Is there Karma?

May your eye go to the sun, your life's breath to the wind. Goto the sky or earth, as is your nature; or go to the waters, if that is your fate. Take root in the plants with your limbs.
gb

We are watching, not waiting, not expecting anything to happen but watching without end. JK

If I am interrested, I can give my whole being to enquire. If not I can carry on as before, i.e. meaningless existence. That's all.

hello Mathew it was you

We are watching, not waiting, not expecting anything to happen but watching without end. JK

hi Ganesan,

I'm interesting to talk more about Karma, and to go into what it means.

Mathew Broughton wrote:
go into what it means.

There are lot of karmas and lot of meanings. you mean the cycle of birth and death. one more meaning is, it is dirty. but simple meaning is living.
gb

We are watching, not waiting, not expecting anything to happen but watching without end. JK

This post was last updated by ganesan balachandran Mon, 28 Mar 2011.

what does k say about karma / cause and effect? anything?

Mathew Broughton wrote:
what does k say about karma / cause and effect? anything?

I think he says that it is a construct of the mind to escape.
gb

We are watching, not waiting, not expecting anything to happen but watching without end. JK

He also said that if you indulge your senses you will pay the price.

Someone once told me of 'the law of karmic returns.' The more your understanding and integrity grows the quicker you pay the price for your indiscretions. This is true. If I hurt someone nowadays I also quickly feel the pain of it very deeply whereas in the past I was courser and could self-justify to brush off responsibility for my actions. With clarity comes responsibility and therefore sanity.

But see what religion has done to the original meaning of karma, which was meant, 'cause and effect.' See how the poor are blamed for their poverty as if it were a punishment for sins in previous lives. It is a brutal message which absolves humans from responsibility for their actions or lack of actions, the opposite of what it originally meant, which had little or nothing to do with reincarnation or punishment and everything to do with being alive to the implications of your actions, now.

What are you waiting for?

hi Paul,

I also came across this by K :
"What do you mean by the word karma? To do, to act, to be. Let us try to find out in spite of old women's tales. Karma implies, does it not, cause and effect - action based on cause, producing a certain effect; action born out of conditioning, producing further results. So karma implies cause and effect. And are cause and effect static, are cause and effect ever fixed? Does not effect become cause also? So there is no fixed cause or fixed effect.

Today is a result of yesterday, is it not? Today is the outcome of yesterday, chronologically as well as psychologically; and today is the cause of tomorrow. So cause is effect, and effect becomes cause - it is one continuous movement; there is no fixed cause or fixed effect. If there were a fixed cause and a fixed effect, there would be specialization, and is not specialization death? Any species that specializes obviously comes to an end. The greatness of man is that he cannot specialize. He may specialize technically, but in structure he cannot specialize. An acorn seed is specialized - it cannot be anything but what it is."

I still have a lot of conditioning in regards to Karma, which creates fear, judgements, trying to be good etc.. And this is another type of suffering.

Mathew Broughton wrote:
He may specialize technically, but in structure he cannot specialize. An acorn seed is specialized - it cannot be anything but what it is."

Yes Mathew, this is like when Jesus said that the son of man has no place to rest his head. We create our own destiny and when we become fixed in roles, this is our death. We have no fixed role to play, no given place in the order.

We are not mechanical like that. An animal is a machine, in spite of its consciousness. An animal or a seed is specialized. We are not so. So when we become specialized we become machines and that is our downfall, which is where we are.

We have a tremendous asset, the human brain, which is 'triurnal' having three parts. It allows us an extra dimensio0n of consciousness and with that the ability to reflect, to study and understand our own processes. But we use that brain as a machine and operate with it in virtual sleep. We dream and sleep-walk through life. Look at this current war. Thousands of sleepwalking people killing each other. This is man as machine.

Within that super-intelligent three-centred brain we operate a child's video-game. We operate exclusively on two-dimensional sensory values and divide the world according to pleasure and pain, good and bad, me and you. This is the karma-machine, the cause-effect conveyor belt, Mathew. And every action has its consequence.

Happy is the man who is blind, but damned the one who can see but closes his eyes. That is karma.

A machine that sees that it is a machine is no longer a machine. Then karma ends.

What are you waiting for?

a computer just works within its program, and so do we. this is the human stream that k talks of i guess. to step out of the stream or not to be a machine is a psychological revolution. this is just so amazing to just start to get a glimpse of all this, of how programmed we actually are.

yes look at the madness and brutality thats going on in the world. people acting without like programmed robots.

just something else off the track a little - i know violence cannot end violence, but when do you think self defence is justified?

just imagine if the world stepped in earlier in WW2. and stopped the holocaust. I do wonder about this, where is the line? I wouldnt let someone break into my house and try to hurt my family or take my child, I would have to use violence to stop them.

whats your thoughts on this?

Matthew - forget karma and all the other dogmas that have been advocated for eons.

To really go where K pointed there can be NO such baggage. One must negate everything - every belief, every doctrine, every comfort. Simple as that.

And - every projection.

Mathew Broughton wrote:
So cause is effect, and effect becomes cause - it is one continuous movement; there is no fixed cause or fixed effect.

if i can understand a logical, clear explanation of what "karma" actually is then it may mean my conditioned thinking about it may change. A lot of people talk about karma, i cant just say "ah its nothing" i think its good to go into what it actually is. K's explanation makes sense to me. I dont want to just repeat his words, but it does shed light on what karma (cause and effect) is.

but to think of karma as a law of punishment and reward is off the track and a result of religions over 1000's of years, to explain how and why things happen. This is the common understanig of karma, which is not correct.

Not projecting just reflecting about life, going into it and what's behind actions and reactions.Thoughts and fears etc...

Mathew Broughton wrote:
I do wonder about this, where is the line? I wouldnt let someone break into my house and try to hurt my family or take my child, I would have to use violence to stop them.
whats your thoughts on this?

K: You see. Now wait a minute. Let's go into that. The stream manifesting itself as Mathew Broughton, and in his activities he becomes very cunning, clever. Has not intelligence, no relationship, with cunning, cleverness, chicanery, all that, but it is essentially part of love and compassion. What do you say, sir? The love in the stream is not love. You know, we are saying things which nobody will accept. If B is in the stream, and he tells his wife or his girlfriend or boyfriend, 'I love you', is that love

and

K: So, that's what I'm enquiring. The love of a book, the love of your particular soup, the love of poetry, the love of a beautiful thing, the love of an ideal, the love of your country, the love of jealousy, in which is included hate, envy, hurt. Is all that - I'm questioning, exploring - is all that love? And Mathew Broughton who is the manifestation says, 'Yes, that is love. At least it's part of love.' Or he says, 'Without jealousy there is no love,' I've heard these statements a dozen times before.

J. Krishnamurti Second Conversation with Buddhist Scholars at Brockwood Park June 1979

At the light of these two quotes I will say as Patricia did :

Patricia Hemingway wrote:
To really go where K pointed there can be NO such baggage. One must negate everything - every belief, every doctrine, every comfort. Simple as that.

thanks Nice to see my name in lights. :)

Its not easy for that person Mathew Broughton to take that he is just a manifestation of the stream. He would like to think of himself as a unique, talented, beautiful person. But alas, we are all just of the stream of humanity.

So Yvonne Bokobza is just the name of another one of the entities of the stream.

If we were not part of the stream who or what would we be? Or is that just projecting too much again?

To become free from of the stream when we are made up of all the water of the stream. We have to empty oursleves of the stream - this is very painful for us as we actually like the stream too, even though we suffer in it.

Everything built up by time is what the human being believes s/he is. S/he is other than that.

The locus of our action is the time-built memory, which is the self. And the self is part of that enormous flow of human confusion that may be called the universal human consciousness, whether it be inherited or learned.

As a machine we are operated by life, by the friction within that stream. Some have advocated going with the flow of life but they do not understand that this 'life' IS the human confusion. The self, the bundle, tries to adapt itself, to go with the flow or against it. Both are the ways of becoming, the struggle to reconstruct the bundle or to keep it tied together.

Metaphors have their limitations. There are several streams we face, several rivers to cross on the road to Jordon. The stream of human universal consciousness is the first.

What are you waiting for?

Karma theory is attached with reincarnation.It say that one day you will get punishment and reward of your each doing.

This theory is based on a permanent "you"/self.But if self is an ever-changing entity, it is many, then this theory can't stand.Because then B will get punishment for A's doing.

But if you see that you are world, then it's different.Then obviously your actions are responsible for human race's fate.

I don't know

So my thoughts and actions contribute to the stream and to humanity. so the more materialistic, self centered and egotistical the different fragments that make up the me become, the more I add to the stream of human consciousness.

But if i have insight, freedom from self, then this means that I benefit all humanity as I'm not adding to the suffering of the stream.

Is this basically what K means?

Mathew Broughton wrote:
if i can understand a logical, clear explanation of what "karma" actually is then it may mean my conditioned thinking about it may change.

Mathew, May I say what I think about it.

Karma is explained here as the effect of your actions.Now people build images in relationship.This we know.So when I do something, based on my action another builds an image.Then that person when he meets me again responds to me through that image.So my earlier action when I met him has an effect when I meet him at a later point.This happens because we carry experience as knowledge in consciousness which puts together the image which comes up in relationship. So we face effects of what we do at later points.This bit easy.

Now the next question is, is there karma or effects we face due to actions done prior to birth.To answer this question we have to understand whether the consciousness continues after the organism dies. K said using the word rebirth, rebirth is the continuation of the consciousness without the personal identity.(this was in a bulletin published by the Indian Foundation).K also said mind is one.However in Questioning Krishnamurti or A wholly different Way of living he said this does not mean we are some amorphous beings.(Please note Mathew I don't have the slightest interest in rebirth or reincarnation.Because if there is, it will be just like this.We will be asking what is all this,is there karma,what is the cause of suffering & so on again.So it will be this.So what's the point?)

I can tell you this from personal experience.Once an uncle of mine was staying at our place.Dead in the night he fell badly ill.I drove him to the hospital.Then he walked unaided about 2 or 3 meters into the hospital.Inside he was finding it difficult to breath & I got a wheel chair & was trying to make him sit on it when I saw a flame right inside his head leaving upwards.I was with a family member of mine & I told him uncle died.And this family member said what nonsense & started massaging his heart.However uncle died there.

On two other occasions I have seen a light going into the heart of living human beings.The first occasion I went & checked the ceiling above the person to see whether it was some glimmer of light that caused it although I was pretty sure about what I saw.There was no light there.On the second occasion a small light went into my heart!! At an arms distance I saw something like water splashed in space approaching me with the faint image of a girl I knew long ago before it went into my heart as a small light.I started checking up to find out whether this girl died for that to happen.After about 3 months one person told me she died.However I do not know this conclusively.

Now what does this mean? What K said & all this? I think consciousness is like a dotted cloth.Or like a tree with many flowers.To say one flower is different from another in the tree will be an illusion.

Now is there karma or effects you face due to actions before the birth? Consciousness is images.Now if this is continuing(there is no 'me' continuing.Even when we are living this 'me' is an illusion.So how can there be a 'me' continuing?)then is there recognition at some level when you meet another person beginning a reaction deep down somewhere? This can culminate into a reaction.Then there are effects due to actions prior to birth.But Mathew I must tell you I am unaware of this.This is a possibility considering some other things I have mentioned here.

Now there is another possibility.The consciousness is made up of images.When we do something this image undergoes change accordingly.Out of guilt our behavior will have certain manifestations.Our actions moulds us.Now if the consciousness is continuing then this will have a certain moulding according to previous actions & this manifestation will draw in(from) others through its actions a reaction related that moulding.So then actions prior to birth can have effects now.

However karma as punishment & reward is complete nonsense I think.

In The Magus of Strovolos it is said that when you send out a thought form, it will eventually come back to you.

You can test this out, say with anger, for example.

In one of the old british comedy 'Carry On' films an ancient lift operator explained his 'philosophy.' "I'm always polite with people on the way up 'cos, you never know, you might get them on the way back down." Karma!

What are you waiting for?

Mathew Broughton wrote:
Is there Karma?

Does it matter?

to over half the worlds population it does. so what is the truth about what is karma? To me its a valid inquiry.

Mathew Broughton wrote:
over half the worlds population it does.

just a statistical reality.
gb

We are watching, not waiting, not expecting anything to happen but watching without end. JK

Mathew Broughton wrote:
Is there Karma?

No. Injustice is really disturbing so humans have made up theories, like karma, to reassure us when faced with the brutal unfairness of life.

The basic idea is that what I do, think and say now has an effect on what happens to me in the future. Is this so? It seems so in a limited way. If I'm nice to people, they will be nice to me, won't they? Maybe. But not necessarily. They could have faced a difficulty elsewhere and end up taking it out on me.

There is no evidence for some record keeper in the sky or some kind of cosmic accounting system that would provide a mechanism for karma to actually take place.

Let's face it. When someone is blatantly cruel, we want them to get their comeuppance. And it's a comfort to believe that in this life or the next they will. Heaven and hell provide the same kind of comfort to other kinds of believers. But it's fallacious thinking. Just because we want justice, doesn't mean there are unseen principles implementing it.

Such belief also relieves us of responsibility. If I see destitution or if I see a caste or race being mistreated, I can excuse it as their karma. In a stroke, I'm relieved of responsibility. But in fact we ARE responsible for the mess on this planet. We ARE responsible for the cruelties we inflict on each other.

And if I truly see this, I start to pay attention to what I do, think, and say! Not to ward off repercussions. But because, seeing the violence of the world, I need to begin to observe the violence in myself, the way I mistreat those I supposedly love or am friends with, or the way I harm myself. I watch what I actually do.

So paying attention to what I say, think and do is the beginning of liberation, of meditation. This is the only thing that will help the world, which is us, overcome the violence and injustice we inflict on ourselves.

This post was last updated by idiot ? Sun, 10 Apr 2011.

thanks, Idiot ?, my sentiments too.

K did say that Karma is not fixed action-reward/punishment but changes from moment to moment. So our actions in the present modify our past karma and determine our future karma.
And yes Karma does imply reincarnation as the past karma cannot vanish all of a sudden with mere physical death.

This post was last updated by Dhanan Rao Thu, 21 Apr 2011.