You are right, Retro.. And, thanks, I have seen Cooran's post. It speaks of the difference between kamma vipakha resulting from natural events and kamma vipakha, which results from one's intentional actions. I truly do understand the difference as you clearly do. We have had this discussion many times in the past on many different forums over the years. However, my point in this case was to focus upon the fact that we must take responsibility for the results of our own personal decisions as well as our intentions, and that when we make decisions to respond to " violence with violence " there will usually be dire consequences for not only ourselves, but for all those around us, as is the case with all the wars in which we have been engaged since my birth over sixty-six years ago.retrofuturist wrote:Greetings Ron,
If there's one thing that doesn't sit quite right with me about the posts you've made, it's that the consequences of kamma (i.e. vipaka) are mental, and are experienced because of becoming (bhava).
Your post contains a great deal of what one might call "common sense" and a good understanding of worldly causality and how "one thing leads to another" but I think it is a mistake to conflate that and make connections between those observations and kamma and dependent origination, in the way you have.
As I understand them, kamma and dependent origination are deep teachings based on how one formulates one's loka through volitional activity rooted in ignorance, rather than establishing a two-way relationship between the (little s) self and the so-called "world around us".
See also Cooran's links above if you've not already done so.
Metta,
Retro.
There are always unforeseen consequences of our actions which arise out of our acting in ignorance, which is what is discussed in The Four Noble Truths and in its underpinnings: impermanence and dependent origination. As you and I have discussed before The Law of Kamma is but a proper subset of D.O..
For example if we are ignorant of the force of gravity, and we build our houses on an inclines along the Pacific Ocean not only because of our attachment to the view, but because of what Buddha describes as what is impermanent and dependently originated, we can expect when (not if) the rainy seasons arrive that our house will be taken away by the typical mud slides experienced on the West Coast under the influence of gravity. If this is just common sense, then so be it, but every year we read about folks losing their homes that way, just as we read about folks building their homes in dry desert forests and high grasses, because of their attachment to isolation surrounded by ten year overgrowth losing their homes and perhaps ever their lives to fires.
The fact of suffering that Buddha describes in The Four Noble Truths, is suffering which arises due to our attachment to our lovely homes, and the belief that it will last us for a life-time and beyond to be passed on to our children. Physical pain, which is also a form of dukkha, comes from the real potential of losing our limbs or lives in the middle of the night due to our ignorance in choosing a poor building site out of our lack of understanding of impermanence and dependent origination along with the basic principles of good engineering. Dukkha arises both in the physical plane and the mental plane. We can personally witness the consequences of our ignorance in the physical plane by just looking at the rubble in Haiti, Chili, China, Tibet, and now Japan. Buildings don't experience dukkha, but the people who once lived in them do. We can witness the consequences of our ignorance in the mental plane by just looking around at the death and destruction in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Darfur, Egypt, Libya, and all the battle and war memorials around the world: Pearl Harbor, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Arlington Cemetery, Argonne Cemetery, The Killing Fields of Laos, Gettysburg, .........and unfortunately many, many more. Again, the destroyed infrastructure doesn't experience dukkha, but the people which used and depended upon them do, and the folks who lost their loved-ones in these wars do. It may sound harsh to say that in the case of wars, much of this physical pain, suffering, stress and dissatisfaction (dukkha) is the result of our attachments to loved ones and the belief or some tacit tolerance of the belief that participation in wars can somehow be glorious and righteous. As any warrior knows first hand, "War is hell!"....because violence leads only to more violence. It is never ending as history will testify.