Karma and Consequences

[Leo Rivers]

This was originally written for the anger thread.

1. Intention 2. Action 3. Satisfaction

The above 3 Parts of an Action was what I was taught.

But 2 complaints always came up for me.

There was the push back from women who balked at accepting that someone who is raped "deserved it" because of something they did in a past life. Being told the rapest was making their own horrible karma didn't really seem enough of an answer.

And...

Let's say I burned my neigbour's shed out of revenge. I wanted to see it burn. I lit it on fire. And I grinned like a fool to see that sucker burn! But the fire spread across the grass to the corner market and to my horror caught fire and burned down.

Will I suffer karma for that market with all 3 parts of an action causing act missing? If so, ...

[reiun]

Having conversations with women suggesting rape is deserved, whether just a philosophical argument or not, is a karna all of its own.

[PadmaVonSamba]

This gets brought up a lot.
Rape, disabilities, illness, etc.
Take your pick.
It’s a total misunderstanding of karma.
Karma is not about victim-blaming.
Karma isn’t some cosmic system
of punishments and rewards.

I recommend listening to the first couple of episodes of this podcast
“What’s Karma Got To Do With It?” Link:
https://urbandharmancpodcast.wordpress.com/

[PadmaVonSamba]

Let's say I burned my neigbour's shed out of revenge. I wanted to see it burn. I lit it on fire. And I grinned like a fool to see that sucker burn! But the fire spread across the grass to the corner market and to my horror caught fire and burned down.

Will I suffer karma for that market with all 3 parts of an action causing act missing? If so, ...

Let’s suppose then that the store owner collected a huge insurance payout and was able to build a bigger store with new equipment and inventory.
Would you then get good karmic results?
But then let’s suppose that this bigger store becomes a magnet for armed robbers and the owner gets killed. Does your karma score go down again?

It’s endless speculation. That’s why you can’t look at karma this way. Up and down, down and up. Where is the cut-off point when all phenomena is dependently arising?
Otherwise you are just better off playing the stock market.

[Leo Rivers]

I believe these tools are a means to remind us to accept responcibilty for curating our conduct. The seeds of our deeds as they say.

[PadmaVonSamba]

Being told the rapest was making their own horrible karma didn't really seem enough of an answer.

while that’s true, it’s about the perpetrator, not about the victim.

[Astus]

Will I suffer karma for that market with all 3 parts of an action causing act missing? If so, ...

The main element of karma is intention, and the main effect is in one's experience. It's less about external events, but more about how events are sensed and interpreted. So the karma one suffers for is in the quality of the experience primarily, not much in the specific happenings.

[Tao]

Agree.

Karmic seeds are stored in Alaya, and that's "your" mind. Not an universal mind

That's why (Astus cited):

> The main element of karma is intention, and the main effect is in one's experience.

[Ayu]

Having conversations with women suggesting rape is deserved, whether just a philosophical argument or not, is a karma all of its own.

It's just like telling parents "Your child deserved dieing." or
telling starving people "You deserved poverty."

It is bound to be contra-productive to try to explain karma like this. How can people understand the arguments as long as they are being offended in first place?

[Agent Smith]

Karma as I always maintained is causality as pertains to the ethical universe. It's an essential feature of certain moral systems we're familiar with and it seems to square with how things work e.g. as some say, what goes around comes around.

[Natan]

This was originally written for the anger thread.

1. Intention 2. Action 3. Satisfaction

The above 3 Parts of an Action was what I was taught.

But 2 complaints always came up for me.

There was the push back from women who balked at accepting that someone who is raped "deserved it" because of something they did in a past life. Being told the rapest was making their own horrible karma didn't really seem enough of an answer.

And...

Let's say I burned my neigbour's shed out of revenge. I wanted to see it burn. I lit it on fire. And I grinned like a fool to see that sucker burn! But the fire spread across the grass to the corner market and to my horror caught fire and burned down.

Will I suffer karma for that market with all 3 parts of an action causing act missing? If so, ...

The way to understand karma is how actions cause distractions and reactions to pile on.