Arbiteur of Karma

From what I understand about Hinduism, dependent upon how you act in this life, you could come back in your supposed reincarnated next life as a rock, or a tree, or a rat, or a monkey, or an impoverished tenant farmer, or a wealthy person of influence, so who/what decides how good or bad is your supposed karma?

 

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Karma is essentially a natural law.

 

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But who/what decides what somebody comes back as?

 

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I understand it's not a who, more like an impersonal force. Your actions are like a weight on a balance, the classic image of justice.

 

So what supposedly is the impetus to force you into your reincarnated rock body, or monkey body, or human body, and who/what calibrates "the scales?"

 

I assume that good deeds and bad have a force like gravity, or a chemical reactant that fits into it's corresponding reactant. It's passive rather than a personal active force as in western religion.

 

Then shouldn't that all be measurable? (I do realize you said "like.")

 

And if the supposed mechanism for reincarnation is something that can't be quantified or qualified, doesn't that make it supernatural? So then, we would have a supernatural something or someone judging good and evil.

 

Quite so, the traditional concept of Karma has supernatural aspects.

I think there is a natural kind of karma, which is simply an implication of the fact that everything is connected. Our actions can echo through time, our bodies are copies of bodies that came before, it's all cyclical.

 

Then to reincarnate would be a supernatural event, with a supernatural arbiteur deciding which actions and thoughts in our lives are good, as deemed by the decider (cue to pile on Bush), and which actions and thoughts are bad, so how does the great decider know what is good and bad?

 

It could be interpreted that way, but karma is not necessarily a supernatural concept.

 

I see no other way to describe reincarnation other than supernatural.

And if bad folks come back as toads, and good folks as rich influential folks, what supernatural intelligence decides such? Matter can't make decisions, so it must be an intelligence, a being.

 

Reincarnation is going on right now. Matter is becoming incarnate when you eat, it makes decisions when it is incorporated into a nerve cell. When you die, your material doesn't go away, it goes into the soil, and turns into plants, which again get eaten.

I don't think individuals are born as other beings based on the accumulated merit of their lives, but the problem lies with what we call self. Your sense of self is not self-generated, but inherited from culture. This survives independently of the body, and is reintroduced to every new body through social contact. This is why people get reborn. To break this programming is to break the chain of rebirth.

 

"Matter.... makes decisions." Huh?

What do you mean "people get reborn," and so, what is "to break the chain of rebirth?"

 

IceAgeCivilizations:

The nature of the desire produces the incarnation in the species one ends up as. In essence, where the manifestation of one's desires and drives can best be realized, they are.

Example: Someone who really likes to steal things, might come back as a crow.

 

Or if you like to snorkel, you'll come back as a whale, but what does that have to do with "good karma" and "bad karma?"

 

Good karma basically is "do good, good will come back to you" whereas bad karma is "do evil, evil comes back to you".

It is rooted in the same foundation as the stealing and snorkeling analogies (as crude as they are) we made. Karma essentially works, it is claimed, on the principle.that inherent in all actions is a predisposition and desire for a world which one experiences of that type.

 

to begine with karma is a mundane mechanism for dealing with the activities of conditioned souls (it would be incorrect to say that an unconditioned soul receives 'karma' even though they may act in this world - but that is a seperate subject)

So karma comes in three varieties

1. karma - generally the good sort, although it binds one to material existence (ie birth, death, old age and disease), so even to become rich by dint of karma, it is as a few cons.
2. vikarma - "that which seperates one from the result of karma" , in other words sinful activity
3. akarma - that which exhausts ones stockpile of karma and akarma, ie transcendental activity

so the first two ar e within the juristiction of yamaraj (other wise known as dharmaraj or the demigod of death or justice, and the last one is in the jurisdiction of visnu - so I guess we will be focusing on the first two.

To begin with yamaraj is not a grim reaper figure (although he has attendants called yamadutas that fit such a description) - he is an incredibly pious living entity that by dint of their previous karma (mixed with akarma) they get designated the status of "yamaraj". So the laws of karma are established by visnu or god, but the empowered personality who deals with it is yamaraj, much like an ambassador or secretary is 'empowered' to perform various official tasks for a monarch

there is an interesting conversation between the yamadutas (servants of yamaraj) and the visnudutas (servants of visnu) in the incident of Ajamila, a man who was born into brahminical culture but who later on got degraded due to bad association

chapter summaries here
intro to ajamila
discussion between visnudutas and yamadutas
yamadutas going back to yamaraj to determine what's going on

 

So Vishnu decides what is sin?

 

Visnu is the existential reality that sin/piety rests on
Manu elaborates on it (for mankind)
Yamaraj enforces it