Merle,
> Merle wrote, among other things, below:
> "Being good has nothing to do with karma".
Well, I say, don't throw the baby out with the bath water.
Remember "Causes and Conditions", hetu-pratyaya, conditioned-arising.
(in drug-taking years, psychologists referred to "set and setting", too, as a
way to explain or understand people's behavior, or their experience, and why it
might differ from others' behavior and experience. Another way to explain it
is to say, "Well, everybody's different!" But, Set and Setting or
conditioned-arising is what explains why people are "different"). ;-)
Some speak about karma, but we don't have to put it in those terms.
It's just cause and effect.
Behavior and character and mentality is seldom an accident, except when it is.
And, even then... .
Karma is one element in Buddhist philosophy, but I think conditioned-arising is
more important, and comes first.
Just a little note, Merle, about this part of Buddhist philosophy; It's
important to some Zen people as well, but maybe not all, even if they see the
sense in it, and see how and why the point arises with respect to thought,
character, and behavior.
We may *enter* life as a _tabula rasa_ (I do not say that we do), but, ...it's
all downhill from there. ;-)
Conditioning and circumstances turn us into WHO WE SEEM. ;-)
Awakening can combust or burn away much of the conditioning, and leave us,
well, FREE. Free to use the full compliment of our basic and ancient human
inheritance, and sense the true size of our lives and ourselves. Awakenings
subsequent to the first one go even a little further.
Well, to cool off the keyboard, now.
--Joe
> Merle Lester wrote:
>
> tell me how karma came back to the war criminals?
> some of them live long healthy lives...they don't give a shit
> it could be another one of the spinning bullshit  to keep us all in
> check...be good or else?
> being good has nothing to do with karma
> one is good because one is
> and it is part and parcel of being an evolved human being..merle
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