Karma And Dui

[sergei29]

Hey guys, just wondering what you think of the idea of Karma.

 

For example, does it work like that? Let's say you drive drunk few times but get home safe, will something happen to you or your family because you endangered the public with your action?

 

Or anything of that sort?

[Deva]

Hey guys, just wondering what you think of the idea of Karma.

 

For example, does it work like that? Let's say you drive drunk few times but get home safe, will something happen to you or your family because you endangered the public with your action?

 

Or anything of that sort?

 

No, it doesn't work like that, but the person ought to stop drinking and driving or something bad may happen next time.

[hereticzero]

Your family's karma is dependent upon yours and you may affect them with bad karma. That type of karma would be returned three-fold against you. Karma does not seek out your family, you bring it upon them through your actions. You pay a fine and spend some time in jail, plus going to court and attorney plus everything else that happens, a wreck perhaps, someone dies, all of this affects your family's karma but not until you set your karma in motion. Their bad karma is the result of your immediate actions.

[Shyone]

The actual religious concept of Karma never convinced me of its existence any more than the religious concept of hubris. OTOH, if you see Karma as "the consequences of behavior" then it makes great sense to me.

 

Drive drunk, get into a wreck, get a fine, go to jail, make lots of people really mad at you. That shit happens all the time.

 

Drive drunk and arrive home safely, have the IRS audit you... Not so much. Unless somehow your psychologic disease or alcoholism caused you to fail to do your taxes as well.

 

Lots of things are tied together in ways that are difficult to forsee, so the expression, "When it rains, it pours" is one expression of Karma.

 

Control those things you have control over, do what is right, be a good person, and even bad things may seem a little better. If you have friends, or at least a good reputation, even bad things are not so bad.

 

Finally, try to anticipate what bad things may happen. Buy car insurance, life insurance, home insurance, save for retirement (my big weakness), take care of your health (and don't use your sick days for goofing off), get flowers for your Significant Other, walk the dog, and on and on. There is no end to the things that might happen, but it turns out that if we do our best in every way, we mitigate the bad, enhance the good, and have less anxiety about life's problems (justifiably or not).

 

Mystically speaking, it makes for good karma.

 

Or, it's just a good way to live.

[par4dcourse]

Karma is a cute idea, but doesn't really exist. The state patrol, however, most certainly do.

[Rev R]

Hey guys, just wondering what you think of the idea of Karma.

 

For example, does it work like that? Let's say you drive drunk few times but get home safe, will something happen to you or your family because you endangered the public with your action?

 

Or anything of that sort?

 

What a strange question.

 

If you are asking, "if some person drives drunk several times and arrives safely at home but six months later his wife comes down with cancer, is this a result of karma?"- the answer is a resounding no.

 

Even from a metaphysical view, no single event we isolate has a singular cause since all phenomena are interdependent and interpenetrated.

 

Karma is not our judge but rather what we choose to do and the effects of that choice. The stuff we do and what happens when we do stuff. The real question should be why this hypothetical person would consciously choose an action that could have such harmful consequences for so many people.

[NotBlinded]

The very first thing to understand about karma is that there are no separate occurences in nature and there are no separate things in nature and above all, there is no you that is separate from all that is. That is a must to understand it properly in my opinion. Also, the word karma just means "doing", not cause and effect or punishment/reward. We can't look at it with a Western worldview and comprehend it.

 

With this in mind, karma isn't a law or something to do with retribution. It implies that all things are one which includes the effects of actions. There is no cause without an effect and no effect without a cause. They are just as much one as two sides of a coin. The effect is already implied in the cause. This is why when anything happens (good or bad), it is said to be "my karma". What you do and what happens to you is all one process. You have to keep in mind that we are not separate. There is no difference between voluntary and involuntary action in this thought. We don't know why we decide to do anything (we can never take into account all the variables involved in decisions) and we can't explain how we are able to move our arms. We just do it.

 

Since there are no separate events in nature, we have to realize that whatever we do affects something. We are not separate from everything. If we see ourselves this way, we tend to interpret karma as a "law" or as an entity that can reach into reality and cause something to happen. Our actions are but another element already embedded in any cause. We are also an effect of other causes. Causation can also work backwards.

 

We are just part of the entire thing and whatever happens is what happens. Not because of some wrong action but because of the effect of the unity of the entire thing working as a whole. Remember, there is no separate you that things affect. You are a part of things. Everything is your own doing. You turn the sun into light and air vibrations into sound. You are the Atman or Self pretending that you're not (in this view).

 

I'm going to put some Alan Watts here to say this better:

 

These two aspects of our experience which we can call the voluntary and the involuntary, the knower and the known, the subject and the object, the self and the other although appearing to be two, are indeed one. You cannot have one without the other. Whenever it seems that you do, you should know at once that there is a conspiracy, that when two things seem as different and different can be, they are actually, for the very reason, the same. You can detect this even in those actions that you call voluntary. In the voluntary movement of the muscles or of the mind there are processes that are not voluntary. You do not will your blood to circulate, you do not control by intention the synapses in your nervous system, and yet you would be incapable of any voluntary action unless those involuntary processes were going on. So, therefore, these differences go together.

 

You begin to realize something that is rather difficult to describe: that what you call your experience is a do happening. We do not have good words for this. We have some words that convey this sense, like the word cleave, which means "to stick together" or "hold together" and also "to split." So, I would like to propose we find some word for a do happening, because everything is a do happening. When Buddhists talk about karma, they mean action, and when something happens to you, be it good or bad, they say it is you karma. That means quite simply, "It is your doing." Now, you may say, "I did not mean to do that." One school of thoughts will explain events by saying, "You did something in a former life, or at a former time, that is now having this consequence." However, that is a very superficial understanding of karma. You do not need to believe in reincarnation to understand karma. Karma is simply not letting your left hand know what your right hand is doing. With one aspect you are doing what you call the environment and with the other aspect you are doing what you call the organism, this living body. Since you cannot possibly conceive of the existence of a living body with no environment, there is the clue that the two are basically one. As with two poles of a magnet, north is quite different from south, and yet they are both part of one magnet.

 

In precisely the same way, you are both what you do and what happens to you. You have a little game in which you play that you are not responsible for what happens to you, you are only responsible for what you do. This illusion allows you to compete with the two sides of yourself. It is like getting two knitting pins, one in each hand, and having a fencing match with yourself. If you sincerely try to stick one hand with the other, the first hand must really try to stick the other, just to defend itself. You will come to sort of a stand still, unless you decide that your right hand is the one to win, and then you have broken the rules of the game, which is what we do all the time.

 

Both the Hindus and the Buddhists call this rule breaking avidya, "ignorance" which really means ignorance. Basically it comes down to the fact that you are responsible for everything. The guru's authority comes from you. The place in life where you are is where you have put yourself. Just as on the suface of the sphere every point may be regarded as the center of the surface, so every place may be regarded as the true place.

 

...

Myth and Religion: The Edited Transcripts (Alan Watts Love of Wisdom Library)

 

It is taking resonsibility for whatever happens to us. No one particular action causes another thing to happen. It's all interconnected.

 

It takes a shift in thought, IMO, to grasp this. I'm still shifting by the way and trying to understand this better myself.

[NotBlinded]

Even from a metaphysical view, no single event we isolate has a singular cause since all phenomena are interdependent and interpenetrated.

Oh one of little words said it all. Myself? I babble on and on!

[oddbird1963]

I don't believe in Karma.

 

I don't think there is some unseen force or principle, other than the forces of physics, that rule our lives.

 

The nearest thing I believe we get to Karma we get is logical consequences. On a physical and social level, our actions and words tend to have reactions or consequences SOMEWHAT commensurate to our behavior.

 

I don't believe in some natural form of justice, however.

[Shyone]

Even from a metaphysical view, no single event we isolate has a singular cause since all phenomena are interdependent and interpenetrated.

Oh one of little words said it all. Myself? I babble on and on!

I understand the words, and I appreciate the conciseness of this statement, but I still think "What goes around, comes around."

 

That may not really relate to the concept of karma, but given the way society works, but it fits with experience.

 

Like the golden rule of karma says, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" because if you treat others poorly, you get the same in return. And treating others with kindness and compassion, fairly and honestly, will likewise garner similar treatment from others.

[NotBlinded]

Even from a metaphysical view, no single event we isolate has a singular cause since all phenomena are interdependent and interpenetrated.

Oh one of little words said it all. Myself? I babble on and on!

I understand the words, and I appreciate the conciseness of this statement, but I still think "What goes around, comes around."

 

That may not really relate to the concept of karma, but given the way society works, but it fits with experience.

 

Like the golden rule of karma says, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" because if you treat others poorly, you get the same in return. And treating others with kindness and compassion, fairly and honestly, will likewise garner similar treatment from others.

Yes, I agree with you. I think the key is to know this and know the other at the same time. The golden rule is easy to prove because if we smile at people, most of the time, they will smile back. If you project anger, anger will be returned. This is why, I believe, that the people that are depressed and need people the most only attract more suffering. I think there is something deeper at work than we can realize though. There are greater connections (of all things) that causes this to be so. I think...

[Rev R]

Oh one of little words said it all. Myself? I babble on and on!

*shrug* some people require a lot of words.

 

I understand the words, and I appreciate the conciseness of this statement, but I still think "What goes around, comes around."

 

That may not really relate to the concept of karma, but given the way society works, but it fits with experience.

 

Like the golden rule of karma says, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" because if you treat others poorly, you get the same in return. And treating others with kindness and compassion, fairly and honestly, will likewise garner similar treatment from others.

 

That's it in a practical sense.

 

Karma works great as a teaching tool within a society familiar with the concept, such as India 2500 years ago. Currently, in my opinion, the word has far too much baggage. It is much simpler to grasp if we translate it to "volitional action" or "deed".

[NotBlinded]

That's it in a practical sense.

 

Karma works great as a teaching tool within a society familiar with the concept, such as India 2500 years ago. Currently, in my opinion, the word has far too much baggage. It is much simpler to grasp if we translate it to "volitional action" or "deed".

Can you hop on a plane and fly down here? I would love to learn from you.

[Rev R]

Can you hop on a plane and fly down here? I would love to learn from you.

 

but I have nothing to teach...

 

Truthfully, I'm a terrible teacher.

[Deva]

 

Karma works great as a teaching tool within a society familiar with the concept, such as India 2500 years ago. Currently, in my opinion, the word has far too much baggage. It is much simpler to grasp if we translate it to "volitional action" or "deed".

 

I completely agree. Although I do accept it, and your definition is correct, thinking about it is really less than useful. Here in the west, it can turn into just another thing to beat yourself up with.

 

Also I think it really doesn't exist at all, at the absolute level.

[NotBlinded]

but I have nothing to teach...

I seem to have heard that before.

 

Truthfully, I'm a terrible teacher.

Ok...just post more then!

[Shyone]

Can you hop on a plane and fly down here? I would love to learn from you.

 

but I have nothing to teach...

 

Truthfully, I'm a terrible teacher.

We all have much to learn from each other if we will only take the time.

[Rev R]

I completely agree. Although I do accept it, and your definition is correct, thinking about it is really less than useful. Here in the west, it can turn into just another thing to beat yourself up with.

 

Also I think it really doesn't exist at all, at the absolute level.

Even "enlightenment" can become a barbed whip in the right hands.

 

 

 

Ok...just post more then!

Can't make any promises...but I'll try.

 

 

We all have much to learn from each other if we will only take the time.

Very true.