A question for Buddhists only?

Question

Can you please explain karma from a Buddhist perspective as well as your personal view of it? (This means I don't want to hear bigoted comments from xtian fundies OR atheists, thank you.)

Answer 1

A simple description would be : you reap what you sow.

From one Buddhist's perspective ( me ) , it is :Every action that you do will give you back a corresponding result.

The result depends on what action you have done. For example , if you give others happiness , then you will receive happiness back later , although you can't predict when it will come back.

If you give others suffering ,then you will receive it back. Again, you can't predict when it will come back to you.

This is the basic form of karma .

Second thing I would like to say is that , Karma doesn't just happened between humans only . This law extends to everything you do. It also applies to everything under the sun.

Example: If you are cruel to small animals say you torture a cat and caused it to die, later on in your life , you will get back the same suffering on yourself .It may not be a cat , it may be some other animals or a human being doing it to you. You may not die from it , ( it depends on what other deeds you have done after the cat died) , but , you certainly will get the suffering, the torture.

If creating suffering to a cat will give you suffering, then doing it to a human being will increase the suffering greatly.

In all cases , karma that you do ( causes that you created now and the past ) would be reaped by you.

There are many well documented cases of karma happenings , especially in Buddhist circles. There are many books who collate these karma happenings. You can browse on the internet and look for them. Or you can go to your local Buddhist Centre and look for them.

If you are a Chinese or you can read chinese well, then you can see Professor Yun's series of books : "Why I believe in Cause and Effect " . His books documents true karma happenings in the Taiwan and China regions.

See this link: http://www.bfnn.org/bookgb/books3/2101.htm

Although you reap what you sow, sometimes there are some apparent exceptions .

This brings me to the third point :

Sometimes , karma that you do may not happen on you but it could happened to a close family members of yours, for example , your children.

This is a bit harder to explain ,but , your children ( those with blood relations) could be considered as another you. He or she inherited your genes and also part of your karma history.

I have heard of a real account on this : There is a man who became a Buddhist .But he has a unwholesome hobby : he likes to go fishing. As this go against the first Precept ( No Killing ) , so ,his Buddhist friends tried to persuade him to give up this hobby. But, he wouldn't listen. He said that this is his favourite hobby.

His wife was pregnant at that time . She later gave birth to a baby girl with deformed cleft lips. At first , this man did not know why his daugther is born like this and he blamed it on Buddhism . Then he went to see a spiritually accomplished monk . This accomplished monk meditated and with clairvoyance powers saw that this is karma ripening :

When he went fishing, for every fish he catched , the hook that he used tore open the lips of the fishes and this causes great pain to them . Therefore by cause and effect , this karma ripened on his new born daughter and she was born with cleft lips .

The man regretted his actions deeply and gave up fishing altogether . He also had an operation done on his daughter to correct the deformation. Fortunately , the operation was successful and she could have a normal life .

You may say that it is unfair. The father should bear all the karma himself and not the daughter , but , it is also the daughter's personal karma ( her own cause and effect done in her past lives) that caused her to be born as his daughter.

Fortunately, her karma was light and after the operation she could still live a normal life.

There are other forms of karma : like Group karma . These are the karma that was done by a group of people. Example : an army invading another country , this is an example of group karma. The invading army are the ones initiating it , so , they planted the causes. They will bear the effects later , maybe next life or in this life .

All these that I have said are just some simple forms of karma , there are many other forms. But the basic principle is still the same, you reap what you sow.

In Buddhism, when we talk about karma , the more complete and acccurate teachings are Cause + Conditions = Effects .

This could be best explained by the analogy in the planting of a flower .

To plant a flower , you bury the seed ( cause ) in the soil ( condition ) . Then you water it ( condition ) . Then the Sun shined on it , ( condition) and finally you have a plant that keeps growing until it flowers. ( effect )

To get the flower ( effect ) you not only have to plant the seed ( cause) . You need accompanying conditions to let it grow ( soil, water , sunlight , time ).

Suppose that you try to plant this seed into a concrete floor and you water it and let the sun shine on it .

Do you get flowers? No of course not, because the accompanying ( I should say conducive) conditions are not there.

This explains why sometimes people committed bad karma but they don't get it back. Because the conditions are not right yet , the time is not ripe.

But the condition will eventually ripened and those who had done bad will receive their dues.

If you look carefully in the world , there is a natural balancing in the world. Eventually, every causes , good or bad will act out.

It is a very interesting subject and you can write much about this.

Right now, I can only offer you some of the true accounts I have heard and some of the basic ideas.

Hoped this helps.

Answer 2

The simple answer:

Everything you do and say affects everything and everyone around you. If you yell at your spouse, your spouse then yells at a co-worker and so on. The negative and positive effects of your actions just go on and on. These actions then come back to you somehow. If you are basically good and do good things then good things will happen to you and you will mostly be happy.

Encyclopedia version :-) :

Karma (Sanskrit: कर्म from the root kṛ, "to do", [meaning deed] meaning action, effect, destiny) is a term that comprises the entire cycle of cause and effect. Karma is a sum of all that an individual has done, is currently doing and will do. The effects of all deeds actively create present and future experiences, thus making one responsible for one's own life, and the pain in others. In religions that incorporate reincarnation, karma extends through one's present life and all past and future lives as well.

In relation to Buddhists:

In Buddhism, karma (Pāli kamma) is strictly distinguished from vipāka ("fruit" or "result"). Karma is one element in a chain of cause and effect. Any action is understood to create "seeds" in the mind which will sprout into the appropriate result when they meet with the right conditions. Certain types of karmas, with good or bad result, will keep one within the wheel of saṃsāra; others will liberate one to nirvāṇa.

Answer 3

Karma is a kind of law of cause and effect, and generally means the sum total of one's actions, past and present and future, and one's actions have an effect. One experiences these effects as one goes along. Sort of the idea that what we do makes waves for us. Some of these we might like, some we might not like.

This makes us responsible for our own lives. In religions that recognize reincarnation, what we do here now in this life extends its effects into the next one.

Hinduism and some other religions also recognize karma, and there are I think some Christian traditions that also recognize it. Generally, standard Jesus-saves theology is one where it is claimed that God's Love gave Jesus to mankind to take on everyone's karma who cast himself upon the mercy of God and Jesus, such that they would be reborn in heaven and skip everything else.

I personally don't feel that karma and constantly being reborn until one gets it right can be "short-circuited," and I think that the religious figure we know as Jesus was not well understood and/or his teachings were not very well documented. There has been some speculation about this Jesus' "lost years" and it has been noted how sayings attributed to him are somewhat similar to Buddhist principles. In general, though, earnestly following the social and ethica principles of conduct that Jesus recommended would go a very long way to smoothing out one's karma.

Personal experience? Well, of course I can't be sure, but this happened: I was working in a place where a man had mental and physical problems, and one problem involved his feet needing a certain shoe or else he was constantly in pain. The people in charge chose to fight with me over it, to the point where they destroyed the shoes I got for him and make him walk around in the usual pain-inducing regular shoes.

Not that long after this, both persons involved had severe problems with their feet, one needing an operation, another hobbling around with a cast and crutches. Of course, this is rather sudden and immediate and one-to-one, but it does illustrate karma: we cause pain, we get pain ourselves.

Answer 4

WELL , i'm a hindu. we too believe in karma.

Buddhist perspective on karma and the dying process.
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One of d main points is that karma is conditional, not deterministic. In other words, we are not fated to our particular lives; rather, our karma is created, and we have the opportunity to transform it in each moment and particularly at the moment of death.
For a Buddhist the funeral ceremony begins at birth. We start practicing with an awareness of death from the minute we are born. Each person is thought to be in the process of simultaneously living and dying, and each of us has the potential to become free of both.

For Buddhists, this is particularly important, because death presents us with a unique opportunity to transform our karma. Many Buddhists practice throughout their lives for the moment of dying, at which time it is possible to release many old karmic habits of mind.