echograph wrote:
All I want is this one simple answer: What is Karma? The police force of the universe? revenge squad? peace keeper? Whatever Karma is, it sound extremely irrational to punish a soul for what it has done in its past life, without the soul knowing what it did that was so terrible. I would accept that if there was a lesson to be learned.
Hi echograph,
If you want the short version, here you go:
"Intention, I tell you, is kamma. Intending, one does kamma by way of body, speech, & intellect."
— AN 6.63
for a better understanding of khamma, check this out:
Dhammawiki:
http://dhammawiki.com/index.php?title=Kamma" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Nyanaponika Mahathera:
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/auth ... fruit.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
In the Buddhas own words:
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dham ... kamma.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Thanissaro Bhikkhu:
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/auth ... karma.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
echograph wrote:This is like sedating a criminal with Rohypnol so he wont remember what he did, then when sober, imprison him without an explanation. Just tell him that you have committed a crime that you have no recollection of and we wont tell you what the crime was, but now here is your punishment. and by the way, when you are being punished, we are going to give you some more Rohypnol so you wont remember the punishment either. in this case, replace Rohypnol with reincarnation.
Sorry but what you are describing is highly irrational. If you truly believe in that, you are living in hell. a Rohypnol induced hell.
Khamma is not a person, nor an intelligent being or anything like that. the law of khamma is like the law of physics in this matter: It does not work to punish or to reward, it has no moral intention in the way it works. It's just a mechanism. Another example: You can think a red traffic light is evil and unjust and a green traffic light is good and just, but the traffic light is really neither of it. The traffic light just does its thing. It does not want anything, it has no intention to bully or to be kind to you.
But unlike the traffic light, it's up to you what you get out of it. Do good and there will be good consequences. Do bad, and there will be bad consequences.
The law of Khamma is not something to believe in, but something to see for yourself.
echograph wrote:but my views changed, i realized that hate only hurts me.
This is the law of khamma right there. If you see for yourself, thoughts imbued with hatred and anger don't lead you to happiness, but to irritation and even more anger and hatred, that thoughts, speech and actions with hatred as their intention harm yourself, that's where you see how your actions lead to consequences! Well done, see it for yourself from your own experience!
echograph wrote:the problem is the effects the abuse had on my subconscious, it ruined my youth, it prevented good memories to be made, it made me an anxious, and depressed person living a love-less life with no hope in humanity. now, if you say Karma says I had it coming, and i did something to deserve it. maybe im looking in the wrong place for help. because the Karma you just described sounds irrational and illogical. inhumane and blindly mean. How is that supposed to help?
Put the question why something in the past happened to you on the sideburner for now. Khamma is not the only explanation (see Dhammawiki link) for why things might have happened to you in the past. The law of khamma shows that you are in charge of your decisions, you are in charge of your decisions and there will be consequences for your decisions, you and only you are responsible for every decision you make in your life. This can turn your life for better of for worse. It's up to you.
The past is the past. You can't change it. What happened, has happened. What you do
now is up to you. You can think about the past again and again, linger on how bad you have been treated again and again, think of yourself as a victim again and again. The consequences of this? Everytime you bring those memories and thoughts back from the past, turn them alive in your mind again and relate to them in an unskillful manner, you may feel hurt again and again, feel sad again and again, feel as a powerless victim again and again. You can feel that, can't you? If you think about what you have lost or what you could have had, if you think about alternative realities that are not real and move you away from the present, is that helping you to find peace with the present? Or do you just get away from it this way?
You can move on from these things. You are in charge of whether you live in happiness in the present and the future or not. It is your actions, not the actions of some mad person who did something to you x years ago, that can lead you to happiness or to misery.
Now tell me, what is karma is going to do to you for making me feel this way and obviously misrepresenting it. I guess you have to wait till the next life to be punished, and you will never know why you are being punished.
This is quite another fine example for actions and the results of actions. If you have the perception "Others are responsible for my feelings, others are responsible for my misery, others are responsible for how i feel, i'm not responsible for it." then what is the obvious consequence? will there be the perception that you can change your life for the better, or will you continue in your life feeling like a victim to everyone around you? If you make others responsible for how you feel, will you bear resentment towards them or not?
This was the ONLY time i asked for help and I was made to be the bad guy.
"I was made to be..." "for making me feel this way"... these are quite striking formulations for these kinds of perceptions. People made you misunderstand, it's all their fault! Let's get and punish them!
...Put things into perspectives. It's not the case that khamma explains everything that happens to you, but your inner world (and a good part of your outer environment, too!) is indeed shaped by your own behavior in speech, act and mind. No matter where you stand, the Buddha shows that it's by your actions that you can find happiness. It's not predetermined, it's not determined by others and it's not random. You are in charge of your own happiness.
This is the beautiful thing about the teachings of the Buddha. You don't have to put blind faith in a god or put all responsibilty in some supreme being. You are not told that you should do this or that. The teachings just shows what, if done, will lead to wholesome states of mind and will be beneficial to you and what, if done, will lead to unwholesome states of mind and will be unbeneficial to you. The teachings invite us to see and experience the truth for ourself, to see from our own experience how things really are.
If you feel offended by the idea, that you are in charge of your happiness, that it's up to you how you feel and relate to the world, this is just understandable. Accepting this also comes with accepting that if you act in a bad way, you are responsible for the bad consequences, which one may not like if one prefers to blame others for bad stuff. Either way, I wish you all the best and i hope that you will find a way out of this thicket of anger and sadness.
Best wishes,
Alobha