namaskaram :namaste
Namaste,
This is a quote from 'Living with Siva' - from the Himalayan Academy a Shaiva school:
quote
"Whenever we are injured or hurt, we understand that our suffering is but the fulfillment of a karma we once initiated, for which our injurer is but the instrument who, when his karma cycles around, will be the injured."
quote end.
and this quote is from realsikhism.com - the actual quote that upset me so much in my queries into Sikhism:
quote:
"If God creates new souls, then why are children born with disabilities? Souls are born with disabilities because of the bad deeds they committed in their previous life. It is up to God if he sends the soul to hell to make it realize the consequences of its actions or be born and make it realize in its next life."
quote end.
Just to quickly explain where I'm coming from: I totally understand that the above view of Karma etc. is one way to look at it; and it is one theory amongst others I came across during my more extensive studies of Hinduism.
However, when I started learning about Sikhism recently - and because I have studied religions quite a bit, I directly look for how key concepts are conceived, I came across above quote on a Sikh site.
So my worries were / are if Sikhism holds to this particular [bad] view of Karma and suffering.
I'm sorry for this short and rambling reply, I'll revisit later.
Best regards,
De Li
may I sidetrack a little and give lord buddhas take on this , .....
he explains very carefully that in the embodied realm , everything is basicaly suffering , ' Dukka ' ...sure this world has its benifits but it also has its detrements .
some will be fortunate enough to be born into a good family , but might lack the motivation or the inteligence to use the benifits of his life wisely , another may be born poor or dissabled yet be blessed with wisdom and inteligence with which he will realise the true purpose of life .
in this case we might experience suffering in many ways in this life , but what might at first seem to be a blessing turns out to be a curse , such as wealth and beauty , as beauty fades and wealth all to often buys us only false freindships and brings about its own troubles.
and of suffering ? .... allthough we would not wish suffering of any kind upon any one , ...what purpose might it serve ? suffering is the one thing we canot escape in this human realm , birth , old age sickness and death come to us all , and were life to be without suffering we would not question what this life is , and for what purpose we are granted life if it wernt for the realisation of the truth , .....were life perfect and without fault or failing would we strive for libberation? .... would we desire to be born in the heavenly realms and to be free from human ignorance ?
when a hindu says ....
"Whenever we are injured or hurt, we understand that our suffering is but the fulfillment of a karma we once initiated, for which our injurer is but the instrument who, when his karma cycles around, will be the injured."
he is acknowledging the cycle of birth , deathand rebirth , and that during any embodied life we commit action ; Karma , these actions must have reactions ,..therefore we have in previous lives comitted so many actions which if not purified by renunciation , must have implications which will be played out in subsequent lives , we will have mixed reactions some good some bad , but most of all having this store of karmic reactions propells us in to another life into which we could be the injured or the injurer , neither of these are desirable situations , it is not some god given punishment it is simply a concequence of embodied birth , we canot go through life without being either the injurer or the injured , therefore we cause more of the same . even when we are mindfull not to injure still we might injure by acident or be forced to injuer as a part of our duty . the only way to escape this is to refrain from taking another human birth , and to do this we must be free from human desire .
the next quote raises the question ...[/QUOTE]
"If God creates new souls, then why are children born with disabilities?''
,............and answers it a litle unskillfully by saying ....
'' Souls are born with disabilities because of the bad deeds they committed in their previous life.''
.........when ever we are born in embodied form we posess some kind of dissability , some visable some hidden , ...we might be aware of physical dissabilities as they are visable to the eye but some perfectly formed beings lack other important atributes which may be more of an impediment to our spiritual growth and consiousness , in truth nothing is as it appears to our conception as our conception is coloured by dellusions as to what is benificial and what is not .
''It is up to God if he sends the soul to hell to make it realize the consequences of its actions or be born and make it realize in its next life."
the buddhist in me would say that hell is very much with us here in this life time
, those that are born with strong attatchments and cravings are in a hellish state of mind at all times and are perminantly tortured by their own desires as they can never be fulfilled , but those that rejoice in the realisation of the truth and who seek higher understanding are facing the heavens and are blessed with happiness and are perfectly sattisfied , these are the extremes of human understanding and between then lay many permutations of human experience . if the tortured man were able to renounce his attatchment to worldly desires he would be able to experience the bliss of heaven and trancend physical form and future suffering .
in ways it is difficult to translate an understanding of karma and fruits of karma without taking it too literaly ...and for a westerner difficult not to impute heaven or hell as places into which we are flung by a judgemental god , the dharmic veiw is very different .
