Spirituality karma is dogma

[Blobbenstein]

I googled 'karma is dogma' and found this.

Karma is a foundational concept or law about actions. It’s found in several Eastern religions including Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism. In its simple form, karma is the belief that actions are part of a cycle of cause and effect. Good deeds lead to positive benefits and bad deeds result in negative consequences.

Dogma is a particular belief or doctrine held by a particular religion. Because of the formulation of creeds, dogma is often associated with Christianity. However, dogma is part of all religions and individual spiritualities because dogma is nothing more than the articulation of a belief. In other words, karma is dogma: it’s a statement of belief about individual behavior.

We’re generally familiar with members of Western religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) who are very rigid when it comes to their respective dogma. The dogmatic purity (or their version of it) is often unreasonable when compared to proven fact or positions supported by evidence. Rigid beliefs often become the foundation of prejudice, oppression, hatred, and wars. In the West, what we miss is that the law of karma is also dogma. When the law of karma is taken rigidly, it also leads to the same kinds of problems that are found in the history of Western religion. For example, India’s historic caste system was based on the law of karma. Oppression of various castes was understood to be morally appropriate because it was nothing more than the karmic cycle. Being of a lower caste was assumed to be the result of bad deeds in a previous life. It’s really much the same as the dogma that contends that positive thinking about prosperity or health results in financial gain or a lack of disease. They are all just various dogmatic statements.

Karma vs. Dogma | emerging by Lou Kavar, Ph.D.

 

[yakherder]

I pretty much agree. Yeah it's fun when God things happen to people our when bad things happen to crappy people. But it's either the result of random circumstance or cause and effect, not some intangible force out there writing invisibly to make sure the world is fair and just. As a general rule, it isn't.

 

[Calliegirl]

It drives me crazy when someone does something bad, and then something bad happens to them and everyone cries karma. I don't believe in it in the first place, but, it's supposed to affect you in your next life, not this one.

All those karmic religions are just as bad as the rest. I don't have much respect for a religion that says when a fetus is aborted it's because it must have done something bad in a previous life, and since it was aborted in this life, it will again be on the low end of things in its next life. That's just as bad as claiming babies are born sinners in Christianity. It's so sickening and wrong in both cases.

 

[yakherder]

Wasn't born a sinner, I chose to become one

 

[Blobbenstein]

well, there might be some mechanism to karma, but the belief in it can still become dogmatic....no less dogmatic than other religious beliefs.

 

[yakherder]

I'd say the mechanism behind it, if any, is along the lines of a self fulfilling prophesy.

 

[Blobbenstein]

I think that is one reason...if someone dogmatically thinks about karma.

I believe in God, so even if there are cycles like karma, they can be broken, as God isn't a machine, he can just forgive someone...

 

[Blobbenstein]

I suppose in some way, I would rather believe that the bad things that have happened to me, are due to past lives.....then maybe I can get another chance in the next life...I'm not a very strong person though, so I'd probably fluff up another life too.

 

[Dropkick]

My karma ran over your dogma.

 

[Blobbenstein]

your dogma ran over my dogma.

 

[Clueless Git]

The law of Karma could be seen as dogma in the same way that the law of gravity could be seen as a myth because the world sucks, yes.

The law of Karma is, in fact, the simple scientific law that every effect must have a cause and that every cause must have an effect.

Karma is more your 'chaos theory' or 'butterfly effect' than how directly proportional revenge/reward hungry minds tend to want it to work though.

A kind of it is just as likely that a hurricane in the Americas will cause a butterfly to flap it's wings in the Andes as it is that a butterfly flapping it's wings in the Andes will cause a hurricane in the Americas thing, if that makes any sense?

 

[Blobbenstein]

I think there are karmic processes, but I believe there is more to it than that.
Thinking about karma too much can become a bit dogmatic, is what I am saying.

 

[Clueless Git]

And a little story about what happens when karma and 'directly proportional reward/revenge hungry' minds collide ...

A couple in a village in Malaysia find an Armadillo crossing their property. They kill it and eat. The woman falls pregnant shortly afterwards and gives birth to an Armadillo. The Armadillo baby dies shortly after birth and so Karmic punishment for the killing of an Armadillo is served

Story was told to me by a Malaysian buddhist businessman whom I would trust with my life not to knowingly tell a lie.

The story is clearly a pile of old bollocks though.

Best as I can divine what probably happened is this;

Woman gives birth to a Harlequin Ichthyosis baby in an area where HI is totaly unknown and an HI baby has never been seen.

From the effect the cause is deduced and everything goes straight to hell in a hand basket from there.

 

[Clueless Git]

I think there are karmic processes, but I believe there is more to it than that.
Thinking about karma too much can become a bit dogmatic, is what I am saying.

In buddhism trying to fathom out the path of karma back to first cause (it's a waste of time trying to fathom it out to any degree less) is one of three 'meditations' that lead to insanity.

Story above being a small example of how when people try to fathom out karma insanities may ensue.

 

[Second Summer]

Cause and effect in the scientific sense is different, and much easier to understand/accept, than karmic cause and effect. In the scientific sense it deals exclusively with physical laws of nature. In the karmic sense you also need to include definitions for good and bad/evil actions, as well as an invisible force that seeks to reward and punish people according to the virtousness of their actions.

 

[Tom L.]

I suppose in some way, I would rather believe that the bad things that have happened to me, are due to past lives.....then maybe I can get another chance in the next life...I'm not a very strong person though, so I'd probably fluff up another life too.

I don't think you're giving yourself enough credit.

Anyway... in principle, I really like the idea of karma in general because it would mean there is justice and reparation in the end. And sometimes it would make me feel better to believe that I've brought something on myself. What I'm apprehensive about is, I or someone else might take this attitude to think: "I don't have to be charitable to someone down on their luck. They deserve what's happening to them."... when actually if there's no such thing as karma, as Yakherder argues, this doesn't fly at all. Karma is a nice theory but believing in it could result in nastiness.

My karma ran over your dogma.

your dogma ran over my dogma.

Your dogma is chasing my karma...

 

[Andy_T]

A couple in a village in Malaysia find an Armadillo crossing their property. They kill it and eat.

Interesting story, but this is the first time I hear about armadillos in Malaysia

 

[Dropkick]

Anyway... in principle, I really like the idea of karma in general because it would mean there is justice and reparation in the end. And sometimes it would make me feel better to believe that I've brought something on myself. What I'm apprehensive about is, I or someone else might take this attitude to think: "I don't have to be charitable to someone down on their luck. They deserve what's happening to them."... when actually if there's no such thing as karma, as Yakherder argues, this doesn't fly at all. Karma is a nice theory but believing in it could result in nastiness.

That attitude would only work if you didn't believe that your own karma would be harmed by a lack of charity on your part.
...or if you were using it as an excuse to be a scum bag - as most religious belief systems have been used over the centuries.

 

[Dropkick]

Interesting story, but this is the first time I hear about armadillos in Malaysia

Maybe it was a pangolin and the story suffered in translation.

On a side note- when I was a child I found a drowned armadillo on a small island in the middle of the Madison river at the Missouri Headwaters. This is in Montana and a long way from anywhere you should find an armadillo. -I expect someone had it as a pet and it got loose.

 

[Clueless Git]

Interesting story, but this is the first time I hear about armadillos in Malaysia

I didn't question that.

Probably 'cos a larger unlikelihood in the story had totaly grabbed my interest.