But do you see the FLAW of believing in a thing called KARMA?

no. i dont see the flaw. i see a misunderstanding of the thing called karma.

Does not work like that. You cannot actually cancel the Karma. You are playing with probability.

It's even worse you if think there is someone who can absorb your sins away.

yeap, in karma, there is no such thing as a get out of jail free card. you do bad things, you pay. regardless of anything else you do. its that brutal.

having say that, still dont believe in it

I'm still trying to understand what you mean by this. Care to elaborate?

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Added on May 30, 2010, 11:19 pmPut inside your pocket a small white stone (good kamma) and black stone (bad kamma).

Do more good things , you put more white stones into your pocket. When you draw from your pocket, the probability of you getting the white stone is higher, but by no means that you will never draw the black stone, just lower chance. So kamma works like this more or less - you cannot really cancel your kamma.

This post has been edited by soul2soul: May 30 2010, 11:19 PM

Ok I see what u mean. It is slightly different than the Buddha's explanation. He likened bad karma as a lump of salt in a river and the water surrounding it as good karma. If your river is tiny, the water is salty and life isn't sweet. But if your water flow is a big raging river, you won't notice the saltiness and life is good. The logic is not one of probability but of one force overcrowding the other and rendering it statistically irrelevant.

if your pocket is filled with black stones, you will get black stones most of the time. if your pocket is filled with white stones, you will hardly notice the black.

no matter how big the river (lake would be a better analogy, as river implies that it is transient) the salt does not disappear.

or if you are filthy rich, you probably wont notice much if someone bang your car. but your car still get banged regardless.

This post has been edited by lin00b: May 31 2010, 12:25 AM

Exactly. A rich man won't feel the loss of a few cents and if you did a study on happy people, they'll tell you their happy moments outnumber the bad moments. Same with unhappy people. Neither one escapes the pleasant or the unpleasant. Its just that one outweighs the other.

I don't believe in Past Karma at all.
I only believe present karma, which means you do bad, you face bad consequences.

There's no point punishing a new life with what he did in so-called "previous life"

I don't know about other religion. In Chinese, generally, have this "bridge" where people drinks a soup (some soup that you will forget past life after drinking it) cross over the bridge and reborn. Supposely all the sins are being wiped/forgive and so.

Even for a criminal in this present life, mostly what we said is "He will go to Hell" But in Chinese, we using the same terms, they went to hell and have their punishment there, but when they are allowed to be reborn, supposely again, their sin should be wiped/forgive already.

So there's no such PAST KARMA at all.

Well, that's my POV. Different people, different belief.

By saying if you do bad you face bad consequences, isn't that a form of belief in past karma? You did something bad yesterday, you get a payback today or tomorrow and yesterday=past, yes?

What i mean is past life's karma.

Sorry for the misunderstanding.

In chinese believe or taoist type religion, you still have to pay for what you have done in previous life. Go to hell is the god punishment. Your next life punishment is the person who you done bad thing to him in the previous life. Example killing that guys.

Soup, bridge and hell thing is taoist type believing. Mostly chinese believe. For me, it is very complicated system.

Highlighted again for the SAKE of the so-called GOD.

How about trying to discuss karma without involving god in the picture. I suggest discussing it as a process which can be done in a lab. Here's a few examples, differentiated by amount of time between cause and effect.

1. You hold a cigarette lighter to a piece of paper (cause), paper burns immediately (effect)

2. You spend using your credit card (cause) and end of the month, the bill comes (effect)

3. You invest in a 5-year guaranteed bond (cause) and 5 years later, you get principal plus profits (effect)

4. You spend like there's no tomorrow (cause) and 50 years later, you become a beggar (effect)

You'll agree that cause and effect is provable provided you put down the religious-coloured term and relied on controlled experiments on the physical process.

On does this process stop at death or does it continue? No one can answer that except with faith, just like the heaven and hell thingy. That's where I draw the line.

I understand the religious argument that you can't otherwise explain why some are born beautiful, some ugly, some to a rich family, some to beggars, some smart, some stupid, etc and hence karma must be behind it. They assert you haven't exhausted your store of potential energy when you died so it is unwinding in the next existence.

But you can't prove in a lab that that guy who just died has now become this baby. All there is is circumstantial evidence... the ability to speak foreign languages without much training, musical prodigies, knowing people you never met, deja vu, weird stuff like that. I don't discount stuff simply because they're weird so I'll just stay agnostic and skeptical until I see the evidence.

but the bad things still happens. that is what it means that you cant cancel out karma, but your reaction towards the retribution may differ depending on your other karma

Yes I believe you are right. The rich man example is a good one, thanks for bringing it up.

but still. Buddha said before that it is never too late to turn into 'a new leaf'.

never too late to add more water to dissolve the salt. but u cant get rid of the salt

Although I live on science, I can't say for sure there is karma, not from religion point of view but the course of life. I have lived long enough to see people get what they deserve within the same lifetime and I felt a sense of relief that justice is done, you know, stupid people suffers the consequences of their silly act that caused others to lose something.

There are quit a few examples and one is my ex father in law who die of cancer, my friends who say he made more money than me in an argument are job hoping and in misery, those who think they deserve better are now worried of retrenchment and more. I have been enjoying the show in recent years, sorry to say it out loud and a reminder to these people here and warning to those who speak with EGO.