Karma - Determined or Determining?

I’m not sure I follow.
You mean that you tend to concern yourself with the effects of your actions that you have tangible, verifiable evidence of?

What’s the difference, really?
If you concern yourself with probable result, then you ARE concerning yourself with intention, because if the probable result does not align with your desired result, then you will ideally act in a different way.
In other words, if the probable results and your intentions do not match, the action is not the right one.

Although I understand, and do agree to some extent, I think we are just looking at it from different angles or scales.
Your “Goal” could be to end world hunger…
But your “Goal” could simply be to live a more virtuous life, to quit smoking or to be nicer to people.
Striving to discern what you believe spiritually is a goal.
Even simply having the desire to learn more is a goal.
You can not live without goals.
Though, I agree, that more often than not, long-term, specific goals are more of a detriment to life.
Without goal(s), you have no direction.
Direction implies progress, which necessarily implies a destination.

So, that is a goal of yours, no?

Exactly.

Doesn’t that, then, answer these questions:

You are minding the effects and dynamics of Karma in your actions and choices.

Excellent point.
From which is borne of the concept of Hell.

 

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Hell is a combination of the concepts justice and consequence (suffering). Trying to avoid the consequences of evil deeds (see Dhammapada 127 above) is the equivalent of trying to avoid hell.

Or does not thinking you did something wrong protect you from the consequences?

 

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In order to find karma, to see the supposed system, you need to have some idea of what it looks like, which is not so easy, if only because of the karmic effect of looking for it, the chasing of the karmic tail.

In a word: hypocrisy, the difference between what we like to think that we think and what we actually do, intentions pretended and intentions surmised from observation. The most impotant decisions in life tend to be the most intuitive, with no definite advice available, congenial to full analysis at a later date perhaps, but not before.
In practice it has much to do with breaking habits, or the impossibility of breaking them.

Personally I am driven by curiousity, and always was and to an absurd extent, wiling to suffer all sorts of risks for the sake of it, and with scarcely an action to be detected that is free from the motivation. It gets me into all sorts of trouble, pushing things too far just to see what happens.

Other people, I do appreciate, may be relatively free from the urge to experiment but their complacency in this repect bewilders me.

Indeed, and a point which has earnestly engaged me recently while reviewing an intense correspondence that continued over the past few months and with much talk of karma and sundry moral issues involved. With the facility to search text filed online it is wonderfully possible to reconsider intentions and events precisely, in extact detail, with little else involved apart from the actual online text.

What has struck me then, you could even say "shocked", is the extent to which words written lived themselves out, that what was wished for intentionally or unintentionally but in so many words actually came to be, optimism or pessimism in action as a self fullfilling prophecy.

Never mind karma, beware of what you wish for.

--- Ron.

 

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In a sense, yes.
Guilt over doing wrong is what causes suffering, in the mental/emotional sense.
If you do not believe what you did was wrong, you do not suffer from it.
For example, I feel no guilt from smoking marijuana, even though many others, including the law, says it is "wrong".

Of course, there is the physical practical aspects of negative results from "wrong" actions, but those effects are physical, tangible results on earth, such as social disorder, but those results, in my opinion, have nothing to do with "Hell", unless you personally, emotionally suffer from guilt for your actions.

 

That is a very sweeping statement.

Is this why babies cry, because of the guilt they are born with?

I grant that "if only....." is the big emotional killer, but I don't know that this equates to guilt.

Regret perhaps.

--- Ron.

 

I don’t think it is difficult to see the simple concept of Karma in action, in its many levels. It is simple cause and effect.
Then again, most people I see around me seem to be disabled with respect to the concept of having consequences for your actions, or at least do not put it into practice.

If you are willing to be honest with yourself, no distinction needs to be made.
Blatant, dishonest justification is a far cry from honest reasoning.

Everyone I have met is a hypocrite to one degree or another.
What is important is to constantly check yourself and honestly attempt to determine if your idealistic intentions match the pragmatic results of your actions.
Sometimes that can get confusing, and sometimes it is a difficult decision to make, but it is not difficult to see if you are honest with yourself and refrain from blatant, dishonest justification.
J Krishnamurti has had some wonderfully insightful things to say about identifying yourself with a group or ideal leading to what is essentially apologetic justification.
It is very simple to see, but some people simply do not want to see it.

Thus your goal is to learn, expand and grow, yes?

Me too.
On the other hand, I can certainly understand people’s reticence to allow unchecked scientific and technological “progress” without clear, intended goals.

Care to share what correspondence you are referring to?
Or at least some details of what transpired?

Absolutely.

 

You misunderstand.
I didn’t say guilt is responsible for ALL emotional/mental stress.
I am referring to the specific case of self-induced states/concepts of Hell.

 

But it is difficult, a precariously tricky affair at times and precisely because, as you say, the hypocrisy is everywhere.

It is an excellent habit, before accusing anybody else, to wonder "does this apply to me", but the effect of that depends upon the cognisance, the knowing of the self in practical terms. It took me a good 40 years before I really began to to get the hang of it, to see my own conditioning objectively, especially to the extent that we think we please ourselves while actually enslaved to the expectations of other people. The liberation from the want of approval was a hard fought psychological struggle, and that is where it all goes horribly wrong, with the urge to say what we think they want to hear, and the moral confusion that arises from that.

Society demands that we lie.

It was, long ago.

Nowadays it would rather be to keep a completely clear mind, with no thought before the very need for it.

Do you feel this, the impossibility of preparing to express honestly?

It plagues me when posting here.

Absolute spontaneity is the only expression to trust absolutely.

For my own part yes, but the Moderator has expressly forbidden it

and I lack the time now anyway.

Maybe one day I write the book.

--- Ron.

 

I have noticed this with grief, that the worst of it is the sense of unfinished business, things that we never got around to doing or saying.

If somebody dies and I have said all that I wanted to say to them, then I am at ease with it, unaffected.

---- Ron.

 

But that's where laws come in, isn't it? They serve to point out when something is wrong in a particular context. People obviously follow their internal law before any external ones (as expressed by some recognized authority). But many feel no guilt for theft, murder or rape, even though many others, including the law, say it is "wrong". Where do you draw the line, in respect to karma?

Hell as conceived by the Greeks and Romans might have been a strictly metaphysical place, but the Judeo-Christian concept really did have to do with tangible results on earth: physical death was one (expressed as "sheol", the grave), "Gehenna" was another (a valley where child sacrifice used to take place, and fires burned continually to destroy the city's refuse). People who lived under these conditions were very literally in hell, and if the next world promised to be no better - with no end in sight, with no God, justice, or forgiveness, to present an alternative (after)life - you got Hell with a capital H.

Our thinking inevitably lives itself out. Our words and thoughts might as well be prophesies if we never change the paradigms according to which we act.

 

It's not our fault that we have karma. What causes karma in the first place? Karma itself can't be blamed on karma.

 

Did somebody say that karma is a fault?

 

People say that it's our fault if we are not happy, because it's our karma. But the karma is not our fault, so it's not really our "fault".
:bugeye:

 

I cannot discuss the "Buddhist concept" of karma, because Buddhists are misguided, but I can discuss the Hindu one.

We are limited by our design. Thus deeds fit into that paradigm, both done by us and to us.

:m: