Karma, Destiny, & Past Lives: Things that don't make sense about them

Discuss deep philosophical topics and questions.
lavezzi
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Post by lavezzi »

Winston wrote:There's something about karma I don't get. Suppose I did something wrong to someone, or even killed him. Now if he deserved it due to something he did in the past or bad karma in a past life, then I would have dealt him the karma he deserved. So in that sense, I would have been an agent of karma right? If so, then would I be punished and accrue bad karma for my action too? The thing is, if I was delivering someone his own karma, then why would I be guilty of anything?

But on the other hand, if he had no bad karma, then why would karma let me do something bad to him?

Have any of you ever wondered about this?
The buddhists believe in re-incarnation, so it makes sense to them that a person can have acquired little negative karma in their current life yet still be accumulating negative repercussions from their past lives.

We are being programmed by our culture to be totally confused about each and every aspect of life; as odbo said, to believe life's purpose is to seek joy that never really comes. In this one life which is very likely our last, our sole purpose in terms of developing ourselves should be to aim to see things clearly for what they truly are and avoid all forms of confusion. A key to doing this is to understand just how delusional human beings really are by evaluating our daily lives and comparing the wide range of emotions and impulses we experience with the actual physical events that occur. You'll then notice that not much actually happens in the physical sense whatsoever, most of what we experience is predominantly just mental activity. As the hindu teaching goes: mind and body are one of the same, really we are only the awareness that senses and perceives everything, nothing more. If a man has his legs and arms amputated, has he lost any of his "self"? No. But going by the understanding that mind and body are the same, if we lost our whole body including our brains and therefore our mind, at which point would we have lost our "self"? We wouldn't have, because the self is just a concept created by the mind and is the sole cause of most of our suffering.

Once you realize that striving for joy does not carry with it any real satisfaction and everything is just fine how it is, you can then start to think about what our true purpose in life is. The only real and best answer there could be is to help others avoid confusion and achieve clarity, but most people are too delusional to understand these types of ideas, so in my opinion what you should really do is have children in whom you can inherit good values. With the aforementioned realization, you begin to understand how each human's life is equal, although their minds and bodies may not be. So to give another human life is the only real purpose we can have, and to use the sense of clarity we have to help our children be as functional and clear-minded as possible.


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Post by Jackal »

Winston wrote:There's something about karma I don't get. Suppose I did something wrong to someone, or even killed him. Now if he deserved it due to something he did in the past or bad karma in a past life, then I would have dealt him the karma he deserved. So in that sense, I would have been an agent of karma right? If so, then would I be punished and accrue bad karma for my action too? The thing is, if I was delivering someone his own karma, then why would I be guilty of anything?

But on the other hand, if he had no bad karma, then why would karma let me do something bad to him?

Have any of you ever wondered about this?
Winston, I think your main problem is that you are thinking about karma in a theistic way like it's some external force that judges people, but at least the Buddhist concept of karma is not that way at all (Hindus, Jains, and perhaps some other religions have somewhat different ideas about karma). Karma literally means "intentional action" and your motivation for performing the action plays a large part in how much you will benefit/suffer in the future because of it.

There are also different schools of thought regarding karma in Buddhism. Some think that it causes most of the actions that happen to a person, others have the more moderate view that karma only causes some things to happen to a person and the other things that happen to that person are caused by different kinds of causal relations.

So in your example above, if you killed the man out of compassion for him and others (perhaps he was about to kill hundreds of people) then you probably wouldn't create much negative karma. If on the other hand, you killed the man out of hatred or greed, then you would create a lot of bad karma.

Karma is basically your mind punishing/rewarding itself through negative/postive emotions.

I haven't read all of this page yet, but it looks good if you want to explore the Buddhist concept of karma further:
http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/karma.htm
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Post by lookin4happiness »

lavezzi wrote:
Winston wrote:There's something about karma I don't get. Suppose I did something wrong to someone, or even killed him. Now if he deserved it due to something he did in the past or bad karma in a past life, then I would have dealt him the karma he deserved. So in that sense, I would have been an agent of karma right? If so, then would I be punished and accrue bad karma for my action too? The thing is, if I was delivering someone his own karma, then why would I be guilty of anything?

But on the other hand, if he had no bad karma, then why would karma let me do something bad to him?

Have any of you ever wondered about this?
The buddhists believe in re-incarnation, so it makes sense to them that a person can have acquired little negative karma in their current life yet still be accumulating negative repercussions from their past lives.

We are being programmed by our culture to be totally confused about each and every aspect of life; as odbo said, to believe life's purpose is to seek joy that never really comes. In this one life which is very likely our last, our sole purpose in terms of developing ourselves should be to aim to see things clearly for what they truly are and avoid all forms of confusion. A key to doing this is to understand just how delusional human beings really are by evaluating our daily lives and comparing the wide range of emotions and impulses we experience with the actual physical events that occur. You'll then notice that not much actually happens in the physical sense whatsoever, most of what we experience is predominantly just mental activity. As the hindu teaching goes: mind and body are one of the same, really we are only the awareness that senses and perceives everything, nothing more. If a man has his legs and arms amputated, has he lost any of his "self"? No. But going by the understanding that mind and body are the same, if we lost our whole body including our brains and therefore our mind, at which point would we have lost our "self"? We wouldn't have, because the self is just a concept created by the mind and is the sole cause of most of our suffering.

Once you realize that striving for joy does not carry with it any real satisfaction and everything is just fine how it is, you can then start to think about what our true purpose in life is. The only real and best answer there could be is to help others avoid confusion and achieve clarity, but most people are too delusional to understand these types of ideas, so in my opinion what you should really do is have children in whom you can inherit good values. With the aforementioned realization, you begin to understand how each human's life is equal, although their minds and bodies may not be. So to give another human life is the only real purpose we can have, and to use the sense of clarity we have to help our children be as functional and clear-minded as possible.
very good sir... very good.
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Post by Winston »

Check out what someone on the ATS forum said about karma. Do you think it's true? If so, then what's the point of being good if you don't get rewarded for it?

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thr ... id14031999
There is no such thing as 'Karma'. It is just something invented in the Hindu religion like the 'Sin' found in Christianity that must be repented. Obviously the priests wanted the general population to behave and keep them under control so they frighten people by telling them that there is a God that will punish people for 'bad' behavior.

There is no such thing as good-for-good, bad-for-bad Karma. There is only cause and effect, souls' experiencing of human restrictions, souls' experiencing of ignorance etc

Souls are here to experience human restrictions/limitations, so they will definitely experience suffering. Whoever creates the suffering does not matter. Life is preplanned by souls themselves. So no one is guilty of anything.

People often misunderstood the human's experience of restrictions/suffering as bad 'karma'. However, it is just experience that souls wanted to experience.
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Post by Winston »

I saw a presentation by Todd Murphy, a brain scientist who is friends with Michael Persinger, about reincarnation where he said that it would make no sense for humans to reincarnate as animals from an evolutionary standpoint, because a human cannot apply the lessons he learned in his lifetime to a subsequent life as an animal or insect. Therefore if we are all evolving and growing, we could have to have a next life in which we could take what we learned and improve upon it or develop it to the next level. Otherwise, reincarnation makes no sense from an evolutionary standpoint. Here is that presentation where he talks about this. It's really interesting. What do you think?

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Post by Jackal »

Winston wrote:Check out what someone on the ATS forum said about karma. Do you think it's true? If so, then what's the point of being good if you don't get rewarded for it?
Yes, in the short term, karma can SEEM irrelevant because it often takes a long time for its effects to happen (sometimes several lifetimes). Karma is often very unsatisfying to the impatient.
There is no such thing as 'Karma'. It is just something invented in the Hindu religion like the 'Sin' found in Christianity that must be repented. Obviously the priests wanted the general population to behave and keep them under control so they frighten people by telling them that there is a God that will punish people for 'bad' behavior.

There is no such thing as good-for-good, bad-for-bad Karma. There is only cause and effect, souls' experiencing of human restrictions, souls' experiencing of ignorance etc

Souls are here to experience human restrictions/limitations, so they will definitely experience suffering. Whoever creates the suffering does not matter. Life is preplanned by souls themselves. So no one is guilty of anything.

People often misunderstood the human's experience of restrictions/suffering as bad 'karma'. However, it is just experience that souls wanted to experience.
Hmm, there are lots of assumptions in there. My first question is "Does the author of that post even understand the Buddhist concept of karma?" 99 times out of 100, the answer is "no" because so many people are viewing Buddhism through their own theistic lense and keep likening it to "god's judement" which is totally the wrong concept.

Why is this man so certain that people have souls? Buddhism certainly doesn't believe in any fixed thing called a "soul"... that's Hinduism... which people often confuse with traditional Buddhism. People who don't believe in souls will never agree very much with those who do believe in souls.
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Post by Jackal »

Winston wrote:I saw a presentation by Todd Murphy, a brain scientist who is friends with Michael Persinger, about reincarnation where he said that it would make no sense for humans to reincarnate as animals from an evolutionary standpoint, because a human cannot apply the lessons he learned in his lifetime to a subsequent life as an animal or insect. Therefore if we are all evolving and growing, we could have to have a next life in which we could take what we learned and improve upon it or develop it to the next level. Otherwise, reincarnation makes no sense from an evolutionary standpoint. Here is that presentation where he talks about this. It's really interesting. What do you think?
Who says that life always has to make sense? Some people drink themselves to death, even though they clearly remember people in their current lifetime telling them not to, so merely remembering information doesn't mean that people will use it wisely. Yes, being reborn as an animal is a negative thing, but it's not permanent: When the being is next reborn as a mentally sound human (which might take a very long time), there is an opportunity for them to learn again (although they might not use it).

It would be nice if every being in the universe were improving at every moment, but I think that observations show that this is not the case. Lots of people don't even learn many lessons in their current lifetimes. Improvement usually requires conscious effort. Lots of people already live like animals and will probably be reborn as animals in their next lives.
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Post by Jackal »

So the main point is this:
A Buddhist view of karma will only make sense if you believe that Buddhists' assumptions about the mind and reality are correct. Whereas if you are looking at Buddhist ideas about karma from a subconsciouly theistic perspective, from the perspective of another religion's assumptions, or from a completely materialistic perspective, then, yes, you will always find conflicts between your assumptions and Buddhist ideas about karma.

The New Age movement has made people think world religions are just a smorgasbord where people can take a bit of whatever appeals to them and mix them together however they like. However, the result of too much mixing of religions is often diluted nonsense in which terms no longer have their original, intended meanings. "Karma" starts to mean anything one likes it to in this context. And one person's idea of "karma" doesn't match another's. Whereas in traditional eastern religions, such as Buddhism, Hinduism, etc., the term "karma" is very specific and technical.

Winston, you seem to always think of things in a vaguely theistic way, so you might prefer Hindu ideas about karma, which will be less foreign to your way of thinking. However, I know little about Hinduism, so I can't give you advice about it.
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Re: Karma and Destiny: Things that don't make sense

Post by Winston »

Whats your take on this below? Is the universe unfair to make u pay debt for a past life u cant remember? See my talk with Alex below.

[5/10, 2:11 PM] Alex From Venice: Well... I'm just telling you what I've read... honestly I don't believe in karmic debt because it'd be immoral to have to pay with struggle in a life while unaware of what it's been done in the previous...
[5/10, 2:13 PM] Alex From Venice: the lack of memories of the previous life make impossible to recognize the "bad luck" like a "punishment or balance" because there's nothing known from the past that can justify the punishment or the balance
[5/10, 2:13 PM] Alex From Venice: so it become just a circular reasoning
[5/10, 2:14 PM] Alex From Venice: you can believe there's a past life with many wrong doing because you believe in karmic debt and you believe in karmic debt because you assume a past life with wrong doing
[5/10, 2:15 PM] Alex From Venice: but the karmic debt should be proven on the memories of a past life not the assumption of a past life with wrong doing derived by the belief in karmic debt
[5/10, 2:17 PM] Alex From Venice: so karmic debt can't be proven and even if it is real, it's immoral because there's no real "teaching" or real "redemption" if someone suffer without knowing the reasons of his suffers

[5/10, 2:22 PM] Winston Wu: True bro. But everything happens for a reason. Just because something is unfair doesnt mean its untrue right?

New agers say that ur memory has to be wiped because if u remember your past life its too much burden. Everything needs to reset. Its the cycle of life. Your mind and soul need to reset too. Not just your body.

Also if u are advanced spiritually u can discover your past lives too. So its possible to remember.

[5/10, 2:27 PM] Alex From Venice: but it's not possible for the great great great majority of people, so there's no real "advance" from a life to another if there's no memories of past life
[5/10, 2:28 PM] Alex From Venice: think if your memories would last one day only bro?
[5/10, 2:28 PM] Alex From Venice: how could you ever reach any advance even spiritually?
[5/10, 2:29 PM] Alex From Venice: we need to have memories of our past to be able to learn and evolve

[5/10, 2:29 PM] Winston Wu: Maybe u do have memory of past lives in your subconscious or akashic record?
[5/10, 2:30 PM] Winston Wu: Its just up to you to access them via meditation and spiritual practice? Maybe u have to be evolved first like Buddha? Buddha remembered all his past lives once he became enlightened remember? So the story goes.
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Re: Karma and Destiny: Things that don't make sense about them

Post by Winston »

This Indian guru says that bad karma can actually help you and be good for you. Wow what an unusual thing to say. lol



He also says here that karma means allowing your past to become your future. Wow, so this means no karma is best? Interesting and wise Indian perspective.



"What is Karma? Sadhguru speaks on the nature of memory and how it influences not just our mind and emotion, but also our body and genetic make-up. He also relates memory to the karmic structure in the human system and how to go beyond this."

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Re: Karma and Destiny: Things that don't make sense about them

Post by Winston »

Wow this is so beautiful, profound, and wise!



Parallel Universes
84 significant number
-this existence has passed through 84 happenings.
-this is the 84th time.
-whole existence is just vibration
-first there was a word and the word is God
- creation and the creator cannot be separated
-creation is not a done thing,
it is an ongoing thing first there was word
- first thing that happened was sound.
-an ever-expanding universe.
- there is no beginning and an end.It is an endless universe.
-Rudra means the Roarer
- The dissolution is always happening.
-When we say, ‘It's her karma’ -it means she is allowing her past to be her future, there is no fresh possibility in her
- there is no future for them really, it will repeat itself.
-spiritual path means: you do not want your past to repeat as future, you do not want your life to be cyclical
-You're in a state of dementia
- The moment you were born, your death happened.
-Karma means you are repeating your past as future.
-Karma is like an anchor
-You throw in an anchor and you’re trying to move your boat –at the most it can only go in circles. without cutting your anchor
you’re not going to move ahead
-without that memory this body cannot be structured and held together.
So memory is not your enemy, it is just thatyou don't know how to hold it.
You are into it, that’s the problem
...
Sadhguru's books:
Adiyogi: The Source of Yoga: https://amzn.to/2lBjXyi
A Yogi's Guide to Joy: https://amzn.to/2KaGd0D
https://www.amazon.com/shop/onepath
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Re: Karma, Destiny, & Past Lives: Things that don't make sense about them

Post by Winston »

Buddhist Sifu in Taiwan explains the Buddhist perspective on karma, destiny, and past lives. And how karma and destiny can be changed.





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Re: Karma, Destiny, & Past Lives: Things that don't make sense about them

Post by Lucas88 »

Winston wrote:
August 16th, 2011, 1:06 am
Destiny has a funny way of forcing its will in your life. If it really wants something, it will make you unhappy and make things go against you, until you follow your destiny. So it doesn't seem to really give you a choice whether to follow it or not. If you don't follow its path, then it blocks your chosen path with a wall, until you turn around and obey your destiny. Doesn't that suck? It shows how little control we have over our lives, doesn't it?
I understand your sentiment, @Winston. I too have my own frustrations with destiny and the circumstances of my own life and often feel trapped and miserable. In my case I'm on the autistic spectrum and was also born into a culture which I absolutely loath and therefore suffer from self-hatred on grounds of nationality. These things have undoubtedly held me back significantly in this incarnation and resulted in depression and feelings of alienation. New Agers will say that these circumstances are the result of my own karma or that they somehow serve as "lessons" for my own soul growth. But I don't see how being robbed of a substantial social life and the experience of romantic relationships or suffering as a misfit in a culture that is completely alien to my own nature could possibly lead to any true soul growth. For me it has only resulted in a life of emptiness.

I've come to believe that reincarnation and each individual's lot in life make much more sense within the context of a Gnostic-like view of the world, namely that our planet's reincarnation system has been hijacked by "archons" or malevolent entities who masquerade as "God" or as "angels" and arbitrarily determine our incarnations which are often negative. In this case doctrines such as karma and redemptive or didactic suffering would be nothing more than excuses concocted by the archons themselves.

Having accepted this view of reality, I am of the view that our incarnations follow one of the following two scenarios:

1. An Archontic Life Plan

We are captured by the archons on the other side and detained in their astral gulag beyond the white light. After suffering unjust abuse at their hands we are reincarnated into the world with a negative life plan chosen by them. This will involve things like abusive family relationships, bullying and social alienation, poverty and financial problems, illnesses and disabilities, addictions, loss of loved ones, programmed traumatic events, etc. The justification for such negative life plans will be karma or the need to experience such forms of suffering in order to learn from them but that is a lie. These incarnations will be extremely difficult and may even resemble a bad horror movie. Some victims will get into New Age spirituality and even believe the archontic lie. Unfortunately these people will return to the white light after bodily death and go through all of the same shit again in their next incarnation and the one after that.

2. A Rebellious Life Plan

We realize that it's a trap and don't go into the white light. Instead we choose to flee and manage to evade the archons and all of their deceptions. However, trapped within the astral plane of the archon matrix and preferring the material world to the archons' astral gulag of soul torture and abuse, we initiate our next incarnation of the fly and attempt to make a our own life plan, often in an extremely ad hoc manner. While a rebellious incarnation like this will be free of much of the extreme suffering of an archontically planned incarnation, it isn't without problems. Often it will lack structure due to its ad hoc planning. We may feel that our life is going nowhere while others are seemingly advancing smoothly in life. Other times our soul will still be hindered by etheric engrams which the archons have embedded in our soul anatomy and which have been programmed to create handicaps and weaknesses or trigger negative situations in any one of our incarnations. This is likely punishment for having rebelled against the enslavers in previous lives. So this kind of incarnation can involve limitations and frustration with destiny too.

Everything makes more sense in light of the archon theory of reincarnation as opposed to the New Age theory. Most of the people who suffer abject poverty, horrific illnesses, self-destructive behaviors, abuse or tyranny have been given that kind of life plan by the archons. That is their archontically determined "destiny". The suffering and limitations which characterize many people's incarnations serve no real purpose. Such lives are only for the benefit and amusement of the archons who are really our enemies.

What is the solution to this situation? According to the spiritual path which I follow, the only solution on an individual level is to develop one's soul through occult practice, raise the Kundalini and complete the Opus Magnum in order to achieve godhood (the next level of our spiritual evolution). Only then will we be immune to the archons' artificial karma and mandates of "destiny" and be able to plan our lives as we wish.


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