tell us what exactly they mean by a man's thought and/or his consciousness? For we know that a man's thought and/or consciousness can be interrupted as when he faints, when he is in a coma, or when he is under general anesthesia.

In all such states of man's as we know from medical science, where is the thought and consciousness of man wherein is stored the karma listing and machinery?


I have to read more from these Buddhist theorists. Gautama is of no help, because he does not know about cerebrum and neurons, genetics, and the origin of the phenomenon of life from the standpoint of science. And besides, Gautama has the convenient habit of taking to task disciples who ask pointless question like when and where did the very first sentient being come into the universe?


Yrreg
 
yrreg said:
I have to confess as readers might have noticed that up to the present I have not brought up the question how exactly karma operates, as like in the concrete assembly line processing of say digestion in an animal like man.
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I'll let you in on two little secrets:
  1. Like the fine label of packaged grass, I'm not sure anybody has bothered reading the onerous volume of your posts, except masochists, people on Vicodin, and real men.
  2. Understanding of karma, like basic right and wrong (sentience), arises by implication of intelligence (a form of power), and unaffliction (absense of craving and forms of violence), and a undefined "something else".
 
Attempting to be somewhat more clear, I will say, that as retribution is shed - or ideally - annihilated, that even in a relative sense, your life is set on a different course, but I've known some people who carried an enormous weight - I often wondered if it was them, being so filled with turmoil and confusion, that instigate these circumstances. But as soon as they made any attempt at redemption or appeal, heaven descended on them like a hammer in a very negative and abrupt way, as if by way of response ("Ok, let's speed this process up, then, if you are so sincere.."). It is also important to keep in mind, when dealing with retribution, the four general types of legacy people carry with them:
  1. As I don't think it is possible for something existing in the lower universe to migrate to human existence, these are humans who, made gross hate (materialism) craving (greed) and or disbelief in cause and effect (ignorance) and have volitionally degraded or destroyed the lives of others, are destined to the lower universe.
  2. Those who previously carried the legacy of an animal and obtained the auspicious human form. These types, though posessing the capabilities of a human, have the basic motivations and ignorance of animals.
  3. Those who have maintained their existence as the human form and developed great sentience, and to varying degrees, naturally have shed the legacy of the other three destinies and their endless sub forms. As this is shed, the greater capabilities humans posess become unobstructed, their minds eventually becoming fixed on uniting form and function, and their heart fixed on uniting the subjective and objective.
  4. Those who previously existed in but fell from the upper universe. They are obsessed with metaphysical phenomena, self-indulgence, and form.
 
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Some suggestions to Buddhist theorists.

Maybe Buddhist theorists can resort to the analogies I have in mind for them to illustrate how karma operates.

Karma is a listing of things which you have done of good or ill: the good will return you with good in some later time of your present rebirth or in some future rebirth, and the ill will return you with ill similarly.

In your actual present rebirth in current time you are reaping the good karma from the good done in the past, and the ill or bad karma from the bad done in the past.

Buddha gave five examples of karma:

(From my post #57 above)

Here are the five kinds of persons who can be and are the hosts of karma in the five narratives recounted by the Buddha:
1. Murderer of parents, who blamed it on bandits, but himself got murdered in turn by bandits.
2. Ugly but rich woman who was given to anger with others but otherwise generous to them.
3. Beautiful but poor woman who was softspoken with others but stingy with them.
4. Poor but healthy person who was stingy with others but saved living things.
5. Rich but ill person who was generous to others but loved hunting games.​
(See also posts #50 and #51, above.)​

From the science of accounting we have the statement of assets and liabilities and the balance sheet of credits and debits, and from the technologies of mechanics and electronics and computer we have the feedback operation.

Now, even though there is some vacillation or hesitancy from the part of Buddhist theorists of the West, nonetheless they are or have no choice but to accept and propound that the act that is recorded in the karma listing is a moral act of the moral realm, a deed done with presence of mind, with knowledge, with free choice, and independently by a person, in our present context, the karma host.

But they also maintain that the karma system is of the in effect physical realm, once it is set in motion with a moral deed or by moral causality, the physical chain reaction or physical causality gets going until its final denouement is played out in the future, even in some distant rebirth of the karma host millennia after.

So, from our accounting science of keeping strict faithful and carefully preserved records of assets and liabilities and of credits and debits in regard to our material worth and cash situations/transactions, we have for our Buddhist theorists a perfect analogy for their karma system.

And from the contraption of the feedback device in mechanics, electronics, and also computer, we have for our Buddhist theorists a perfect analogy for their illustration of how karma works, from past to the present to the future.


If I were a Buddhist theorist -- and I have said that I can be a very good Buddhist and theorist at that or teacher, even without conviction -- I will explain to my Buddhist audience the dogma of karma, this way:

Karma is a listing of past deeds of goodness or evil each person has done in his cycle of rebirths. This listing is like the statement of assets and liabilities of your earthly worth and the balance sheet of your financial situations/transactions.

Where is this karma listing? It is inside you, not in the bank or with your accountant in his office records.

Now, in this karma listing of assets of good deeds and liabilities of bad deeds, and also credits you have earned with good deeds and the debits you have incurred with bad deeds, there is in the karma system inside you a component that maneuvers a feedback process, so that a good deed produces by feedback a rebound that is good for you, while a bad deed causes by feedback a rebound that is bad for you.

You see now why the murderer of his own parents blaming it on bandits got murdered in his turn by bandits. Murder is the foul deed and murder is the feedback on oneself.

So also women who are generous with people become rich but for being angry habitually with people they become ugly; while women who are softspoken with people become beautiful but for being stingy they become poor; and persons who save living things enjoy good health even though for being stingy they become poor; similarly also persons who are generous with others become rich even though they suffer bad health for indulging in the sport of game hunting.

But you ask me, where inside each one of us is that karma piece of machinery? [Answer] Only enlightened ones like the Gautama know where and what deeds of good or ill correlate with what deeds in the past and to the future. Be not occupied, oh monks, with pointless curiosity. Work out your liberation by good deeds whereby you will earn good karma and attain enlightenment, and be freed of this cycle of samsara.​

What do you guys here say, should I apply for a license to teach Buddhism in my workshop of spirituality?


Yrreg
 
Analyzing a karma text excerpt.

Here is a segment from a text explaining Buddhist karma, trying to show that karma is neither good nor bad, except for our personal preferences and opinions; and then telling us how to avoid just the same bad karma and cultivate good karma, and also escaping the cycle of karma altogether.
http://open-site.org/Society/Religion/Buddhism/Karma/
It could be noted that there is no good karma or bad karma as such, karma is simply the working law of cause and effect, so whatever karma takes a result it is simply a result, whether that is good or bad is distinguished by our personal preferences and opinions at the time, as such we give it a category in either ‘good’ or ‘bad’, but in reality karma is neither good or bad, it is just the way things turn out according to the deeds we do, so we should take some care in choosing how we act in this life, without due care we are likely to revolve in the cyclic existence of Samsara getting lost again and again, inhabiting the realms of others where suffering takes on a new meaning, and all because we lived in ignorance. By choosing to develop mindfulness in our ways we can create better circumstances both for ourselves and in turn for all others also, but all this should be done while developing a selfless attitude in life with intentions which are good.

(Sources: E-Sangha Buddhism Portal)
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There are three thoughts the author is trying to tell us:

1. There is really no such thing as good or bad karma;

2. It is all our personal preferences and opinions;

3. How to release ourselves just the same from the karma system altogether.

​

I will break up the excerpt into lines and rearrange them according to #1, #2, or #3, as the lines are concerned with each corresponding numbered thought.


The following lines belong to #1 thought:

It could be noted that there is no good karma or bad karma as such,

karma is simply the working law of cause and effect,

so whatever karma takes a result it is simply a result,

but in reality karma is neither good or bad,

it is just the way things turn out according to the deeds we do,

​

The following lines belong to #2 thought:

whether that is good or bad is distinguished by our personal preferences and opinions at the time,

as such we give it a category in either ‘good’ or ‘bad’,

​

The following lines belong to #3 thought:

so we should take some care in choosing how we act in this life,

without due care we are likely to revolve in the cyclic existence of Samsara getting lost again and again,

inhabiting the realms of others where suffering takes on a new meaning,

and all because we lived in ignorance.

By choosing to develop mindfulness in our ways we can create better circumstances both for ourselves and in turn for all others also,

but all this should be done while developing a selfless attitude in life with intentions which are good.

​

I honestly can't imagine how the lengthy prescription is warranted from the above thoughts #1 and #2.

What the author should have prescribed in thought #3 as a release from the cycle of karma and samsara is just to tell people to change their personal preferences and opinions about what is good or what is bad for themselves.

As a matter of fact that is what we are witnessing at present, the change and even revolution in morality in sexual reproductive ethics.

But that change in ethics or morality by mere modification of personal preferences and opinions, that is certainly not justifiable either, whatever the possibilities offered by modern science and technology; I for one believe that there are still some absolute canons of ethics or morality.


What do I say about the above segment on karma being neither good nor bad, etc.? I think the author is a very shallow thinker; he can be trusted to parrot ideas from the Buddha but not to make sense of anything. Unless you have the blind faith of a Buddhist, the whole caboodle is all nonsense.


Yrreg
 
What do you guys here say, should I apply for a license to teach Buddhism in my workshop of spirituality?
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Excuse me, but exactly, what is the point you are making here, and what could it take you to realize that nobody likes to read a huge mess of rhetoric that seemingly is trying to make a vague point, but like an ethreal flower, cannot be found anywhere inside the body of it. But I'll speak for everyone here when I say: no. Why?
  1. Even though it will defer your attention to some other group of people, and give this forum relief, it will harm other sentient beings (headaches, boredom, suicidal thoughts).
  2. Highly-functioning animals could likely be trained to comprehend Buddhism, among other things, better and write more coherently with their hooves and paws than you could with 5000, seperated, jumbled sentences.
 
SirPhilip said:
Excuse me, but exactly, what is the point you are making here, and what could it take you to realize that nobody likes to read a huge mess of rhetoric that seemingly is trying to make a vague point, but like an ethreal flower, cannot be found anywhere inside the body of it. But I'll speak for everyone here when I say: no. Why?
  1. Even though it will defer your attention to some other group of people, and give this forum relief, it will harm other sentient beings (headaches, boredom, suicidal thoughts).
  2. Highly-functioning animals could likely be trained to comprehend Buddhism, among other things, better and write more coherently with their hooves and paws than you could with 5000, seperated, jumbled sentences.
Click to expand...


A thousand monkeys with a thousand typewriters and a thousand years...

"It was the best of times it was the blurst of times"
The Simpsons
 
Leave all thinking, ye that enter Buddhism -- Yrreg

Here is another shallow thinker from:
The Arrow River Forest Hermitage
formerly the Arrow River Community Center​

The Arrow River Forest Hermitage is a Theravadin Buddhist monastery and meditation center located in Northern Ontario, fifty miles southwest of Thunder Bay. We have 92 acres of land in a beautiful mixed forest. There are presently five all-weather dwelling places on the property as well as a meditation-hall and kitchen, a sauna and a well-equipped workshop.
http://www.arrowriver.ca/center.html
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Excerpts from an article on karma and natural disasters, my comments are in italics. Allow me to call the attention of readers to parts of the article I put in bold.

Karma and Katrina
http://www.arrowriver.ca/torStar/katrina.html

Natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina or last year's Asian tsunami raise all kinds of questions, including religious ones. For followers of theistic religions this is usually couched in terms of God's agency. This is not an issue in Buddhism, which does not postulate an almighty creator. Instead the question for Buddhists is how to make sense of the law of karma in the face of sudden massive death and suffering. ​

Yes, let's read how the author makes sense.

Simply put, the doctrine of karma teaches a being's experience depends upon their actions. If one does "good" deeds, deeds of generosity or kindness, one experiences happy results. If one does "bad" deeds, deeds of cruelty or selfishness, one experiences unhappy results, in this or a future life. This process is not the judgment of a supreme being, but the process of a natural law like gravity.

Many find it hard to understand how this may work when thousands experience a disaster all at once. The answer is not simple, nor is it without controversy within Buddhist thought. On the one hand, the Buddha taught that it is an error to believe that karma is the sole cause of everything. On the other hand, the Abhidhamma texts also teach that all our sense experiences can be classed as results of karma. This would presumably include the experience of sudden death by drowning.

There is more than one way to reconcile these teachings. Some Buddhists put little stock in the Abhidhamma, as being a later addition to the Buddha's teaching. These thinkers would allow that some events are just random. A more orthodox position within Theravada Buddhism holds that while karma is one cause of a given experience, it is never the sole cause. External conditions must come together to allow a karmic seed to manifest. In this view, all the beings who die in a flood must have made the karmic seed, possibly by deliberately drowning others, in one of their many past lives. We all have many such unmanifested seeds waiting for external conditions to ripen. In this view, those people who "miraculously" escape would be just those who lack the requisite karma.

We must be careful not to use the idea of karma for casting blame. Buddhism is always a practical religion, interested in what we can do to end suffering. In this light, discussion of past karma is of theoretical interest only; what is done is done and there is no way to change it. One should instead take a keen interest in the making of new karma, something over which we do have control.​

That is pure hypocrisy if not dishonesty. The logical implication and thus the intention of Buddha's teaching on karma is precisely so that you can and you should blame yourself for your tough lucks in life, and you can also blame others for their tough lucks in life and derive warning thereby. Of course you can sympathize with them, telling them: "I really feel sorry for your nasty loss of both legs in the auto accident, it's just your evil past deed coming back to you by karma; let me know if I can help in any way with the insurance claim." [That is Buddhist compassion.]

In the event of a calamity like Hurricane Katrina, a practical view would be to focus more on the other aspects of external causality. While the Asian tsunami was caused by a shift of tectonic plates, a natural process completely beyond human agency, the hurricane was a result of climatic forces which have been disturbed by humanity's careless discharge of carbon into the atmosphere. It is obvious that such storms are increasing in power and frequency. It would be wise to start heeding these warnings, before more and worse disasters befall our coastal cities.​

What's the use? Your karma and the group karma will inexorably seek you out whatever your satellite warnings and weather forecasts; that is what the karma caboodle is all about. Why not just tell people to abandon this nonsense of karma, and start a new Buddhism without karma. I will chip in to contribute my share of theoretical underpinnings; or assure them that bn accepting karma, in the millennia ahead they will one day in some rebirth arrive at enlightenment, and hence no more karma.

Likewise, we could focus our attention on practical issues of flood control and disaster relief. There is plenty to criticize here in both the cases of the tsunami and the hurricane. To highlight one glaring example; just when Louisiana could use the services of their National Guard, most of them were thousands of miles away fighting an unjustifiable colonial war. It is much more useful to consider issues such as these than to speculate about past karma, a kind of speculation the Buddha criticized as pointless.​

National guards elsewhere fighting a pointless war is a perfect example of inexorable karma; but why bother at all to attempt to no purpose whatever some softening of karma in the disastrous event of katrina? Just remind your Buddhist believers that it's all karma, period; everything else of questioning and explaining and reconciling is pointless -- says Buddha.

----------------

I am sorry to say this, but it is all nonsense; however such is religion, so nonsensical in order to reap some solace in the face of what I would rather call instead of evil or suffering, the indiscriminate reality of genetics, physics, atmospherics, and geodetics. Man has attained conscious intelligence and free act within himself and with fellowmen, but that does not exempt him from being subject just the same to the unfeeling forces of nature.


Yrreg
 
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