To a certain extent, I do. I always feel like whenever I say something bad about someone, almost 75% of the time, that something bad happens to me. This is why I try not to say anything bad about anyone. In a way it's a good habit to carry on but at the same time I don't like being superstitious.

What are your thoughts on this?

buddha is pretty efficient when punishing me with karma ....

Why do you say that?

Do you believe in karma? My answer depends on how you define karma & I've heard of some pretty funny ones. So how do you define karma?

Honestly I'm not too sure if I believe in karma (or at least my definition of karma). I feel like it only applies to me sometimes and not all the time. So when something bad happens, it might just be me pointing my finger at something just because it's there for me to do so.

Anyway, my def. of karma is doing something good and receiving something good in return. The opposite applies for bad karma. Correct me if I'm wrong.

This post has been edited by objectifyme: May 22 2010, 10:03 AM

karma does have its weakness. For example, blind prejudices. Everytime we see bad things happen to someone , usually strangers (eg read from newspaper), we slap something like "he/she must've done something wrong in his previous life" on them.

Okay, that doesn't apply to me. Normally I believe everything happens for a reason so if something bad happens to someone, it must've been for a reason, and not because he did something bad in his past life. I don't believe in reincarnation as well.

Generally I don't think I believe very much in karma. It's just that certain situations make me wonder if there really is a karma system that works and, is out to get me.

karma on other people are wishful thinking/irrational rationalization. (he do bad and got away, so he'll be punished somehow in future)

karma on self is irrational pattern-finding on matters of coincidence.

personal story, i once accidentally scratched someone's car, got scared and kept quiet, that night someone else scratched my car and confessed. kinda inspired me and i confessed of my actions the next day. is there a god/karma teaching me something, or me thinking too much about a series of events?

I personally find karma much more palatable than going to heaven or hell based on whether you believe in a certain god or not.

Sounds like your own conscience is "out to get you". When we done somebody wrong, we felt scared and keeps on thinking bout retribution, hence maybe self fulfil that prophecy (worry often, causing lapse in mind, then *shit* happens)

In our lives, we have done good and maybe some naughty things (intentionally or not). In the future, equally good things awaits us and maybe some setbacks too (most probably due to our lifestyle choice/or in the genes). The active minds of humans tried to LINK EVERYTHING TOGETHER, albeit loosely. That's why the "art" of [enter body part here] reading/fortune telling are still very much in practice today.

Maybe in the future, we prosper (gotten rich/old and still health) then we think back the (possible ONLY ONE lol) small good deed like "donating to a desperately poor orphan" 50 years ago. What about those who done greater deeds like devoting their whole life to the orphanages and yet died young?

Yeah, that sounds more like it. I think that's where lin00b's quote comes in.



This post has been edited by objectifyme: May 22 2010, 11:26 AM

Karma sounds more like a cycle to me

When someone do something bad, eventually he will deal with bad things
This is partly cause by the behaviour of that someone
If u are a fierce people and u treat people badly, eventually people will not like u and tend to kick u out from the community.
While if u are a good person, many people will like u and u will have a good time with everyone.

This is just one simple example

However karma cannot say to be entirely true because it happen that when people do good things always and being a good person, he still receive bad luck like other people did

More sounds like people judging from the sirface without knowing the true fact, not much to do with karma

That's true. So does this mean that karma doesn't exist?

For me its kinda like 'reverse-karma' if theres even such a thing.

E.g. I'd say aloud 'ahh i'm finally relieved of ankle pain!'

Next thing you know the pain comes back.

Okay i know i make no sense

karma is only a fancy name for probability

more like a fancy name for human pattern-detection

I do believe what goes around comes around, you reap what you sow, Newton's action-reaction law, that energy never really disappears but gets transferred from one form to another as in the 1st law of thermodynamics.

Some call it karma, some call it by other names but they're all just labels to me.


This post has been edited by Beastboy: May 22 2010, 10:30 PM

This term exist in buddhism teaching,
im not one so i dont know further bout that

Hindus also have karma. So do other religions that believe you'll go to hell if you're bad, heaven if you're good. Cause and effect. They call it by different names but the concept is more or less the same. As they say, a rose by any other name...

Btw, strictly speaking, karma in sanskrit means action, act or performance. Every action (karma) has a consequence (vipaka.) Typing on a keyboard is an act (karma). The vipaka is the characters appearing on your screen. No magic involved.

no, that simply means u have no idea what you're talking about,.

Karma is just coincidence. Our mind is pulling tricks on us.

If karma exist, then bad things shouldn't happen to a good person, right? But when it does happen, we say it's karma from previous life. How is it fair for a person who has no conscious of his past life to bear the consequence?

Care to enlighten me then?

Edit: Just to make things clear, I mean no offense by whatever I say. I'm just someone who's trying to learn more about karma and the way it works. I'm not trying criticize or bring anyone's religion down. So yup.

This post has been edited by objectifyme: May 23 2010, 04:53 PM

Wow, this is amazing.

I always thought karma is fate and destiny. It is enlightening of Beastboy to identify it as energy from newton's prespective.

I think there is so many definition of karma. Before we can continue with karma can we agree what is karma. As I see it form forumers who contributed, it is "what ever you do to others (good or bad) it will be eventually be done unto you". Many seem to disagree if had to be transferred to next or from previous life. So are we taking reincarnation out or in?

As to personal experience, I do not have the karma type of experience you guys did (eg lim00b scratching someone's car). I never seen the good or the bad I done (as in almost similar incident) being reflect back to me.

well, i dont look upon it as the universe's revenge on me, its more like the universe giving me a lesson ie, "the other person scratched you car and confess, shouldnt you try the same thing?"

but all in all, its just fancy over thinking on my part. still dont believe in karma despite at times i feel my life is part of some cosmic joke/movie

"At times"!!! Dont we all feel the same

Karma is easy to refute if you think of it as a linear phenomenon, as in if you are kind to people, people will be kind to you. I don't think cause and effect works that way.

Example: your parents may have said if you get a uni degree, you'll get more job opportunities. That's the typical linear relationship, do A, get B. What's forgotten is the thousand things you did that can change the supposed outcome of A. You may have chosen a field of study that is no longer in demand. You may have chosen to party instead of studying and scraped through with a GPA of 2.1, causing your resume to persistently get shoved to the bottom of the pile. Sometimes even just being present at a place can change the outcome of A, as in someone comes to you and says hey, didn't we go to class together? My dad's the VP of the company you're interviewing at!

In all the scenarios, the common denominator is you, and the seemingly random choices you made prior to that point in time. You choose to attend a particular uni, the field of study, to party & skip classes. Every little choice - even the time you hesitated to cross the road and missed getting hit by a truck by 2 seconds, contributes to the final outcome. That's how complex cause and effect is.

So while the common variety "do A get B" definition of karma is a joke, the study of how a set of micro forces lead to an outcome is intriguing. It is as complex as predicting weather patterns, and can probably use the same concepts as the butterfly effect.

As I see it, it is for this reason that my reward for doing a good deed may not be the same as your reward for doing the same.

+1

Since there is no linear relationship, then karma is not applicable?

No, it just means the common man-in-the-street definition of karma is a gross oversimplification of the process.

Okay I said, I never understood karma. So what is karma in the not simplified sense.

This post has been edited by faceless: May 25 2010, 11:53 AM

I doubt there's one definition of karma that everyone can agree to but I find this to be a good brief summary:

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-karma.htm

To me, karma is an ancient name for a process and as I've said previously, the closest analogy I can find to it is the weather prediction process. Weather is a result of prior conditions. When inputting complex variables into a weather-scenario computer, scientists found out that small variations like rounding a number from .506127 to 0.506 can alter the course of weather forever, hence the name butterfly effect where the flap of the wings can change the weather's outcome. More on butterfly effect here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect

The butterfly effect is based on chaos theory and suggests the non-linear nature of cause and effect. The smallest inconspicuous act can alter your future and what you are today is the result of millions of past variables, just as what you'll be tomorrow must take into account today's hundred variables. Some variable take a long time to take effect, like how years may pass before the cops knock on your door becoz of an old unpaid traffic summons.

Using formulas similar to weather prediction, the past and present actions of an individual can likewise be measured and fed into a computer and a future outcome predicted. That would be your "karma."

How to teach simple village folk a thousand years ago about chaos theory... it was easier to just say if you do something good, then something good will happen to you. The stories are preserved till today. In reality its a lot more complex than that.

There's one aspect about karma - past lives and future lives - I cannot resolve so I won't spend time speculating about something I cannot get empirical data to.

What your theorizes about already overstep the boundary of karma (which is.. as you said it.... another equivalent of gross oversimplication of karm too? lol) . For eg. based on what you've written, What person A does affects person B thousands of miles aways. So if person A chose to drink a cow milk today, its not longer HIS "karma" per se if it MIGHT possibly cause the death of an random unrelated person B the next day. Unless further thoughts link up person's B death which in return.... made person A to be kicked by a cow in the near future (a karma from drinking cow's milk

Person A drink milk > [ some random butterfly effects] > Person B (a farmer perhaps?) died > farm unkempt > livestocks strayed > cow wandered 100 km > feeling agigated from the journey, kicked person A who happens in the vicinity?

Now we have to solve the riddle/possible explanations on what kinda karma-tic caused person B to die? Another branching perhaps from person C who just did a naughty things likes running away after accidentally scratching another person's car?

As usual, you're turning another topic to become a "free for all. any thoughts are possible/logical".

I'd say, my "free for all, radical thoughts" at this moment would be... karma is related to some random undiscovered planet in some undiscovered galaxy, where there live a bunch of aliens working day and night to keep humans in check on what they do and assign their fate.

Im sure somebody (who post) after me can easily claim I oversimplified the understanding of karma by introducing yet another radical theory with bigger chunk of beef/details (taken from conventional science or simply a passable logical idea)

This post has been edited by alanyuppie: May 25 2010, 01:26 PM

Honestly, I'm not sure if the Butterfly Effect is applicable in this case, because BE doesn't factor in the intent of the action against the outcome, which is an important part of karma.

This post has been edited by VMSmith: May 25 2010, 01:36 PM

As I understand it, there is cause and effect for actions and there is cause and effect for intentions. The fact that we can die in an accident demonstrates that an effect can happen without intentional cause, hence why they call it an "accident."

I see BE figuring in the parts involving measurable action like the accident example but you're right, I don't see where BE fits in when two people sit blindfolded and think bad intentions at each other. How do you measure intention anyway?

Interesting thoughts. Very unique. I am just curious how you come up with this idea.

thinking bad intention will result in ugly features/negative aura which result in ppl not having favourable inpression about you which result in return less than favourable intentions.

have u seen a person who is pissed off all the time? u dont have to know him...u can just feel the negativity.

This post has been edited by teongpeng: May 25 2010, 08:43 PM

if there are such things as bad karma then should also have good karma, right?

That means you do good things and bad things will come to your later cause it's karma. Or does the mystique being on the universe know what is the difference between doing good and doing bad? Thus rewarding you for doing good and punishing you for doing bad (bad karma)?

if u eat shit and think it tasted bad...no one is punishing u wiht the bad taste. you are punishing yourself with your stupidity(or bravery depending on your line of thoughts )

But things tend to go haywire, even if you do good things there's still a very high possibility you might get something bad in return
as in the case you helped a person but the person didn't feel thankful instead accused you of trying to take advantage of him or her

i dont feel it is correct to label good karma/bad karma. there are only cause and effect. the concept of karma is to treat it as natural force. you dont go around calling gravity good/bad right?

This post has been edited by lin00b: May 28 2010, 09:10 PM

That is why I'm always of the opinion that there is no such thing as good or bad, there's only consequence. Whether the consequence is perceived as "good" or "bad" is subjective, depending on which belief system you're from.

pain = bad
no pain = good

Whats so hard to NOT understand?

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Added on May 28, 2010, 10:45 pm you ppl are so shallow. doing something good will always be rewarded with something good. You not receiving something good after you've done something good is because u have done something bad in the past which result in an unfavourable response.

Its very simple. someone kill your mom. and then he do something good like help u fix your car. do you think you oughta reward him or dissed him? duh.



This post has been edited by teongpeng: May 28 2010, 10:45 PM

not according to some bsdm video i see

u watch those?

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Added on May 29, 2010, 9:45 amIf you want to read about Kamma, there is a big chunk of it being explained by the Buddha. From Kamma that creates you, sustains your life force, making you experience pleasant and unpleasant things (how your mind reacts to external stimuli), your subconscious, kamma that interrupts your lifeforce (accidental death, etc), kamma that matures now, next life, next 2 lives, indefinite, heavy kamma, etc.

IT's something that is very complex, because everyone in this universe have a will (mind), that constantly creates Kamma that will interact with the world. See, it's very hard to contemplate, and it's among one of the Unthinkables in Buddhism. Think so much on it will make you crazy one.

This post has been edited by soul2soul: May 29 2010, 09:46 AM

oops sorry
I thought karma only applies in the present life, i didn't know it can be extended to past life

got.. the different grades of humans .. are explained by karma lo.

oh thanks for enlightening

i didnt exactly say anything about past life...but oh well...

Not yet but thank you anyway.

Here's a question to those who believe in karma.

If one does a good deed, and let's just say it's in a somewhat, huge proportion, i.e. donated a million to the poor, which side of karma (good / bad) that he will gain if the money which he donated were actually obtained through theft?

This post has been edited by Deadlocks: May 30 2010, 12:17 PM

I have something same problem like you. It is not feel but directly get the karma today, few day, month or yrs. But sure I get it. Since I mature now, when do bad, I will stanby to get the consequence. And I get it. I can't escape it. I get the karma either by fizikal or loose something. Direct or indirectly.

I start to realise it when I am 9 or 10yrs old. Slowly I have to control my bad thing to minimise the karma till non.

I guess the guy up there don't allow me to do bad thing. The problem is, I don't believe such a god thing.

donation brings good karma. theft brings bad karma. and thus he will experience both good and bad consequences separately.

So does that mean as long as the person outweighs his bad deeds with good ones, "karma" will simply deemed his "bad deeds" as excusable?

Or, a more appropriate question will be, why is that bad deeds are always much more severe than good ones?

which part of the consequences happening SEPARATELY dont u understand?

True, consequences may trigger separately in accordance to good and bad karma, but isn't it already a bad karma for a person to rest upon the relieve that he'll always be "okay" about it as long as he manages to top up some good deeds in compensate his bad ones?

For example: I stole something. And then I contemplate: "Hey wait, it's that bad karma? Oh wait, no worries. All I gotta do is to get some good karma, and all will be fine." AND SO I CONTINUED STEALING.

Now, I don't know about you, but that thinking is already a "bad karma". Karma may have consequences SEPARATELY for good and bad deeds as you put it, but to actually accept karma as a teaching? I personally think it will put us into that position where we can choose to justify our bad deeds with the good ones, and even if that's possible, I seriously think we're in a big deal of bad karma, which ultimately means that if you believe in karma, only bad things can happen to you, LOL.

This post has been edited by Deadlocks: May 30 2010, 02:57 PM

Jesus dude! u really dont understand the meaning of the consequences happening separately do you?

If you steal and do some good deeds, you will suffer consequences of stealing and at a DIFFERENT time enjoy the good consequences of the good deeds.

Yeah, but that will put ourselves in the very position I described in my post.

u thirsty u drink. u hungry u eat. DIFFERENT THINGS BRO. DIFF-farking-RENT! haih....

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.

Actually u can

This post has been edited by soul2soul: Jun 11 2010, 07:32 PM

i am so called christian, but i truly believe in karma.....i believe that when i do sth good, good things will return (probably indirectly)...but just don't expect it

i have 1 question to those who believe in Karma...
when you do something bad to yourselves, does something else that is bad will happen to you? or vice versa?

In my case yes. It happen to me either same yrs or next yrs. I cannot run away the bad karma if I done bad thing. It is good that the bad karma not drag too long.

if sth bad happen to me, shall i blame it for the bad karma or the wrong doings that i have done before that?

how if sth good happen to me, shall i praise for the good deed that i did before that lead me to my good karma now?

Huh, sth to ponder here.=)

if sth bad happen to you, it doesn;t mean that you have done bad, maybe someone related to you had and it affected you indirectly

If sth bad happen to you, first look at yourself. What have you done. And don't do it again. Blame yourself first before point at others.

Do you feel good when you done good thing? You already praise yourself.

I do believe that everything happened for a reason. for instance, if something bad happen to you, it could be a small warning to an even bigger problem. It depends very much on the individual's point of view.

Sometimes, these "bad things" that happens to you after you said/did something "bad" to someone else, are all based on your subconcious mind or as people call it conscience.
You feel bad about it and it eats up on you, and when something bad happens, you instantly think it's Karma. And also how you have been taught on how Karma works plays a part in it.

But I do believe in Karma myself, I'd like to believe in it. For the world is insanely unjust and unfair and it's nice to have a hope that perhaps somewhere, there is a fair judge to prosecute those evil bastards

Kamma is real. Beware of your conduct.

Human brains like to pick patterns. It's easy to test this out, think "red" and look around your room. Notice how everything red jumps out at you? it's the same with stuff like this, you expect things to happen to you when you do bad things, so you tend to notice them more. Or you might even unconsciously set yourself up for disaster because you expect it and want it to happen. This is called "self-fulfilling prophecy".


This post has been edited by wodenus: Jun 22 2010, 10:41 PM

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This post has been edited by marsalee: Nov 8 2010, 10:50 AM

Folks,

Why SO COMPLICATED??

It is VERY SIMPLE. Any system that has MEMORY or SOMETHING to accumulate EFFECT has Karma.

Does a car has Karma?? Does a car REMEMBER how well you treated a car??

If you take care of a car and change oil regularly, it would not have a SERIOUS UNEXPECTED breakdown. If not, the lack of care and maintenance until a point where the car will cause you problem.

This is Karma.

Ditto, on a country level, if country A and B have good relationship, the MEMORY / good Karma accumulated. If country A is in trouble, country B is most likely to help...

And, so on....

Any system that has MEMORY aka capability to store effect has Karma. Culture / history has ability to store Karma across hundred / thousand of years.

This does not even go up to Metaphysical level aka spiritual level yet.

It is VERY SIMPLE. Karma exist for ANY SYSTEM with memory...

Dreamer

Unless of course, you're waiting at a traffic light that's red, and a speeding car hits you from behind