Re "Who says dying young is necessarily the result of bad karma? That would be
assuming death was a punishment or a bad thing":
Good point.
Indeed the assumptions we make about good vs bad are loaded with our
prejudices. I like the Tibetan Buddhist (probably Hindu also) view that, yes,
you can accumulate virtue and end up living as a god or goddess in some
postmortem paradise but once your karma has been used up you're right back
where you started*. The goal is to tire of the game and jump off the Wheel of
Karma - good or bad - and "embrace" extinction-cum-Nirvana.
*right back where you started ie, "back to square one". That expression
originated with the game Snakes and Ladders ("Chutes and Ladders" in US?). That
Indian game ("Leela") was intended to teach the young the virtues to follow and
the vices to avoid. The final square would be labelled Moksha.
There was an old (Indian) board I saw once that had a "paradise" square near
the top of the layout. Once there the player was taken out of the game! See the
subtlety of it? If someone finds themselves in a paradisiacal place they
mistake it for final liberation and settle down there not realising there are
yet further levels to come. To find such religious psychological insight into
the perils of the spiritual life in a board game! And what did we come up with?
Monopoly.
