[Cicero]

No I don't. The traditional version of Karma is a little harsh of an experience. Karma is known as the law of cause and effect, and the often, simultaneity of it. I believe in cause and effect, but the history of the word is a long one, full of implications of past life wrong doing, and the punishments, or rewards for it now.

There are people that write everything off as karma, for good or ill, on any situation. I think this is stupid and ill conceived. Sometimes people are merely random victims, and sometimes people just experience random good fortune. There is self-fulfilling prophecy everywhere.

I watched this guy think something terrible about me once, I could tell by the look on his face, and he spilled his tall coffee all over the coffee counter. He actually came over to my general area and mentioned something about it, as if it were his karma for thinking something. He approached me getting cream, and said out loud, "that's what I get"...I think he did it all to his self. That's a mild version of someone acting out of their perceived karma.

I used to spend hours devoted to chanting over my perceived karma. And that was dumb. Karma is just cause and effect and there is no chanting to cure you of cause and effect, and what you do to yourself. Sure, if you spend hours chanting about karma, that may keep you out of trouble because you aren't out wreaking havoc. In that way, it might be effective, but on the whole, to say a youngster is traumatized because of past-life karma is dull and dim whitted. Sometimes victims are victims, and the fortunate just got a lucky stroke. That doesn't last forever either.

Pie mentions people and their good or bad choices. This is true. Either person can die early in a car accident,however. To attribute Karma to an unlucky stroke would still be faulty thinking. We always need a grand explanation as to why things happen and sometimes there just isn't one. There is a problem with pie's example, all people make good and bad choices. Instead of saying group a and b let's say there is group a=b and a group a=z. Now group "a" here is representative of a bad choice. And the value is representative of the magnitude of the effect. If george jr. gets a dui he gets it expunged, if little johnny gets a dui, it's the beginning of a long criminal history.

Say you have made these "great choices" all your life, but then cut someone off behind you in traffic not seeing them there, and they hit the gaurdrail and die. Is that their karma? Is that their poor choice? Nope.

I actually believe in luck. A real demon can hit the lottery, and a real angel can die starving, and early. I think it's a lot choices, and personal responsibility, with a dash of luck. I do not think luck and karma are the same thing at all. Luck is "shit happens", and karma is "shit happens because you did this other thing over there". I believe in random, dumb luck, for good or ill. You can seize opportunity and make good choices. And you can make bad choices and see what happens. But sometimes things happen that even karma can not explain away.... I think it's about luck. I do. You can create a beautiful life on purpose and cheers to you! But there are no guarantees.....Luck. Random luck. I believe in it. Not as a force that acts on it's own....Just as something that just happens when all the variables are right for it.

People think that karma is about cause and effect, but if you read the sutras, it's about what you did in this life or another one, to reap the effect. Pllllbt. I believe in cause and effect and how great or terribly unlucky the effect was. heh.