by SpiceItUp 108 Replies latest jw friends
Mercurious you are playing with the net down, and it shows. More then one definition and you used the ones that you felt justified your argument. Now I will be more objective about it.
mys·ti·cism n.
Don't try to bull$it an XJW
Jehovah's Witnesses believe something similar to karma, they honestly believe that if someone in the congregation behaves badly toward them, Jehovah will see to it that the sin is uncovered. You have to wait on Jehovah for the person to get their comeuppance so that the congregation is kept clean. What goes around comes around.
Do I personally believe that there is some mystical moral law of cause and effect? No, absolutely not.
Karma just means that everybody is getting what they deserve. A child being raped and tortured by a paedophile deserves it. People who are mentally or physically disabled deserved it for bad things they must have done in the past. All suffering is deserved, according to the law of karma.
So nobody is really good or evil. Nobody is really responsible for anything they do, we are all like karma robot pawns on a big mystical chess board.
Sorry I don't buy it.
do i believe in karma?
absolutely NOT!
there is no miraculous force trying to even out tihngs.
sure if a person is always mean other people will be mean to him and thus bad things might happen...but that has nothing to do with karma.
I definitely believe in karma - though I am not sure that I agree that it has application to another life - just have to wait and see on that one! I think that how we treat others and choices we make will at some future date have an impact on our lives and the lives of our children and that we have a responsibility to do everything we can to make that impact positive.
Not that music really has anything to do with this thread, but the question made me think of one of my favorite songs by The Indigo Girls (lyrics below). I enjoy music that has a message and theirs "speaks" on so many levels, at least to me.
Galileo - Indigo Girls
galileo's head was on the block
the crime was looking up for truth
and as the bombshells of my daily fears explode
i try to trace them to my youth
and then you had to bring up reincarnation
over a couple of beers the other night
and now i'm serving time for mistakes
made by another in another lifetime
how long till my soul gets it right
can any human being ever reach that kind of light
i call on the resting soul of galileo
king of night vision, king of insight
and then i think about my fear of motion
which i never could explain
some other fool across the ocean years ago
must have crashed his little airplane
how long till my soul gets it right
can any human being ever reach that kind of light
i call on the resting soul of galileo
king of night vision, king of insight
i'm not making a joke, you know me
i take everything so seriously
if we wait for the time till all souls get it right
then at least i know there'll be no nuclear annihilation
in my lifetime i'm still not right
i offer thanks to those before me
that's all i've got to say
'cause maybe you squandered big bucks in your lifetime
now i have to pay
but then again it feels like some sort of inspiration
to let the next life off the hook
but she'll say "look what i had to overcome from my last life
i think i'll write a book"
how long till my soul gets it right
can any human being ever reach the highest light
except for galileo god rest his soul
(except for the resting soul of galileo)
king of night vision, king of insight
how long
(till my soul gets it right)
[til we reach the highest light]
how long
(till my soul gets it right)
[til we reach the highest light]
how long
It's unfortunate that usage will twist the original meaning of a word, I suppose some people might have a problem with the word paradise too - just because it's a word that may carry some baggage for XJWs. Of course the way this question is phrased is really rather closed ended, as with anything else in the category of "do you believe in ---". If you think about it, giving a direct answer is pretty much "I believe/don't believe in what I believe karma (or whatever) is." It's kind of funny how we got two layers of belief going there isn't it? Nothing wrong with voicing your opinion of course, it's just not terribly informative as far as discussion goes.
Too many bad things happen to good people. Injustice is everywhere. Karma? I think not.
I've heard about that book - it looks like a good read JH!
Someone who treats others badly is very likely to be treated badly themselves, that's certainly not Karma - that's just simply what happens in life, there is no need to attach some spiritual or supernatural label onto it. If someone is mean to everyone then it's unlikely that that person is going to be popular! Conversely if they have money and power then they may be popular no matter what they do. Anyway, if someone is absolutely rotten to the core it's likely that someone will give them a slap eventually. There's a strong chance they will get their comeuppance, but maybe they will get away with it - who really knows? Practical experience of life surely will tell you this, I'm sure I don't need to explain it to anybody.
Let us make very sure what we are talking about here, we are talking about Karma, a religious teaching of the sum and the consequences of a person's actions during the successive phases of his or her existence. Every action is connected. All those people who were murdered in the World Trade Centre were gathered together there for a purpose - it was predestined - they were to be destroyed because of their actions in a previous life - they deserved it. All the Jews that were murdered and tortured in the concentration camps in Nazi Germany deserved it too. People who believe in Karma quite deliberately ignore these harsh realities and prefer to indulge in airy fairy talk about "justice" for all the nice people of the world. Every single human being on Earth will get the fruits of his or her actions either in the present or in some future life and whatever someone is in his present life is the result of his own actions in the past life or lives. Do the people here that say they believe in karma truly believe this? If not, then they should stop calling their belief karma.
Matty that was the best post yet on Karma. I loved every word of it. You exhibited sound rational thinking. Thanks.
Brian'
Do the people here that say they believe in karma truly believe this? If not, then they should stop calling their belief karma.
It works both ways - what you are talking about is the common usage of the word. The religious teaching is not universal, many (who actually have an understanding of it in context of the beliefs of their religion) have the understanding that karma is simply cause and effect without any kind of implications of morality or justice, and the evidence seems to indicate that the word itself carries this meaning.
If this is the original meaning of karma, why should these people stop calling it karma? Because a lot of people in the west and certain religious sects have a mistaken idea of what it means?
Actually, if you want to put things in perspective any argument about karma being some kind of reward or punishment for doing bad things at a previous point in time is because you have a self centered perspective. I'm not saying this as a statement of judgement, it's a description - it's looking at any cause and effect in terms of what it means to an unchanging soul or self. If there is not a self in your perspective, as is the case for many Buddhists, then that simply does not apply. This is where the confusion comes from, even some Buddhists who believe that there is good or bad karma from a previous life is contradicting the no-self thing, because who is getting the better or worse life situation if there is not a self??
So the meaning of the word itself would be the same in both cases, but depending on whether or not you believe in some kind of self or soul it would either be something you (self) experience or something that just is (no-self) - if there is no self then it is simply a bunch of interrelated cause and effect relationships. It's not a question of what the word karma means, but what it means in a larger context of your world view, whether it has separate selves or not. What has happend is two different ideas are being shoved into one word, and perhaps because those in the west are more familiar with the Judeo-Christian belief system in which there is an immortal soul, they tend to make that assumption unconsciously.
