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Hard Talk
Why Is The Law Of Karma Rejected?
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<blockquote data-quote="Archived_member14" data-source="post: 179429" data-attributes="member: 586"><p>Ambarsaria ji,</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Causes are experiences such as a moment of anger, sensuous attachment, pride, miserliness etc. on one hand, and kindness, compassion, generosity and understanding etc, on the other.</p><p></p><p>Resultants are such as the experience of seeing, hearing, touching, smelling and tasting.</p><p></p><p>====</p><p></p><p></p><p>Didn't you refer to this as common sense in your last post?</p><p>Today I express anger towards my wife's cooking, tomorrow I do it again, chances are that at another time she cooks the same dish, I will react with anger. This is reflection of tendency. Indeed if I get angry easily at one particular kind of experience and you don't, this shows that I've accumulated from the past one kind of tendency and you another kind. </p><p></p><p>===</p><p></p><p></p><p>No, in fact I pointed out twice in my last two messages, that these are common knowledge. And this I did so that you will consider the possibility of another mental function, namely karma.</p><p></p><p>So tell me now, why do you believe in the function of mentality which is accumulated tendencies, but deny the possibility of another function by “intention” namely karma? Is it because you can observe one to the satisfaction of your intellect and not the other?</p><p></p><p>===</p><p></p><p></p><p>But rise and fall away is not what is meant by cause and effect?! It is simply the characteristic of impermanence inherent in all conditioned existence, this means that causes are impermanent in nature and so are the resultants.</p><p></p><p>===</p><p></p><p></p><p>Give me one example and I will show you how that is not a case of moral cause and effect.</p><p></p><p>===</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>What I am saying is that while the mental states are realities with definite characteristics, function and proximate cause and that these can be known by wisdom, a conventional idea about cause and effect is just that, an idea. You will hit or miss, but in either case, it does nothing in the way of developing wisdom. Indeed if you do not know what the mental reality behind any outward activity is, you will end up not only increasing ignorance and attachment, but also wrong understanding. </p><p></p><p>===</p><p></p><p></p><p>See what you are doing? You are insisting on proof when in fact what is required is understanding, and this is got through studying different states of mind. And btw, do you require proof for your belief in God or does that in fact involve a particular way of thinking about things? If someone has used the concept of karma incorrectly, instead of helping by pointing out the correct way of understanding it, you are instead going along with your own perceptions and then trying to dismiss karma altogether. This from my point of view, places you in no better position than those you are criticizing. Both come from a wrong understanding about Karma. </p><p></p><p>===</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Or maybe unlike you, I do not allow other people’s thoughts and actions decide what to accept as Truth and what not to. Practical? The only practical thing to do is mind one’s own mind. </p><p></p><p>===</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>And according to Buddhist teachings, for both karma and its resultant there must be a coming together of several conditions, some in the present and some from the past. But karma itself is one kind of phenomena and so is the resultant. The question is not what conditions karma and its fruit to arise at any given moment, but what these actually are. I gave examples of these in the beginning of this message. So you might like to also do the same with regard to what you propose. What is the reality that is sow / sowing and what exactly is reaped?</p><p></p><p>===</p><p></p><p></p><p>What do you think about the following?</p><p></p><p>The Five Cosmic orders are;</p><p></p><p>1. The caloric order.</p><p>2. The germinal order.</p><p>3. The moral order.</p><p>4. The psychical order.</p><p>5. The phenomenal sequence.</p><p></p><p>Number 1 refers to the laws that governs material objects from a chemical compound to a star.</p><p>Number 2 refers to the laws governing plant life.</p><p>Number 3 is karma.</p><p>Number 4 is the laws according to which consciousness and its mental concomitants rise and fall in succession.</p><p>Number 5 is a general law encompassing all the other four and more.</p><p></p><p>Number one, what is relevant is that which is experienced through the five senses and this can be known directly. With regard to 2, a conceptual idea is all that we can ever have. Numbers 3 and 4 is what we need to understand more than anything else. Number 5 we can begin to understand through studying the other four. All this can be understood only by way of understanding that which appears “now” to experience. </p><p>Do you find this reasonable?</p><p>Is there anything else that needs to be done? </p><p></p><p>===</p><p></p><p></p><p>Karma is intention of a particular intensity which accompanies volitional consciousness. The results of karma are fleeting instances of consciousness which include pleasant / unpleasant experiences through the five senses, birth, life-continuum and death consciousness. </p><p></p><p>I build a house by the sea and one day get hit by a Tsunami, which parts of this is karma and which are results of karma? When seeing a pleasant object, experiencing pleasant bodily sensations, etc. as in looking towards the sea and feeling the breeze, these are karma results. I then think about these experiences with attachment and proliferate on to the idea of “living by the sea”, these are an examples of cause. It is therefore wrong to say that karma led me to live by the sea and then to be hit by a Tsunami. </p><p></p><p>===</p><p> </p><p></p><p>Many perceptions are involved and many experiences both pleasant and unpleasant each associated with much volitional activity through body, speech and mind. The object of wisdom would be any one of these experiences and their objects. For someone who continues to take seriously his thoughts about the past and future, this kind of understanding will be extremely remote.</p><p></p><p>===</p><p></p><p></p><p>The idea of control aside, understanding the different experiences and their objects through the five senses and the mind, counters the tendency to think in terms of stories about the past and future. And since in the end, no matter where we are and what we are doing, there is just the one experience at a time, and all of them equally fleeting, what then is there to be concerned and surprised about? </p><p></p><p>===</p><p></p><p></p><p>Understanding the eye, ear and mind itself would be a great achievement. But this won't happen if along the way there was no understanding about certain mental realities as being cause and some other as being result.</p><p></p><p>Please tell me; based on what knowledge do you judge moral cause and effect or Karma as illusory? I have provided my reasons for believing in the concept. Can you provide some concrete reason as to why you reject it apart from saying that it cannot be observed or that it is an invention by a particular group of people? One impression I get is that these protestations is due to fear of appearing superstitious….. </p><p></p><p>===</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>So you think the majority view is evidence of the rightness and wrongness of any concept. I would like to hear your explanation regarding Guru Nanak pointing out the wrong practices of the millions of Hindus and Muslims of his time…</p><p></p><p>But do attempt to prove wrong my suggestion about other Buddhists being wrong based on what I said. I had suggested that they are wrong based on the fact that there is only one moment of consciousness at a time and that all causes and conditions involved are within that very rising and falling away.</p><p></p><p>===</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Yes, it approaches 100% of those who call themselves Buddhist today. Can you explain to me what might be the problem with this?</p><p></p><p>===</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I doesn't interest me to look at the Buddha from the historical standpoint. The Buddha is Buddha as in “the One who knows and sees”. Unlike others, he taught to see that which is the Truth, one which is not an abstraction, but can be understood right here and right now. And with this as reference point, I have come to see gradually more clearly, how others are wrong. </p><p></p><p>Anyway, although the Buddha did not write anything, his teachings were passed down via oral tradition involving large number of monks in different parts of India and elsewhere, reciting together. And this is much more reliable than written texts.</p><p></p><p>===</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>We all like to belong and we all fear change. This is due to ignorance and craving, and lack of wisdom which appreciates Truth as the only worthy aim. </p><p></p><p>I don’t see how your question relates to my comment, please explain.</p><p></p><p>===</p><p></p><p></p><p>You mean thought about the person with whom you are interacting is a mistake and that ideally one should be thinking in terms of the bigger picture?</p><p></p><p>===</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I thought that you were dust before your birth and will be dust after your death. Now you are saying that you come from an amoeba or whatever that existed a billion years ago?! So the one amoeba or paramecium is the great forefather of you, me, Einstein, Guru Nanak and the Buddha, and perhaps we should all once a year pay reverence to it? Just kidding.</p><p></p><p>But seriously, do you see how this tendency to identify is a problem? You identify with the whole of creation, with being some part, with humanity, with other Sikhs, with animals from the past. It is hard enough with this identification as me, mine and I, it becomes much harder when these become “we”. And you consider this as getting at the Truth?</p><p></p><p>I don’t deny evolution. I think it is the story about life in this planet we call earth. It simply points at how the planet changed and able to sustain different life forms as time passed. But to identify oneself with the amoeba, the caveman or even one’s own father as means to understand who we are is completely misleading. </p><p></p><p>That your parents provided one a sperm and the other an egg which resulted in you being born or that this planet at one point had only one single-celled life form and later diversified into a great many different species, says nothing about who “you” actually are. The former only gives us an idea about a particular set of material conditions for birth. This and what happens after, between your parents and you, plays a part in your accumulated tendencies. The latter however, is a story that has absolutely nothing to do with your birth, life or death. On the other hand, this Karma which you consider garbage, explains much of what constitutes life and also what birth and death are. And the important thing is that it actually encourages you to examine your life from moment to moment, whereas the other things you have recourse to, in leading you away from what is "now", in fact encourage more ignorance, attachment, wrong understanding, and as you've shown, also conceit.</p><p> </p><p>And by the way, identification is conceit at work, and strong identification and strong conceit is what madness in fact is. </p><p></p><p>===</p><p></p><p></p><p>Tell me one Truth that you know and I’ll show you how it’s just a belief.</p><p></p><p>===</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Although only as a joke, do you see how you can’t help thinking about God without some level of comparison. And if this is not conceit, what is it? </p><p></p><p>===</p><p>.</p><p></p><p></p><p>The problem is in the way you think about the different ideas and theories out there. You end up so identified with those stories that you have no clue as to what is really going on right now.</p><p></p><p>===</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>And you love that particular story. You think that conceit is addressed when you make yourself an insignificant part, just like any other. But conceit in fact is not only when one thinks oneself greater than, but also both when lesser and equal to. Apparently what you consider truth has led you to consistently think in these terms, not only with regard to creation, but other things as well, re: “we” as humanity, as Sikhs, as product of our forefathers, as coming from the amoeba….. </p><p></p><p>===</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>This is what you had said:</p><p></p><p>Quote:</p><p>“Creation churns all to ashes and particles so fine that something totally wonderful could be created all the time”</p><p></p><p>Now the super controller does not have to be separate from that which it creates and destroys. The idea is that there is a controlling force that reaches out to affect everything. This goes against the understanding that the causes and conditions for the arising of every physical and mental phenomena lie within that very phenomena. Indeed were this not so, then impermanence would not be a general characteristic, there'd have to be something that exists over time both in order to condition something else to arise as well as causing it to fall away.</p><p></p><p>===</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Again you are saying here that the majority view is correct. And you are suggesting an impossible and senseless task for me to undertake before you can start to consider my point of view as possibly valid. This reminds me of the simile of the man who attempts to cover the world with leather instead of simply wearing shoes. Why don't you just discuss with me about the concept to find out if in fact I am right or not? Are you having so much fun being the critic that you don't want to know what the Truth is?</p><p></p><p>===</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>How can you expect me to call it something else when every part of it impresses upon me as coming from a particular set of teachings, namely the Pali Tipitaka, and this has been attributed to the Buddha? From my point of view it would be silly to call it anything else. </p><p></p><p>====</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Your characterization is off the mark. And since as I said above, any characterization by me can be traced back to something written in the Tipitaka, in order to satisfy your wishes, let's just call what I have been saying as “Ism”. How is that?</p><p></p><p>===</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Sorry about that. I actually hesitated a bit since I realized my memory regarding the Pavlov experiment was quite vague. But you have not been precise, so perhaps you can tell me now, what exactly you refer to.</p><p></p><p>===</p><p> </p><p></p><p></p><p>It would be good if we get into a discussion about this. However if you don't wish to, but instead like to continue to express your criticism, then just as you suggested me do with regard to Buddha, you should make it clear that your criticism is directed at only a particular interpretation.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Archived_member14, post: 179429, member: 586"] Ambarsaria ji, Causes are experiences such as a moment of anger, sensuous attachment, pride, miserliness etc. on one hand, and kindness, compassion, generosity and understanding etc, on the other. Resultants are such as the experience of seeing, hearing, touching, smelling and tasting. ==== Didn't you refer to this as common sense in your last post? Today I express anger towards my wife's cooking, tomorrow I do it again, chances are that at another time she cooks the same dish, I will react with anger. This is reflection of tendency. Indeed if I get angry easily at one particular kind of experience and you don't, this shows that I've accumulated from the past one kind of tendency and you another kind. === No, in fact I pointed out twice in my last two messages, that these are common knowledge. And this I did so that you will consider the possibility of another mental function, namely karma. So tell me now, why do you believe in the function of mentality which is accumulated tendencies, but deny the possibility of another function by “intention” namely karma? Is it because you can observe one to the satisfaction of your intellect and not the other? === But rise and fall away is not what is meant by cause and effect?! It is simply the characteristic of impermanence inherent in all conditioned existence, this means that causes are impermanent in nature and so are the resultants. === Give me one example and I will show you how that is not a case of moral cause and effect. === What I am saying is that while the mental states are realities with definite characteristics, function and proximate cause and that these can be known by wisdom, a conventional idea about cause and effect is just that, an idea. You will hit or miss, but in either case, it does nothing in the way of developing wisdom. Indeed if you do not know what the mental reality behind any outward activity is, you will end up not only increasing ignorance and attachment, but also wrong understanding. === See what you are doing? You are insisting on proof when in fact what is required is understanding, and this is got through studying different states of mind. And btw, do you require proof for your belief in God or does that in fact involve a particular way of thinking about things? If someone has used the concept of karma incorrectly, instead of helping by pointing out the correct way of understanding it, you are instead going along with your own perceptions and then trying to dismiss karma altogether. This from my point of view, places you in no better position than those you are criticizing. Both come from a wrong understanding about Karma. === Or maybe unlike you, I do not allow other people’s thoughts and actions decide what to accept as Truth and what not to. Practical? The only practical thing to do is mind one’s own mind. === And according to Buddhist teachings, for both karma and its resultant there must be a coming together of several conditions, some in the present and some from the past. But karma itself is one kind of phenomena and so is the resultant. The question is not what conditions karma and its fruit to arise at any given moment, but what these actually are. I gave examples of these in the beginning of this message. So you might like to also do the same with regard to what you propose. What is the reality that is sow / sowing and what exactly is reaped? === What do you think about the following? The Five Cosmic orders are; 1. The caloric order. 2. The germinal order. 3. The moral order. 4. The psychical order. 5. The phenomenal sequence. Number 1 refers to the laws that governs material objects from a chemical compound to a star. Number 2 refers to the laws governing plant life. Number 3 is karma. Number 4 is the laws according to which consciousness and its mental concomitants rise and fall in succession. Number 5 is a general law encompassing all the other four and more. Number one, what is relevant is that which is experienced through the five senses and this can be known directly. With regard to 2, a conceptual idea is all that we can ever have. Numbers 3 and 4 is what we need to understand more than anything else. Number 5 we can begin to understand through studying the other four. All this can be understood only by way of understanding that which appears “now” to experience. Do you find this reasonable? Is there anything else that needs to be done? === Karma is intention of a particular intensity which accompanies volitional consciousness. The results of karma are fleeting instances of consciousness which include pleasant / unpleasant experiences through the five senses, birth, life-continuum and death consciousness. I build a house by the sea and one day get hit by a Tsunami, which parts of this is karma and which are results of karma? When seeing a pleasant object, experiencing pleasant bodily sensations, etc. as in looking towards the sea and feeling the breeze, these are karma results. I then think about these experiences with attachment and proliferate on to the idea of “living by the sea”, these are an examples of cause. It is therefore wrong to say that karma led me to live by the sea and then to be hit by a Tsunami. === Many perceptions are involved and many experiences both pleasant and unpleasant each associated with much volitional activity through body, speech and mind. The object of wisdom would be any one of these experiences and their objects. For someone who continues to take seriously his thoughts about the past and future, this kind of understanding will be extremely remote. === The idea of control aside, understanding the different experiences and their objects through the five senses and the mind, counters the tendency to think in terms of stories about the past and future. And since in the end, no matter where we are and what we are doing, there is just the one experience at a time, and all of them equally fleeting, what then is there to be concerned and surprised about? === Understanding the eye, ear and mind itself would be a great achievement. But this won't happen if along the way there was no understanding about certain mental realities as being cause and some other as being result. Please tell me; based on what knowledge do you judge moral cause and effect or Karma as illusory? I have provided my reasons for believing in the concept. Can you provide some concrete reason as to why you reject it apart from saying that it cannot be observed or that it is an invention by a particular group of people? One impression I get is that these protestations is due to fear of appearing superstitious….. === So you think the majority view is evidence of the rightness and wrongness of any concept. I would like to hear your explanation regarding Guru Nanak pointing out the wrong practices of the millions of Hindus and Muslims of his time… But do attempt to prove wrong my suggestion about other Buddhists being wrong based on what I said. I had suggested that they are wrong based on the fact that there is only one moment of consciousness at a time and that all causes and conditions involved are within that very rising and falling away. === Yes, it approaches 100% of those who call themselves Buddhist today. Can you explain to me what might be the problem with this? === I doesn't interest me to look at the Buddha from the historical standpoint. The Buddha is Buddha as in “the One who knows and sees”. Unlike others, he taught to see that which is the Truth, one which is not an abstraction, but can be understood right here and right now. And with this as reference point, I have come to see gradually more clearly, how others are wrong. Anyway, although the Buddha did not write anything, his teachings were passed down via oral tradition involving large number of monks in different parts of India and elsewhere, reciting together. And this is much more reliable than written texts. === We all like to belong and we all fear change. This is due to ignorance and craving, and lack of wisdom which appreciates Truth as the only worthy aim. I don’t see how your question relates to my comment, please explain. === You mean thought about the person with whom you are interacting is a mistake and that ideally one should be thinking in terms of the bigger picture? === I thought that you were dust before your birth and will be dust after your death. Now you are saying that you come from an amoeba or whatever that existed a billion years ago?! So the one amoeba or paramecium is the great forefather of you, me, Einstein, Guru Nanak and the Buddha, and perhaps we should all once a year pay reverence to it? Just kidding. But seriously, do you see how this tendency to identify is a problem? You identify with the whole of creation, with being some part, with humanity, with other Sikhs, with animals from the past. It is hard enough with this identification as me, mine and I, it becomes much harder when these become “we”. And you consider this as getting at the Truth? I don’t deny evolution. I think it is the story about life in this planet we call earth. It simply points at how the planet changed and able to sustain different life forms as time passed. But to identify oneself with the amoeba, the caveman or even one’s own father as means to understand who we are is completely misleading. That your parents provided one a sperm and the other an egg which resulted in you being born or that this planet at one point had only one single-celled life form and later diversified into a great many different species, says nothing about who “you” actually are. The former only gives us an idea about a particular set of material conditions for birth. This and what happens after, between your parents and you, plays a part in your accumulated tendencies. The latter however, is a story that has absolutely nothing to do with your birth, life or death. On the other hand, this Karma which you consider garbage, explains much of what constitutes life and also what birth and death are. And the important thing is that it actually encourages you to examine your life from moment to moment, whereas the other things you have recourse to, in leading you away from what is "now", in fact encourage more ignorance, attachment, wrong understanding, and as you've shown, also conceit. And by the way, identification is conceit at work, and strong identification and strong conceit is what madness in fact is. === Tell me one Truth that you know and I’ll show you how it’s just a belief. === Although only as a joke, do you see how you can’t help thinking about God without some level of comparison. And if this is not conceit, what is it? === . The problem is in the way you think about the different ideas and theories out there. You end up so identified with those stories that you have no clue as to what is really going on right now. === And you love that particular story. You think that conceit is addressed when you make yourself an insignificant part, just like any other. But conceit in fact is not only when one thinks oneself greater than, but also both when lesser and equal to. Apparently what you consider truth has led you to consistently think in these terms, not only with regard to creation, but other things as well, re: “we” as humanity, as Sikhs, as product of our forefathers, as coming from the amoeba….. === This is what you had said: Quote: “Creation churns all to ashes and particles so fine that something totally wonderful could be created all the time” Now the super controller does not have to be separate from that which it creates and destroys. The idea is that there is a controlling force that reaches out to affect everything. This goes against the understanding that the causes and conditions for the arising of every physical and mental phenomena lie within that very phenomena. Indeed were this not so, then impermanence would not be a general characteristic, there'd have to be something that exists over time both in order to condition something else to arise as well as causing it to fall away. === Again you are saying here that the majority view is correct. And you are suggesting an impossible and senseless task for me to undertake before you can start to consider my point of view as possibly valid. This reminds me of the simile of the man who attempts to cover the world with leather instead of simply wearing shoes. Why don't you just discuss with me about the concept to find out if in fact I am right or not? Are you having so much fun being the critic that you don't want to know what the Truth is? === How can you expect me to call it something else when every part of it impresses upon me as coming from a particular set of teachings, namely the Pali Tipitaka, and this has been attributed to the Buddha? From my point of view it would be silly to call it anything else. ==== Your characterization is off the mark. And since as I said above, any characterization by me can be traced back to something written in the Tipitaka, in order to satisfy your wishes, let's just call what I have been saying as “Ism”. How is that? === Sorry about that. I actually hesitated a bit since I realized my memory regarding the Pavlov experiment was quite vague. But you have not been precise, so perhaps you can tell me now, what exactly you refer to. === It would be good if we get into a discussion about this. However if you don't wish to, but instead like to continue to express your criticism, then just as you suggested me do with regard to Buddha, you should make it clear that your criticism is directed at only a particular interpretation. [/QUOTE]
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Why Is The Law Of Karma Rejected?
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