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Karma isn't what you think it is.
Aug. 12th, 2010 02:02 pmHey all.
I decided to write an entry in response to this article here. [TW: In The Secret discussion there is mention of rape and murder]
For the most part, I agree with it. "The Secret" is a steaming pile of shit and anything that tells you that you attract the bad things that happen to you deserve to be mocked mercilessly and shown up for the load of fucking lies it is. I'm down with that.
However, karma gets dragged into the scuffle and somehow, karma is compared to The Secret's unhelpful Law of Attraction crap. It's at this point I would like to differentiate a positive Law of Attraction idea that can actually be good for you from the Law of Attraction that's hocked in The Secret. If you think positively and put good energy out towards a goal, you'll find it easier to attain that goal, because you're working at the goal. And maybe because of a little good luck. A bit of this and a bit of that. I really don't think you can "attract bad energy" or bad experiences. Those things don't happen to a person lightly. Sometimes, that stuff is beyond our control. Sometimes that stuff is a result of bad choices. It's complicated, and it can't be encapsulated in a simplistic formulaic idea.
It's when karma is brought up that I start getting annoyed, because the writer of that article has it totally wrong. It's something I see again and again, and if you're a learned fucking skeptic, I expect you to know about what you're tearing down. Five minutes reading a book about Buddhism would educate a person about what karma really is. I am really not going to take your arguments against karma seriously if you can't even get the basic premise of it right.
Oh, and bringing up the rape and murder of a young girl doesn't help. Fuck you, lady. Next time, put a trigger warning in it.
Anyway, back to Karma. Now, I'm not hugely educated when it comes to Buddhism. I only know what I know from reading about it in passing in books and from the dribs and drabs that came out of Tripitaka's mouth in the TV show "Monkey" (otherwise known as Monkey Magic). I'll do the best I can, though.
Karma is often described in Buddhism as a wheel. It's not unlike the wheel of fate in the Tarot, in fact I think that wheel of fate is based on Karma (correct me if I'm wrong). Karma is not a cheques and balances system. If you do good things in this life, this does not mean you are going to win the lotto. Or have someone do the exact same good things to you the following week. If something bad has happened to you, it's not because you did something bad. Though that *can* happen, that's not exactly what karma is about.
Karma is about lessons. Everything that happens in life, everything, is a lesson. Every experience, every moment of existence, from the tiniest amoeba to the largest blue whale in the ocean, from the simplest thinker to the genius, everything - it's a lesson on a path to enlightenment. Different belief systems call it different things. In Gnosticism, it's working to attaining Gnosis, and being one with God again. In Buddhism, it's about becoming Buddha yourself, and being one with the Buddha inside of you. The basic notion is the same - learning and becoming a higher spirit/self/person. In Gnosis, it's taken a step further, where-in one's spirit merges with The Ineffable/God/Goddess/etc and a state of pure Knowing is attained.
Notice that not once in that paragraph did I mention "You get bad shit if you do bad shit." Or "You get good shit if you do good shit".
How does karma relate to bad things that happen to us? Well, sometimes things happen in life that suck. Majorly. The idea of karma is that we're all on the wheel, and to exist on the wheel, you have to be at the top of the wheel sometimes, and sometimes, you have to be at the bottom. It's something all spirits go through, and when we go through that hard stuff, we say, "It's our karma". It's a debt to existence we must pay, a lesson we must learn to keep developing and becoming one with God.
We didn't bring it in. We didn't do something to make it happen. Sometimes, it's just time to have that darkness. Life is not all good. There are good bits and bad bits, as the Doctor once said.
The comfort in karma is that we can survive it, and that somehow, within ourselves, we are growing and learning and becoming more for our suffering. Often, in the moment, we don't see the value or point of what we're going through. Like a player in a play, we are engrossed in the drama of the moment. Often, we don't see the big picture, and often times, we can't, because we're just human beings.
Sometimes, shit just happens, and even if we were able to ask God and get an answer, God might say, "Sorry. The world is horrible. Things happen and I can't interfere. Humanity does these things to itself. I just pointed you down the path."
Shit happens, and karma is totally cool with that. Karma is not a bartering system of good and bad mojo. Karma is the mystery of why things happen to us, the lessons we learn from those things and the hope that they will make us better spirits.
I decided to write an entry in response to this article here. [TW: In The Secret discussion there is mention of rape and murder]
For the most part, I agree with it. "The Secret" is a steaming pile of shit and anything that tells you that you attract the bad things that happen to you deserve to be mocked mercilessly and shown up for the load of fucking lies it is. I'm down with that.
However, karma gets dragged into the scuffle and somehow, karma is compared to The Secret's unhelpful Law of Attraction crap. It's at this point I would like to differentiate a positive Law of Attraction idea that can actually be good for you from the Law of Attraction that's hocked in The Secret. If you think positively and put good energy out towards a goal, you'll find it easier to attain that goal, because you're working at the goal. And maybe because of a little good luck. A bit of this and a bit of that. I really don't think you can "attract bad energy" or bad experiences. Those things don't happen to a person lightly. Sometimes, that stuff is beyond our control. Sometimes that stuff is a result of bad choices. It's complicated, and it can't be encapsulated in a simplistic formulaic idea.
It's when karma is brought up that I start getting annoyed, because the writer of that article has it totally wrong. It's something I see again and again, and if you're a learned fucking skeptic, I expect you to know about what you're tearing down. Five minutes reading a book about Buddhism would educate a person about what karma really is. I am really not going to take your arguments against karma seriously if you can't even get the basic premise of it right.
Oh, and bringing up the rape and murder of a young girl doesn't help. Fuck you, lady. Next time, put a trigger warning in it.
Anyway, back to Karma. Now, I'm not hugely educated when it comes to Buddhism. I only know what I know from reading about it in passing in books and from the dribs and drabs that came out of Tripitaka's mouth in the TV show "Monkey" (otherwise known as Monkey Magic). I'll do the best I can, though.
Karma is often described in Buddhism as a wheel. It's not unlike the wheel of fate in the Tarot, in fact I think that wheel of fate is based on Karma (correct me if I'm wrong). Karma is not a cheques and balances system. If you do good things in this life, this does not mean you are going to win the lotto. Or have someone do the exact same good things to you the following week. If something bad has happened to you, it's not because you did something bad. Though that *can* happen, that's not exactly what karma is about.
Karma is about lessons. Everything that happens in life, everything, is a lesson. Every experience, every moment of existence, from the tiniest amoeba to the largest blue whale in the ocean, from the simplest thinker to the genius, everything - it's a lesson on a path to enlightenment. Different belief systems call it different things. In Gnosticism, it's working to attaining Gnosis, and being one with God again. In Buddhism, it's about becoming Buddha yourself, and being one with the Buddha inside of you. The basic notion is the same - learning and becoming a higher spirit/self/person. In Gnosis, it's taken a step further, where-in one's spirit merges with The Ineffable/God/Goddess/etc and a state of pure Knowing is attained.
Notice that not once in that paragraph did I mention "You get bad shit if you do bad shit." Or "You get good shit if you do good shit".
How does karma relate to bad things that happen to us? Well, sometimes things happen in life that suck. Majorly. The idea of karma is that we're all on the wheel, and to exist on the wheel, you have to be at the top of the wheel sometimes, and sometimes, you have to be at the bottom. It's something all spirits go through, and when we go through that hard stuff, we say, "It's our karma". It's a debt to existence we must pay, a lesson we must learn to keep developing and becoming one with God.
We didn't bring it in. We didn't do something to make it happen. Sometimes, it's just time to have that darkness. Life is not all good. There are good bits and bad bits, as the Doctor once said.
The comfort in karma is that we can survive it, and that somehow, within ourselves, we are growing and learning and becoming more for our suffering. Often, in the moment, we don't see the value or point of what we're going through. Like a player in a play, we are engrossed in the drama of the moment. Often, we don't see the big picture, and often times, we can't, because we're just human beings.
Sometimes, shit just happens, and even if we were able to ask God and get an answer, God might say, "Sorry. The world is horrible. Things happen and I can't interfere. Humanity does these things to itself. I just pointed you down the path."
Shit happens, and karma is totally cool with that. Karma is not a bartering system of good and bad mojo. Karma is the mystery of why things happen to us, the lessons we learn from those things and the hope that they will make us better spirits.
