Fighting a war and karma

[Fresco]

I believe all killing is wrong and brings bad karma, except in self-defense or if you're coming to the aid of someone else.
Like if your wife is being attacked you have a right to defend her with deadly force if need be.

But what aboot wars. Is the current war the US is engaged in against ISIS a just war??
The US is coming to the aid of oppressed people (Kurds and Yazidi) who would all be killed if it werent for American air-power.

So I wonder if a justified war would still produce bad karma for the soldiers who are fighting it.
Or does it cancel the bad karma because people have a right to defend themselves??

Whats your opinion

[Swami Chihuahuananda]

Originally Posted by Fresco

I believe all killing is wrong and brings bad karma, except in self-defense or if you're coming to the aid of someone else.
Like if your wife is being attacked you have a right to defend her with deadly force if need be.

But what aboot wars. Is the current war the US is engaged in against ISIS a just war??
The US is coming to the aid of oppressed people (Kurds and Yazidi) who would all be killed if it werent for American air-power.

So I wonder if a justified war would still produce bad karma for the soldiers who are fighting it.
Or does it cancel the bad karma because people have a right to defend themselves??

Whats your opinion

Read the beginning of the Bhagavad Gita . Krishna has some valuable insights .

To the outside eye, war is a single entity and as a soldier, a person is trained to serve the war. But each man or woman is still an individual and each choice of action is complex, yet remains the responsibility of the individual.

The choices that we sometimes have to make are complex, they are rarely black and white, and as you are discovering maybe, ideas of karma being related to good and bad, don't stand up when one begins to look at lifes choices with compassion for lifes complexities.

[God-Like]

It is by no coincidence that one engages in war or not . One has foreseen their participation prior to incarnation .

How you kill or how you are killed ripples in effect amongst the many .

A man can unwittingly walk across an open field and kill hundreds of insects beneath their feet, is this the same karma that manifests as the one that leaves a bomb hidden amongst the crowd .

A life is a life is it not .

One could ask the question, why does one do that . Why does the man feel in a particular way that can end the lives of many and why doesn't the unaware man look where he is treading .

If you are unaware, or if you feel a particular way, then there is no helping that at the time .

When one does become aware and when one understands that killing with intent causes a particular energy within and without then the man eventually ceases to participate in the killings with intent .

The next incarnation either brings with it a situation where one declines signing up for war or his incarnation is situated in an environment where there is peace .

Somewhere along the line one begins to realise how their thoughts and actions effect their individual self and others and will not go against their nature .

Their nature reflects their natural expression that are thought and action based .

So the man at war killing with intent is experiencing something within self awareness and will not sleep well at some point . One may self enquire as to why they have no peace .

Whilst karma remains there will be no peace .

Thats why when an individual self enquires it brings to the surface all that keeps them from being at peace and in love with one's self .


x dazzle x

Just to add a personal story to the thread. there was a man I met a few years ago, he is a Buddhist, vegan and has a very strong drive and energy for healing others.

During one of our sessions, I saw my past life connection to him. We were warriors and friends, I had been knocked from my horse and lay on the floor dying, he turned and looked at me, but he had to keep riding and leave me to die. There was pain in his face and heart, and I understood that after my death he had lived with a great deal of pain and regret that he didn't help me. But in my death, I understood that he couldn't have and wasn't meant to help me. Everything was at it was, no good or bad.

Yes he did live with pain and regret in that life time, but it wasn't a punishment or 'bad' karma - he experienced the feelings that have driven his path to healing in this life. Without those experiences, he wouldn't have the energy for healing that he now has. So not a punishment, but a necessary part of the journey.

Originally Posted by Fresco

I believe all killing is wrong and brings bad karma, except in self-defense or if you're coming to the aid of someone else.
Like if your wife is being attacked you have a right to defend her with deadly force if need be.

But what aboot wars. Is the current war the US is engaged in against ISIS a just war??
The US is coming to the aid of oppressed people (Kurds and Yazidi) who would all be killed if it werent for American air-power.

So I wonder if a justified war would still produce bad karma for the soldiers who are fighting it.
Or does it cancel the bad karma because people have a right to defend themselves??

Whats your opinion

It's always a difficult moral question. Yes, killing is wrong - cutting someone's path, their being, from under them is perhaps the greatest sin as it prevents someone attaining any goals spiritual or physical. But that assumes their goals didn't include acts aimed at perverting/distorting the paths of others.

I look at this latest frenzy over the Is lamic State and this execution, the "civilised west" running round like headless chickens crying "terrible! barbaric!" and a load of moral indignation about what's happening.

But then, who was it who set up a campaign that led to it; in fact led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents in Iraq merely to murder one guy, its leader, simply because they didn't like him and he'd served his purpose in warring against Iran but was now a nuisance over oil-pricing.

D'you know, the Brit responsible for that was made the Middle East Peace Envoy, on a pretty juicy salary...and look at the state of the place.

So, on the scale of horror, with IS proclaiming itself a caliphate state - is this execution any more savage than US and UK State murder?

It's the sad state of humanity, its imperfection being its incapability in acknowledging people just as people, most of whom want simply to live a life with various aspirations and hopes. Humans lack shared consciousness. Perhaps its successor species will do better.

Humans are the only animals that can kill other humans merely for entertainment and sometimes amusement, or to settle the quarrels of politicians.

...

[Swami Chihuahuananda]

Originally Posted by Lorelyen

It's always a difficult moral question. Yes, killing is wrong - cutting someone's path, their being, from under them is perhaps the greatest sin as it prevents someone attaining any goals spiritual or physical. But that assumes their goals didn't include acts aimed at perverting/distorting the paths of others.

I look at this latest frenzy over the Is lamic State and this execution, the "civilised west" running round like headless chickens crying "terrible! barbaric!" and a load of moral indignation about what's happening.

But then, who was it who set up a campaign that led to it; in fact led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents in Iraq merely to murder one guy, its leader, simply because they didn't like him and he'd served his purpose in warring against Iran but was now a nuisance over oil-pricing.

D'you know, the Brit responsible for that was made the Middle East Peace Envoy, on a pretty juicy salary...and look at the state of the place.

So, on the scale of horror, with IS proclaiming itself a caliphate state - is this execution any more savage than US and UK State murder?

It's the sad state of humanity, its imperfection being its incapability in acknowledging people just as people, most of whom want simply to live a life with various aspirations and hopes. Humans lack shared consciousness. Perhaps its successor species will do better.

Humans are the only animals that can kill other humans merely for entertainment and sometimes amusement, or to settle the quarrels of politicians.

...

Mankind is not a nice species , historically . people are good , but we're flawed in the ways we interact with each other and our world.

There's no doubt that the US created a gigantic mess in Iraq , and inspired new generations of fanatics. It's her 'bad karma ' to have to deal with trying to somehow make things better, but the people in power have done their own people huge wrongs as well . Greed and power ....

Religious fanaticism taken to the level of killing justified and rationalized as being what you think God wants has no place in the modern world , and include all sides who engage in such actions . At the end of the day , I'd rather not see a world dominated by a culture that buries women up to the neck and throws stones at their heads until they die. This IS barbaric and reasonable people, Muslims included , need to see that such a culture does not prevail . If that means more killing , then so be it . It's a tough world out there sometimes

Originally Posted by Fresco

Is the current war the US is engaged in against ISIS a just war??
The US is coming to the aid of oppressed people (Kurds and Yazidi) who would all be killed if it werent for American air-power.

So I wonder if a justified war would still produce bad karma for the soldiers who are fighting it.
Or does it cancel the bad karma because people have a right to defend themselves??

Whats your opinion

Well, we must be careful not to take the current situation in isolation. If we did, then it would look like the US are the world heroes.

Lets consider the bigger picture. How can ISIS make the gains they have made? By filling a power vacuum.

In the 1980s, the US (and probably Britain and others) sold some pretty awesome military kit to Saddam Hussain. It made sense because quite apart from the value of those arms deals, we needed Iraq to be able to defend itself, remembering that relations between Iraq and their more powerful neighbour Iran were not good, and Iraq was producing a lot of cheap oil for sale.

Then 1990 (or was it 91) Saddam turned on us, invading Kuwait, a tiny but fairly wealthy country that housed a lot of allied interests. So we kicked him into touch, and pushed him back into Iraq, then that was enough, so that war pretty much ended.

Fast forward again, and some terrorists who are not representing any nation attack the US. Despite this action being taken by people who are not acting on behalf of any nation, a US president, needing a jolly good war to prove himself, declared 'war on terror' with his focus on any nation that he felt he could justify fighting with. Afghanistan because the terrorists that attacked the world trade centre came from their (although their action was not sanctioned by the nation of Afghanistan) and Iraq, because past experience showed that they were quite easy to defeat, was run by a dictator that most of the western world already disliked, and of course they had something worth taking.

After a fight that proved tougher than expected (it is always easier to defend home ground than it is to take new ground), Saddam was finally ousted, and US based companies were awarded contracts to rebuild and manage the oil installations.

This created a massive problem. While Saddam was clearly a horrible man, he did maintain some hint of order in his country (even though he did so in some cases by committing the most heinous crimes against his own people). With Saddam gone, an oppressed group of peoples, different cultures and different races within one country, wanted some control. Not a problem while US and British (and other allied) forces were still in control, but we couldn't hold someone else's turf indefinitely, so a plan was made to bring our forces home. Part of this plan involved choosing some random local (Maliki) and making him president of Iraq, and then training some locals in the art of combat and hoping that the people that were trained would be loyal to the random local (Maliki) who in turn it was hoped would be loyal to the US, then all the NATO soldiers started to leave them to it.

Well, it turns out that Maliki was weak, and half the locals we trained as soldiers had their own agenda, and so the house of cards collapsed, leaving a massive power vacuum.

Someone had to fill that power vacuum, and that someone turns out to be ISIS. So ISIS is filling a power vacuum created by a US led coalition, and as a result, people are being forced to flee from their homes, and people are being massacred.

So, is the US justified in fighting this war with ISIS? I don't think that's the right question. I think a more appropriate question would be, is it right that the US should help to clean up the mess it created, even if that means returning to war? Then I think the answer is yes.

[Swami Chihuahuananda]

Originally Posted by Badger1777

Well, we must be careful not to take the current situation in isolation. If we did, then it would look like the US are the world heroes.


Well, it turns out that Maliki was weak, and half the locals we trained as soldiers had their own agenda, and so the house of cards collapsed, leaving a massive power vacuum.

Someone had to fill that power vacuum, and that someone turns out to be ISIS. So ISIS is filling a power vacuum created by a US led coalition, and as a result, people are being forced to flee from their homes, and people are being massacred.

So, is the US justified in fighting this war with ISIS? I don't think that's the right question. I think a more appropriate question would be, is it right that the US should help to clean up the mess it created, even if that means returning to war? Then I think the answer is yes.

And isn't it a bit unsettling that the US's same pattern of involvement , followed by abandonment , is what helped catalyze the rise of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan ?. Oi.... we never seem to learn a dang thing

[Fresco]

Originally Posted by Badger1777

While Saddam was clearly a horrible man, he did maintain some hint of order in his country (even though he did so in some cases by committing the most heinous crimes against his own people)

My grandfather was a fairly important politician in Holland when he was still alive, he basically said the same thing. That particular area of the world called the middle-east needs to be ruled with an iron fist. It needs to be governed by brutal dictators , he always said.

That might sound a bit cruel, but it actually works because the people that live there can be so violent and rebellious, that only a strong-armed dictator who rules by fear can control them and stop them from killing each other.

I think he has a point, look at Iraq now and before when it was ruled under Saddam. Yes he was a vicious dictator, but at least there was law and order. Now you have constant civil wars popping up, and probably a lot more people being slaughtered than when Saddam was still in power