What are your thoughts on Karma?

[dumdumdedum]

Most world cultures abhor suicide and warn of bad karma, eternal damnation and suffering, etc. What do you make of this?

 

[NextBusLeaving]

It's a bitch.

 

[Astral316]

Most world cultures have to keep their hierarchical social infrastructures intact.

 

[Udidthistome]

I have seen people getting away with major wrongdoings. Not onto themselves but to others. I feel it is one of the reasons I feel more suicidal. I have lost faith in the righteousness, life being fair. In fact I have seen more of people who have done good in their lives , helped the society and the needy,suffering more than those who are pure evil. In Hindu mythology it is said to be one of the ages called Kalyug. Where the evil prevails and the good suffers/perishes. I feel that is the age we are in now.

 

[TearyEyedQueen]

Assholes who hurt me and others are living it up to the fullest and enjoying life while myself, by no means a perfect person but one who at least didn't screw anyone over, cries herself to sleep and and searches for suicide methods.
I used to believe in karma but not anymore, way too much injustice in the world.
As for karmic consequences of suicide, honestly I'd rather repeat this life if I have to. If it's like a school assignment where you have to repeat as much as possible to learn a lesson, so be it. But I'd make the right choices this time.

 

[woxihuanni]

What I make of this is expressible only by my middle finger.

 

[Deleted member 1465]

Putting any esotericism aside, karma can be expressed very simply as the concept that all actions have consequences.

 

[Vanity]

Doesn't exist.

 

[Moonicide]

I think Karma was a term made for comfort. To help us let go and move forward. It helps people, and I'm supportive of that.
But do I truly believe in it? Considering there's people out there that have done very evil and vile things and are still walking around unscathed? Yeah, no.

 

[wendydong1]

I was romance scammed. I now wake up every couple hours at night, suffers every day, never smiled after that, my dog now yelps in pain every couple hours and the doctor doesn't really know why, and my dog cannot really walk anymore.

But the person who scammed me lives it up and builds his life.

It's as if I was the one who scams him..

 

[yellow_boat]

Unfortunately, karma seems to be most of the time on holiday... And looks like its holidays will last a while.

 

[Fragile]

if it existed then the world wouldn't be ruled by sociopaths.

very flawed concept, this life is just a game of chances and no matter how good and benevolent some people are, they are still suffering because they had no luck.

 

[Sweet emotion]

I don't believe in Karma. There are so many awful people out here living a!azong lives while good people suffer unbelievably. And I don't think you're damned if you kill yourself.

 

[Santiago]

It doesn't exist, but I guess it's a cool little buzzword nowadays.

 

[Misanthrope]

I thoroughly endorse karma, your pain and suffering and reasons for being on this site are a truly good thing. I am glad to see you all suffering. As punishment is meant to involve suffering. I am glad you are being ravaged by disease and mental health issues and brutalised by life. To the point that researching methods on death is one of your few comforts. I also suggest you all take a belt sander to your face to pay off the karmic debt quicker and speed your soul journey forward. I mean if you want the deluxe package of enlightenment you could also sell yourself into sex slavery and tell your captors how they remind you of diseased camel testicles. I am sure a world of well-deserved and earned hurt will be coming to you then.

Maybe next time you could try and not be Pol Pot or Nero or the Alien Tomalak that used a planet-destroying weapon on the innocent Hamster people of Nova 4. You utter monstrous bastards you deserve what you are getting. Take this as a lesson to not use world-destroying weapons in future. Erm... not sure exactly how you would know not to do that as you don't remember being Tomalak ender of Hamsterdom. But go cosmic justice!

 

[WhyIsLife56]

I used to believe in it somewhat but now, I think that those people who will end up dying in the future anyways won't remember what they've done let alone the fact that they ended up living a life at all by the time they die...so it doesn't matter. They're still suffering by being alive. They just don't know it.

 

[Return2Dust]

I believe in Karma. I watched it kick the crap out of several people who did bad stuff for years. It was ugly and I felt bad for them. I don't understand the full extent of Karma, but I'm very careful to keep my side of the street clean because I don't want an a** kicking like the ones I witnessed.

 

[Johnnythefox]

Karma, karma, karma, karma, karma chameleon
You come and go, you come and go
Loving would be easy if your colors were like my dreams
Red, gold, and green, red, gold, and green

 

[Numbtopain97]

There is no such thing as karma as it is defined. Those resulting events that people call karma are simply coincidences.

 

[selfhater]

I have seen people getting away with major wrongdoings. Not onto themselves but to others. I feel it is one of the reasons I feel more suicidal. I have lost faith in the righteousness, life being fair. In fact I have seen more of people who have done good in their lives , helped the society and the needy,suffering more than those who are pure evil. In Hindu mythology it is said to be one of the ages called Kalyug. Where the evil prevails and the good suffers/perishes. I feel that is the age we are in now.

exactly as i think

 

[OpheliasFlowers]

I have seen people getting away with major wrongdoings. Not onto themselves but to others. I feel it is one of the reasons I feel more suicidal. I have lost faith in the righteousness, life being fair. In fact I have seen more of people who have done good in their lives , helped the society and the needy,suffering more than those who are pure evil. In Hindu mythology it is said to be one of the ages called Kalyug. Where the evil prevails and the good suffers/perishes. I feel that is the age we are in now.

I agree.

Karma, karma, karma, karma, karma chameleon
You come and go, you come and go
Loving would be easy if your colors were like my dreams
Red, gold, and green, red, gold, and green

This made me smile because not only do I love Culture Club, and this song, but my late mother just absolutely loved Boy George and this was her favorite Culture Club song so whenever I hear it I think of her. Thanks for giving me a smile today.

 

[SimplyTopHat]

If it's real, I must have been a royal cunt in a past life.

 

[Marchioness]

Doesn't exist

 

[Myforevercharlie]

I think it exists. My abusive father lost his arm in a woodchipper years back. I smiled and thanked karma

 

[terry_a_davis]

I don't believe in karma as some magical force. I do believe if you do bad things and/or make wrong choices then you increase the chances of this effecting you negatively at some point in your life. But yes unfortunately some people suffer having done nothing wrong and some people seem to get away with doing bad things.

 

[GoodPersonEffed]

From my studying Buddhism, in that philosophy there are two types of karma, volitional (intentional) action, and the fruits of volitional action, which determine the destination and conditions of rebirth.

Volitional actions are enacted in thought, word, or deed. They can be light, dark, neither-light-nor-dark, or the kind of actions that lead to enlightenment and ultimately breaking free from samsara, the endless cycle of suffering that includes rebirth.

Rebirth is determined by the ripened fruits of the volitional actions in current and past lives. Karma determines what type of realm one is born into, and the conditions experienced in that realm. Earth is supposed to be a desirable realm but not as good as a heaven realm, and one can be born into good or bad conditions. Gautama Buddha identified conditions by past actions, for example that a physically ugly person acted in ugly ways in a past life. The way he identified such conditions, I can imagine a lot of people in Buddhist countries are vilified for purely genetic conditions because they are believed to deserve it, or that those who are poor deserve it because they were stingy in a past life, or those who die young deserve it because they previously took someone else's life.

In some ways, Gautama oversimplified it with the life conditions being explained as the fruits of past actions. In other ways, it is incomprehensible, and he says that it is difficult to understand or explain unless you achieve enlightenment yourself.

Not all of the concepts are unique to Buddhism. Gautama started out with Jainism and Bramahnism (and all of these religions have ties to Hinduism). He used their meditation techniques and struggled with parts of their philosophies, such as starvation and extreme physical punishment. Part of his enlightenment was his discovery of the Middle Way -- equanimity, not being too extreme in suffering nor indulgence. He said that each Buddha (not each person, but an actual Buddha) arrives at enlightenment -- how to be free from suffering and karma -- on his own, like finding a lost city that has always existed but was forgotten. This road to this city is the Eightfold Noble Path he re-discovered as an emerging Buddha, and which is followed by non-layperson Buddhists to achieve enlightenment, which can take innumerable lifetimes.

He also used the concept of karma to, imo, vilify his cousin, who was one of his monks, and tried to overthrow Gautama and have him killed when he didn't accept some of the rules for monks that his cousin wanted to add. The Nikayas (sp?) are stories of Gautama's past lives that he recalled in meditation just before his enlightenment. The cousin is often the bad guy in the story, providing a foil for Gautama to get closer to his goal of Buddhahood. The cousin always seemed to have these weird cursed-yet-blessed rebirths where his life purpose was to help further Gautama's goal. Imo, the cousin is one of the most scapegoated figures, if not the most scapegoated, in the history of the world.

(If you're interested, In the Buddha's Words is a good source for understanding the roots of Buddhism. I studied it deeply, and I came away with a good understanding of a lot of Buddhist concepts, as well as the personal opinion that Gautama was quite possibly narcissistic and had a big ego.)

Anyhow, Eastern religion became popularized in modern Western culture begining in the late 1800s with the charismatic and well-traveled Hindu Swami Vivekenanda, with Zen Buddhism in the Beat generation (and later Vipassana), and with the Hindu teachings of the Beatles' guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Somehow along the way, Westerners got the idea that karma is about payback and justice, but neither the Buddhist nor Hindu cosmologies support this. It is complicated, nothing at all like the simple binary opposition found in the Western religious concepts of good/evil, God/Satan, and heaven/hell. In popular Western culture, karma became a similarly binary concept, but it is not an accurate representation of the concepts that originated in India.

 

[Grendel]

Karma needs a helping hand