Page 1 of 2
Your beliefs and or knowlege creates karma
Posted: Wed Oct 03, 2012 3:48 am
by Ervin
If you believe that karma exists you give it power that way. If you stop believing in karma then it stops existing. You create your world to a great extent with your beliefs or should I say expectations.
Thoughts
Thanks
Re: Your beliefs and or knowlege creates karma
Posted: Wed Oct 03, 2012 3:57 am
by plwk
I can just imagine.... clobbering my mother to death and then think, it's okay, nothing will happen...life will go on...
Yeah, life
will go on for me ... in the slammer that is... if I was in a country that has life imprisonment or like where I live, death by hanging... unless mitigated by intervening factors...
Does the above work in your world view?
Think not lightly of evil, saying, "It will not come to me." Drop by drop is the water pot filled.
Likewise, the fool, gathering it little by little, fills himself with evil.
Neither in the sky nor in mid-ocean, nor by entering into mountain clefts,
nowhere in the world is there a place where one may escape from the results of evil deeds.
The Dhammapada
Re: Your beliefs and or knowlege creates karma
Posted: Wed Oct 03, 2012 4:13 am
by Ervin
To a certain extent that is. Your mind is a very powerful entity!
Thanks
Re: Your beliefs and or knowlege creates karma
Posted: Wed Oct 03, 2012 4:35 am
by m0rl0ck
As i understand it karma is cause and effect. It can be empirically demonstrated and is valid within that frame.
If you jump off a diving board you cant think yourself motionless halfway down.
Re: Your beliefs and or knowlege creates karma
Posted: Wed Oct 03, 2012 5:20 am
by Ervin
Isn't it a Buddhist belief that once you reach enlightenment and become a so called Buddha, your karma stops? So woldn't stopping karma mean that you have realized that your karma is a product of your so called mind? How else can you control it?
Thanks
Re: Your beliefs and or knowlege creates karma
Posted: Wed Oct 03, 2012 5:21 am
by Ervin
You are in charge of a lot if you believe that you are!
Thanks
Re: Your beliefs and or knowlege creates karma
Posted: Wed Oct 03, 2012 6:09 am
by mikenz66
Hi Ervin,
Ervin wrote:Isn't it a Buddhist belief that once you reach enlightenment and become a so called Buddha, your karma stops? So woldn't stopping karma mean that you have realized that your karma is a product of your so called mind? How else can you control it?
That's on the right track, I think. How it is usually expressed is that an arahant doesn't do actions (kamma) that have the result (vipaka) of renewed existence.
See, for example:
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka ... .than.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/study/kamma.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Mike
Re: Your beliefs and or knowlege creates karma
Posted: Wed Oct 03, 2012 6:45 am
by Ervin
If you have freed yourself and weren't a total slave to karma any more wouldn't it be possible to do evil but not suffer the consequences?
Thanks
Re: Your beliefs and or knowlege creates karma
Posted: Wed Oct 03, 2012 7:41 am
by mikenz66
According to the Suttas an arahant is incapable of evil actions.
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka ... .than.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Mike
Re: Your beliefs and or knowlege creates karma
Posted: Wed Oct 03, 2012 8:00 am
by Ervin
Thanks mikenz .
If an arhant can't do evil wouldn't that mean then that he doesn't have Free will any more?
Is an enlightened being in this world incapable of choosing freely their actions?
Thanks
Re: Your beliefs and or knowlege creates karma
Posted: Wed Oct 03, 2012 8:13 am
by mikenz66
I don't think its a straitjacket kind of thing. An arahant would simply have perfect compassion, and so on, and the idea of harming living beings simply wouldn't arise. Sorry, I'm not being very precise here, just trying to get across my understanding.
Mike
Re: Your beliefs and or knowlege creates karma
Posted: Wed Oct 03, 2012 9:46 am
by equilibrium
Ervin wrote:If you believe that karma exists you give it power that way. If you stop believing in karma then it stops existing. You create your world to a great extent with your beliefs or should I say expectations.
What if that believe were not true?.....what are the consequences?.....why believe where you can know?
Isn't it a Buddhist belief that once you reach enlightenment and become a so called Buddha, your karma stops? So woldn't stopping karma mean that you have realized that your karma is a product of your so called mind? How else can you control it?
It takes believe for one to be on the path and when one reach enlightenment, there is no further "I".....this is where you will know.....it is all in the mind.....to control it is to know oneself by following the path.
Re: Your beliefs and or knowlege creates karma
Posted: Wed Oct 03, 2012 11:00 am
by Hanzze
Ervin wrote:If you have freed yourself and weren't a total slave to karma any more wouldn't it be possible to do evil but not suffer the consequences?
Thanks
Dear Ervin,
Technical yes, but why would one like to do it? One who is free from suffering has no desire to do anything. No desire no karma, I guess that is the better sequence. Previous Karma is just the forunner for one who is not free from desire. The lesser desire the lesser the producing or additional karma and the more free will.
This might be maybe more relevant:
Doing Evil Knowingly and Unknowingly
When we are one time free from any desire (positive or negative), we know for our self.
Inspired by barcsimalsi post below:
from
right & wrong
Modern sociologists have identified five basic strategies that people use to avoid accepting blame when they've caused harm, and it's noteworthy that the Pali teaching on moral responsibility serves to undercut all five. The strategies are:
to deny responsibility,
to deny that harm was actually done,
to deny the worth of the victim,
to attack the accuser,
and
to claim that they were acting in the service of a higher cause (I guess that is the most dangerous reason but also the most common)
The Pali responses to these strategies are:
(1) We are always responsible for our conscious choices.
(2) We should always put ourselves in the other person's place.
(3) All beings are worthy of respect.
(4) We should regard those who point out our faults as if they were pointing out treasure. (Monks, in fact, are required not to show disrespect to people who criticize them, even if they don't plan to abide by the criticism.)
(5)
There are no — repeat, no — higher purposes that excuse breaking the basic precepts of ethical behavior.
Re: Your beliefs and or knowlege creates karma
Posted: Wed Oct 03, 2012 12:01 pm
by barcsimalsi
Ervin wrote:
If an arhant can't do evil wouldn't that mean then that he doesn't have Free will any more?
Is an enlightened being in this world incapable of choosing freely their actions?
Thanks
First you need to acknowledge why people do evil deed. There's few reason:
1) out of greed / for lustful pleasure
2) out of anger
3) out of fear / insecure because of attachment
4) out of delusion
Dependent origination teaches us how to trace the cause that leads to these negative emotion and thoughts. Followed by the way to eliminate the cause which all arahants had succeed.
Arahant still have freewill but the absence of unwholesome thoughts will naturally deny every chance of misconduct.
When a person like arahant completely diminish desire, their mind are satisfied without any cause and condition so the freewill isn't as necessary as for common people.
Re: Your beliefs and or knowlege creates karma
Posted: Wed Oct 03, 2012 7:11 pm
by Ervin
Maybe there are people who choose evil and are enlightened at the same time. It seems as if knowledge would be out of reach for evil people. I disagree. There are evil doctors out there. And there are very good people who weren't capable of finishing primary school.