[quote]Black Thorn wrote:
tiredoflogin wrote:
Not killing or otherwise harming other living creatures is of obvious benefit for them. Less obvious is the fact that refraining from harming others is equally advantageous for ourselves. Why? Because of the law of karma. “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.” When you kill, or cause others to kill for you, in order to satisfy your desire for meat, you incur a karmic debt, and this debt must eventually be repaid.
So, in a very real sense, the keeping of a vegetarian diet is a gift which we give to ourselves. We feel better, the quality of our lives improves as the heaviness of our karmic indebtedness diminishes, and we are offered entrance into new subtle and heavenly realms of inner experience. It is well worth the small price you have to pay!
No one cares. btw, talking about “karma” already means any self-respecting Christian will consider you stupid/a heathen. And no one cares about the Quan Vin method. So this bunch of oriental crap is only interesting if YOU ARE NOT christian or muslim. Does this mean a little more than half the world population? Hmmm. Considering that the karma quan whateva adepts are usually practicing yoga, not weight lifting, thus not ever reading this site (which promotes about EVERYTHING you don’t seem to consider right)…
Proof that being vegan makes both weak you both weak AND ignorant: it’s LEV, not LEO
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I don’t mean to hijack the thread, and i’m not defending tiredoflogin, but the quote does demonstrate that there is a hint of truth in the whole karma thing, altho i wouldnt say in the way it is believed nowadays. you said no christian will care about it but he then quotes a karma-like christian saying, “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.”
so there might be some truth in karma from a christian point of view.
“Fools buy false coins because they are like the true.
If in the world no genuine minted coin
Were current, how would forgers pass the false?
Falsehood were nothing unless truth were there,
To make it specious. 'Tis the love of right
Lures men to wrong. Let poison but be mixed
With sugar, they will cram it into their mouths.
Oh, cry not that all creeds are vain! Some scent
Of truth they have, else they would not beguile.
Say not, ‘How utterly fantastical!’
No fancy in the world is all untrue.
Amongst the crowd of dervishes hides one,
One true fakir. Search well and thou wilt find!”
MUCH MORE emphasis is placed on the doctrine of Karma in Hindu theology than in the religions of Beni Israel. By Hindu theology I do not mean only the Vedantic or Brahmin, but also the Buddhist; by the religion of Beni Israel I do not mean the Judaic only, but also the Christian and Muslim. The whole of Hindu philosophy is based upon the doctrine of Karma, but the moral of the religions of Beni Israel is also based upon Karma; the only difference is that in the one case the philosophy is based on Karma, and in the other it is the morals.
The meaning of the word Karma is action. It is quite evident that what one sows one reaps; the present is the echo of the past, the future is the reflection of the present; and therefore it is logical that the past should make the present and the present make the future.
Nevertheless, in the Sufi school little is said upon this subject, and very often people interested in the doctrine of Karma begin to wonder if Sufism is opposed to it. It is not at all opposed to it, but because of the way a Sufi looks at it he cannot but close his lips.
In the first place what a person calls right or wrong is only according to his own knowledge. He calls something right which he knows as right, which he has learned to call right; he calls something wrong which he has learned to call wrong. And in this way there may be various nations, communities, and races, differing in their conceptions of right and wrong. A person accuses another of wrongdoing only on such grounds as he knows to be wrong. And how does he know a thing to be wrong? Because he has learned it, he has read it in a book, or he has been told so. People have looked with horror, with hatred, with prejudice at the doings of one another, individuals, communities, nations, and races; and yet there is no label, there is no stamp, there is no seal upon actions which points them out as being right or wrong. This is one aspect of this question.
There is also another way of looking at it. At every step of evolution man’s conception of good and bad, of right and wrong, changes. How does it change? Does he see more wrong or does he see less wrong as he evolves? One might naturally think that by virtue of one’s evolution one would see more wrong, but that is not the case; the more one evolves the less wrong one sees, for then it is not always the action itself which counts, it is the motive behind it. Sometimes an action, apparently right, may be made wrong by the motive behind it. Sometimes an action, apparently wrong, may be right on account of its motive. Therefore although the ignorant are ready to form an opinion of another person’s action, for the wise it is most difficult to form an opinion of the action of another.
Seen from the religious point of view, if a man evolves spiritually he sees less and less wrong at every stage of his evolution. How can God be counting the minor faults of human beings who know so little about life? We read in the Bible, ‘God is love’; but what does love mean? Love means forgiveness, love does not mean judging. When people make of God a cruel judge, sitting in the seat of judgment, getting hold of every person and asking him about his faults, judging him for his actions, sentencing him to be cast out of the heavens, then where is the God of love?
Some people believe that accidents are prepared by their Karma. In a way this is true, but one should not emphasize this. If one asks why there is a drum or a trumpet in the orchestra, the answer is: In order that the music may be played as the composer wished it to be played. Perhaps to our mind it is disagreeable; but the composer wrote music which required a drum or a trumpet. In the same way all that seems to us useless is there for some purpose, all making the divine symphony. We say, ‘Why is this?’ but it is our limited mind which says that. In reality everything has its place and purpose. Someone asked the Prophet [Muhammad] in jest why mosquitoes were created, and the Prophet answered, ‘That you might not sleep all night, but might devote some hours of the night to your prayers.’
Coming to the philosophical point of view one may ask whether man is a machine or an engineer. If he is a machine, then he must go on for years and years under a kind of mechanical action of his evil deeds, in which case he is not responsible for his actions. But if he is an engineer then he is responsible for his actions; and if he is responsible for his actions, then he is the master of his destiny, and makes his destiny what he wishes it to be.
The difference between the human and the divine is the difference between the two ends of the same line. One represents limitation, the other the unlimited. One end represents imperfection, the other perfection. And when we consider the human beings of this world, we see that they do not all stand at the same end; they fill the gap between one extreme and the other. Although just now the world is going through a phase of exalting the idea of equality, it happens that the nobility of the soul, even its divinity, is ignored. In every phase of life one notices this. There is one vote for everybody in the state, and also in the home; it is the same everywhere. But when we come to understand the spiritual life of things we shall realize that just as on the piano all the notes are not the same, so all the souls are not alike. Man starts his life as a mechanism, a machine, but he can develop to the stage where he is an engineer. The restriction of Karma is only for the machine.
No doubt every soul has to be a machine first in order to become an engineer later; and one does not turn at once into an engineer. One does this gradually; that is why the influence of Karma is not the same upon every soul. The law of Karma is different for each individual. A thing can be sin for one person and a virtue for another; it can be right for the one and wrong for the other. According to this law each individual has his own Karma to meet with.
Speaking from this point of view, the Sufi says, ‘It is true that if things go wrong with me, it is the effect of my actions. But that does not mean that I should submit to it. I should be resigned to it because it results from my past actions; but I must make my destiny because I am the engineer.’ That is the difference. I have heard a person say, ‘I have been ill for so many years, but I have been resigned to it. I bear it easily because it is my Karma, I am paying back.’ By that he may prolong the paying, which was intended perhaps for ten years, for the rest of his life. The Sufi in this case acts not only as a patient but also as a doctor to himself. He says, ‘Is my condition bad? Is it the effect of the past? I am going to cure it. The past has brought the present, but out of this present I will make the future.’ It only means that he does not allow past influences to overwhelm his life; he wants to produce now the influence that will make his life better later.
Besides there is something still more essential connected with this subject. Before a person takes upon himself the responsibility of paying back for his past, does he ask himself, ‘What was I in the past?’ If he does not know this, why must he hold himself responsible for it? We can only be responsible for something with which our conscience is tainted; and that is quite a sufficient load to carry in life. Why add to it a load of the unknown past?
When we look at our selves philosophically, what do we see? The keener our sight becomes, the less of our self can we find. The more conscious of reality we become the less conscious we are of our small self. So all this burden of past actions is carried by man without his ever having been invited to take it up. He could just as well have ignored it. It does not benefit him; it only gives him a brief satisfaction to think that his troubles are just; but this idea of justice fortifies his discomfort. The pain that could have been stopped continues because he has fortified the pain.
The main object of esoteric work is to put away the thought of oneself: what one was, what one is, and what one will be. One would be much better occupied in thinking about life as a whole: what it is, what it should have been, what it will be. This idea produces a kind of synthetic point of view and unites instead of dispersing. It is constructive, and the secret of spiritual liberation is to be found in it. Brahmins, Vedantists, and Buddhists, who hold Karma to be the foremost doctrine, rise above the idea of Karma as soon as they touch the idea of the goal that is to be attained by spirituality, which they call Mukti or Nirvana. For it is a condition that unless a person has risen above that idea he does not touch Nirvana.
