Buddhists believe in cause and effect. Taoists believe in random chance.

Both Buddhists and Taoists ventured to the spirit world in ancient times through elevated levels of endogenous DMT achieved by meditation. So did yogis. Shamans. Mayan initiates. So why is there no consensus on either cause and effect or random chance?

I think that "what goes around comes around" is an obvious fact of existance, and you can still have karma and random chance. Sometimes bad things happen to Good people and vis versa, independently of their karma they may encounter hardship or good fortune.

The universe and existance is far more complex than any philosophy or culture or spiritual sect can box it into, and as it turns out, most things are not one or the other, they are both and the other.

-eg

^ Agreed

Good works for bad and bad works for good interchangeably forever, but is it 50/50? Sometimes I think not but it is hard to not have a bias or tendency to see the glass half empty after witnessing tragedies, ah like this one (nsfw or faint hearted): http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=eeb_1464380357

This is a scene from The Fifth Element that describes it nicely:



Later in the movie it is revealed that in order to win the girl of his dreams he HAD to get fired AND lose his wife... So, when one door opens another closes.



Errr, yeah don't think so pal, unless you want to provide literature on the subject you might as well start talking about goblins in the sky telling you to elevate your levels of dopamine so that they can use your brain for cosmic experiments.

I'm not sure you understood me, but take from it what ever you can.

The difference between a half empty glass and a half full glass is your perspective.

If your suffering you may want to sit down and think about what is causing it, which I can bet it's either related to attachment, desire, or ego.

-eg

I wasn't replying to you I was just agreeing with you that is why i didn't quote you.

I was talking of a half empty glass perspective in terms of AFTER being exposed to the trauma of evil (as in the horrific link I posted)

Agreed, or physical pain. Unless you wanna make it a conversation about how enlightenment goes beyond pain.

"Do you believe in karma?"
also read:
"Do you believe everything happens because something caused it to happen?"

/thread

Mystery solved folks. You can go home now.

Read moar Buddha

I firmly believe that you get what you give, its logical that if you are nice to people most people are nice to you. If, you treat people with respect you most likely get treated with respect.

What i've been pondering for some time, is if everything happens for a reason. It's a comforting thought for me but nothing more than just a thought since I haven't been presented with any evidence that faith or Karma exists.

I used to think Karma meant some sort of judgement/reward system. If someone does bad things then bad things get them: justice.

But I have grown to understand that this is not how it works, and that this interpretation is sort of the easy to digest version. And yes this following seems to contradict conventional explanations which require absolutes of good/evil.

If you expect certain things, if you feel you deserve those things and you believe they are possible and likely then those things will happen. This is karma as I see it. You create your experience from what you allow. So largely those who feel guilty will call punishment to themselves if they feel they deserve it, and those who feel lucky will be lucky.

It is not, unfortunately, a fully conscious exercise - so you can have barriers internally which can be considerable work to overcome - even the most morally good and giving can feel the need to punish themselves deep inside.

Besides this "good/bad" thing really only exists relative to a specific social context, and I find it hard to believe in some great judge who decides what is good and what is bad.

So yes, I believe in Karma because it appears from my experience to be the way things work.

I believe that karma is an undeniable part of existance, yet random chance exists as well, meaning despite your good karma, by random chance, bad things may still happen to you, and vis versa.

Opposites define each other rather than negate each other.

When it comes to Buddhism, I think it would be useful for all people to review the four Nobel truths and the eightfold path at least once, and not even for spiritual reasons, but so they are able to understand existance better.

There are "hidden truths" out there, but theses things are not "hidden" because someone is deliberately hiding them or trying to keep them secret, they are "hidden" truths because they are not obvious, and had they not been pointed out to you, you probably never would have figured it out.

The pictures of the burning monks reminded of a modern situation involving Tibetan monks burning themselves in protest of the theft of their homeland and victimization of their people...

In true Buddhist fashion, they should have "let it go", all things are impermanent, even homelands, you must accept the good and the bad equally, and be mindful of your thoughts, actions and words, as to avoid causing yourself or others suffering.

These monks are deluded by ego, attachment and desire, and it's causing suffering and suicide.

It's their ATTATCHMENT to their homeland, which has been taken, which causes them to suffer, yet all things are impermanent, even homelands.

It's their DESIRE to have their homelandback , and their DESIRE to seek justice which causes them to suffer.

And it's their ego which made them think it was their land to begin with, it's their ego which allows them to feel anger and makes them want to seek revenge, it's their ego that's causing suffering...

When you watched the Tibetans leaving Tibet, you did not see people in tears, you did not see sadness, you saw smiles, laughter, and happiness...

When the dhali lama was asked if he could say anything to the Chinese what would it be, and he replied "I forgive you"

So not all Tibetans have succumbed to the illusions of ego, desire, and attachments, but the ones who are burning themselves, the ones who are suffering over their losses and victimization, the ones who feel they need to hold onto to all if this, have lost their way, and forgotten the basic principles of Buddhist philosophy.

-eg

In a way it does work like that...

if you put good things into the world, good things will come to you, if you put negative things in the world negative things will come to you. "What goes around comes around" "cause and effect"

...but of coarse there is no judge, and you can not expect to be rewarded or punished...

you have a very strange way of understanding these things, at least from my perspective, because I disagree with a good deal here, but I also feel it's not my place to tell a person how to perceive certain concepts. Your views here are for sure very different than my own, I'll just leave it at that.

-eg

If you preform selfless acts in anticipation of a reward, then they become selfish acts.

Acts that generate good karma are selfless, and are preformed for selfless reasons.

-eg

Maybe because I state with a language of certainty when really nothing is certain, and I should instead pepper my words with lots of "I believe" and "I think". In the DMT Nexus I will take "strange" as a compliment .

We are so out on a limb here, there is no objective evidence for Karma - so we can only argue this if (a)There is Karma and (b)Either of us really knows anything subjectively. So certainly my outlook is not the classic one from Hinduism or Buddhism. You could even say that I do not agree with Karma, but here is option number 2 which I do currently believe and is quite similar.

My issue is that Karma requires context on what is positive and what is negative, these only exist relative to a specific position.

And I don't disagree with what you say in general terms, but I believe that if the generally accepted model were Newtonian Mechanics, that there are more accurate models such as General Relativity.

I believe that the reason it generally works, is because people judge their own actions (the positive and negative are judged by them), and we often have extremely similar conceptions of what positive and negative are. Generally the criminal exploiting people knows that he/she is doing wrong and expects punishment.

The reason I discuss judgement and reward is because that is how the human mind works and how we choose to apply this to ourselves.

Many people, I would judge as good, subconsciously draw negatives to themselves because of their own level of judgement, and many people who have done questionable things feel no issue with it and continue to pull good things to themselves.

One of my luckiest friends works for petrochemical companies finding oil. Many would consider this to be a hideous negative act, but he does not and is chilled, happy, wealthy and lucky.

My point being is that as the judge your own Karma, you have a lot of power to go easy on yourself - but that is the difficult part.

This also I agree with, BUT

Why is a selfless act positive and a selfish act negative. Which is what I assume you are implying.

I would expect everyone to look after themselves, but to do so is selfish - they must take time away from selfless pursuits to feed themselves, clean themselves and worse than that seek entertainment and joy. All selfish acts.

But if you have a child, them performing such selfish acts would make you happy. So that would make that positive.

Who judges?

I put it forward that the struggle for what is positive and negative is in your own head, and your example works because the person truly knows their intentions and judges their own actions.

I just suggest it is possible to not be judgemental, and this is a better way to be.

Prove it.

OKay, let's start by examining the NON-WESTERN idea of karma:

Karma literally means action. The law of karma is often misinterpreted to say that essentially "What goes around comes around". This is not the case. Karma is a law that more closely looks like causality.

Westerners look at karma and think of it like "If I do good things, good things will happen and bad things will not." Once again this is a misguided view.
A more Eastern view would say something like "One cannot plant an apple seed and get an orange tree."

That's not to say that Karma as the West is concerned isn't true to some extent; if you do good things, people are much more likely to do good things to you, and vice versa.
Conversely, if you do bad things, often you end up around unsavoury people who are also doing bad things and may do bad things to you, but this doesn't come about as a result of some kind of karmic currency system. This is just simple cause and effect. When it comes to what sort of results you get out of life, Buddha says you might have to wait a few lives to reap what you have sown. Perhaps Hitler was reborn in a city he had laid waste to and had to see the results first hand? See, this enters the realm of speculation.

Modern physics looks more like the law of karma, than say, the justice system. Physics tells us the same thing the Buddha says i.e. "This happens because that happens. This does not happen because that does not happen."

In my opinion, almost every act is selfish in atleast some way. Let's say that I do something "good" for a person without any expectations that this person will return that favour.
So far so good. But, out of doing this "good" deed it gives me pleasure and makes me feel good. Is this then a selfless act on my behalf? I think it is not, unless it gives me no pleasure at all by doing something "good" for a fellow being.

In fact to be truely selfless it should make me feel the opposite to good by helping someone out.
I can come up with two possible selfless acts: 1 Giving my life for someone elses whom I've never met and without no one ever knows about it.
2 I can love someone unconditionally.

Thankyou for that! I have since thrown out what wikipedia says, which in the first paragraph states the popular view of "Good Karma" and "Bad Karma", which felt wrong to me.

Finding a nice actual Buddhist resource it is very much as you state it with no direct implication that good actions reap good effects, although even this document goes there:



Which alludes to suffering as a result of being corrupt, however, in the way that I was saying it - in that you create it "..they have created their own Hells...", and also that you can overcome it.

It seems the stuff I was talking about is also covered as freeing yourself from Karma, which it seems is what Buddha did.

Not that I fully endorse Buddhism (it gains its own Dogmas and common superstitions), but if we are discussing their terms then I suppose we should use their definitions, and in some sense I see things I feel to agree with my own experience and gut feeling of reality.

I have seen the videos of the newer self-immolizations and I saw the monks screaming in pain, obviously a sign of still being wrapped in the ego. But the picture of the burning monk in SE asia that I posted was evidently a monk who had either become enlightened or understood how to switch pain of entirely, something which very few people still attached to their ego could do.

So I think you are wrong to generalize buddhist monks as crazy egotistical wannabes who set themselves on fire because of their ego delusions. It is not true in all cases which is why that picture I posted had the monk sitting the whole time until his death, not flinching a muscle