posted August 06, 2014 07:02 AM            

OR

2. Relative. Retribution in kind
(please explain?)

OR

3. Other.
(please explain?)

posted August 06, 2014 05:11 PM            

quote:

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Karma, in the original Buddhist scriptures, is a blind machine; in fact, it is functionally identical with the scientific concept of natural law. Sentimental ethical ideas about justice being built into the machine, so that those who do evil in one life are punished for it in another life, were added later by theologians reasoning from their own moralistic prejudices. Buddha simply indicated that all the cruelties and injustices of the past are still active: their effects are always being felt. Similarly, he explained, all the good of the past, all the kindness and patience and love of decent people is also still being felt.

Since most humans are still controlled by fairly robotic reflexes, the bad energy of the past far outweighs the good, and the tendency of the wheel is to keep moving in the same terrible direction, violence breeding more violence, hatred breeding more hatred, war breeding more war. The only way to "stop the wheel" is to stop it inside yourself, by giving up bad energy and concentrating on the positive. This is by no means easy, but once you understand what Gurdjieff called "the horror of our situation," you have no choice but to try, and to keep on trying.

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Or put another way, "patterns." Patters that shape us as we grow and continue to affect us blindly even if we struggle to change our karma, and working out our karma is working out our internal patterns within (but not so much the patterns from others that continue to affect us for good or ill, and regardless of whether we deserve it).

posted August 06, 2014 06:26 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by PixieJane:
This pretty much sums it up:
http://www.deepleafproductions.com/wilsonlibrary/texts/raw-karma.html

Or put another way, "patterns." Patters that shape us as we grow and continue to affect us blindly even if we struggle to change our karma, and working out our karma is working out our internal patterns within (but not so much the patterns from others that continue to affect us for good or ill, and regardless of whether we deserve it).

I can go into more detail (maybe I will later) but that's the short and sweet of it (I could also add caveats).

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posted August 07, 2014 05:18 AM            

Some believe that karma is the result of a universal law of balance, but this indicates that the effects of causes would be directly related to the nature of the cause - a union of opposites?

PixieJane,
how do we affect it? Is it by choosing our reaction to the effect of the cause we have made?
So we have control over our personal reactions to karma's reactions, and this informs future karma?

posted August 07, 2014 10:23 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Voix_de_la_Mer:
PixieJane,
how do we affect it? Is it by choosing our reaction to the effect of the cause we have made?
So we have control over our personal reactions to karma's reactions, and this informs future karma?

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The potential is there. Using a very simple example (and complementing the one given by Robert Anton Wilson)...a friend of mine, years before I was born, was caught up in the karma of the American and Haitian Revolution, Civil War and Yankee Carpetbaggers, African slave trade (which included Africans selling others) and more to shape a white man who had adopted his family's fear and disdain of black people and "sticking to your race." (He was also raised in the Deep South.) There was so much blind karma at work that he was just swept along with it and centuries of evil (not just by whites, nor was there much in the way of innocence, it was a vicious circle rather than one side good and the other evil as many insist on seeing it as, which is a trap) trickled into him and many around him that caused the sins of the past to ripple around them all.

Then one day there was an accident at the plant he worked at, some sort of explosion that knocked many down...and as he was on the edge of the roof he found himself hanging on for dear life while the most terrible hissing noise continued that caused all his white friends to save themselves. He thought for sure he was dead, was accepting the fact and commending his soul to Jesus when hands grabbed his arms and pulled him up and then helped him reached the bottom (as he was weak and shaky). It was a black man who worked there, one the white man had often said nasty things about behind his back. The karma could've made the black guy nasty as well but he rose above that and filled with sympathy for another human being saved his life.

This dramatic action caused him to reevaluate his views and he became a strong opponent against racism (and eventually all sorts of bigotry), something that didn't go over well in the 70s and definitely did not go over well with his family. And then he would go on to become an author (he has asked me not to share his name so I won't, but his works that included themes of rejecting bigotry in any form has inspired readers) and a family man as well as work with people, that black man who risked his life to save that of a racist who despised him created all sorts of ripples for decades later (and still ongoing).

Granted, there's a lot of bad that creates their ripples, but he's not alone. There's also this that's about the same thing:
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24653643

quote:

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In 1996, a black teenager protected a white man from an angry mob who thought he supported the racist Ku Klux Klan. It was an act of extraordinary courage and kindness - and is still inspiring people today

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Did it change him? Maybe, maybe not, but it's likely she changed his son at least:

quote:

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Thomas has never heard from the man she saved, but she did once meet a member of his family. Months later, someone came up to her in a coffee shop and said thanks. "What for?" she asked. "That was my dad," the young man replied.

For Thomas, the fact that the man had a son gave her actions even greater significance - she had potentially prevented further violence.

"For the most part, people who hurt... they come from hurt. It is a cycle. Let's say they had killed him or hurt him really bad. How does the son feel? Does he carry on the violence?"

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posted August 08, 2014 07:11 AM            

thank you for sharing this story.
It really opens up the thinking on karma.

Rajji gave an analogy of the stone creating ripples when dropped in the water,
I guess we could take the water here to include all people and environments,
and hence the interconnectedness of all behaviour of all people to all others.

No need for magical thinking.

We simply effect each other by our way of being, and in turn the others effect us in relation to their reactions to our way of being.