What is Karma? How does it work?

Originally Posted by ketzer

God's a yukster alright. But how does Karma play into all that...or does it?

Perhaps it's just the guardrails to keep us in the lane of Maya and keep the game going? It's baked into Maya as an inherent and integral feature and as long as we buy into it we're trapped within the game. Aside from that I don't think it's worth contemplating too deeply and it doesn't seem helpful in the least musing about past Karma's role in current circumstances, good or bad, aside from a general sense wearing a form comes with a chain as an accoutrement.

I guess I'm suspicious of carrot & stick scenarios meant to goad us into doing the right thing. Best to do the right thing for its own sake and not because of any perceived upside.

Ultimately and on a philosophical level, at least from an Advaita perspective, Karma being wholly within Maya is just as "unreal" as anything else and never touches our true nature, so the important thing is by any means necessary realize that true nature and it's all moot.

[BigJohn]

Originally Posted by ketzer

What is Karma? How does it work?

I searched back a year and found a number of Karma threads, but they all seem to start with the assumption of what Karma means, and then want to discuss the hows of how to manipulate it, raise it, lower it, resolve it, etc.

It seems to me some tend to view Karma as a sort of automated cosmic department of corrections where crimes are recorded and punishment extracted sooner or later, even if it takes a few reincarnations to catch up to one. This is the crime and punishment sort of Karmic interpretation.

Others seem to view it as more of a cosmic university where you just keep taking the same classes over and over until you pass and move on to another. Perhaps one day you graduate from the school of Samsara, and move on to Nirvana. This is the ignorance and learning sort of Karmic interpretation.

What do you think? What is Karma supposed to mean? What does it mean to you?
Do you think you can detect Karma working in your life?
Are there any particular Karmas that you have resolved, either through punishment or learning?

Karma...... is whatever you want it to be.
For those who believe in it, it is as real as you and me.

For those who do not believe in Karma, they generally could care less about about.

For those who do not believe in Karma any more, they generally claim they see no differences in their life except less stress.

[HITESH SHAH]

Originally Posted by ketzer

What is Karma? How does it work?

I searched back a year and found a number of Karma threads, but they all seem to start with the assumption of what Karma means, and then want to discuss the hows of how to manipulate it, raise it, lower it, resolve it, etc.

It seems to me some tend to view Karma as a sort of automated cosmic department of corrections where crimes are recorded and punishment extracted sooner or later, even if it takes a few reincarnations to catch up to one. This is the crime and punishment sort of Karmic interpretation.

Others seem to view it as more of a cosmic university where you just keep taking the same classes over and over until you pass and move on to another. Perhaps one day you graduate from the school of Samsara, and move on to Nirvana. This is the ignorance and learning sort of Karmic interpretation.

What do you think? What is Karma supposed to mean? What does it mean to you?
Do you think you can detect Karma working in your life?
Are there any particular Karmas that you have resolved, either through punishment or learning?

My understanding is as hereunder.
1. Karma is for self (individual) and Self (God ) to judge and NOT for others to comment.

2. Even if self ignores Karma , Self (God) has its accounting . In Hindu tradition name of deity keeping this account is known as 'Chitragupta' - one who has secret of view of all your karma . This Self (God ) residing in our very hearts its extremely easier for Him to have this view . Outsiders simply can not have big holistic view of others. So if somebody has 'cancer' , I or anybody can not and should not go to the fellow and say you got a bad karma so u got cancer . That's totally wrong and callous .

3. Whether one believes in karma or not , it is unavoidable . It's fact of life .

4. To feel karma working in life is very difficult . It is like this . You do lot of banking transactions . Every time you receive the currency notes from bank/atm , you do not think whether it is the same currency notes you gave at same/different atm/branch . You simply check /know your balances and drive away with cash. Same way you can not definitively /assertively say which karma results in what . But defnitely u and your God keeps an account of your credit/debit balances with Him.

5. How can one fend it off ? - Simple - extending the same banking example is to increase credit balance with bank or reducing the debit balance , you regularly deposit money with bank . Same way keep doing good deeds and that may avoid some bad karma naturally.

6. With regular good deeds in action with good heart and soul , you can really be very tension free for longer periods than some 'carefree' moments you get ignoring karma.

Originally Posted by ketzer

What do you think? What is Karma supposed to mean? What does it mean to you?
Do you think you can detect Karma working in your life?
Are there any particular Karmas that you have resolved, either through punishment or learning?

In the original Sanskrit karma means 'action'. Sometime later it came to mean 'cause and effect'. The karma of reward/punish is a mentality, not Spirituality. If you really want to understand what's going on - https://www.londonbuddhistvihara.org...-of-cognition/

Originally Posted by JustASimpleGuy

Perhaps it's just the guardrails to keep us in the lane of Maya and keep the game going? It's baked into Maya as an inherent and integral feature and as long as we buy into it we're trapped within the game. Aside from that I don't think it's worth contemplating too deeply and it doesn't seem helpful in the least musing about past Karma's role in current circumstances, good or bad, aside from a general sense wearing a form comes with a chain as an accoutrement.

I guess I'm suspicious of carrot & stick scenarios meant to goad us into doing the right thing. Best to do the right thing for its own sake and not because of any perceived upside.

Ultimately and on a philosophical level, at least from an Advaita perspective, Karma being wholly within Maya is just as "unreal" as anything else and never touches our true nature, so the important thing is by any means necessary realize that true nature and it's all moot.

As far as what is real and unreal, I seem to know less and less about this as I study the issue more and more. Perhaps real is really just a word, and it has whatever meaning we choose to give it from the perspective in which we look to define it. In any case, at present I am equally comfortable with Maya being viewed to be real or unreal, both seem to work equally well.

Just how deep can one contemplate if the depth is infinite? What percent of that depth will we have contemplated after so much deep contemplation? Moot it may all be, if not because of the realization of “true nature”, then perhaps because of the realization of the hopelessness of the mind against the task of the comprehension of infinity.

I like the idea that Karma is a force pushing me toward experiences that will help me grow, to evolve toward some higher self realization, some higher state of being. Who knows, perhaps even that realization of true nature that you speak of. Yet, if eternity stretches in both directions, then why have I not already arrived? After all, even the slowest of turtles will have already arrived at its destination, if it has been moving for eternity. What if I do arrive? What then? Will I end up like that God you spoke of earlier, who gets so bored with itself against the backdrop of eternity, that it has to forget itself for a spell and play games of pretending not to know? Just what will I do for eternity once I get to wherever it is I am going?

Perhaps I am not evolving toward anything. Maybe I am that bored God pretending that I don’t know who I am and just how perpetually dull it is to exist in eternity, with the full knowledge and understanding of infinity. Karma perhaps has no real purpose, other than to keep the wheel of cause and effect spinning around and around as cause becomes effect which causes an effect once more. This solves the problem of evolution against eternity by simply changing it into a circle rather than a spiral, no more evolving, just perpetual revolving. Yet I have to say, from the perspective in which I look upon in now, it is an extremely unsatisfying picture of eternity. If true, how glad I am to be able to forget myself and spin up the cycling of Samsara, and relieve my boredom by suffering for a bit in Maya, to take my mind off of my own eternally dull existence. Or maybe it is not at all dull to be eternal and omniscient at the same time, maybe it is only my dull human intellect that imagines it as such. IDK, my dull human intellect cannot comprehend it.

Maybe I will never get there, maybe I shall always evolve asymptotically toward perfection. IDK, but it seems like it might be a nice place to split the baby. I do like the thought of evolving, learning is fun. Graduation just means I have to get a job, and most of those are rather dull exchanges of thoughts, feelings, experiences, and time, for money, leaving many all the poorer for the bargain. Perhaps my Karmas, like time and the mind of God, are infinite and inexhaustible as well. Of my alternatives, though not perfect, it seems to be the preferred one for the present moment, and the one I gravitate toward.

What to do then, or rather now???

I wonder if I am not like a mouse in a maze busily scurrying about looking for the end, and that cheese I can’t see but could swear I smell and am sure is there. Only I have recently come across one of those mouse tubes and climbed up in it high above the maze, thinking I will be able to see the whole maze and see the way out. Instead, I have found that the higher I climb, the further I can see, but still can’t see the end of the maze, not even any edges in any direction. In fact, way up here, I can’t even smell that cheese anymore. Instead the resolution of my vision just fades off into the distance in every direction.

I look down and see all the other mice scurrying about. Some angry and in a hurry to get somewhere, cross with any who get in their way. Despite it, or maybe because of it, they just seem to keep going down the same dead ends. But there are other mice as well. Some who seem rather content to just wander about, finding a crumb or two here and there that they stop to enjoy before wandering on. I wonder now, should I keep trying to climb higher in my tube to see if I can figure out which way to go, or if I am better off just climbing down and wandering about like those contented looking mice accidentally stumbling across a crumb here and there. Crumbs many of those serious mice on a mission to get out of the maze may run right past. Perhaps the way to deal with the maze is to forget about trying to find the way out, forget that one is in a maze at all. If there is no exit, then one is better off not eternally agonizing one's tiny mouse mind in trying to find it. If there is an exit, then I wonder whether or not somewhere over the course of eternity, I will wander across it anyway. Who knows. Maybe those crumbs will turn out to be a tasty trail that leads right to it, IDK.

.

Originally Posted by ketzer

As far as what is real and unreal, I seem to know less and less about this as I study the issue more and more. Perhaps real is really just a word, and it has whatever meaning we choose to give it from the perspective in which we look to define it. In any case, at present I am equally comfortable with Maya being viewed to be real or unreal, both seem to work equally well.

Just how deep can one contemplate if the depth is infinite? What percent of that depth will we have contemplated after so much deep contemplation? Moot it may all be, if not because of the realization of “true nature”, then perhaps because of the realization of the hopelessness of the mind against the task of the comprehension of infinity.

I like the idea that Karma is a force pushing me toward experiences that will help me grow, to evolve toward some higher self realization, some higher state of being. Who knows, perhaps even that realization of true nature that you speak of. Yet, if eternity stretches in both directions, then why have I not already arrived? After all, even the slowest of turtles will have already arrived at its destination, if it has been moving for eternity. What if I do arrive? What then? Will I end up like that God you spoke of earlier, who gets so bored with itself against the backdrop of eternity, that it has to forget itself for a spell and play games of forgetting? Just what will I do for eternity once I get to wherever it is I am going?

Perhaps I am not evolving toward anything. Maybe I am that bored God pretending that I don’t know who I am and just how perpetually dull it is to exist in eternity, with the full knowledge and understanding of infinity. Karma perhaps has no real purpose, other than to keep the wheel of cause and effect spinning around and around as cause becomes effect which causes an effect once more. This solves the problem of evolution against eternity by simply changing it into a circle rather than a spiral, no more evolving, just perpetual revolving. Yet I have to say, from the perspective in which I look upon in now, it is an extremely unsatisfying picture of eternity. If true, how glad I am to be able to forget myself and spin up the cycling of Samsara, and relieve my boredom by suffering for a bit in Maya, to take my mind off of my own eternally dull existence. Or maybe it is not at all dull to be eternal and omniscient at the same time, maybe it is only my dull human intellect that imagines it as such. IDK, my dull human intellect cannot comprehend it.

Maybe I will never get there, maybe I shall always evolve asymptotically toward perfection. IDK, but it seems like it might be a nice place to split the baby. I do like the thought of evolving, learning is fun. Graduation just means I have to get a job, and most of those are rather dull exchanges of thoughts, feelings, experiences, and time, for money, leaving many all the poorer for the bargain. Perhaps my Karmas, like time and the mind of God, are infinite and inexhaustible as well. Of my alternatives, though not perfect, it seems to be the preferred one for the present moment, and the one I gravitate toward.

What to do then, or rather now???

I wonder if I am not like a mouse in a maze busily scurrying about looking for the end, and that cheese I can’t see but could swear I smell and am sure is there. Only I have recently come across one of those mouse tubes and climbed up in it high above the maze, thinking I will be able to see the whole maze and see the way out. Instead, I have found that the higher I climb, the further I can see, but still can’t see the end of the maze, not even any edges in any direction. In fact, way up here, I can’t even smell that cheese anymore. Instead the resolution of my vision just fades off into the distance in every direction.

I look down and see all the other mice scurrying about. Some angry and in a hurry to get somewhere, cross with any who get in their way. Despite it, or maybe because of it, they just seem to keep going down the same dead ends. But there are other mice as well. Some who seem rather content to just wander about, finding a crumb or two here and there that they stop to enjoy before wandering on. I wonder now, should I keep trying to climb higher in my tube to see if I can figure out which way to go, or if I am better off just climbing down and wandering about like those contented looking mice accidentally stumbling across a crumb here and there. Crumbs many of those serious mice on a mission to get out of the maze may run right past. Perhaps the way to deal with the maze is to forget about trying to find the way out, forget that one is in a maze at all. If there is no exit, then one is better off not eternally agonizing one's tiny mouse mind in trying to find it. If there is an exit, then I wonder whether or not somewhere over the course of eternity, I will wander across it anyway. Who knows. Maybe those crumbs will turn out to be a tasty trail that leads right to it, IDK.

.

That has the feel of a mild version of The Dark Night of the Soul.

Originally Posted by JustASimpleGuy

That has the feel of a mild version of The Dark Night of the Soul.

Perhaps, but it is always darkest before the dawn, so maybe a good thing.
Anyway, nothing that a nap and a few good crumbs won't cure.

“When you wake up in the morning, Pooh," said Piglet at last, "what's the first thing you say to yourself?"

"What's for breakfast?" said Pooh. "What do you say, Piglet?"

"I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?" said Piglet.

Pooh nodded thoughtfully. "It's the same thing," he said.”

― A.A. Milne

[Unseeking Seeker]

Great insights here!

Putting aside for the moment that we are (or are not) in a dream, as both object in hypnotic trance as also the subject - dreamer, dreaming .... on an as is where is basis, right here and now, in this-ness of mind-body, we see easily enough that the immediacy of our I-ness is split, so to speak, between head and heart. Why, even on our palms, head and heart lines do not meet!

Head grasps, heart connects. Head judges, heart simply loves.

Karma then being, thoughts, words and deeds, which emanate from our head, misaligned with voice of conscience in our heart. Once (if and as and when), head and heart are in alignment, internal conflict ends, karma ends.

In my view, all paths point us out in this direction. Looking at Tantra, for example, be it Spanda (vibration), Krama (sensation), Kaula (celebration) or Pratyabhijna (re-cognition) or Buddhist pointers to fullness in emptiness through mindfulness, once inner alignment is breathed, on a moment to moment basis, lower and higher minds or self and Self, meld as one.

Meanwhile, enjoy! Vanilla or chocolate?

[hallow]

Originally Posted by ketzer

What is Karma? How does it work?

I searched back a year and found a number of Karma threads, but they all seem to start with the assumption of what Karma means, and then want to discuss the hows of how to manipulate it, raise it, lower it, resolve it, etc.

It seems to me some tend to view Karma as a sort of automated cosmic department of corrections where crimes are recorded and punishment extracted sooner or later, even if it takes a few reincarnations to catch up to one. This is the crime and punishment sort of Karmic interpretation.

Others seem to view it as more of a cosmic university where you just keep taking the same classes over and over until you pass and move on to another. Perhaps one day you graduate from the school of Samsara, and move on to Nirvana. This is the ignorance and learning sort of Karmic interpretation.

What do you think? What is Karma supposed to mean? What does it mean to you?
Do you think you can detect Karma working in your life?
Are there any particular Karmas that you have resolved, either through punishment or learning?

karma can be hard to explain in words. But imagine EVERYTHING you do is mirrored back to you. You do harm, in turn at some point a similar harm will come back to you. You do good, a similar good will come back to you. Karma doesn't care what you do, it will return it. I do believe karma is working in my life, it works in everyone's. I don't worry about revenge if someone wrongs me. I just sit back and watch karma do it's work. It's all part of the balance of the universe. https://www.healthline.com/health/laws-of-karma

[psychoslice]

Much of religion is used to control, not necessarily a negative thing, but in ways in making those who are ignorant and may cause suffering to themselves or others, I feel that karma is no different.

I don't feel that karma is a law like a boomerang that we through and wait until it comes back with good or bad attached to it, but if that is what makes you a better person then by all means, believe.