cherydactyl | The Theory of Karma

The theory of karma should not be confused with so-called "moral justice" or "reward and punishment." The idea of moral justice, or reward and punishment, arises out of the conception of a supreme being, a God, who sits in judgment, who is a law-giver and who decides what is right and wrong. The term "justice" is ambiguous and dangerous, and in its name more harm than good is done to humanity. The theory of karma is the theory of cause and effect, of action and reaction; it is a natural law, which has nothing to do with the idea of justice or reward and punishment. Every volitional action produces its effects or results. If a good action produces good effects and a bad action bad effects, it is not justice, or reward, or punishment meted out by anybody or any power sitting in judgment on your action, but this is in virtue of its own nature, its own law. This is not difficult to understand. But what is difficult is that, according to karma theory, the effects of a volitional action may continue to manifest themselves even in a life after death.
--Walpola Rahula

As I've been telling people, Karma is not some kind of spiritual-financial account of merit or detriment.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Very interesting. I'm not sure about it not being hard to understand, though! I'm still chewing on this one...

Try this:

Legislation that was passed one hundred years ago is still affecting things today. Directly, if that law is still on the books. Indirectly, by having influenced other subsequent legislation and/or how people went about passing that other legislation. The effects, both intended and unintended, of the volitional acts of the legislators live way beyond themselves. Karma is just a name for this phenomenon, generalized to all volitional action.

The questions of "a life after death" (re-birth and/or reincantaion), and what exactly constitutes volitional action (my impression is that things many westerners consider involuntary are not viewed that way by some Easterners/traditional Buddists), are somewhat open, but not issues I feel I have all the answers about.

BTW, I posted this because I have recently had people around me, non-Buddhist friends and acquaintances, use the term "karma" in the commonly-held but erroneous way to mean spiritual or supernatural capital that can be spent and replenished. For example one friend yesterday talked about karma "working both ways" (first for me, later for him) in reference to favorable and unfavorable random events in a game we were playing together.

OK, I think I get it - it's literally cause and effect, not action and reward or punishment. Thanks.

That's how I understand it.

There's just one thing that bothers me. It seems like there are plenty of cases where trying to do a good thing leads to bad results. I'm thinking of the phrase "unintended consequences" and the saying "No good deed goes unpunished." People say these things because they happen.

What am I missing?

Consider a choice--what kind of ice cream to get when I go to the ice cream counter, say.

It probably "doesn't matter" in some sense what flavor I pick. But maybe if I take the last scoop of vanilla the kid in line three people behind me will not get what he wants and throw a tantrum, because he's only three and sometimes that happens. Or, maybe I really love almond ripple, but it usually makes me regret it later in the form of digestive distress. There are consequences, some I can "reasonably foresee" and some I "can't reasonably foresee."

Taking all possible choices I could make into account...there is some best action, or perhaps a set of best actions that are truly equivalent. We assume that this is not a universe of perfect information, so the choices that we think are equivalent with limited information might be revealed to not be equivalently good with perfect information.

Theoretically, a Buddha (enlightened being) knows instinctively what action is the best action without thought or consideration, even when there appears to be not enough information.

But, back in the real world, what about me wanting to pretend that almond ripple won't mess me up? It's not equivalent...but I want to pretend it is.

The problem with no good deed going unpunished is in incomplete consideration of the "good deed"'s rightness/correctness. And managing incomplete information--me pretending almond ripple is equivalent, i.e., not using the information you have correctly, is a more comon problem when people make decisions than you might suppose.

I assume you don't have kids, but do you think the right way to deal with kids is to do things for them so they get done right, or to let them fail sometimes? The "right" action is often more subtle that doing the "good deed." Letting my daughter get a face full of water at the water park teaches her not to tease the guy behind the water cannon when she's in range. Would the right action be to let her learn the lesson or not? It depends...on other information that I'm not revealing here in this simple scenario, like whether she's likely to fall over on cement due to a bad playground design, whether she's done this before, etc.

So I would submit that "no good deed goes unpunished" follows from insufficiently deep consideration of whether the "good deed" is the right action, and specifically incomplete consideration of the information one does have. I have to get the kids to school/camp...so I must dash for now.

The Theory of Karma

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject