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    Questions about "karma" and/or other concepts in Buddhism

    I'm learning a lot about Buddhism, what with being a Buddhist and all.

    As I learn I've found that a lot of what I though I knew about Buddhism was mistaken because (often) of mistaken understanding of terminology - for example, "karma" probably isn't what you think it is...

    In order to help me make sense of what I'm learning, I would be grateful if you could ask me questions about "What do Buddhists mean when they say...?" That would give me the operatunafish to try to articulate a coherent response.
    Every moment of a life is a horrible tragedy, a slapstick comedy, dark nihilism, golden illumination, or nothing at all; depending on how we write the story we tell ourselves.


    #2
    Re: Questions about "karma" and/or other concepts in Buddhism

    Let's go with the low hanging fruit. Can you give us a quick overview of what Karma is?
    life itself was a lightsaber in his hands; even in the face of treachery and death and hopes gone cold, he burned like a candle in the darkness. Like a star shining in the black eternity of space.

    Yoda: Dark Rendezvous

    "But those men who know anything at all about the Light also know that there is a fierceness to its power, like the bare sword of the law, or the white burning of the sun." Suddenly his voice sounded to Will very strong, and very Welsh. "At the very heart, that is. Other things, like humanity, and mercy, and charity, that most good men hold more precious than all else, they do not come first for the Light. Oh, sometimes they are there; often, indeed. But in the very long run the concern of you people is with the absolute good, ahead of all else..."

    John Rowlands, The Grey King by Susan Cooper

    "You come from the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve", said Aslan. "And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth; be content."

    Aslan, Prince Caspian by CS Lewis


    Comment


      #3
      Re: Questions about "karma" and/or other concepts in Buddhism

      Originally posted by MaskedOne View Post
      Let's go with the low hanging fruit. Can you give us a quick overview of what Karma is?
      Part 1

      LOl - I put the fruit basket on the low branch because "karma" is a pretty interesting study in the difference between a magical explanation, and a reality-based (scienticic) explanation. I think I need to explain...

      If you ask "Why does a rock fall to earth when you drop it?" and the answer you get is "Gravity pulls it toward the center of the earth," you will have been given a magical explanation. The magic is that a power (called "gravity") reaches out, grrabs hold of thngs, and pulls on them. We call this a "scientific explanation," but without further explanation (what is gravity? How does it work? If I can answer these two questions, how can I USE that information?) there is no science, just woo woo.

      Most people are happy with the woo woo. Some people can explain how gravity is formed by the deformation of space-time by mass. A few others can provde the understanding of this phenomenon that allows a space mission to arrive at a planet millions of miles away. And a very few others are working to discover how mass deforms space time... This is the science of the thing. Understanding how it works, in enough detail to serve a purpose.

      The same is true with Karma.

      So, to explain karma - even a simplified version - I actualy have to answer three questions:

      1. What iss the basic idea behind karma (if I stop here, I've teaching woo woo. I don't do that, though, so...)
      2. How does it work? (If I can't explain this, again, it's woo woo)
      3. Why does it matter in Buddhism? (i.e.: what is the practicle application of this knowedge?)
      Every moment of a life is a horrible tragedy, a slapstick comedy, dark nihilism, golden illumination, or nothing at all; depending on how we write the story we tell ourselves.

      Comment


        #4
        Re: Questions about "karma" and/or other concepts in Buddhism

        Part 2: The basic idea of karma

        If you ask the average person "What is karma?" you will most likely get the magical explanation - something like "Karma is the principle that what you do - the good or the bad - comes back to you, or, explained another way, what you do/don't do becomes your karma, and you either pay for it, or benefit frome it, or you recieve a mixture of karmic bills and bennies.

        Whhile this explanation is basicly correct it is also a magical expllanation because it proposes an unexplained force (called "karma") that creates some sort of cosmic accounting service keeping track of what you do and issuing rewards/punishments based on actions.

        I don't care for woo woo, and neither do Buddhist thinkers. These Buddhist thinkers are scientists. The want to know how karma works, and so do I.

        In order to explain "How does it work?" I have to start by asking you to rethink your basic understanding of karma - rather than thinking of karma as a cosmic balancing principle, start thinking of karma a the psycho-physical-historical matrix in which each sentient being is embedded.

        In other words, while karma does (somewhat) reward and punish, it isn't a thing that happens outside of the individual, it is a fundimental principle derrived from acknowledging that all sentient beings are embedded in a reality based on cause and effect relationships which began long before they were born, and which will continue long after the sentient entity is dead and gone.

        In short - the best non-woo woo way to understand karma is that the term "Karma" is shorthand for "the long chain of cause and effect relationshis which began with the beginning of the universe leading to you as you are RIGHT NOW, and that you are a part of that chain of cause-effect relationships, and that your actions will continue to reverberate in this system.

        If you understand that idea, you can simplify the idea of karma even further to something like this: People are the victims and beneficiaries of the context in which they live.

        While I can provide real world examples to support this idea, the concept of cause and effect relationships (spread out through long history) in affecing the quality of life of each individual is so basic to our understanding of the historical, social, psychological, and physical make up of all of us that arguing against it would require arguing against cause-effect relationships.

        That would be anti-science.

        Karma, correctly understood, isn't woo woo. It is science. Arguing against karma is anti-science = woo woo.

        So, we've arrived at the point where "Karma" is a term that means "cause and effect relationships."

        No magic, no mystical weirdness, no woo woo. Just the simple fundamental principle that is the basis of all science.

        The next question is "How does it work?" Since I've turned karma into cause and effect relationshps, it would seem that this question is easy to answer. We all know how cause/effect works... A bumps into B, which bumps into C and D, which bump into E, F, G, etc.

        But Buddhist scientists wanted a far more detailed explantion of how these relationships work in terms of creating each individual's perception of reality. And even more importantly, how do these cause/effect relationships lead to the MISperception of reality - in Buddhist terms, this misperception is called "illusion."

        In Buddhism, the suffering that is an inherent part of life is caused when one fails to accept what "is really there" (believes the illusion; see the Four Noble Truths that provide the rationale for Buddhism). Therefore, the Buddhist scientists needed to look closely at EXACTLY how present perceptions are affected by karma, because karma frequently causes misperceptions.

        To take the deep dive into "How does it work?" I'll have to get into some very deep Buddhism. Let me introduce you the Abhidharma... after I rest. The Abhidharma is... extraordinarily detailed and highly complex...
        Every moment of a life is a horrible tragedy, a slapstick comedy, dark nihilism, golden illumination, or nothing at all; depending on how we write the story we tell ourselves.

        Comment


          #5
          Re: Questions about "karma" and/or other concepts in Buddhism

          Part 3 - How does Karma work?

          I have avoided giving sources for the information I presented previously because if you do a search for "Karma Buddhism" you'll find that what I've said is pretty much accepted by Buddhists. However, for this part, I will give a source: The Abhidharma. I want to cite this because Buddhist teaching is divided into three groups (referred to as "baskets"). These baskets are: 1. Vinaya: Rules aand procedures for Buddhist communities (this basket will vary depending on the specific Buddhist group using it), Sutras: the collected teachings of Buddha (similar for all groups, but varies slightly depending on a specific group), and Abhidharma: The expanded explanation of Buddhist principles (an analogy for this might be the "source code" of Buddhism).

          The Abhidharma was composed post-Buddha by Buddhist scientists, and most Buddhists won't spend any time studying this because understanding how a thing works isn't generally necessary in using a thing - kind of like "I only have a vague idea of how this computer works, but I can make it work without knowing that."

          However, if you want to know how it works, the Buddhists got your back with The Abhidharm (p.s.: The Abhidharma is a highly detailed look at human perceptions. I read one estimate that the complete Abhidharma is roughly 80,000 pages. I'm not an expert on this - I'm only on about page 40 of a introducory text).

          The Abhidhrma describes a 17 step process that occures when a full act of perception takes palce - called "Complete Eye-Door Process." This entire process takes place in a tiny fraction of a second...

          Steps 1-4 all take place before you are consciously aware that you are beginning to percieve something.
          Steps 5-7 take in the object and recognize or define it.
          Steps 8-14 are all one thing repeated 7 times. The things are called "javanas," which translates to something like "running swiftly." You can think of these as a feedback loop, or mental reverberations, possibly neurons firing (? although the Buddhist scientists didn't tie any of this into brain physiology. The were interested in the process, not the mechanics) where the object of your perceptions connect to past memories and experiences, leading to your thoughts/feelings/beliefs about the present perception.
          Steps 15-17 are the meaning you attach to a perception, and how that creates a mental formation.

          According to the Abhidharma, it is steps 9-17 that create future Karma, while steps 1-8 are the result of past karma.

          So- the upshot of all this is that Karma is created when your present perceptions are affected or influeced by your past, already processed, perceptions.

          If all that confuses you, forget it - the idea here is that EVERY SINGLE PERCEPTION that every sentient being has is colored/flavored/intertwined with previously experienced and processed experiences. And, if that is true, then nobody can actually have a pure uncolored/unflavored/unintertwined perception of anything. In Buddhist terms, this results in percieving illusion (illusion is misunderstanding what you percieve - due to the coloring of Karma, not the idea that we experience some kind of not real hallucination).

          There is nothing particularly weird, illogical, or mystical about this - it should be self-evident. My perception of a dog is dependent on my previous experiences with dogs (including things I have seen in movies or cute videos on the internet). My perception of a hammer is based on all my previous experiences with hammers (inclding true crime stories where a person is killed with a claw hammer).

          In part 4 I will try to eplain why this matters in Buddhism.






          p.s.: how am I doing with the quick overiew thing?
          Last edited by B. de Corbin; 17 Sep 2021, 11:44.
          Every moment of a life is a horrible tragedy, a slapstick comedy, dark nihilism, golden illumination, or nothing at all; depending on how we write the story we tell ourselves.

          Comment


            #6
            Re: Questions about "karma" and/or other concepts in Buddhism

            Originally posted by B. de Corbin View Post
            p.s.: how am I doing with the quick overiew thing?
            Three posts is a lot less then 80k pages and I'm mostly entertained so profit?
            It's 1 AM so I don't have much that's coherent and useful to say but this has been interesting.
            life itself was a lightsaber in his hands; even in the face of treachery and death and hopes gone cold, he burned like a candle in the darkness. Like a star shining in the black eternity of space.

            Yoda: Dark Rendezvous

            "But those men who know anything at all about the Light also know that there is a fierceness to its power, like the bare sword of the law, or the white burning of the sun." Suddenly his voice sounded to Will very strong, and very Welsh. "At the very heart, that is. Other things, like humanity, and mercy, and charity, that most good men hold more precious than all else, they do not come first for the Light. Oh, sometimes they are there; often, indeed. But in the very long run the concern of you people is with the absolute good, ahead of all else..."

            John Rowlands, The Grey King by Susan Cooper

            "You come from the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve", said Aslan. "And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth; be content."

            Aslan, Prince Caspian by CS Lewis


            Comment


              #7
              Re: Questions about "karma" and/or other concepts in Buddhism

              I pick up my repaired computer today, so I'll be able to finish this soon.

              In the meantime, this video echoes the Abhidharma (you'll see the connection most clearly in the bit right before the title sequence comes up:

              Every moment of a life is a horrible tragedy, a slapstick comedy, dark nihilism, golden illumination, or nothing at all; depending on how we write the story we tell ourselves.

              Comment


                #8
                resultcause/effect relationships (c/ec/eIf

                Buddha is correct and there is an exit from unalterable karma

                and God(s) exist

                Then

                the God(s) are lying about no way out,

                or
                Every moment of a life is a horrible tragedy, a slapstick comedy, dark nihilism, golden illumination, or nothing at all; depending on how we write the story we tell ourselves.

                Comment

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