karma...is it real?

I believe in it. I dont believe in karma as a mythical force that surrounds us, but a practical and obvious way of thinking about other people. If you do something good for someone, they will probably think of you in a better way, thus positive karma. If you slash their tires and they know its you, You have bad karma with them. Im pretty torched so i dont know if im makin sense...

I dont believe in a mystical karma if thats what your talking about, i just think its a good term to use when it applies to relationships between people.

I also dont think saving a little girls kitten will make you a lottery winner.

 

Karma is VERY real, and I'm a firm believer in it. "You reap what you sow." If you do good, good comes back to you eventually, if you do bad, bad eventually follows you and bites you in the ass, and there's no time frame in when it'll happen either.

 

that pretty much explains it, it should be common sense sooner or later.

and just so you know, eastern philosophies of karma are different than western ideas of it. such as from wikipedia;

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It's similar to faith, and relates to inner peace...

 

Vicious, how does one eliminate karma in the strictly Buddist sense?

For me, it just feels good to give stuff away to others without expecting much in return (Give it Away, Give it Away Now.. Chili Peppers ) ... sometimes just the feeling of well-being after I helped someone out is enough compensation. But somehow, doing good usually has its way of coming back around, for me at least. Maybe it's because my happy inner vibes carry out and show a faint smile or a little more positive tone of voice, but I know that when I'm happy I show it. This probably gets noticed by the people I'm with and that positive energy carries over and they feel like doing some good.

On the other hand, I know when those pissed off vibes radiate from inside... I used to work at Costco and I hated it but I tried to keep it to myself. One day as I was taking a customer's order (Food Court) he asked why I was frowning! I couldn't believe I was showing these emotions. It was kinda cool b/c I realized that he was an old teacher of mine and the short conversation with him lightened my day... I just felt better and somehow I started getting more thank-you's for getting peoples' food. So really, I'm not sure if there's such thing as good or bad energy but it's pretty common sense that if you're happy those vibes will rub off on everyone you meet.

 

to me, im at the point where the question of beliefe in karma unsubstantial, i see it as something that happens all the time and its just a matter of recognizing it. be it coincidenc or not, things tend to balance out it thier own way.

karma and the laws of attraction, if understood, are great pathways to a generally more relaxed style of living.

 

The idea of Karma as it stands today is a result of a game of spiritual Chinese Whispers and misinterpretation. Karma was an early Hindu concept that simply meant that if you do bad things you will become a bad person, do good things, etc...

As time went on and the idea was absorbed by Buddhism, it came to mean the causal flow of events one leading to another, with no idea of retribution, or a force of good driving it. It's not a moral leveller that feeds evil back into its perpetrators, but a description of the way that events propagate and lead to other events. Buddha strictly denied that karma was something that would follow a person from lifetime to lifetime.

Karma isn't a matter of faith, it's a simple description of the action of cause and effect, which applies equally to the fall of a tree or a moral/immoral action.

MelT

 

Maybe you're not too far off from what you want to know.

 

So they took something simple and complicated it? Geez...

Where is the original understanding? Or is there even one?

If it's easy to misunderstand why not just keep it simple and say it differently then.

"What goes around comes around"

If we are the beginning and the end of everything, then we will experience all things in eternity as it is a loop.

Whatever happens, happens because of you. You are all things, therefore "what goes around comes around"

That's how I saw Karma, but I guess I was dead wrong. I guess I should just say 'what goes around comes around' now.

 

I don't believe it exists unfortunately. I've always been an extremely nice/caring person (except for a small period of my life where I was somewhat manipulative) and I do these things for the right reasons as well, unlike some people. I continue to see a trend of being fairly unlucky in life (nothing that bad happens when I get unlucky it just happens all the time). Luckily I'm a different person now and don't get really mad that I continuously defy the odds in a huge way

 

not to rain on anyone's parade, but when people ask "why do bad things happen to good people?"...I think "maybe because karma really doesn't exist and it's all just scientific probability?"

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQF08Ny3mi4

thats karma

 

Actually, it's the bad things that happen to good people that can really make them "good". It's all in how you take it, learn and live to deal with it that makes you a "better" person.

And bad things just don't happen to good people, bad things happen to everyone. It's just that we focus on the things that happen to good people because we "care" more for them. Although its true that some people suffer less than others, but those that don't suffer don't really know what it means to live.

 

Well, the idea has been around for about 5,500 years+, it's bound ot go through some transformation. If someone has a vague idea of the meaning and then adds in a little bit of their own reasoning then it can easily develop into other things. Initially Karma was not judgemental, or driven by morality, but if you were a beliver in god and karma then you could easily feel that god used karma to punish the bad and reward the good. This is how it developed within Hinduism, whilst the Buddhist idea stayed as simply meaning that every cause has an effect.

Look at the way other things adapt too; from being one christianity 2,000 years ago to thousands of versions now. Aikido too, it's only really been around in the way we think of it now for about 50 years, but it too has changed massively from what it was in that time. There are endless other examples. However, anyone wanting to know what Karma was originally and what it is now just has to go to a library or here on the net to find out - but few people do, they ask each other instead, and that's where meanings get lost.

Karma has survived pretty much in its original form in the East for about 4,000 years, with only slight further developments in the following years. In the west though, starting from about 1963, karma and a whole bag of eastern philosophy was hijacked by the New Age movement, and that's where the real distortions began. People wanted buddhism and hinduism that they could merge with their own beliefs, and very quickly many of the original ideas within those traditions became so distorted by them that they became entirely lost - even though, as I said, anyone with ten minutes to spare could find the true meaning.

it was convenient for the first people within the movement that very few people in the west knew much about real eastern thought, so any time they had some new alternative bullshit to sell they just had to say, "Yes, it's actually from Tibetan Buddhism' and people would just nod and accept that, and hand over their money.

We have scores of books, therapies, and god knows what nowadays that purport to be based on ancient beliefs and ideas (chakras and Reiki for one) that truly are based on nothing at all. Again, anyone could check out the background to any of it, but we just accept at face value that if someone brings out a book about something then they must know what they're talking about. Uhuh. Timothy Leary for one has done more damage to people with his odd interpretation of Tibetan thinking than anyone could realise. Robert Anton Wilson too, 'Prometheus Rising'..absolutely nuts and almost entirely groundless. But books by both of these people have sold in their millions. We just wanted what they offered at the time and so suspended disbelief.



>>>Where is the original understanding? Or is there even one?

As I said, the original meaning is, "Do good, become good. Be bad, become bad."

>>If we are the beginning and the end of everything, then we will experience all things in eternity as it is a loop.

Sorry, you just lost me? Why are we at the beginning and the end of everything?


MelT

 

Wow, great post man. Very informative

I remember our conversation when you talked about your beliefs and said

This is parallel with what I believe, that all things begin and end with you because you are all of reality or all there is.

Not only myself, but others have experienced "a loop" when on LSD and N2O- seeing themselves stare off into space looking for something. Instead of looking inside your mind, you try to look outside and see yourself staring off into the distance. Your conscious mind totally shuts down and the sub-conscious has no control over what is going on so it waits for the conscious mind to come back and control it.

Personally it was very confusing and kinda frightening at the time to experience but that's what happened to not only myself but 2 of my other friends by themselves and it happened when we were chilling too one time... Minds connecting... I was explaining what my brother was feeling and experiencing when he was trying to speak I spoke for him. It was the craziest thing, but it all makes sense if we are all connected.

 

Hi Goodstuff, I'll get to you in a second when I'm less mashed, interesting post. I'm trying a mixture of Turkish cream hash and some good bud at present, so typing's quite hard, thinking even harder I just wanted to say that in my posting above that it sounds like I'm against the idea of chakras, what I should have said is that I'm against the modern interpretation of them. I do belive they are a real thing.

That was tougher than it should have been....

MelT

 

Turkish cream hash??? Sounds Meltylicious!

How is it made?