Discussion on Karma

A discussion on all aspects of Theravāda Buddhism
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phuff
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Discussion on Karma

Post by phuff »

I am a student gathering opinions of modern Buddhists on ideas of Karma and Rebirth and would greatly appreciate any insight and responses. Thank you!!! :)


How does Karma affect your daily life? Or how should it affect your daily living? How do you apply karma and rebirth to your life?

What role does Karma play in rebirth? Do you have to believe in/understand Karma to approach ideas of rebirth?
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Ceisiwr
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Re: Discussion on Karma

Post by Ceisiwr »

Hello and welcome

Your going to get a few varied responses here

How does Karma affect your daily life?


The results of an intentional action can effect my mental state. For example If I intentionally shout abuse at someone, this will have an effect on my mental state. This is the result of an intentional action, or kamma
How do you apply karma and rebirth to your life?
The Buddha taught that a human being is made up of five parts:

Form (body)
Feeling
Mental Volition (thoughts, ideas etc)
Consciousness
Perception


These five are all impermanent (they change, rise and cease) and are empty of a self. That is to say they are empty of "I" and they arent "mine" or anyones

However humans have a sense of "Self". This comes about via clinging. For example if there is clinging to the body, then there arises the notion "I am the body" thus an "I" is born. This "I" or ego-consciousness arises and falls many times in the mind. This is the meaning of rebirth
What role does Karma play in rebirth? Do you have to believe in/understand Karma to approach ideas of rebirth?
If there a an intentional negative attitude performed, then this can lead to the birth of "I" in a mental state of anguish

metta
“Knowing that this body is just like foam,
understanding it has the nature of a mirage,
cutting off Māra’s flower-tipped arrows,
one should go beyond the King of Death’s sight.”
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Ben
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Re: Discussion on Karma

Post by Ben »

phuff wrote:How does Karma affect your daily life? Or how should it affect your daily living? How do you apply karma and rebirth to your life?

What role does Karma play in rebirth? Do you have to believe in/understand Karma to approach ideas of rebirth?


It will depend on what you mean by "karma" and "rebirth". These are heavily loaded terms and what they mean to one (or some) practitioners isn't the same as what it means to others, let alone an interested bystander such as yourself. My advice to you is to spend some time understanding what is meant by these terms by different practitioners and then you can look at how understanding those terms is of benefit to practitioners in daily life.
kind regards

Ben
“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.”
- Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:
in mountain clefts and chasms,
loud gush the streamlets,
but great rivers flow silently.
- Sutta Nipata 3.725

Compassionate Hands Foundation (Buddhist aid in Myanmar) • Buddhist Global ReliefUNHCR

e: [email protected]..
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Ceisiwr
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Re: Discussion on Karma

Post by Ceisiwr »

Ben wrote:
phuff wrote:How does Karma affect your daily life? Or how should it affect your daily living? How do you apply karma and rebirth to your life?

What role does Karma play in rebirth? Do you have to believe in/understand Karma to approach ideas of rebirth?


It will depend on what you mean by "karma" and "rebirth". These are heavily loaded terms and what they mean to one (or some) practitioners isn't the same as what it means to others, let alone an interested bystander such as yourself. My advice to you is to spend some time understanding what is meant by these terms by different practitioners and then you can look at how understanding those terms is of benefit to practitioners in daily life.
kind regards

Ben



I agree with Ben. You will get varied answers within Theravada alone not to mention the wider Buddhist traditions of the Mahayana
“Knowing that this body is just like foam,
understanding it has the nature of a mirage,
cutting off Māra’s flower-tipped arrows,
one should go beyond the King of Death’s sight.”
Individual
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Joined: Mon Jan 12, 2009 2:19 am

Re: Discussion on Karma

Post by Individual »

Ben wrote:
phuff wrote:How does Karma affect your daily life? Or how should it affect your daily living? How do you apply karma and rebirth to your life?

What role does Karma play in rebirth? Do you have to believe in/understand Karma to approach ideas of rebirth?


It will depend on what you mean by "karma" and "rebirth". These are heavily loaded terms and what they mean to one (or some) practitioners isn't the same as what it means to others, let alone an interested bystander such as yourself. My advice to you is to spend some time understanding what is meant by these terms by different practitioners and then you can look at how understanding those terms is of benefit to practitioners in daily life.
kind regards

Ben

:goodpost:
The best things in life aren't things.

The Diamond Sutra
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Jason
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Re: Discussion on Karma

Post by Jason »

phuff wrote:I am a student gathering opinions of modern Buddhists on ideas of Karma and Rebirth and would greatly appreciate any insight and responses. Thank you!!! :)


How does Karma affect your daily life? Or how should it affect your daily living? How do you apply karma and rebirth to your life?
To me, the teachings on kamma are tools to help us deal more skillful deal with the suffering we create with our own actions. This, I think, is also the essence of the famous passage from Leo Tolstoy's letter, "To the Working People":
  • People fare badly only because they themselves live badly. And there is no more injurious thought for people than that the causes of the wretchedness of their position is not in themselves, but in external conditions. A man or a society of men need but imagine that the evil experienced by them is due to external conditions and to direct their attention and efforts to the change of these external conditions, and the evil will be increased. But a man or a society of men need but sincerely direct their attention to themselves, and in themselves and their lives look for the causes of that evil from which they suffer, in order that these causes may be at once found and destroyed.
In the context of actions (kamma), the Pali term kusala, often translated as 'skillful' or 'wholesome,' basically means that which is not conducive to harm and pain, but to benefit and pleasure (AN 2.19). It denotes doing something well, such as in the case of playing a lute (see AN 6.55). The Pali term akusala (composed of the negative prefix a- + kusala), often translated as 'unskillful' or 'unwholesome,' basically means the opposite, or that which is not conducive to benefit and pleasure, but to harm and pain.

Actions are deemed unskillful if they lead to to self-affliction, to the affliction of others or to both. Conversely, action are deemed skillful if they don't lead to self-affliction, to the affliction of others or to both (MN 61). In this sense, Buddhist ethics and philosophy are basically empirical and pragmatic in nature, and these are descriptive labels that are limited to observable qualities and experiences (adjectives), not self-existent entities (nouns). The focus is on actions and their consequences.

At the heart of the practice, Buddhism encourages one to renounce their unskillful habits and desires, and to renounce what's conducive to short-term welfare and happiness in favour of what's conducive to long-term welfare and happiness. In the ultimate sense, this involves, to adopt an image from Plato's Republic, turning the soul (mind) away from the darkness of the visible realm (samsara) towards the light of the form of the Good (nibbana). But at the beginning, it starts with learning to ask the right kinds of questions, such as, "Is what I intend to do here skillful or unskillful? Will it lead to well-being or harm?"

One comes to know what's skillful and unskillful via repeated reflection (MN 61), which is one of the reasons Buddhism is called a gradual path (MN 107). From the Buddhist perspective, until we achieve moral perfection (i.e., the ending of kamma and the elimination of the skillful/unskillful dichotomy altogether), we all have the potential do both skillful and unskillful things, and this is why the Buddha often stresses the importance of being as mindful of our actions and the intentions behind them as we can. As the Buddha notes, "all skillful qualities are rooted in heedfulness, converge in heedfulness, and heedfulness is reckoned the foremost among them" (AN 10.15).

Skill is something that comes from practice, through trial and error. Unskillfulness, on the other hand, doesn't really come from anywhere; it arises out of ignorance (avijja), specifically ignorance of the four noble truths, and ignorance is simply a lack of knowledge. (Incidentally, this is almost identical to the Stoic's belief that people act in ways that are harmful to themselves and others out of ignorance, i.e., if they understood the nature of happiness, of the mind itself, they would never willingly act against their own happiness or the happiness of others.) I think Thanissaro Bhikkhu sums this idea up well in his essay "Ignorance":
  • Avijja, the Pali word for ignorance, is the opposite of vijja, which means not only "knowledge" but also "skill" — as in the skills of a doctor or animal-trainer. So when the Buddha focuses on the ignorance that causes stress and suffering, saying that people suffer from not knowing the four noble truths, he's not simply saying that they lack information or direct knowledge of those truths. He's also saying that they lack skill in handling them. They suffer because they don't know what they're doing.

    The four truths are (1) stress — which covers everything from the slightest tension to out-and-out agony; (2) the cause of stress; (3) the cessation of stress; and (4) the path of practice leading to the cessation of stress. When the Buddha first taught these truths, he also taught that his full Awakening came from knowing them on three levels: identifying them, knowing the skill appropriate to each, and knowing finally that he had fully mastered the skills.

    Stress he identified with examples — such things as birth, aging, illness, and death; sorrow, distress, and despair — summarizing it as five clinging-aggregates: clinging to physical form; to feelings of pleasure, pain, and neither pleasure nor pain; to perception; to thought-constructs; and to sensory consciousness. The cause of stress he identified as three kinds of craving: craving for sensuality, craving to take on an identity in a world of experience, and craving for one's identity and world of experience to be destroyed. The cessation of stress he identified as renunciation of and release from those three kinds of craving. And the path to the cessation of stress he identified as right concentration together with seven supporting factors: right view, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, and right mindfulness.
All of this is basically a long-winded way of saying I view the teachings on kamma as an ethical framework and methodology for making more and more skillful decisions, which, in my daily life, helps me to become a better person.
What role does Karma play in rebirth? Do you have to believe in/understand Karma to approach ideas of rebirth?
Unfortunately, I don't have time to address this directly; but if you're interested, you can find some of my past thoughts about kamma and rebirth here and here.
"Sabbe dhamma nalam abhinivesaya" (AN 7.58).

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Spiny O'Norman
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Re: Discussion on Karma

Post by Spiny O'Norman »

phuff wrote:How does Karma affect your daily life?
For me it's trying to be mindful about the consequences of my actions, both on myself and on others.

Spiny
phuff
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Re: Discussion on Karma

Post by phuff »

Ben wrote:
phuff wrote:How does Karma affect your daily life? Or how should it affect your daily living? How do you apply karma and rebirth to your life?

What role does Karma play in rebirth? Do you have to believe in/understand Karma to approach ideas of rebirth?


It will depend on what you mean by "karma" and "rebirth". These are heavily loaded terms and what they mean to one (or some) practitioners isn't the same as what it means to others, let alone an interested bystander such as yourself. My advice to you is to spend some time understanding what is meant by these terms by different practitioners and then you can look at how understanding those terms is of benefit to practitioners in daily life.
kind regards

Ben



Thanks Ben. Yes I agree, there will be many different responses depending on personal practice, belief, background, etc. It would be helpful in my study to collect responses from multiple viewpoints and backgrounds, perhaps allowing me to compare different sects of Buddhism or other sub categories within the respondents. I am not interested in my definition of the words Karma or Rebirth, but want to know what these words mean and imply to practicing Buddhists. What are the daily applications of karma and rebirth as understood by Buddhists today?

So to narrow down my original question, I am interested in what each individual holds karma to be in their life, and how it shapes your individual daily living. It would be helpful to include what you identify as your Buddhist background or sect (i.e. Theravada, etc) and your definition and application of Karma.

Thank you!
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Ben
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Re: Discussion on Karma

Post by Ben »

No problem phuff.
I'll get back to you later with a detailed response as time permits.
Wishing you well in your studies.
kind regards

Ben
“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.”
- Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:
in mountain clefts and chasms,
loud gush the streamlets,
but great rivers flow silently.
- Sutta Nipata 3.725

Compassionate Hands Foundation (Buddhist aid in Myanmar) • Buddhist Global ReliefUNHCR

e: [email protected]..
Individual
Posts: 1970
Joined: Mon Jan 12, 2009 2:19 am

Re: Discussion on Karma

Post by Individual »

I like this forum because a random stranger can mention the word "karma" and the forum doesn't explode like somebody tossing a piece of meat to a pack of wild dogs. :)
The best things in life aren't things.

The Diamond Sutra
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