Do you believe in karma?

[piercehawkeye45]

Originally Posted by Aliantha

I think you can be nice to people without being taken advantage of.

When did I say you couldn't? If you are nice to some people they will take advantage of you, others won't.

[piercehawkeye45]

Originally Posted by lumberjim

Thanks, Doogie. You've certainly got it all figured out.

I don't have it all figured out. I just don't believe in karma and I gave my reasons why.

It seems to me that people get good things when they put themselves, or are put there, in good positions. If you are an asshole but you put yourself in a good position, you will tend to get good things. If you are really nice but put yourself in bad positions, then bad things will tend to happen to you.

That is assuming we are in control of our lives as well.

[Pie]

People who have made poor choices in the past are more likely to do so in the future.

Those that have demonstrated good decision-making are likely to continue to make good decisions.

That's hardly a cosmic force.

[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.

[Pie]

Cic, good things and bad things happen -- to everyone. Entropy is the major force at work in the universe.

When we try to connect patterns, or look at statistically significant outcomes, that's when we fall into "causation-correlation" mixups.

On the average, people with good decision making skills (either from genetic predisposition or acquired understanding) will tend to fare better than their less gifted counterparts.

Some folks like george jr. can fake it for a while, by covering up his bad decision-making by being rich and societally advantaged. Then he gets to be president, and no one can cover up his cognitive fuck-ups any longer.

[Undertoad]

If you are nice to a bunch of assholes they will take advantage of you. If you are nice to a bunch of genuine people, they will be touched by your niceness and want to be nice themselves.

I can't tell who the assholes are. So I'm just nice to people and if they take advantage of me, enh, that's OK too.

[Shawnee123]

Do I believe in karma? I don't know, what's going on in Florida right about now?

[Cicero]

Originally Posted by Pie

On the average, people with good decision making skills (either from genetic predisposition or acquired understanding) will tend to fare better than their less gifted counterparts.

This is true. Absolutely. But I do know a ton of examples of it being, not true. So some of it is blind luck. Rlly.

Like my brother. He is gifted, but he is also handicapped and had no choice over his genetic predisposition. Heh. He was actually born doomed by a latent genetic problem, and there was no choice anyone could make about it. Bad luck. The fact that he has survived this long, is all good luck, and the scrupulous choices he personally has made.

Luck can make all the difference or no difference at all. I like the irony. I say luck.

There was an anger management teacher that I knew, that let me sit in on classes once. (I was so curious) She was actually teaching people how to make better choices. She was very successful and was making money hand over fist with these mostly, court-mandated courses. She was a trained psychologist of course,but then she died in an auto accident on the highway. Bad luck. Just a couple of seconds of bad luck can make all the difference. Slippery road..smash.

I knew a kid that was modest and making art. He got in a car with one of his friends, and the friend lost control of the car in the rain. Died instantly. That kid was cool. It's too bad. I was actually funding some of his art materials when I could....Bad luck. For a couple of seconds, terrible luck. He was making all the right choices, despite the environment he grew up in, and was very talented...A very quiet, talented, nice kid. A couple of seconds of bad luck, and he is no longer with us. You can try and blame this on him for this or that, but I don't think you can.

You can tell me what happens on the average, but I am still watching the show, and it is definitely not at it's conclusion.

Heh, I've seen terrible people that fare well. It's aaaall luck. I do believe in making proper choices because it's a moral imperative.I do believe in making proper choices because of a positive logical outcome. Everything else is luck.

[Sundae]

Someone my Mum knew worked past retirement age in order to have a better standard of living as a pensioner. She certainly worked longer and to more effect than Mum (who worked hard, but never had what you would call a career, just a job).

No sooner had she finally retired, having reached the goal she set herself, she was hit by a car. Crash, bang, wallop. I seem to remember it mounted the pavement (sidewalk) making her the ultimate innocent victim, but that might be me over-egging it.

That doesn't really further the discussion, but I wanted to tell my bad luck story too.

[Cicero]

lol! I'm just saying that good decisions are great, they are awesome. But luck can have it's way with you. Srsly.

You can make a bad decision a bad choice, and it can be the best thing that ever happened to you, if luck is involved, another anecdote:

A local professor I knew, went to work in New York on something for a couple of months. He did not even get out of bed for his appointment that morning. I don't even think he called to let anyone know he wasn't going to make it. Needless to say, the building was hit and was destroyed right when he was supposed to be inside of it. That's good luck for the poor decision maker, I say...

Pure luck. The sleepy slacker survived. It wasn't karma. Just a lucky stroke.

[HungLikeJesus]

Clone thread:
Do you believe in caramel?

[Pie]

With sea salt.

[Scriveyn]

Gimme Korma any day

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Aliantha

I think you can be nice to people without being taken advantage of.

What's the fun in that?:p

[Nirvana]

There are three degrees of giving. One is called one-handed giving. With this degree of giving, you give things away because people ask you, or because you are pressured into it, or because people are looking. But you are also holding on with one hand. You may not really want to give, but, reluctantly, you do. Let's say that a beggar keeps on badgering you. To get rid of him, you give him something. If you've ever traveled in India, you've probably encountered situations where beggars follow you around like a shadow and won't let you go until you finally give them something. That is a form of giving, of sharing with others. But it has a limited value, because, of course, the whole spirit of giving is really letting go. This is letting go to some degree, but not fully.

The second degree of giving is friendly giving. That means you give because you like to give. It feels good. You don't have to pressured into it. Whenever you see somebody in a situation of need, if you have enough for yourself, if you have two of something, you give it out of friendliness. If you have two bananas and somebody is hungry, you usually give them one. That's a higher form giving because you're not being pressured into it-it's coming from your own friendliness, and you're not tightly holding on.

The third degree is called kingly giving. In kingly giving, you give anything at any time. You give the shirt off your back. You give the last food you have to someone who is hungrier. Because there's no thought-you give the best that you have. There's no holding on nor even thought of an "I" involved in the giving.

Everyone is basically in control of their own karma and I don't believe in past life karmic black clouds. I think that is a wrongly interpreted sutra. The Buddha was not the one that wrote down his teachings, and there was probably some embellishments by monks that had meaning for the people at the time they were written. But all things change and that is the only constant. Some people do not want change and resent it so much they cause their own "bad luck" by refusing the reality of the situation. Some do not look at death as "bad luck".