| Aug 9, 2009 @ 10:55 AM |
Karma
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Bj864
Posts: 4,235
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It's not impossible for some of us. Some of us are able to put the past behind us and live in the present for it is all we have.
Not at all really. Any thought past this present moment is history. Nothing can be changed to the past. The thought is gone, past action gone. Every stressful uncounter anyone can have in their lives is due to the past action. Not the present because you are in control of the present. Your action at the moment, right now dictates your state.
If you broke your leg yesterday, you are coping with something that happened in the past.
If a loved one passed away yesterday, you are coping with the grief of a loss in the past.
If you caught a disease last week, you are coping with the results of that disease today.
If I got a bill in the mail yesterday. I cannot ignore it today.
And on and on and on.
We simply cannot eliminate what happened in the past, be it good or bad.
I think it is a wonderful concept to try to live in the moment. However, I think we have to be realistic about what led to this moment.
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| Aug 9, 2009 @ 11:13 AM |
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Banned_Knots
Posts: 1,125
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And then karma intervenes and everything just strangely goes well. I think she has seen enough examples of this that she should blindly drop her worry but it's not in her nature.
It is very difficult for people to drop their worries. They attach to their desires of life, have habitual behaviours and seek to better their lives by thinking what they did in the past matters. Truly, as said it is what you do in this moment that matters and not the past.
Your words tell me your a happy and content man with a good future.
Sadly, I wish it was true. A matter of weeks ago my life was almost expired but into the hands of good surgeons I recovered. I lay in hospital wondering what the heck happened! It taught me how to behave in this moment. Worked off more bad karma for what ever I had done in the past the seeds had ripened at this time. There was choices to be made and I chose to try and take the experience as being positive. Make it my teacher. It taught many great things in such a short time. I do hope to see a brighter future, be at peace and to realise a good future.
I am terrified to think of Karma coming back to nip in the butt for my wrong doings.
Hrmmmm... I use too be terrified until it came back at me to nip in the butt, it did as said above. But now I am not terrified. I am so glad of the opportunity to have the experience and demonstrating that I am able to act wisely and positively through the experience. People have choices in the moment. All our great Masters teach us to do good, harm no other, act with love, compassion and wisdom. These karma curve balls give us the best opportunity to behave in this manner to bring us well-being.
If Karma was a spirit I'd plea to it..... Please oh please give me a break, I was naive and ignorant. Look at all the nice stuff I've done..... there has to be a trade off.
Ha ha ha Keep doing nice stuff and work of the bad karma. Take the bad karma as the greatest teacher. When people have happy contented lives they forget their true spirituality. Karma likes to wake that up and keep you on a good spiritual path. It is good to be thankful that this happens. In this way your life becomes more meaningful. Thats how I see it.
Many Tibetan Buddhist Masters worked off their bad karma in many frightening and difficult ways. It scares me to think of it but through their own actions they became great Masters and Awakened teachers. Even the Christians should recognise the suffering Jesus went through. His actions reverberate today so imagine what his karmic actions would be like. He had to pay the consequences of his actions then in his day here on earth. They say he paid towards the cross and on the cross. People lament because of it. He asked that those who caused this harm towards him be forgiven. Truly he was a great enlightened man and in my mind knew exactly karma. Pity the people didnt and dont.
Thankfully, karma doesnt have to be scary. The Buddha went to great lengths to find and recognize the truths to severe ascetic practice including horrendous starvation by feeding from one grain of rice a day as it is told. Then on one day he was enlightened realising it isnt necessary to go to such great lengths but to take the Middle Way.
Doing not too much and not doing too little. Take the middle way and all will be well. So, practicing a karmic life should be taken with a sensible attitude.
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| Aug 9, 2009 @ 11:25 AM |
Karma
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Banned_Knots
Posts: 1,125
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If you broke your leg yesterday, you are coping with something that happened in the past.
How is the best way to cope? You cant change the past. The leg isnt going to to be fixed in an instant. Worrying over what will happen as most people do isnt going to make things any better, in fact they make things worse. You become out of harmony with yourself and surroundings. Changing your actions in the moment in positive thoughts will aid healing far quicker.
If a loved one passed away yesterday, you are coping with the grief of a loss in the past.
Does it change anything? Although it is very difficult for many people again it doesnt change anything. Only you are effecting yourself. The dead person has gone and according to Christians in heaven or hell, to Buddhists in the intermediate states progressing on their spiritual path. However, youyr grief is a mirror reflection of your own desires and habitual behaviour to suffer. Some countries are very happy a loved one has died because they know it is part of the progress of real life and happy for the person spiritually progressing. Death isnt death and no one is truly ever parted from another.
If you caught a disease last week, you are coping with the results of that disease today.
Again, past has gone. It is what you do in the now moment that counts. Are you going to mope and groan, "woe is me" or finding peace and calm in oneself which will aid healing faster?
If I got a bill in the mail yesterday. I cannot ignore it today.
Why not? I do.
And on and on and on.
Sorry, past has gone. Cant do anything about it. Present moment you can. Maybe I should pay that bill and be honest or deny it and dont give a care. Which ever the karmic seeds of right or wrong doing will be there.
We simply cannot eliminate what happened in the past, be it good or bad.
Why not? You do it all the time. You have probably forgotten at least 80% of your past by now. Why worry about it?
I think it is a wonderful concept to try to live in the moment. However, I think we have to be realistic about what led to this moment.
Nothing wrong in trying to remember the past to guide you. But again it cant be changed. The only thing you can do is act in the moment and see the future play out as it does in the moment. The moment is all you have. Okay the past is gone and nothing can be done. So what about the future? Can you change that? No, not that either. We try to plan a future but sometimes it happens but often times it does come out the way we expected. Karma will ripen as it does because of your past actions that were once your present moments.
Work with good actions in the present moment then see your future ripen. Do harm and karma kicks you in the butt as the consequences rebound against you. Do no harm and you see karma give you pleasant surprises.
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| Aug 10, 2009 @ 8:55 PM |
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Bj864
Posts: 4,235
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Sorry, past has gone. Cant do anything about it. Present moment you can. Maybe I should pay that bill and be honest or deny it and dont give a care. Which ever the karmic seeds of right or wrong doing will be there.
I know the past is gone. I am not trying to say that we should dwell on the past. I am just saying that the past DOES have an effect on us. It should. Otherwise how would we EVER learn from our mistakes or get rewards from our good deeds?
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| Aug 11, 2009 @ 7:49 AM |
Karma
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Banned_Knots
Posts: 1,125
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Hi bj,
yes, as you say our past does have an effect on us. Thats the problem.
In our reality most of the past we forget. It cease to exist for us. It no longer matters what we did whether good or bad, we have forgotten. Thats okay because in truth it really doesnt matter about learning from our past mistakes. It is a helpful tool but that is all.
Whether our past actions are good or bad it doesnt really matter. We make the choice now in this moment to do good actions in mind and body or bad actions, the past doesnt have anything to do with it. The past thought, actions are dead, gone. They lived their life and gone.
All this is on a simple level. All this karma talk is on a simple level. Meaning its basics.
Notching up then we could say good past actions we let go of because giving in generosity in your actions is best served by doing the good deed and then let it go. Dont hold on to the thought of giving. It is much more powerful in karmic "goodness." So good past actions are really useless for us.
If we negative actions, they too have gone. How we feel in the moment and what we do about it in the moment is important to us. Looking back and thinking "how bad I was" serves little purpose than to cause more karmic problems.
Being aware in our moment of how we feel and letting go is very important to us. We we feel remorse in the moment then we should forgive ourselves now. It is all about the moment, this here and now. Not the past or the future. Finding our balance now.
Karma goes very deep in Buddhism. There are over 64,000 emotions, different obstacles that cause karma in different ways and so much more. There are ways and methods to remove our negative karmas and wrong deeds on many levels of body and mind.
It is a very, very deep subject. But its basic is simple. Do good, harm no sentient being. Love.
“We could say that meditation doesn't have a reason or doesn't have a purpose. In this respect it's unlike almost all other things we do except perhaps making music and dancing. When we make music we don't do it in order to reach a certain point, such as the end of the composition. If that were the purpose of music then obviously the fastest players would be the best. Also, when we are dancing we are not aiming to arrive at a particular place on the floor as in a journey. When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point. And exactly the same thing is true in meditation. Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.” - Alan Watts
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| Aug 11, 2009 @ 8:23 AM |
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eyesofastranger
Posts: 1,369
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If you broke your leg yesterday, you are coping with something that happened in the past.
Maybe I think different than Knotty but if I broke my leg then I have to rent one of those fat people chairs to get my stuff done. How is this a problem? Actually I told my family if I even need one of those lazy fat ass chairs to take me to the back 40 and shoot my lazy ass.
If a loved one passed away yesterday, you are coping with the grief of a loss in the past.
People die. If someone very close the absence hurts but people die.
If you caught a disease last week, you are coping with the results of that disease today.
People get sick. I don't get hung up on the me me me me me. If I get sick I deal with it best I can. Why did it happen to me? cummon.
If I got a bill in the mail yesterday. I cannot ignore it today.
Much to the shagrin of those around me it's not a bill until it comes on colored paper. White paper.....pffffft that's to tell me a bill will come in the future.
What happens is going to happen anyway and will have no effect on my brain chemistry. Drives people around me crazy. And then everything goes my way in the end despite unrealistic odds.
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| Aug 11, 2009 @ 10:02 AM |
Karma
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iam01
Posts: 7,558
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Knots,
Not sure if this was ever covered but can bad Karma be forgiven by certain acts or will? In other words, if you transform yourself in some way, take certain actions, you're still responsible for the past but can Karmic effects be forgiven or reduced?
I see it as resolving one's conscience of self acceptance. If you full take responsibility for something, make amends and reparations if possible, can you free yourself of negative karmic effects?
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| Aug 11, 2009 @ 12:15 PM |
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Bj864
Posts: 4,235
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In our reality most of the past we forget. It cease to exist for us. It no longer matters what we did whether good or bad, we have forgotten. Thats okay because in truth it really doesnt matter about learning from our past mistakes. It is a helpful tool but that is all.
I disagree.
This goes even deeper than Karma.
If we touch a hot stove and we get burned, we have learned not to do that again. I could come up with hundreds or millions of examples about this.
If we treat someone badly and we lose their friendship or love, we have learned that behavior is unacceptable.....If we do not learn from our mistakes, we just keep repeating them.
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| Aug 12, 2009 @ 7:53 AM |
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Banned_Knots
Posts: 1,125
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iam Karmic actions have been taken so there consequences are already in force but you can take actions to reduce them or rid of them. In a way you can think of one energy of an action being transformed by an energy of another action.
Its knowing what to do to throw off the balance.
Physicists like to use the billiard table as an example of forces in action and how energy is tranfered from one ball to another.
If you hit one ball with a force it will travel across the table and hit the edge hard. use this ball as the negative action, the negative action of karma.
How to reduce or stop this? Take another ball, (another action) and hit this negative ball with the same but opposite directed force and it will stop in its tracks. Or hit with multiple smaller balls with lesser force and it will slow down and even stop if enough force applied.
Karma balance can be changed with actions to counteract the consequences of the original action.
Deep remorse of a bad deed done can go along way to reduce the effects of the consequences of that original bad deed. But it cant be brushed off with a simple saying "I am sorry."
The energies involved are deep.
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| Aug 12, 2009 @ 7:57 AM |
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BandTMom
Posts: 39,479
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Mornin' Knotty. 
Understanding Karma is so simple that it appears difficult. People have a hard time grasping (pun not intended  ) the concept of karma for they can't understand that changing our lives and futures is as easy as changing our actions and even our thoughts. 
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| Aug 12, 2009 @ 8:50 AM |
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yashaenka
Posts: 10,289
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Meaning & Significance of Karma
Karma is a Sanskrit word springing from the root “Kri” - “to do” or “to make” or more simply, “action”. The deeper meaning of Karma can be described as an infinite chain of the results of action that is perceived and performed. Karma is a concept of wisdom, based on the Ancient Vedas and Upanishads, which explains a system where beneficial events are derived from past beneficial actions and harmful events from past harmful actions, creating a chain of actions and reactions throughout a person's reincarnated lives.
When we talk about “Our Karma” we’re talking about the actions we’ve “sown” or performed in the past (including our past lives) that are the cause of what we “reap” in our current life situation. This either becomes our Karmic Burden or Karmic Baggage or our Karmic Blessing depending on whether we’ve performed positive or negative actions in the past.
Every action, either physical, emotional or mental, every movement occurring either on the plane of gross matter (Sthoolam) or on the astral planes (Sookshma), causes an emission of Energy. In other words, it produces a Seed.
Being a Seed, Karma fructifies or does not fructify immediately after it is sown. The innumerable Karmic Seeds we produce by our various actions - desire, aversion, love, hatred, happiness, etc. will undoubtedly produce, sooner or later, a positive or negative result according to the nature of the seed, if not in this life, then in some future one.
The Vedas propound, “Here they say that a person consists of desires. And as is his desire, so is his will. As is his will, so is his deed. Whatever deed he does, that he will reap.”
Karma should not be confused with Fate. Fate is the notion that man’s life is preplanned for him by some external power, and he has no control over his destiny. Karma on the other hand, can be corrected. Because man is a Conscious Being and he can be aware of his Karma and thus strive to change the course of events, with the help of superior powers. 4 Types of Karma
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| Aug 12, 2009 @ 4:32 PM |
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Bj864
Posts: 4,235
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I also believe karma can be worked off in different ways .
One way we can work off karma is in the dream state.
Another way is with our thoughts and/or our words.
Another way is through our actions.
We can also generate karma the same way.
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| Aug 13, 2009 @ 11:26 AM |
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yashaenka
Posts: 10,289
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Karma in Action
We are what we do?
-by Andrew Olendzki
Karma is a word one runs across more and more these days. It's too bad it is almost always misused. Somehow in English it has come to mean "fate" or "destiny" (American Heritage Dictionary).
This is an unfortunate, if inevitable, distortion because in its original Buddhist context karma is a concept of unparalleled profundity and significance.
The word karma simply means "action" and is derived from the verbal root kr which means "to do" or "to make." There are three distinct senses of the word here, and what renders the concept unique is that all three are inseparable aspects of the same process. We may be used to thinking of (1) the decision to do something as one thing, (2) the action carrying it out as another, and (3) what we make thereby, or the result of the action, as being something else again. But in Buddhist understanding these three are parts of the same whole. Intention is the leading edge of karma, directing the activities of body, speech, and mind to act in ways that accumulate, at its trailing edge, karmic formations or dispositions. Action, in other words, is preceded by a sort of "doing" in which decisions are made and results in a sort of "making" in which a unique personality is constructed. The main idea behind karma is thus the relationship between what we choose to do and what we thereby make of ourselves. Karma in action Is Karma a noun or a verb?
Here in the West we have a truly distorted view as to what Karma is and/or is not 
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| Sep 5, 2009 @ 8:08 AM |
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Banned_Knots
Posts: 1,125
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It is changing though Yash.
Since many Buddhist Masters came to our Universities taking upon themselves to learn the languages of others and their religions they have had the ability to correct the mistakes.
We have to keep emphasising Karma means "action."
Each action there is a consequence to it. Very simple really. Do something good or bad then we have the consequences to that action whether that maybe good or bad.
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| Sep 5, 2009 @ 9:49 AM |
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yashaenka
Posts: 10,289
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Yes I have been pleasantly surprise to find so many professors in our Universities from Asian lands that are monks as well.
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| Sep 5, 2009 @ 9:59 AM |
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Banned_Knots
Posts: 1,125
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I like that fact they practice what they teach. Some of these monks spent many years of their lives to learn the ways of others so they could benefit all. Its good.
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| Sep 5, 2009 @ 10:02 AM |
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Heaveninawildflower
Posts: 19,348
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I'm no scholar on any of this, but I do have a question/observation...I've found that the more guilt I feel, the more likely I am to do something I'll regret later - e.g. I think of myself as 'bad' so basically act in the way that I perceive myself. If I think of myself as 'not bad', I'll refrain from actions like that until I start to suspect that maybe I'm even capable of being 'good', and start doing things that I'm happy that I did. Finding that I feel 'good' when I do good things and don't feel any temptation to do 'not so good' things, changing from a miserable and guilt-ridden person (whether justified or not - other people CAN make you feel guilty, justified or not) took some time but it was less driven by intent than by observation.
How would you feel about this?  I'm thinking that Karma can also be other peoples' actions, as they reflect in your mind...
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| Sep 5, 2009 @ 10:12 AM |
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yashaenka
Posts: 10,289
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Banned will have his own observations about this we seem to see things in the same way although our approach comes from opposites of the same coin. 
I'm no scholar on any of this, but I do have a question/observation...I've found that the more guilt I feel, the more likely I am to do something I'll regret later This is your own form of Attachment, just let it go. What is bad to you is good to another somewhere, what is good to you is bad to another somewhere.
I call this a form of clinging to your emotional Attachments. Why do you need to weigh yourself this way for their is no good without some bad and there is no bad without some good, it is simply a artificial perspective.
Judge not least you be judged! Can you really be the impartial Judge of your own actions? Just let it go stop being Attached to it! 
Let me add this: Most people go through life never accepting themselves as they are now. They are like a mugwump bird sitting on a fence with his face on one side and his wump on the other wondering which way to go.
If you cannot love and accept yourself 100% now then you cannot give 100% of your love to another or receive 100% of another's love for you.Do not be one of those that say oh if I can only be this way I could love and accept myself by setting goals, because when you reach that goal you will simply create another goal. But if you accept and love yourself now 100% than any goal you reach is simply icing on the cake, you, yourself are the cake right now!
[Edited on 9/5/2009 10:21 AM]
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| Sep 5, 2009 @ 11:51 AM |
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Banned_Knots
Posts: 1,125
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I agree with Yash.
We can feel bad or guilt about our actions. This is always after the deed whether we think it or do it. There is nothing really to feel bad about and when we look deeper into the matter there is nothing to really feel good about. This is higher teachings to knowledges that recognises we live in a false world of perception.
Several things should always be remembered. Most of us are not mindful of our actions and worst still to be thinking about what the consequences there maybe to our actions. All in all the whole business of consequences can be pretty much beyond us. It can be overwhelmingly complicated. We all make mistakes.
There should never be guilt when one recognises their past action was harmful (wrong) to oneself or another. Having remorse would be a good thing to have though and thinking to oneself that one should do better next time. Forgiving oneself is a must. We are ignorant beings simply by the fact we havent become aware of ourselves. We dont know ourselves and life is an exploration, hopefully in the sense of a spiritual exploration.
No one goes to heaven or goes to hell because of their thinking or their actions. It is a matter of condition. When the human mind is fully joyous, happy, all loving then it is a heaven in itself and not some place we all go and live an eternity. Heaven and hells are our own minds condition.
No guilt ridden sins, hell fires and damnations.
We all do wrong. If we didnt then we would be perfect *cough and has there ever been a perfect bing in this world? Hell no! Even all the great Masters caused riots one way or another.
Forgive yourself, as Yash said learn to love oneself 100% then your own actions from your own love will radiate to others. Hate yourself, feel guilt yourself and all the negativities against yourself, then you harm yourself and others will not benefit the potential from your love and generosity.
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| Sep 5, 2009 @ 12:20 PM |
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BandTMom
Posts: 39,479
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Awesome posts, gentlemen.
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