It might be helpful to define "karma" as used in Indian doctrine. The theory of karma is dirt simple: all things fall down; human excrement always flows downstream; gravity sucks. It's not a metaphysics - it's just an observation that holds true for everyone and everything. You strike a billiard ball with another and there is an opposite reaction - cause and effect. It's not complicated.
Sankhya philosophy concers the self-generated Purusha, the Being and the relative nature of the thirty-two evolutes of prakriti born of nature. It is clearly stated in the scriptures that the Purusha is entirely separate from the prakriti. According to historians of philosophy, the Sankhya philosophy was the first systematic attempt at explaining the dualistic point-of-view.* Sankhya teaches us that the world is governed by natural law - causation. Sankhya advocates propound that action and the results of actions can be known and explained through the science of enumeration, human observation, and direct experience. The Sage Kapila compiled a series of aphorisms which express this darshana, one of the Six Systems of Indian Philosophy. The question is: does karm work on the level of mental. With the exception of the materialist Charvaka, all the Indian sages agreed that it indeed does work on the level of thought. "And from the contrast with that which is composed of the three constituents, there follows, for the Purusha, the character of Being, a witness; freedom from misery, neutrality, percipience, and non-agency." Work cited: Samkhya Sutras "The Samkhyakarika of Isvarakrishna" Samkhyakarika, XVII trans. and ed. by Suryanarayana Sastri U. of Madras, 1935 ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <anartaxius@...> wrote : The law of karma, as I usually hear of it seems pretty dumb, because it is not explained clearly, and there is no proof of it. This is not necessarily so. Comments in your text. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <jason_green2@...> wrote : Xeno, let's use a little logic here. If you existed before you were born, you will continue to exist after you die. If you didn't exist before you were born, you will not exist after you die. There are multiple possibilities here: You could exist before you were born, be born and live, then die and not exist. You could exist before you were born, be born and live, then die and exist. You could exist before you were born, be stillborn dead, and then exist. You could exist before you were born, be stillborn dead, and then not exist. You could not exist before you were born, be born and live, and then die and not exist. You could not exist before you were born, be born and live, and then die and exist You could not exist before you were born, be stillborn and dead, and then exist. You could not exist before you were born, be stillborn and dead, and then not exist. (This last one is a real bummer, but of course you would never know) What is not so clear is how these various scenarios could work out to be true. Simply saying there is a law of karma and that it is 'subtler' than the laws of physics. is just a way of avoiding describing how the whole thing works, and whether there is any evidence that could support the idea. The laws of physics describe things that are far beyond the ability of the human nervous system to perceive or feel or even experience, but they are not necessarily beyond the ability of machines to detect, which allows us to experience those things by proxy as a mental construct, but never directly. First of all, what does one mean when we use the word 'you'. Is it the same 'you' before birth, at birth and in life, and after death, or what? The experience of, or perhaps, the knowledge of, being as an undefined attribute-less substratum of all existence that remains before, during, and after bodies are born and perish might be considered one's existence, but it then excludes the life of the body with its mental panorama and personality (what we normally consider a person) as being what the 'you' really are. That personality is not what is maintained throughout birth and death in this case. On the other hand if what people normally consider a person is is somehow maintained through the mill of birth and death, the 'you' that we usually mean when we talk to someone, how does that happen? How is the essence of that personality stored in between births, and where is it stored, and how is it reconstituted? This all seems extraordinarily vague to me; people tell me it does, and leave it at that, which means they do not know otherwise they could explain it. My view of birth and death is this: All things that exist have being. Being is an abstract principle that all things, individually and collectively (that is, the universe as a whole) have. Being is equivalent of having existence, no matter what kind or how. It is totally obvious, anything that exists has being. It is a definition. When the human mind and senses experience an aspect of this being and loses sight as it were, of the connectivity of existence, the totality of all the separate beings together, it experiences this aspect of being as a separate object or thing, and thus the being, which appears to have the property of consciousness under certain circumstances (such as when an aspect of being is a nervous system complex enough to have senses and a decent CPU, is 'born' as that object, not because something is happening, but because the perception and knowledge of timeless eternity is lost in that perception. If the totality of being is not lost in perception and knowledge, then nothing is born or dies. So the reality or non reality of birth and death is really just a matter of how narrow or wide perception and knowledge is. The enlightened being sees continuity of being, the unenlightened being sees discontinuity of being, yet both are seeing the same world, but the mind of each has a different slant on the experience. The law of karma or balance is a very subtle law, compared to other gross laws of physics. That's why it's not apparent to most people. The law of karma, as I usually hear of it seems pretty dumb, because it is not explained clearly, and there is no proof of it. There is no proof of what I said about it above either. This is something that might come, or might not come with long meditation practice, but in any case, if it comes, telling it to another can at best spark interest to investigate, certainly not a proof. If something can be apparent to some people, but not all, then an explanation of how it can become apparent to those that perceive it can be given. Here is your chance. You lifting a pen could be action, and you putting it down could be reaction. The point is, time lag for these actions can differ. Coming to your point, if there is no such thing as reincarnation, existence would be totally meaningless, nature unfair, and God if it exists a lunatic. We create the meaning of our existence. That does not mean that existence really has any meaning. Why should it have meaning? A totally meaningless existence would be fine with me. That does not mean it cannot have some fun in it. There seems to be fun. And misery. If you postulate a god that creates this world, and take into account that which happens in this world, then of course it all seems unfair and meaningless if you attribute absurd qualities to the god, like all goodness and benevolence, because doing that is illogical considering the nature of the world that the god supposedly created. To worm one's way around blaming this psychotic deity for the misery aspect, you have to invent all sorts of spurious workarounds, like sin, free will, karma, rebirth, to try to make sense of this totally dumb system of values wherein a benevolent deity somehow manages to create a world filled with evil and suffering. Logically, creating a god that is a total bastard with an occasional flash of benevolence is a better idea, for then you do not need absurd explanatory detours. Here is something from Ludwig Wittgenstein to mull over (emphasis added): The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it does happen: in it no value exists — and if it did exist, it would have no value. If there is any value that does have value, it must lie outside the whole sphere of what happens and is the case. For all that happens and is the case is accidental. What makes it non-accidental cannot lie within the world, since if it did it would itself be accidental. It must lie outside the world. So too it is impossible for there to be propositions of ethics. Propositions can express nothing that is higher. It is clear that ethics cannot be put into words. Ethics is transcendental. (Ethics and aesthetics are one and the same.) When an ethical law of the form, 'Thou shalt...' is laid down, one's first thought is, 'And what if I do not do it?' It is clear, however, that ethics has nothing to do with punishment and reward in the usual sense of the terms. So our question about the consequences of an action must be unimportant. — At least those consequences should not be events. For there must be something right about the question we posed. There must indeed be some kind of ethical reward and ethical punishment, but they must reside in the action itself. (And it is also clear that the reward must be something pleasant and the punishment something unpleasant.) It is impossible to speak about the will in so far as it is the subject of ethical attributes. And the will as a phenomenon is of interest only to psychology. If the good or bad exercise of the will does alter the world, it can alter only the limits of the world, not the facts — not what can be expressed by means of language. In short the effect must be that it becomes an altogether different world. It must, so to speak, wax and wane as a whole. The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man. So too at death the world does not alter, but comes to an end. Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in just the way in which our visual field has no limits. Not only is there no guarantee of the temporal immortality of the human soul, that is to say of its eternal survival after death; but, in any case, this assumption completely fails to accomplish the purpose for which it has always been intended. Or is some riddle solved by my surviving for ever? Is not this eternal life itself as much of a riddle as our present life? The solution of the riddle of life in space and time lies outside space and time. (It is certainly not the solution of any problems of natural science that is required.) How things are in the world is a matter of complete indifference for what is higher. God does not reveal himself in the world. The facts all contribute only to setting the problem, not to its solution. It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists. To view the world sub specie aeterni is to view it as a whole — a limited whole. Feeling the world as a limited whole — it is this that is mystical. When the answer cannot be put into words, neither can the question be put into words. The riddle does not exist. If a question can be framed at all, it is also possible to answer it. Scepticism is not irrefutable, but obviously nonsensical, when it tries to raise doubts where no questions can be asked. For doubt can exist only where a question exists, a question only where an answer exists, and an answer only where something can be said. We feel that even when all possible scientific questions have been answered, the problems of life remain completely untouched. Of course there are then no questions left, and this itself is the answer. The solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the problem. (Is not this the reason why those who have found after a long period of doubt that the sense of life became clear to them have then been unable to say what constituted that sense?) There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical. ======================== The determinism of the classical universe and the randomness of the quantum universe, complement and balance each other. As you pointed out, randomness itself is statistically constrained. Which means there was no intention behind the big bang itself. --- <anartaxius@...> wrote : Share & Jason Share, I do believe you never consider anything as a statement of logic. Settling for the sense of it on resonance, which is really a subtle sense of feeling allows one to bypass figuring out what it might mean. If beyond thought and feeling, that puts it beyond understanding. I myself do not think much about this any more, but it comes up time to time. A contradiction (con = against, & diction = speech) is a statement that says x is so and x is not so at the same time, which is nonsense. Jason's response shows more analysis. Determinism is the doctrine that all events, including human action, are ultimately determined by causes external to the will. While free will is the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one's own discretion. This sets individuality against the universe. The universe can be regarded as having either natural laws which mindlessly govern activity in a mechanical fashion, or as having an intentional stance, having a mind which determines action through will, such as gods are supposed to have. Individual will is an intentional stance that opposes universal laws or the activity of the gods. One can question whether the universe as a whole has will in the intentional stance sense, because proving gods (1 or more) exist seems out of the question. That nature's activity seems rather overpowering in a deterministic sense is pretty obvious, but why that is is not. Quantum mechanics shows us a certain proportion of indeterminacy on a microscopic scale. This is not apparent on the macroscopic scale, but it seems to mean things will never repeat themselves in quite the same way but the variations on the macroscopic scale will be subtle to say the least. The chance, or randomness of particle interaction is not will because there seems to be no intention behind it, it just happens. It is also constrained statistically so it cannot be said to be free either. Recent experiments with the human brain seem to show our sense of will is illusory, that the brain comes to make certain kinds of decisions in a mechanical way, and the results of this 'decision' comes into awareness after the fact, often seconds, as much as seven seconds after the fact. That means consciousness is passive, and does nothing, since it does not know what is happening until after the deed is done. This could hardly be said to be the activity of will. If anything, it is a demonstration of the effect of universal determinism, unless we conclude that micro quantum events introduce an element of chance. But has we note, chance is not a constrained by the concept of will, it bypasses will altogether, but is statistically constrained, which in a sense means its effect is at least partially determined, it is not free in the sense of unconstrained, its functioning is not at its own discretion. Chance has no mind. So we are left with mechanical determined universal action without an intentional stance behind it, both for the universe and for us, but we have the idea in our heads, that we have an intentional stance, even if it is not really there. And then there is that throw of the quantum dice, which prevents us from ever figuring out exactly what is happening when we look deeply into the matter. As for the concept of karmic rebound, not sure how that works or if it exists. If something happens, then something else happens because things are interconnected. I just lifted a pen off my desk, and then put it back down on the desk. What is the karmic rebound here? I have no idea what that would mean in this situation. Suppose a universe in which each person lives, and dies, and is not immortal and vanishes forever at death (kind of like ours). Suppose this person commits a murder in this universe, and is never caught, never even suspected, and this person subsequently lives a happy life filled with joy until he/she dies. What is the karmic rebound in this situation? --- <jason_green2@...> wrote : This is a little difficult to explain, but I'll try. When you perform an action, the karmic rebound is certain. However, when, where and how that rebound will occur cannot be predicted as existence itself does not know about it. There is an element of randomness here that is difficult to comprehend and is unexplainable. If you study evolution carefully, you will notice that evolution itself is partially deterministic and partially random. There is a broad set of laws and yet randomness plays a part. --- <sharelong60@...> wrote : Xeno, I don't understand it as a statement of logic. I understand it as a koan, a statement meant to take the mind beyond logic to a deeper truth. I find there is a level of life where all contradictions exist together. It is beyond thought and feeling. I sometimes call it knowingness, but resonance might be a more descriptive word. --- <anartaxius@...> wrote : That is of course Share, a logical contradiction; hence, false. A statement like this acts as a metaphor for a certain way of understanding how the universe runs, provided you can penetrate the metaphor for its real significance. What has determinism? What has free will? Since they are diametrically opposed in function, what could this mean, if it means anything at all? Since the statement is literally untrue, why does it feel right to you? Is that feeling correct, or is it based on some hidden assumption which allows you accept a falsehood. --- <sharelong60@...> wrote : ...I heard Maharishi say: 100% determinism and 100% free will. That feels right to me.
