Is Karma real or is it just fantasy

[Ablaze]

I'm sure nobody denies the existence of that. As a concept, karma is more than just volition and intention.

Karma is simply volition and intention, in the Buddhist framework. It is vipaka, the results of karma, that are "more than just" that.

 

[atanu]

We mustn't create a metaphysical justice system which returns empathy to the empathetic and injustice to the unjust; we have to create a literal one, a physical one.

Someone should have compassion and empathy if they have it, not forced to for any reason. If we want a person to behave and act accordingly to specific rules, that would be dictatorship. However, we can set boundaries for how people shouldn't act. This is nothing objective though, and thus no metaphysical source of justice should touch on it by logic.

All morals eventually become outdated; does the metaphysical karma change with our civilizations? Is it relative among different earthly cultures? Then what about on the moon where there are no cultures and there is no morality?

Sanatana dharma means that the law and the resultant religion remain unchanged at the core. Understanding of that is reflected in dharma-karma-rebirth.

A metaphysical source of justice is not imposed (and actually not taught). However, as pointed out above, the nyAya darsana Vedic school argues that the working of karma is not blind. It is now up to the individual.

Ishwara mentioned in nyAya shastra is no cosmic ruler. It is the inner controller everywhere. It is the ultimate Knower/Seer.

 

[The Sum of Awe]

Karma is simply volition and intention, in the Buddhist framework. It is vipaka, the results of karma, that are "more than just" that.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I assume that's what was what this was referring to. Or maybe karma in a strict sense.

I don't see how simplifying karma down to cause and effect would be in any way helpful - it's like calling the brain a soul, utterly missing the point of the word only to modernize a concept that can't be related to in any other way.

 

[The Sum of Awe]

Sanatana dharma means that the law and the resultant religion remain unchanged at the core. Understanding of that is reflected in dharma-karma-rebirth.

A metaphysical source of justice is not imposed (and actually not taught). However, as pointed out above, the nyAya darsana Vedic school argues that the working of karma is not blind. It is now up to the individual.

Ishwara mentioned in nyAya shastra is no cosmic ruler. It is the inner controller everywhere. It is the ultimate Knower/Seer.

If there isn't justice for karma to act on, isn't it pretty much chaotic? Not in the sense that it is out of order, because it wouldn't be. But in the sense that it's pretty much randomly deciding what the effect will be in the distant future.

Another question to be drawn if karma doesn't act on an objective morality - what really matters of it? What separates karma from everyday cause and effect? If nothing, the concept in itself is utterly pointless.

 

[atanu]

If there isn't justice for karma to act on, isn't it pretty much chaotic? Not in the sense that it is out of order, because it wouldn't be. But in the sense that it's pretty much randomly deciding what the effect will be in the distant future.

Another question to be drawn if karma doesn't act on an objective morality - what really matters of it? What separates karma from everyday cause and effect? If nothing, the concept in itself is utterly pointless.

Justice is a wrong word.

Karma is the works .. yajna ... which makes the world. If the yajna is aligned with the reality which is indivisible one without a second, the result is sweet. If the yajna is based on the notion that the sensually felt discrete individual existence is true, the result is painful.

nyAya shastra simply says that the dispensing of the result of yajna is not non-intelligent and that intelligence is the warp and woof of this existence.

Let me leave it at this only.

 

[kashmir]

Thanks everyone for all the interesting points

 

[Ablaze]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I assume that's what was what this was referring to. Or maybe karma in a strict sense.

I don't see how simplifying karma down to cause and effect would be in any way helpful - it's like calling the brain a soul, utterly missing the point of the word only to modernize a concept that can't be related to in any other way.

Just a couple of quotes:

"Intention, I tell you, is kamma. Intending, one does kamma by way of body, speech, & intellect."

(Buddha, Anguttara Nikaya 6.63)

"'I am the owner of my actions (kamma), heir to my actions, born of my actions, related through my actions, and have my actions as my arbitrator. Whatever I do, for good or for evil, to that will I fall heir'..."

(Buddha, Anguttara Nikaya 5.57)

These statements were made over 2,500 years ago. It's not as if the definition "actions of an intentional nature" is a simplified, modern take on it. Understanding karma (and the resulting vipaka) as cause and effect driven by intention (one of the five causal orders in traditional Buddhism) has been helpful for countless people for centuries, millennia even.

 

[Gehennaite]

I don't find it plausible. A moral system that could govern its own positive and negative interactions does not seem possible. If such a system actually existed, humankind would be far more balanced than it is today. There's simply too much free will for that to happen.

If morality matters, then it makes more sense that a history of one's moral experiences are somehow charted. These experiences would then be used in an analysis during divine judgment at the end of one's life. These decisions would then determine the outcome of your next life, or perhaps even your eternity.

How divine justice & morality works, I do not know. But, I definitely do not see karma as a legit system for handling something as complex as free will.

 

[Riverwolf]

Karma is cause and effect applied on a cosmic scale. I don't follow an Asian religion, anymore, but I still believe it exists.

But even back then, I didn't believe that our actions in this life have much, if any, influence on whatever happens after death. I never regarded it as a morality system, but rather as something that's similar in concept to Chaos Theory.