What's up with Buddhist cause + effect across lifetimes?

[beoman]

Here's a quote from "The Sutra On Cause And Effect In The Three Periods Of Time," english translation at http://www.purifymind.com/CauseEffectSutra.htm :

 

Sometimes people have plentiful goods,

The reason, in fact, again is quite fair.

In the past these people gave food to the poor.

Others don't have food or drink.

Who can guess the reason why?

Before those people were plagued with a fault:

Stingy greed made them squeeze every penny.

Enjoying blessings and justly prosperous,

Are people who reap a fitting reward.

In times now past they helped build temples

And saw that the Sangha had huts and shelters.

 

This seems to contradict other things I've read about karma... I heard that causes and conditions are wayyy too complicated to be able to pick one thing out, like "giving food to the poor," and relate it to another thing happening in another life, like "having plentiful goods." To me it also seems kind of... logical, and too straightforward. Along these lines are, "If you kill someone, you'll be killed in another life. If you take mind-altering substances, you'll be insane in the next life. 'People who reek with a terrible stench sold inferior scents and phony goods.'" Like you just take an effect you consciously create and have that same thing happen to you without your will in the next life. It seems like if Buddhist laws of karma were correct, we wouldn't be able to predict them that well, and it would make a lot less "sense".

 

For example, in one sutra, Buddha and another monk saw an apparition: a skeleton floating in the air being eaten by vultures. Buddha said the man was a butcher, and now he's going to be in that state for the next 500 years cause of his deeds. Strangely, it being more fantastical and less logical makes me more inclined to believe it.

 

Anyway, in the sutra I quoted, is Buddha maybe just telling people bad things will happen later if you do them now to encourage them to do good deeds, which you should do anyway to have good karma? Or maybe he is not being literal?

[Jetsun]

I wouldn't trust anyone talking about karma on this level to be honest, I doubt they really know for sure what they are talking about.

 

Personally I doubt a lot of what is said about karma is true, for example many Tibetans including high Lama's say that the suffering of their people and the devastation of their country is due to their Karma, whereas surely they aught to be one of the most Karma purified countries in the history of mankind according to the theory, so something doesn't add up if you ask me. I question whether anyone really understands Karma and I think maybe there are influences more powerful than it at work such as celestial or planetary influences.

[Pero]

Personally I doubt a lot of what is said about karma is true, for example many Tibetans including high Lama's say that the suffering of their people and the devastation of their country is due to their Karma, whereas surely they aught to be one of the most Karma purified countries in the history of mankind according to the theory...

 

What makes you think that?

[beoman]

What makes you think that?

 

Well them's a lot of Buddhists there, doing meditation and good deeds and such, lots of monks too... isn't leading the life of a monk conducive to purifying one's karma?

 

Also according to the logic, the western world should be SCREWED! Man did we kill millions of people - the crusades, the inquisition, the world wars, the cold war, oh man.

[Jetsun]

What makes you think that?

 

Not that I ever went to Tibet before the Chinese invaded but by all accounts it had a huge amount of monks and practising Buddhists in proportion to its population most of whom were dedicated to purifying their karma for many generations without being disturbed, by all accounts this produced a compassionate mostly non violent society with very few people in jail and no working army. Then they say their karma led to their demise, it just doesn't make sense to me, although my understanding of karma is probably way off.

[Pero]

Well them's a lot of Buddhists there, doing meditation and good deeds and such, lots of monks too... isn't leading the life of a monk conducive to purifying one's karma?

 

Not really. Just being a monk won't purify karma. But if you're a good monk you won't be accumulating more negative karma and accumulate more positive karma.

 

Also, we accumulated infinite karma, just because we do some practice doesn't neccessarily mean it's all purified, it's not an easy thing to do.

 

And this kind of view of Tibet is a little romantic, the actuality is that many Tibetans then and now don't understand Buddhism that well. The Dalai Lama even said that while his parents consider themselves to be Buddhists, they don't really know what they're doing. So I find it quite questionable that Tibet is the most purified country in history or something like that.

 

Also according to the logic, the western world should be SCREWED! Man did we kill millions of people - the crusades, the inquisition, the world wars, the cold war, oh man.

 

Western world is screwed.

[Pero]

Then they say their karma led to their demise, it just doesn't make sense to me, although my understanding of karma is probably way off.

 

Well one thing is that in the past Tibet invaded China. Another thing I've heard is that they've made a mistake by keeping the teachings to themselves and didn't spread them. And that Mao had the most accumulated merits of any person alive at that time so he couldn't be stopped. LOL.

 

In any case karma manifests when there are the right secondary factors, it could just as well be that the seed for Tibet's destruction was there for a long time, but it couldn't rippen till the fifties.

 

In reality we can't know why exactly something happened unless we're a Buddha.

[adept]

My view of Buddhism was turned on it's head when I read the works of Stephen Batchelor.

His views on rebirth and karma especially are in direct contrast the way they are taught in the orthodox religion known as Buddhism.

The Buddha taught the Dhamma, not Buddhism.

[Jetsun]

Well one thing is that in the past Tibet invaded China. Another thing I've heard is that they've made a mistake by keeping the teachings to themselves and didn't spread them. And that Mao had the most accumulated merits of any person alive at that time so he couldn't be stopped. LOL.

 

Hahaha Chairman LMAO did have a Buddhist mother, just goes to show I don't think anyone really understands how this all works

[passenger1980]

I've read somewhere that the Buddha taught different lessons/examples depending on the person spiritual and intellectual level. For common folks, karma is usually understood (at least as much as you can understand it) as being some sort of self punishment law, which it ressemble in some cases i guess.

 

But to great kings, monks and wealthy people with high intelectual Buddha explained it much more subtlely and had it clear that the law of karma couldn't be understood perfectly by the human mind. One thing is for sure i think, and that is that unwholesome intentions & deeds eventually leads to unwholesome results, and wholesome acts reaps good benefits. But sometimes a good act from a person, could accelerate some past bad karma, which can be seen like a contradiction, but it's actually a purifying process.

 

Of course, if you explain this to a mother who just lost her son and she's in great suffering because of this, it won't make sense to her and ceirtainly won't help her suffering. So we can all understand some basic principles of karma, but not all or even a big part of it. Kinda like we can't really envision god or the infinite, you would go crazy...