Karma

[Wootah]

ref:To believe in Jesus

Jesus was teaching the principle of karma.

That was his message as far as I'm concerned.

I believe in karma, therefore I believe in the teachings of Jesus because Jesus was teaching karma. Thus I believe in the message of Jesus. And so I believe in Jesus in that sense.

Who would like to explain Karma to me and be willing to examine whether Karma is a cogent philosophical concept?

[Divine Insight]

Karma is what Jesus taught:

Matt.7:2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

That is the closest definition to karma as you'll find anywhere.

"What measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again".

This is the essence of Karma.

Here it is again:

Luke.6:37 Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven:


Also the beatitudes are all about karma. Your your thoughts and actions will determine what you shall receive:

Matt.5

[3] Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
[4] Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
[5] Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
[6] Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
[7] Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
[8] Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
[9] Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
[10] Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
[11] Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.

Karma simple means "actions" including thoughts which are mental actions. Your actions will determine your fate.

And this is most certainly what Jesus taught.

If you don't believe in karma, then you most certainly don't believe in the teachings of Jesus.

[Wootah]

Hi DI

I am assuming you dont read the bible to get your daily religious guidence. What are some other sources that you use to explain the concept.

Or are you saying that as a Christian I do have enough information in my bible to preach on karma?

[Divine Insight]

Or are you saying that as a Christian I do have enough information in my bible to preach on karma?

I don't believe in preaching.

For me karma is entirely a personal faith-based belief. And because it is faith-based this certainly means that it could be wrong. I don't have any proof or even substantial evidence to support the idea of karma. So I'm certainly not going to preach it to other people.

I will make the observation, however, that IMHO Jesus was clearly teaching the concept of karma. He was definitely suggesting that how a person behaves and thinks will determine their fate.

I'm actually hoping that the verses I've posted earlier that have been attributed to Jesus are indeed true.

Nothing could possibly make me happier than to believe that I will be judged by how I judge others.

Nothing could make me happier than to believe that if I don't judge others I won't be judged. Not that I feel I need to be exempt form judgement. But if the words of Jesus are worth anything at all, then clearly there will be no judgement day for me because I don't judge other people.

Nothing could make me happier than to believe that if I don't condemn others I won't be condemned. I know of no one that I have ever condemned in my entire life. I've been angry with some people from time to time, but even during those times of anger I never even remotely wished that someone would be condemned.

Nothing could make me happier than to believe that I will be forgiven as I forgive others who have trespassed against me. If there is any truth to these words of Jesus my forgiveness is assured.

So nothing could please me more than to believe that these words of Jesus hold truth.

Ironically it's often the Christians who try to "condemn me" in the name of Jesus. That's ironic because if they are condemning other people in Jesus' name, then according to Jesus they have opened themselves to be condemned in Jesus' name themselves. Remember, according to the words attributed to Jesus they will be judged by the same judgment that the use to judge others.

I don't know if it's up to you to "preach" karma (or preach anything for that matter). But yes, I think that as a Christian you have more than enough information that Jesus was clearly teaching that karma is indeed the way things will be determined.

All you need to do is read the New Testament. It's in there as I have illustrated above. There are other examples as well, but the ones I've listed should be pretty clear already.

[ttruscott]

ref:To believe in Jesus

Jesus was teaching the principle of karma.

That was his message as far as I'm concerned.

I believe in karma, therefore I believe in the teachings of Jesus because Jesus was teaching karma. Thus I believe in the message of Jesus. And so I believe in Jesus in that sense.

Who would like to explain Karma to me and be willing to examine whether Karma is a cogent philosophical concept?

OUR ACTIONS DETERMINE OUR FATE:

kar·ma
n.
1. Hinduism & Buddhism The total effect of a person's actions and conduct during the successive phases of the person's existence, regarded as determining the person's destiny.
2. Fate; destiny.


http://www.sgi.org/buddhism/buddhist-co ... karma.html
[Karma] ,,,means to be confident that our destiny is in our own hands and that we have the power to transform it for the better at any moment.

http://www.arrowriver.ca/torStar/karmanote.html
In Buddhist use, karma always means "volitional action." It is a willed action, originating in the mind of an individual, which has a determined effect at some future time. Put crudely, the law of karma says that if you do good, you will experience good and if you do evil, you will experience evil.

Put this way, karma sounds like a type of moral judgment. However, that cannot be because in Buddhism there is no one to do the judging. It is better to think of karma as a kind of natural law, like gravity. A colloquial expression that comes close to the idea is "what comes around, goes around."

There is some controversy in Buddhism about the role of karma.

OUR DECISIONS DETERMINE OUR FATE:

There is no proof that karma exists outside of the religious need for it which does not even explain how it 'works.' It does not even make sense since good and evil are just illusions and the self is an illusion so how so how can the self which is not there do something evil which does not exist and thereby cause its own future to be a non-existent more evil??

Christian spiritual moral justice on the other hand has a supreme arbiter, the one who is the measure of goodness and who knows everyone perfectly and can impart a perfect judgment. What the Buddhist see in reality is GOD's righteous judgments on good and evil but they cannot talk about it as they deny a moral judge to pronounce sentence or reward...the best they can do is talk about moral justice but strip it of all meat and meaning and call it a natural law. Yikes.

GOD's personal and intellectual system of justice has nothing to do with a 'natural law, something like gravity,' with no intelligence behind it but is an outworking of HIS goodness as the only moral force in the universe.

Peace, Ted

[Divine Insight]

Christian spiritual moral justice on the other hand has a supreme arbiter, the one who is the measure of goodness and who knows everyone perfectly and can impart a perfect judgment. What the Buddhist see in reality is GOD's righteous judgments on good and evil but they cannot talk about it as they deny a moral judge to pronounce sentence or reward...the best they can do is talk about moral justice but strip it of all meat and meaning and call it a natural law. Yikes.

But aren't you the one who is stripping it of all meat and meaning?

If there is an omnipotent God who can do anything what would restrict God from creating a system of judgement that excites automatically and naturally?

Why would there be any need for a God to keep personal tabs on every person and then make some sort of personal judgements on them individually?

Surely an omnipotent God could create a system that he doesn't need to babysit.

Same is true of evolution. Why would an omnipotent God create a universe that is so lame that he then has to sit over it baby-sitting it and magically fiddling with it in order to create what he wants? If he is truly omnipotent and omniscient, there's no reason why he couldn't just place the whole thing on autopilot.

The Christians demanding that their God needs to babysit over everything fiddling with it all the time is really nothing more than their own proclamation that they can't imagine a God who can do things right the first time.

Of course, in light of the Biblical stories this is not surprising since the Bible has God failing at every attempt he ever makes at trying to solve a problem. So it's understandable that the Christians might have problems imagining a truly perfect God who could get things right from the get go and put everything on autopilot.

[Wootah]

Hi DI,

I will not be addressing Christian criticism in this thread as much as possible because that would be off topic.

You said that Karma means that your actions will determine your fate.

How do we know when we have met our fate?

If I don't exercise and get fat is that my fate? If I work hard and reap what I sow is that my fate? Is that what you mean?

If so, then, what if I am fat and miss the bus for work and the bus crashes and I am the only survivor (by my absence)? What if my field produces a lot of wealth and attracts robbers and they steal my wealth and kill my family? Was my fate the wealth or the misery? When have we met our fate?

If I am wealthy and you are not? Does that not mean that, by karma, I am justly wealthy and you are justly poor?

[Divine Insight]

How do we know when we have met our fate?

We don't. We can't see the bigger picture so it may not be possible to see when we have met our fate. It's not a concept that is scientifically measurable, especially within the context of a single lifetime.

If I don't exercise and get fat is that my fate? If I work hard and reap what I sow is that my fate? Is that what you mean?

Yes, I think those are examples of karma in action on a small scale. Karma on that scale simply reduces to cause and effect in action. Therefore on a small scale Karma has been proven by science. It's just cause and effect. Pure and simple.

If so, then, what if I am fat and miss the bus for work and the bus crashes and I am the only survivor (by my absence)? What if my field produces a lot of wealth and attracts robbers and they steal my wealth and kill my family? Was my fate the wealth or the misery? When have we met our fate?

You keep asking "when" but in terms of spiritual karma you can't know "when" because on a spiritual level karma transcends a single lifespan.

If I am wealthy and you are not? Does that not mean that, by karma, I am justly wealthy and you are justly poor?

Being wealthy or poor most likely wouldn't have much to do with karma except in the short-term cause and effect respect.

In the long term spiritual aspect of karma being wealthy or poor is meaningless. You could be wealthy and miserable, another person could be poor and quite happy. So you're looking at the wrong things to begin with.

I said that I "believe" in karma. But you need to understand that I use the term "believe" in a way that is most likely quite different from how you may use it.

What I should have said to be more technically correct, is that I believe in the plausibility of Karma. I believe that it's a plausible spiritual philosophy. So in that sense I believe that it's possible.

Again, I need to stress that Karma, in a spiritual sense, would span multiple lifetimes via reincarnation. But we don't have access to the memory of our past lives. Therefore we can never truly know whether karma is in effect or not.

So perhaps it's wrong of me to say that I "believe" in Karma. That's far too strong of a statement. I simply believe that a philosophy of karma can make sense.

In that sense, I believe that a philosophy of karma is possible, and even plausible.

Whether there is any actual karma associated with reality I most certainly do not know. No human being knows the true nature of reality, and I'm certainly no exception to this.

All I'm saying is that the things Jesus taught were certainly in harmony with a concept of karma.

In fact, consider the following quote from the Bible:

John.12
[47] And if any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.
[48] He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.

Jesus talks about "The word I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day".

So what did Jesus constantly talk about? Behavior. You're behavior will determine your fate. That's the same as saying that Karma is in effect.

It's in his beatitudes and many other things he taught as I had previously posted.

What you do will be met out to you.

Matt.7:2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.


To ask "when" this fate will be realized is irrelevant, especially in a spiritual paradigm where death is not the end of life.

~~~~~

But you need to understand that ultimately I'm agnostic. I also believe that the secular atheists could potentially be right. Maybe there is no rhyme and reason to anything and whatever happens happens and reality doesn't give a damn.

The way nature seems to treat people and animals sure does seem to support the secularist's views that nothing special is going on.

So my "belief" in karma is a purely "faith-based" belief. In other words, I HOPE that it's true. And I'll add from a practical point of view that I feel that it may be plausible as well. But whether this is reality or not I cannot say.

I would love nothing more than for Karma, (or the teachings of Jesus) to be TRUE.

That would suit me just fine. I feel confident that my behavior in this life will guarantee a great life after death, be it by the rules of Karma, or by the teachings of Jesus. It doesn't matter to me because they are basically equivalent.

Matt.7:2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.


I'll gladly take that any day!

[Philomath]

How do we know when we have met our fate?

I believe you've met your fate when you reap what you so.

If I don't exercise and get fat is that my fate? If I work hard and reap what I sow is that my fate? Is that what you mean?

That's pretty much it.

If so, then, what if I am fat and miss the bus for work and the bus crashes and I am the only survivor (by my absence)? What if my field produces a lot of wealth and attracts robbers and they steal my wealth and kill my family? Was my fate the wealth or the misery? When have we met our fate?

Your fate is determined by your actions. You avoided the bus crash because you were not present. People stealing your wealth and killing your family cannot be controlled by you. The people who committed those actions against them have accrued their Karmic debt and will receive what they deserve.

If I am wealthy and you are not? Does that not mean that, by karma, I am justly wealthy and you are justly poor?

Not necessarily. If you have worked and toiled for the wealth you have then yes you deserve it. If the poor person hasn't done anything with himself then he will rightfully be poor.

[Finn the human]

[Replying to post 9 by Philomath]

What about the disabled? It seems like a harsh punishment Buddha/(god?) would do to a newborn child. Why should people be punish for things they cant remember?
You really cant work you way out to get news eyes or out of a cast system.

Should we decide that the infant deserved to be disabled? Stuff like that causes inequality and social problems in India.

Karma does not work in Christianity.
You should see Christianity as a juridical trial where you will be punished on judgement day for your deeds.