Karma

[AsylumSeeker]

I did a quick search and didn't pore over any topic relating to karma as its main source of discussion, so I decided to make this thread.

Do you believe in karma, or the old adage, "What goes around comes around"?

Everything you do in life obviously has a consequence, and morally speaking, your conscious is usually subliminally affected even if you don't realize it at first with every decision.

Could those two factors tie into something?

I don't even know where to begin. Do you believe in karma? Why or why not? What's your perception of its contemporary usage when people speak of it?

[Davin]

I have an idea, just mere speculation, however optimistic it is:

If I do something nice for several people, I think that it's likely that one of those people will in turn do something nice for someone else. If I do something nice for a lot of people, I think the likely hood that the nice actions will reach a third tier increases. So if I do it enough, I think the likely hood that someone will do something nice for me goes up. Like the chaos theory. I'm not likely to research this due to time and interest, so I'll just leave it as baseless speculation and continue to do it unless I find that it does harm... however I don't see any way this could hurt anyone. While I have no evidence to support this idea, I do think it's likely to work, and it's my effort and time to waste as I choose.

I know this doesn't follow exactly in line with Karma, but I do feel it's along the same lines.

[The Black Jester]

I don't personally credit the concept of "Karma" in any mystical sense, but I definitely believe that the world is a sufficiently rich and complex arrangement, such that any action one takes effects, however slightly, the overall balance and present state of the system, which certainly may return to effect the actor, however obliquely.  So that if I contribute violence to the world, and grief, and if I lie, or thieve, or in any way build upon the current misery, I have increased the supply of those things in the general currency, and am likely to receive my payment in kind, both because each of our actions, by a common law, inspires equivalent direct and immediate reactions in others, and because, in the longer view, I have, as I have said, increased the expectation of misery by others by the amount of my own addition, and both made it a more congenial environment for the same actions by others, and inspired cynicism in those who might, otherwise, have lived by higher ideals, and encouraged them to seek a path more base.  In such ways, misery seeks out its own, and keeps them company.

*  I seem to have hit on the same idea as Davin, and he seems to have posted just slightly before me.

[Davin]

*  I seem to have hit on the same idea as Davin, and he seems to have posted just slightly before me.

Looks very much like you did, however I gave my explanation in the form of an example and you explained the underlying concept. Yours, I think, may prove to be the better option.

[The Black Jester]

*  I seem to have hit on the same idea as Davin, and he seems to have posted just slightly before me.

Looks very much like you did, however I gave my explanation in the form of an example and you explained the underlying concept. Yours, I think, may prove to be the better option.

Perhaps we turned out to be a good team on this one?  

[KebertX]

You could no more convince me that Karma isn't real than you could that 2+2=5. It's a force just as apparent and obvious to me as gravity.  From my own experience, I see Karma in action every second of every day.  It may be an illusion from an atheist perspective, but it is so obviously real to me.  Just as Gravity is a real force (even though it's only been proven mathematically, and there's no sight of the graviton anywhere) I think of Karma as just another natural force of the universe.

You can say I'm violating Occam's Razor, and I'll agree with you, but I honestly don't care.  I am convinced by my own experiences (which I will never try to force onto anyone else) That life is made up of it's own energy.  You could put every atom of a human into the correct place, and you'd get a dead body.  It needs energy, a life force if you will.  Like I said, I don't need an experiment to prove this to myself any more than I need someone to produce a graviton for me to believe in gravity.

Your actions put energy out into the world, and the natural equilibrium of the universe sends and equal and opposite energy back at you.  What you send out is what you bring back to yourself.  That's it.  Karma is simply the cosmic flow of cause and effect.  It's how I personally perceive the world around me to behave, scientific merit or not.

[Tank]

I'm a Karma agnostic. Part of me says Pfft superstitious bunkum a smaller part isn't quite so sure.

[Caecilian]

I don't have much to add to this, as I agree with everything in The Black Jester's excellent post. I think that 'karma' is fine so long as we conceive of it as a moral environment that we create in our social space. If we start to think of it as some sort of force of nature, then we part company with metaphysical naturalism, and also with rationality.

[Martin TK]

You could no more convince me that Karma isn't real than you could that 2+2=5. It's a force just as apparent and obvious to me as gravity.  From my own experience, I see Karma in action every second of every day.  It may be an illusion from an atheist perspective, but it is so obviously real to me.  Just as Gravity is a real force (even though it's only been proven mathematically, and there's no sight of the graviton anywhere) I think of Karma as just another natural force of the universe.

You can say I'm violating Occam's Razor, and I'll agree with you, but I honestly don't care.  I am convinced by my own experiences (which I will never try to force onto anyone else) That life is made up of it's own energy.  You could put every atom of a human into the correct place, and you'd get a dead body.  It needs energy, a life force if you will.  Like I said, I don't need an experiment to prove this to myself any more than I need someone to produce a graviton for me to believe in gravity.

Your actions put energy out into the world, and the natural equilibrium of the universe sends and equal and opposite energy back at you.  What you send out is what you bring back to yourself.  That's it.  Karma is simply the cosmic flow of cause and effect.  It's how I personally perceive the world around me to behave, scientific merit or not.

Then aren't you in essence simply saying that you hold these beliefs, therefore you have a belief system, or a religion of sorts.  You are disputing science to put forth your own interpretation of the world, isn't that just another form of religion?  I can understand your point, and I am in no way saying you are wrong in your belief system, as I have studied heavily the Philosophy of the TAO, and even agree with some of it's texts.  But, if science can not prove it, yet, then it is simply either a religion or a theory.  Perhaps science will one day explain this so called Karma, and perhaps it will not.  I am more inclined to say that what goes around comes around is the minority, therefore we are inclined to recognize it or experience it beyond the other activities that are common around us.  Just a thought.

[KebertX]

Then aren't you in essence simply saying that you hold these beliefs, therefore you have a belief system, or a religion of sorts.  You are disputing science to put forth your own interpretation of the world, isn't that just another form of religion?  I can understand your point, and I am in no way saying you are wrong in your belief system, as I have studied heavily the Philosophy of the TAO, and even agree with some of it's texts.  But, if science can not prove it, yet, then it is simply either a religion or a theory.  Perhaps science will one day explain this so called Karma, and perhaps it will not.  I am more inclined to say that what goes around comes around is the minority, therefore we are inclined to recognize it or experience it beyond the other activities that are common around us.  Just a thought.

No. I don't believe anything that contradicts science. I'm simply taking an extra leap.  I don't think of it as religion, religion is mythology. This is a simple world view.  As of right now, there's no hard evidence that supports the idea of Karma (It's not a theory: theories are supported by experimentation. It's not a hypothesis, no one's suggested an experiment for it. Karma is nothing more than an idea.) But I don't care because I can perceive it.  I see Karma in every individual action of everything around me.

I'd be outraged if they tried to teach Karma in schools, but I still think that there's some merit to the idea of Karma, and most of the other Buddhist philosophies.  I'm not being anti scientific, if they came out with a new equation that proved there were only 4 forces in the universe, I'd be skeptical for a while, but eventually concede that Karma doesn't exist.  If they solved the theory of everything, and Karma was not involved, I'd concede that karma doesn't exist.  But, then again, I'd do the same thing if they proved that gravity wasn't real.  Even though gravity is an apparent and obvious force of the universe, I would still concede that gravity wasn't real if it was proven to me.

Does that make sense? I'd require some evidence before I would consider the idea that Karma's not real. I know burden of proof goes to the one who's making the claim, but I don't care. I don't care if other people don't believe it, or if they think I'm under a religious delusion. I remain convinced of Karma.  I hope I clarified my point.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I reject a supernatural conception of karma, but accept a materialistic expression of it.

In short, assholes make enemies.

[maninorange]

I am inclined to agree with Davin and Jester on this one, though I do have something to add.

I think that the very act of performing a good deed makes you feel better.  We all also realize that when we do something we aren't proud of, it tends to eat at us for a while.
When I feel good, I feel incredibly optimistic and the universe is just fine and dandy and nothing could go wrong.  This doesn't necessarily make good things happen to me, but rather makes everything that does happen to me appear in a positive light, creating the illusion of everything being better.  
When I have a piece of guilt gnawing at my insides, the opposite is true.  I'm quite irritable, and no matter what happens, It's going to appear in a very negative light.

While I don't believe in Karma in a mystical sense, I believe it is very real in the forms of social workings and chemicals in your brain.

[Gawen]

Do you believe in karma, or the old adage, "What goes around comes around"?

No.

Everything you do in life obviously has a consequence, and morally speaking, your conscious is usually subliminally affected even if you don't realize it at first with every decision.
Could those two factors tie into something? I don't even know where to begin. Do you believe in karma? Why or why not? What's your perception of its contemporary usage when people speak of it?

'Karma' is an Indian religious concept in contradistinction to 'faith', which view all human dramas as the will of God as opposed to present - and past - life actions. Karma is the concept of "action" or "deed", understood as that which causes the entire cycle of cause and effect

[xSilverPhinx]

Yes, I believe in some form of karma, but I don't give it a supernatural interpretation.

Black Jester put it nicely.

[notself]

Thought it might be useful to see what Buddhist teachings say about Karma/kamma.

"Intention, I tell you, is kamma. Intending, one does kamma by way of body, speech, & intellect."

â€" AN 6.63

"'I am the owner of my actions (kamma), heir to my actions, born of my actions, related through my actions, and have my actions as my arbitrator. Whatever I do, for good or for evil, to that will I fall heir'

â€" AN 5.57

The way the above talks about karma it is not so much cause and effect as it is action (karma) and result(s) of action (vipaka).  Cause and effect is usually thought of as immediate and linear.  Action and result(s) can be linear but are more often a sort of feed back loop or pattern that ends up as habit.  It can take decades for all of the results of an action to play themselves out.  The key is intention.  The more one acts with skillful intention the easier it gets.  The more one acts with unskillful intention the easier that becomes.  One falls heir to one's intentions and actions over time.  I am one of the older members of this board and I can tell you karma is real in the sense that decisions do have results.