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like a BMW is a quasi nascar because it has 4 wheels.
Good one
Yes, if Nascar was the norm for vehicles rather than the saloon, one could say that. Just as, if the bulk of religions were of the natural law kind and there were just one or two that proposed an invisible human, one might say that a 'god' was a 'Quasi -Karma or Fate' entity. It is no more than a human convention - and an understandable one - that the greater number is taken as the norm and the lesser ones the tail of the dog rather than the head.
But there is another aspect of course. If Karma stacked up as a pure natural physical unthinking law, Then I wouldn't even be posting all this. It is because I do not see how it could work unless it has powers of discrimination - in fact a thinking intelligence' and that makes it very much like a god. And I suppose I called it 'quasi' because to call it a god would drop me In It. I am sure. So I call it an entity that arguably must have one attribute of a god, at least. Apart from, of course, hardly a shred of evidence for its existence.
I think I get you. Perhaps related to the free will debate on my old forum (AN) where it seemed that free will was (like everything else, it seems) an illusion, but a very convincing one. There are reasons - many causes - that affect what we do. Some we know and some we don't. And maybe there is a coin - flipping where there is no element of sway (I'll turn left to the mart because there was a sweet chick there yesterday..I'll turn right to the mart because there are trees along the walk), but even that could have some reason for this way or that.
All this adds up to what looks like choice - and it is, but it is not unrelated to reasons and causes, just as the universe is an illusion made of nothing - but it is predictable and real.
Buddha was right - understanding the way things are is the key. Then nobody can do you any harm.
So Karma. There is a lot of talk of cause and effect and I accept that. But there is a bit more in Buddhist doctrine than what we do on this earth affects us. It is too easy to say that good deeds bring good Karma and bad deeds bring bad. But this, as religions have been struggling to explain for millennia, ain't necessarily so. That's why afterlife punishment has to be introduced to put right the unrighted wrongs that occur in this world of ours. And Buddhism has to do that, too. What goes unpunished in this life affects you after you are dead. And that is determined by the amount and kind of merit or demerit that you have piled up:- 'Karma'.
I'll leave aside the basic problem that the 'reward' is going totally phut and the 'punishment' is another life and just reiterate that it is not good enough to claim that actions sort themselves out into good or bad naturally because of the way we get affected by it. I suggest that such a claim does not factually stand up.
Nor is it good enough (not that any Buddhist thinker I have encountered has ever got so far) to claim that we 'know' which deeds are good or bad. What we 'know' is good or bad may not be agreed by the rest of us, and - as stated above - a natural sorting out of our deeds by the effect they have looks more like a doctrinal convenience than a fact.
What this amounts to is that somebody - or something - needs to decide what gets us good merit or bad. I don't claim to be an expert in Buddhism, but I am sure that the scriptures and doctrines make it clear that the merit we accumulated in our lifetimes affect the circumstances of our rebirth (as if we even cared!) according to which pile is the higher.
Who decides on which pile is added to by our actions?
Before Buddhism, Karma was more like fate. I have a real problem with the doctrine and effect of Fate -belief, too. Gods could be bribed and flattered into making things better for us in this life and maybe the next. I gather that Buddhism, by transferring merit -making from Brahminism to the Kshatriya Buddhists were taking over a role of piling up merit to improve the rebirth, so that must have been a feature of Hindu Karma, too.
Except that the Brahmins were intermediaries. You gave them a good dinner and they, as intermediaries, interceded with the gods to get your good merit pile up a bit. Buddhism cut out the middlemen - and middle-gods, too. You went straight to Karma with your deeds and added to the pile of merit or demerit.
Who decided which pile?
Of course, you can make sure which pile by offering the dinners to the Sangha and that is by definition a Good deed. No worries. So if you have a few dodgy acts bothering you, then a few free dinners to the local monks will put that right.
But the question still remains. Who decided that was a good deed? Since the gods are gone and cannot decide that what is a good deed is what they say it is, then it can only be Karma that decides what is a good or bad deed. As I say, nature and its workings and us and our feelings are not a sure guide to which pile gets added to.
Karma has to decide and that means that Karma itself has become as near a god as makes no difference. It is an entity that can be approached in the right way to ensure that one gets a better deal in the next life, if not in this one.
What is Karma? A quasi -god.
Hi there AREQUIPA,
Yes, I think you DO get me in some important ways, I've been told that 'I'm an acquired taste' along with some other less favorable descriptions Thanks & respect for your very thoughtful reply. I appreciate some of the concepts seemingly introduced by Buddhist (& Hindu) thought although I tend to prefer the Taoist ones. The Buddhist 'axiom' which seems to encourage non-desire sometimes confuses me? Non-attachment I think I understand, but non-desire? Desire seems to be one of the 'things' that makes us tick - & has resulted in some of the most wonderful of human creations. O'course an 'unbalanced' desire has most likely produced some of the worst, but there you go.
Non-attachment I think I understand a tad more fully. From my perspective, this aligns more with Taoist thoughts & suggests a more free-flowingness. Fr'instance, the idea of giving &/or receiving. If one is too attached to either position, things tend to get out of hand. Give freely when you have, receive freely when you do not, & do not become attached to being in either position. Something like that. This perhaps even dovetails into the idea that 'it is better to give than it is to receive' because one must have in order to give.
I'm curious by nature & have, perhaps paradoxically, returned to enjoying uncertainty.
Thanks for your kind and understanding post. I am no expert on this matter and I could be dead wrong about everything I said. It is just saying where I am now on Buddhism (disbelieving but still liking it) and how I reasoned it out.
About attachment and desire, they are the same thing at base, so I understand. The idea is that desire for things causes suffering to arise. Detachment, or not -attachment, not wanting things, is the way to eliminate desire and the causes of suffering. You note these things, you are aware of them, but you don't desire or attach to them. The goal is to eliminate desire and achieve enlightenment. I won't go into detail about that because what I think they are talking about and what they think they are talking about is not necessarily the same thing.
The instruction I got on my induction course to the Sangha was that you experience bodily sensations. You may have to respond to them, but you should rather note them and ignore them. Scratching an itch is essentially wrong and enjoying the sensation is the slippery slope to desire and attachment. It is even said that not wanting to attain enlightenment is essential. If you desire to achieve that goal, you have given into attachment.
Thus it begins to look as though getting it right with Buddha is as hard as getting it right with God. There is nothing so simple that some smart Alec can't make it brain - crackingly difficult.
Chan Buddhism even ended up with the masters who made pretty rude comments about Budddha just to show how not attached to him they were.
Yes, if Nascar was the norm for vehicles rather than the saloon, one could say that. Just as, if the bulk of religions were of the natural law kind and there were just one or two that proposed an invisible human, one might say that a 'god' was a 'Quasi -Karma or Fate' entity. It is no more than a human convention - and an understandable one - that the greater number is taken as the norm and the lesser ones the tail of the dog rather than the head.
But there is another aspect of course. If Karma stacked up as a pure natural physical unthinking law, Then I wouldn't even be posting all this. It is because I do not see how it could work unless it has powers of discrimination - in fact a thinking intelligence' and that makes it very much like a god. And I suppose I called it 'quasi' because to call it a god would drop me In It. I am sure. So I call it an entity that arguably must have one attribute of a god, at least. Apart from, of course, hardly a shred of evidence for its existence.
I think of karma loosely like the wind. Hey, it does more than blow. "karma" is a feed black loop more than a natural law. It does not make any choices but acts as it was acted on. The word "karma" also makes it easy to talk to people. It detaches the discussion of bad choices from the person that has to be told such. But like any tool of man there are those that misuse it. I mean look at liberalism. The idea great ideas of being nice to each other and trying and tread lightly destroyed by far left wack jobs.
I think of karma loosely like the wind. Hey, it does more than blow. "karma" is a feed black loop more than a natural law. It does not make any choices but acts as it was acted on. The word "karma" also makes it easy to talk to people. It detaches the discussion of bad choices from the person that has to be told such. But like any tool of man there are those that misuse it. I mean look at liberalism. The idea great ideas of being nice to each other and trying and tread lightly destroyed by far left wack jobs.
Yeah. Just so we are careful to ask for and get a succinct and clear description of what concept and meaning is in mind when the term is used. 'Karma' in Buddhist terms has a very particular meaning, just as 'God' does in religious circles. Or it ought to
Yeah. Just so we are careful to ask for and get a succinct and clear description of what concept and meaning is in mind when the term is used. 'Karma' in Buddhist terms has a very particular meaning, just as 'God' does in religious circles. Or it ought to
lol, yeppers, "being clear". God luck with getting that kind of answer from any leader.
lol, yeppers, "being clear". God luck with getting that kind of answer from any leader.
One lesson in the religion/spiritual debate area that takes a bit of learning, but is a salient learning point when learned is that questioning is as much about listening as explaining. One quicly gets used to not being able to get the other side to admit they are wrong when the evidence piles up against them. Scientists is what they are not.
What is more important is that you listen and hear whether they are making a decent case or are obfuscating in order to avoid admitting that they don't have one.
If they don't see that they are fooling themselves, that is their problem. They are only hurting themselves, not you. And perhaps they like the feeling anyway, so what's the harm? None - if they don't also fool other people (let alone fool them into being dominated and controlled) , including you and me.
So, if we see whether their answers are clear or muddied, we won't be fooled. Like an illusionists, they can be so bewildering that you half - believe that they must really be able to do magic. But, once you know the trick, you cannot be fooled again, and you smile at those who still seem enthralled.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 12-09-2014 at 09:07 AM..
Reason: yeah...brea a lance from Miss Freedom, 38, 26, 37,
One lesson in the religion/spiritual debate area that takes a bit of learning, but is a salient learning point when learned is that questioning is as much about listening as explaining. One quicly gets used to not being able to get the other side to admit they are wrong when the evidence piles up against them. Scientists is what they are not.
What is more important is that you listen and hear whether they are making a decent case or are obfuscating in order to avoid admitting that they don't have one.
If they don't see that they are fooling themselves, that is their problem. They are only hurting themselves, not you. And perhaps they like the feeling anyway, so what's the harm? None - if they don't also fool other people (let alone fool them into being dominated and controlled) , including you and me.
So, if we see whether their answers are clear or muddied, we won't be fooled. Like an illusionists, they can be so bewildering that you half - believe that they must really be able to do magic. But, once you know the trick, you cannot be fooled again, and you smile at those who still seem enthralled.
That's right. I put it few ways.
1) your right to do what you want stops at your neighbors property line.
2) it's ok to believe what you want until we have to make laws.
3) not everybody has a right to an opinion. They have a right to help others.
Who decides? ... we do, there is nobody else!
I am not anti-theist or anti religion. I had normal crazy parents that were catholic. My pop would love to get his hands on abusive priests. Me, lucky I understand the people are people. period. That includes understanding why one would hate religion so much as to be obsessed with this hatred.
Is the person listening to data or are they putting an agenda of "no nothing only" or "this something only" when the data shows the opposite.
Where our last posts go is looking at whether Karma is a free -will thing or not. In Hinduism, it seems to have been regarded as a written down Fate which you could not escape, so there was no point struggling.
The results of which I saw in Indian cities with people living a cardboard box on the street, too hopeless even to beg. Of course, if you sruggle and haul yourself off the pavement into a penthouse, then that was your fate, too. I had a look as prognostication, fortune -telling and even had a subscription to Fate magazine for a while. It took me about a year before I became aware of the pervasive aroma of bullcrap and the rationale (such as it was) of Fate went on the scrapheap, long before I even considered the claims of religion.
But, Buddhist Karma seems a different thing. It seems to hand over free Will choice to human beans and, just as salvation is in your own hands, so is your punishment - another free ride on the merry -go round.
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Good one 
I am sure. So I call it an entity that arguably must have one attribute of a god, at least. Apart from, of course, hardly a shred of evidence for its existence. 
and just reiterate that it is not good enough to claim that actions sort themselves out into good or bad naturally because of the way we get affected by it. I suggest that such a claim does not factually stand up. 
