mjackson74: > > Karma is karma but you seem to think if its created > in the service of Maharishi it don't stick to you... > It sounds to me like you've had a pretty normal experience of going off to college for a year or two.
Does anyone ever get over disagreement with teachers and dealing with admin? You want stories about college? My four years at UT would make your two years at MIU look like a mountain compared to an anthill. LoL! So, let's break it down: If you had paid attention to your history teacher, you would know that the notion of 'karma' comes from original Buddhism in India, during the fifth century B.C. Karma is one of the major beliefs of Qigong in China and Japan. The historical Buddha taught 'Causation', termed 'karma' in Sanskrit. Briefly stated, karma is the theory of 'action', a force that causes the entire cosmic cycle of cause and effect. This eternal cycle of 'samsara' is an endless round of becoming. The idea that there is cause and effect in the material world was first enunciated by the sramanas. The Buddha Shakya the Muni then propounded the idea of moral reciprocity, a new theory of Causation. "A concept of karma (along with samsara and moksha) may originate in the shramana tradition of which Buddhism and Jainism are continuations." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma Are we agreed so far? According to Buddhist teaching, 'karma' has nothing to do with a persons future rebirths. Karma is just the law of cause and effect and everything is subject to this law, from a highly evolved person down to a single blade of grass - there are no exceptions. If there were any kinds of left-over karmic actions in future births these would have to be controlled by the Ishvara, the inner controller. But Buddhism has no such controller - so karma is just Causation, which is the central philosophy of Mahayana Buddhism. In order for a person to reap the result of his or her actions in the past, there would have to be a reincarnating soul-monad. But the historical Buddha did not ascribe to this idea. According to Shakya the Muni, a person gets the karma of their actions in this life - there is rebirth, but not a rebirth of a soul-monad. So, there would be no individual to reap the effects of past karma. Go figure.
