The Idea of 'Karma': What is the Law of Cause and Effect?

[ernestm]

IN the vajrayana, there is also one demon which represents the misconception resulting in cyclic existence, called samsara in sanskrit, and it is depicted holding a 'wheel of life.' The twelve nidanas leading to suffering in the doctrine of dependent origination are in the outside 12 segments, and the domains of samsara are depicted on the inside in various fanciful ways. It's an artistic device with variations depending on the painter. This version from the wikipedia depicts some of the reincarnations of spiritual leaders and animals at its center about which Im sure some clever fairy stories exist because this one is eight centuries old.

[ernestm]

When Tibetan buddhism started, its leaders were stuck with the problem of why they hadn't already exited the cycle of form, so a special category of reincarnation for spiritual leaders was added that signifies they could choose not to reincarnate, but decided to stay around for a few lifetimes to help other people escape reincarnation. They are called boddhisattvas, although the term is a little loose and also refers to conceptualized forces that migrated into buddhism via the mahayana, so there is alot of variations of them described on the wikipedia here

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodhisattva

[ernestm]

Of the beings now grouped together as bodhisattvas, there are four to six that are more pervasive because they occur so frequently in art. In the 1980s there were four, but then two more were added, and the number has settled to five in the last decade, and they are described here

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Tath%C4%81gatas

Lastly, on the subject of bodhisattvas, it is a sanskrit name with no equivalent in most other languages so the entities are instead often just called buddhas. Chinese buddhism has the most due to an older Taoist doctrine of being able to create multiple spirit bodies via meditation to escape the chaos of life, sometimes now considered an explanation of schizophrenia. Its a very popular teraching, called a 'dharma' in Buddhism, first brought to the West by Carl Jung who published his own translation of it

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secre ... den_Flower

by which time one has got a long way from the core precept of the four noble truths in buddhism, and is largely considered ancillary myth even in clutures which perpetuate it, but you asked the question, so there is the answer.

[ernestm]

I guess I should add the standard response to puzzlement resulting from the above, which is why 'they' can't even decide how many tathagathas there are. The main answer is, most buddhist texts were not translated into English when I was born. When I was starting at Oxford, the person running the sanskrit library there estimated the number of translated sansrkit texts at 10%. That was 1978. Mostly due to sharing on the Internet sionce the mid 1990s, most of the ancient texts had been translated about 10 years ago. But another problem cropped up, and that was, corrupted texts, again, this is not the first time this happened in Buddhism.

The second problem is, the Mahayana allowed for many diversions from the central doctrine, and new diversions keep cropping up, for example, now people talk about jabanese buddhism like it is one thing thats always been around. The actual recorded history on it is very slim, and it could have been entirely invented. The actual certainty of huge amounts of stuff on the Internet about various secondary and tertiary derivations is just about as tangible as the life of Christ.

The third thing, which isnt really a problem, is that current-day teachers are still allowed to modify dharmic teachings if it helps more people reach enlightenment. That means there really is not, nor ever has been, one form of Buddhism. The schisms started between Gautama Buddha's followers immediately after his death. Furthermore, there are some real political problems for Buddhists in North West China and the adjunct territories, from Kazakhstan to Sikkim, so teachers keep changing what they say just to escape persecution, Tibet not being an unfamiliar example. This means there is no real authority on authority, on purpose.

[JackDaydream]

I guess I should add the standard response to puzzlement resulting from the above, which is why 'they' can't even decide how many tathagathas there are. The main answer is, most buddhist texts were not translated into English when I was born. When I was starting at Oxford, the person running the sanskrit library there estimated the number of translated sansrkit texts at 10%. That was 1978. Mostly due to sharing on the Internet sionce the mid 1990s, most of the ancient texts had been translated about 10 years ago. But another problem cropped up, and that was, corrupted texts, again, this is not the first time this happened in Buddhism.

The second problem is, the Mahayana allowed for many diversions from the central doctrine, and new diversions keep cropping up, for example, now people talk about jabanese buddhism like it is one thing thats always been around. The actual recorded history on it is very slim, and it could have been entirely invented. The actual certainty of huge amounts of stuff on the Internet about various secondary and tertiary derivations is just about as tangible as the life of Christ.

The third thing, which isnt really a problem, is that current-day teachers are still allowed to modify dharmic teachings if it helps more people reach enlightenment. That means there really is not, nor ever has been, one form of Buddhism. The schisms started between Gautama Buddha's followers immediately after his death. Furthermore, there are some real political problems for Buddhists in North West China and the adjunct territories, from Kazakhstan to Sikkim, so teachers keep changing what they say just to escape persecution, Tibet not being an unfamiliar example. This means there is no real authority on authority, on purpose.

I am grateful for your detailed replies, especially in regard to Buddhism. However, I am wishing to consider the idea of 'karma' as a wider concept in philosophy. Buddhism may be an important aspect of this, but I am not sure to what extent. I am wondering how you see Buddhism, especially in relation to science. Do you consider it to be a religion or a philosophy, and to what extent can you two be separated or distinguished?

[ernestm]

I'm not aware of any philosopher whose written on any kind of personal moral revenge without introducing divine force in some way.

You ask a valid question about the difference between a religion and philosophy from a Western perspective. Historically Buddhism has been more of a political force than either a religion or philosophy, because of its emphasis on right action rather than any divine force or rational process. The same is true of Taoism and Confucianism.

[Raggedy man]

Hi Folks, There are no stops in between,. Not every question has an answer, not every mystery is a question, it is in between the flow of these we exist sadly, we find ourselves in a perpetual state of confusion and question, a neverending hunger !, always questioning, forever mystified ! To me, Karma is retrospective, it would not exist if there were no result,. Yet ! We continue to search, our hunger never quenched,. I beleive it will never be, unless we accept such things as are shown to us by nature, Supy and demand, hunger and hunt, there is no one answer to anything, ever, dont search the unfindably, accept the ebb and flow of life, just as a heart pumps, its existience is ipso facto, we do not question its reason.

[JackDaydream]

I'm not aware of any philosopher whose written on any kind of personal moral revenge without introducing divine force in some way.

You ask a valid question about the difference between a religion and philosophy from a Western perspective. Historically Buddhism has been more of a political force than either a religion or philosophy, because of its emphasis on right action rather than any divine force or rational process. The same is true of Taoism and Confucianism.

I guess that the expositions of the idea of karma do belong to the traditions of Eastern philosophy. The main writers who speak of them in the West were Rudolf Steiner and those in the theosophy. Some writers seem to suggest a belief in reincarnation in early Christianity, even discussion of it by thinkers like Origen. Apart from that, it may be more of a general form of folk wisdom in the West connected to ideas of natural justice.

[3017Metaphysician]

I'm not aware of any philosopher whose written on any kind of personal moral revenge without introducing divine force in some way.

You ask a valid question about the difference between a religion and philosophy from a Western perspective. Historically Buddhism has been more of a political force than either a religion or philosophy, because of its emphasis on right action rather than any divine force or rational process. The same is true of Taoism and Confucianism.

I would be interested in your world view of Taoism. Particularly, those philosophies that relate to cosmology. Please share if you are able!

[Consul]

This basis for thinking about the idea of causation open to the possibility of karma, although it may be a different angle from the more simplistic pictures of punishment and rewards, even though it may suggest a balancing process. To some extent, but not entirely, the original idea of karma is dependent on such a belief in past and future rebirths. Some modern ideas of karma may be very different from the ancient ones, especially when seen through Western eyes which is less oriented towards idealism. Also, time in Eastern thought is more about cycles, which affects the basis of thinking, as Western understanding of linear causality is linked to the nature of entropy.

What Flanagan calls "untame karmic causation" is a mysterious kind of "moral causation", which is different from ordinary natural causation by involving objective moral properties of agents or their actions as causal factors sui generis "that involve more than the environmental plus psycho-social-political-economic effects of previous occupants of the Earth." (Flanagan) And "something more than the efficient causation warranted by the concepts of ordinary causation and karmic causation_(tame) is being introduced." (Flanagan) So "untame" karmic causation has an inherent teleological aspect. (Aristotle's final causes vs. efficient causes)

"Buddhism is founded on the understanding that all life in the universe is subject to moral causality, a process that links present actions to future consequences, both in this life and in lives to come. This force is karma, a word meaning 'deeds', but also their consequences, the individual's cumulative balance of punya ('merit', or what is familiarly called 'good karma') and papa ('demerit', or 'bad karma'). Buddhists regard all intentional acts of the body, speech, and mind as producing 'karmic' consequences. Karma primarily determines the nature of every rebirth after death, ruling one's destiny until, and unless, one realizes nirvana and eliminates karma."

(Trainor, Kevin, ed. Buddhism: The Illustrated Guide. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. p. 60)

[GE Morton]

All of the above elaborate explanations and interpretations notwithstanding, "karma" to most modern (Western) minds simply refers to some sort of "cosmic justice" principle at work in the universe. That hypothesis should be empirically testable --- select, by some random process, a large number of human deeds widely considered to be evil, and determine whether the evildoer suffered any punishing consequence (excluding those imposed by victims or by the law).

Of course, everyone suffers unpleasantries of one sort or another from time to time, but per "karma" there is some sort of symmetry or reciprocity between the evil deed and the "karmic" punishment. So you could only count punishments that clearly had such a relationship to the evil deed.

I suspect you'd find no correlation.

[ernestm]

I'm not aware of any philosopher whose written on any kind of personal moral revenge without introducing divine force in some way.

You ask a valid question about the difference between a religion and philosophy from a Western perspective. Historically Buddhism has been more of a political force than either a religion or philosophy, because of its emphasis on right action rather than any divine force or rational process. The same is true of Taoism and Confucianism.

I would be interested in your world view of Taoism. Particularly, those philosophies that relate to cosmology. Please share if you are able!

Well, from a philosophical perspective, in china Taoism was absorbed into neoCnfucianism about four centuries ago, but its simplicity has been appealing to novices in the West. There's a good article on it here

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-metaphysics/