Posted by Ritch on August 20, 2002, at 1:49:53
In reply to Re: How long before karma catches up with you?, posted by madison88 on August 19, 2002, at 22:41:54
> I didn't think it is unavoidable that you personally will suffer more for your actions than everybody in general. If you believe that you are part of a greater something and will return to it when you die, then it is the greater whole that suffers. There is a popular, cliched Buddhist analogy. You are a wave in the ocean when you are alive. When you die, you lose your distinct properties and are just ocean. Reincarnation, which I am not sure about, holds that you become another wave at some point, so if you believe that, you, having messed with other waves by doing something nasty, will then suffer payback then. I tend to think that once you lose the distinct properties of a wave, you become ocean and never again the same wave that you once were, therefore the you that did something nasty doesn't get payback, because it isn't really you, as you exist now. You may suffer for your actions now since messing with other waves messes with the ocean, and you are ocean. The greater whole suffers, of which you are part. So my final answer is that you may suffer now and in the future, but not anymore than anybody else suffers.
Thanks for the input! So, our current individual "sins" are negatively tainting a future *collective* existence (through the reincarnation process). IOW, you make the future world (of alive humans) more unpleasant and uninhabitable by our current, day-to-day, realworld decisions. So you are *responsible* for the future's "climate" by your acts of today. But, that brings us back to the individual again. Christianity is very individual-soul oriented, Buddhism is not (there's the crucial difference). What we have to contend with is the individual MIND at odds with both philosphies. I guess that is the RAND thing. I have read her stuff, liked it and then grew disillusioned with it, but that has been the case with all other ideas I have read about. Maybe that's why I still seem to trust my feelings in absence of reasoning. That is the only way I can explain my belief in God.Mitch
poster:Ritch
thread:822
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/faith/20020715/msgs/837.html