Question about karma
 

What I don't understand about karma is that to assume everyone who experiences pain and becomes a victim to somebody, that it is either due to past karma or is divinely arranged. I have a strong background in Hinduism and this question has never left me alone. When i think of the Hiroshima bombing it doesn't make sense to me that something like that was divinely arranged, it took out countless ecosystems and countless innocent lives, perhaps many of which were pursuing a path. I don't want to delve to deep too deep into this.

This is the age old question of why do good people get hurt. I'd really like to see a good answer to this.

Thanks, Blessings and Namaste.

according to what i sense as the prevalent understanding from enlightened
thinkers, the very concept of time is illusory... all exists in the now.
there is no past cause for current circumstances.

There are a number of questions that repeatedly arise in the early hours of the morning when sleep is finished and it's time to get on with life and the whole concept of karma is one of them.

I am slowly coming to understand that there is another word for karma that we have not yet recognised as being connected. This word is evolution. In the end, as things are NOW, all is a result of everything that has ever happened. Evolution proceeds and progresses (if that's the right word) while relying upon all experiences and states that have ever been. Our spiritual and physical (say global-warming) progress (sic) as individuals, families, groups, communities, countries, races, continents and probably planets, suns and galaxies (not forgetting universes) is/are all based upon our/their thoughts, words and actions.

It maybe too easy to say the present state of things is what we have 'earned'
but it does give food for thought - early in the mornings.

Karma is my favorite topic of interest. I have often wondered why there is pain and suffering in the world. You can find one answer here. See if it makes sense to you.

As a buddhist the answer is very clear :

even if you were a good person in this life you might not have been a good person in past lives - and you can be a bad person but you did good stuff in past lives so you get good karma this life

very clear and to the point

(1) You don't know that, because you don't know their thoughts, desires, actions neither during this life nor in their past lives. Also, you most likely have a subjective idea of "good" and "bad".

I heard an interesting explanation of why the catastrophic predictions made by Edgar Cayce didn't come true: WW2. So, the great loss of lives was in the cards for the world, but because the WW2 let off the pressure, the tectonic cataclysms were cancelled. (I believe it was a Frank DeMarco interview on youtube).

I go by what Jesus says in the Gospels, not necessarily Christianity or Jesus as a savior god sorta thing. I mean his intuition and his knowledge:

When asked if everyone who perished in the toppling of a tower in Israel was because they were all sinners Jesus said they were no more sinners than people who died natural causes.

Also when asked if the blind man was blind because he "sinned before the womb" which indicates Jesus and his followers believed in reincarnation, Jesus replied, "He was born that way for the glory of God".

The glory of God? The blind man was an old soul, very evolved, who chose that lifetime as a way for others to be compassionate, for Jesus to have that encounter with him, a chance for him to be loving towards him. That blind man was highly evolved and probably didn't need to come back here but did out of a cause for others. Don't always judge a book by it's cover. That homeless man you met the other day coulda been a great Saint in a past life and he came back for your sake to have a chance to do something extraordinary good to help you evolve.

My grandma had a thing she used to say because of her heavy Catholic upbringing she learned from nuns. When asked why you should always help someone in need or if you see a homeless person, a mentally ill person on the street, or someone riddled with disease, or starving the Nuns would say "You don't know, that could be Jesus in disguise". And Mother Teresa once said you have to see the face of Christ in those people. Now the nuns probably believe that literally but what I think it means is that you don't know who you are talking to. Like I said that diseased man down by the river you keep making faces at who clearly talks to himself and looks like he's always in mental and physical pain could be a Christ-like being and he doesn't have to be here again.

That is the Christ Spirit you need to take notice of.

Not everyone who is suffering is because of sin or error. Many suffer out of necessity to teach others to become more opened and empathic.

Not everything is what it seems. And not everyone in Hiroshima was a bad person. Maybe some of them in a past life weren't so good and maybe some of them were good and they decided to perish in such an awful event with these other souls for reasons you couldn't fathom, perhaps even to assist them to the Other Side, or because several of the towns people were all in a war themselves long ago and this was their way collectively to pay their debt they all shared in to move on to a higher level once they perished.

The reasons for people's deaths are numerous and there is no "one reason". Religion, all of them try to black and white everything and they don't have all the answers and never will.

Karma has nothing to do with any 'divine' interference, nor has it anything to do with 'goodness' or 'badness'. Karma is the word used to describe the procedures and processes of action or actions. It is a natural law. That's why a butterfly flapping its wings is said to be the cause of a storm somewhere in the world.

A star, being pulled into a Black Hole on the other side of the universe is a result of millions of actions taking place in millions of galaxies.

Karma is the result, at any given time, of all actions which have led to any specifically observed moment.

For instance my lives' karma has resulted in me (at this moment) sitting here writing this by the window and looking out onto trees, grass and shrubs starting to turn into their autumn colours. There is no other moment which I can call my karmatic moment, only this one - where I am conscious. Everything I have ever thought, said and done has resulted in this moment (and the next moment coming will be similar, unless someone shoots me or the roof caves in). If I want to make it better or worse I have to do something. If I go down to the supermarket and steal something I can expect to have troubles afterwards - maybe not immediately (unless I'm caught) but in the first instance I'd have (say) a bad conscience. To appease my bad conscience I'd be driven to do something to relieve the strain, there would be thousands of things I could do but whatever I do it will have a result.

It's a fallacy to think of karma as being a punishment it's simply that process of getting what you have earned. But as existence is a continuing process you can't know what you are getting and when.
In order to observe any conscious moment and connect it with karma you do of course have to believe in some sort of rebirth or other recurring dimesion in which your conscious condition can register its situation.

Those people who died when the Concorde crashed in Paris a couple of years ago weren't 'sinners' - they didn't at the behest of some divine force all buy tickets for that flight but they took part in a result of a badly maintained plane dropping a piece of metal onto the runway. Each of us can suffer because of another person or people, but in the end it all depends upon us all to do our bit for the common good. Then it reflects upon us all.

It's all your choice. From nothing comes nothing.