karma/nirvana vs pre-determination

androidmarv

The karma/nirvana theory says:
the quality of your reincarnated next life depends on how much good karma you accumulate in your present life. The good karma accumulated in successive lives will eventually lead you to nirvana - the ultimate release from the cycle of rebirth.

Pre-determination says:
Your life is pre-determined and your future can be fore told by the reading of your stars from your 'janampatri' or the lines on your hand.

The conflict:
If my life is pre-determined, then the amount of karma i accumulate in this life is also pre-determined. Thus the number of lives in which I attain Nirvana is pre-determined. So do I have control over my karma, my only way to attain nirvana? How does this work?

kaushiks

Both are true. You do have free will. But they (??/G/..) just happen to know how you will exercise your free will. Thats all.

Ikuru

Nothing is certain, but there might be such thing as free will.

It just might be that none of it is true. What if there is no karma and no free will. what if this is it and all there is to it, then what?

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kaushiks

So what. So be it. Theories are available, you are free to choose what you like.

Ikuru

Yes.
It might be so...
Or maybe where destined to choose a certain path.

NIRVANA

I agree. A person born in the slums in Mumbai can only go so far no matter how hard he tries (there are always exceptions but generally speaking). And a person born rich might just have a few issues in life, but does not have to worry about food/shelter and other basic needs.

So our lives are dependent a lot on who/where we are born !

dharmasoul

Hi androidmarv,

Yes, the quality of this life and future lives is dependent on your karma from this life and all past lives.

I have heard one great Buddhist teacher put it this way: "If you want to understand what you had / were in previous lives, look at your life now. If you want to understand what you will have / be in future lives, look at what you are doing now."

On our subtle mindstream we have the seeds (potentials) for everything, but these will only ripen when the correct conditions are present to ripen any particular seed. And just as a seed needs warmth, moisture, stable fertile ground to germinate, so does a karmic seed on your mindstream need the correct causes and conditions to germinate. All those seeds have accumulated on the mindstream for numberless previous lives. Everything is dependent on this – all actions have a cause and all actions have an effect. All actions will have a corresponding effect (positive action = postive effect, negative action = negative effect) and they will all increase (just as a seed produced a tree that produces thousands of fruit which in turn produces millions of seeds) if not destroyed or purified.

Personally I don’t believe that one’s future is pre-determined. Pre-determined gives me an image of inflexibility / I can have no affect on what happens to me (sort of robot-like) and my actions will have no effect whatsoever because of that. I believe my actions DO have an effect on everything around me and we are all interdependent because of that.

kaushiks:
‘Free-will’ is karma. For example: one has the free choice to buy a particular blue shirt, but what brings you to that decision? You reach that decision because of all the imprints laid on your mind from your education, the influence of your parents, family, friends, what you have been influenced by in your life, what you have seen, read, touched, experienced etc. Through that you see the shirt and subliminally up pops a result, “Nice shirt, I’ll buy it”. Your decision of ‘free-will’ has causes and the causes of the past have an effect. Free will is karma, even if the way I’ve put it here seems like it only involves just this life. It’s not that it’s pre-determined, but just as one has all imprints for everything on one’s mind; different influences are the causes for different seeds to ripen in different individuals. Plus, these will ripen in completely different sequences according to each individuals influences.

NIRVANA:
I agree in that our lives are dependent on who/where we are born. But I would like to elaborate on that a bit:
For instance, one person can be born in the slums of Delhi, get a good education and find a prosperous way in life, or another can be born in the same place, have absolutely nothing but end up being happier than the first, or another can be born in same place and their whole life is just incredible suffering. Or one can be born in the richest family in a country and just be dogged by misfortune, fear, persecution or sickness …….. I think the combinations are absolutely endless, as we’ve all seen.
But more to the point – why is this? Again, I put forward the word ‘karma’ as the theory I (personally) find as the best answer.
Let me put it this way – as your lungs refuse a breath and you understand that death is here, your state of mind is most essential. This is known as ‘throwing karma’; this state or action of the mind is the biggest influence on the next body you are born in. It has the force of ‘throwing’ a mindstream into its next body. If the mind is angry, fearful, hateful, unwilling to let go, then this negative state of mind can result in an unfortunate body (a suffering animal, a person born in poverty etc). Of course, this also applies to a positive state of mind when death arrives, which will encourage a mindstream to be thrown into an advantageous body.
The second type of karma influencing your rebirth after the subtle mind stream has left the body is known as ‘completing karma’ which will dictate the pleasant or unpleasant circumstances of one’s life in accordance of the imprints that ripen. (For me -) therefore, karma has the biggest influence on where / who you our born. Which karmic seeds manifest as throwing karma and which as completing depends on different conditions.

Karma is not fixed, we have the ability to purify negative seeds and create positive seeds through our actions. Purification can be done with certain states of mind (known as The 4 Powers) and the virtuous seeds can be created mainly due to forming a positive motivation for doing something. The most destructive force when it comes to positive seeds is anger – that destroys so much. In short, you are the controller of what you create; you are the controller of your future lives because just as your positive actions will have a future positive effect, your negative actions will most definitely have a negative effect.

So, androidmarv,
Please excuse me, if I do go on a bit , but I hope this can contribute to your thoughts about if you are in control of your karma and how it works, plus I hope that the above can stimulate further discussion. Please consider that what I’ve written is just my opinion from a Buddhist point of view ………. And totally reliant on past causes and conditions!!!!!

May all your virtuous wishes be realized immediately, may all your actions benefit others and may all suffering cease in this very second.

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mira4bai4

IF ONE ACCEPTS THAT KARMA IS REAL THEN:

Karma - Is Action and re-action; the law of action and re-action; the fruit or result of past thoughts, words and deeds. There are three types of Karma:
1. Pralabdh, that portion of our karma which is allotted to this life and is responsible for our present existence. It is also called Fate or Destiny.
2. Kriyaman, the result or fruit of new actions performed during the present life.
3. Sinchit, those karmas which still remain to be taken out of our own stored-up lot and are to be worked off or to bear fruit in future incarnations.

Doing good deeds does act as a balance against the so called bad deeds or karmas where we have caused harm in some way to others in the past. The lighter our karma, the better our birth or our attitude; lighter being less weighed down by heavy or the bad karmas. The state of Nirvana arrives when we have no karma, that is a zero balance. If one goes out and literally saves the world then this is a huge amount of good karma and so instead of being weighed down by bad karma one is weighed down by good karma.

The nature of this creation that we are involved in is likened to a prison or a maize called Chaurasi, the Wheel of Eighty-Four, our karmas shackle us to this existence, chains of iron (bad karma) bind as fimly as chains of gold (good karma). This creation is known to be held within the parameters of the mind, that is while the mind controls our thoughts and our lives then we are bound to the minds creation. This creation is that of the physical, astral and causal worlds, which are all perishable, the region of the Universal Mind. The term like mindedness is a reflection of the billions of others that are with us in this creation, who have created and maintained this ILLUSION that we call our existence.

Based on the understanding that there are a number of spiritual regions or realms and we are presently in one of those, the higher ones have a significance in this regard. The mind, that is the Individual Mind, it is said to have its true home in the realm of Trikuti, this is the second spiritual region or realm. It is also said that where there is no mind, there is no karma, and therefore based on this while one has a load of good karma or bad karma, one is within the confines of the mind. With this being so then once we reach the point of zero karma, we have moved beyond the second region, Trikuti, the Individual Mind has gone to its Home and we, that is our Soul, has continued to progress beyond this region or realm to a higher region where the mind is no longer part of the scenario.

The state that many term Nirvana, 'Nirvan' meaning the state of complete absorption in meditation, is a stage where ones consciousness is no longer dormant, that is, it is fully and completely matured as consciousness. There are levels of Nirvana, one stage called 'Fana', the first, where 'God Is Not' and at a further stage of 'Fana' the 'I Am God' state is experienced. There are levels of consciousness and levels of super-consciousness within the state of Nirvana as there are levels of many forms of consciousness existing in our past, present and future states. The state of 'Fana' might be likened to the 7th Plane which is not easily attained on ones first journey beyond the region of the mind. There are said to be 9 spiritual regions and many stages or levels within each of the 9.

There are many times in ones spiritual journey, we are spiritual beings having a physical experience at present; where on the spiritual journey one gets glimpses of the higher regions and these may feel like 'Nirvana', however, unless ones journey has gone through the many other levels within the preceeding regions, the spiritual experience is that of the various levels of 'heavens'.

We are presently, those of us that have not merged as one with God, in the Gross World, we have to rise up through the 3 subtle worlds and the following 2 mental worlds before we can leave the sphere of Illusion. Our first journey is our spiritual passage through these 5 worlds or regions and as our karmas diminish our ability to rise into these regions becomes easier and the length of time staying in each becomes longer. Until such time as we have experienced all regions and have the ability to progress beyond them we cannot reach the stages of Nirvana. One cannot have any karma remaining in order to attain the states of Nirvana.

Nirvana is the stage where we are ready to move into the 2nd journey, which is beyond Nirvana, one does not move beyond any level until one has fully experienced to the point of saturation all those levels below. While there are any hints of any aspect of physical, mental and subtle remaining within a soul, that soul cannot reach the 4th and final journey or go beyond the 9 regions, to what is termed the 'OM' Point, not to be confused with the general term OM like the magic sound of OM, which is only a subtle reflection of the OM Point.

The OM Point is the Creation Point where there is finite Nothing which manifests as the Infinite Nothingness, which is the Illusion and may be likened to a shadow of God, God being infinite, his shadow is also infinite. As there is a shadow, like a reflection there is also the object of the reflection or the reality. Everything is the manifestation of the equally infinite and the finite point, the Creation Point, the OM Point = GOD.

androidmarv

Both are true. You do have free will. But they (??/G/..) just happen to know how you will exercise your free will. Thats all. - kaushiks

let me further elaborate on the problem. i think we're going a little off track. What I meant was that, say, fine they do happen to know how we exercise our free will, but then thats because they (whoever) knows who we are because they created us with pre-determined characteristics. Which means we did not have the right to choose our behaviour in the first place. which brings us to two notions:
1) if pre-determination is true, you can't set the pace in which you wish to achieve nirvana, i.e how soon or how late you wish to attain it.
2) there is no incentive left to be good (if you an attain nirvana quickly)

I'm taking this in a very logical cause-effect fashion. perhaps somebody has a metaphysical perspective of looking at it.

androidmarv

onw of my friends is working with iskon for an exhibition space on the gita. i asked her the same questions, if she could put them to her gurus. her reply was as follows:

basically there are 4 kinds of yoga; primarily dhyana
yoga, gyana yoga, karma yoga n bhakti yoga. These yoga
are the links between the material body and the
spiritual self. It helps us to attain the absolute
truth or nirvana, or moksha. basically where a living
entity is freed from the bondage of life and death.

now according to karma its ur active involvement with
work, without hoping for any fruitive results and with
the consciousness of the absolute truth one can attain
nirvana. and laws of karma doesnt mean one's past in
this life but it can be any other life, since one's
spirit soul is the same. so if anything is predicted
by a true astrologer its is in accordance with ones
karma.

anyway i'm trying to answer ur doubt very briefly.
these are really complicated and intense stuff. we all
are getting lost in it. so if u can't understand any
of it don't blame it on to me. its ur karma.

....ok, so back to me, i'm thoroughly confused with the part:
"...and laws of karma doesnt mean one's past in
this life but it can be any other life, since one's
spirit soul is the same. so if anything is predicted
by a true astrologer its is in accordance with ones
karma..."

anybody can decipher?

NIRVANA

Like i said there are always exceptions. But speaking practically maybe 0.001 % of the people born in slums really have a chance. Am i wrong ? For someone like that i would doubt if he/she can have a positive outlook of life (or a positive throwing karma). For someone born rich, no matter how miserable his/her existence, there are some basic needs which they never have to be concerned about.

I feel when the basic needs are not met ( food, clothes, home) none of the philosophical theories make sense !!

machadinha

I take the theory to mean that the richer person who forgets to feed the soul and his fellow men will be more miserable for it, in this life if not in any other. Anyway the emphasis on personal attainment and salvation overlooks the element that everything is interconnected over time and space so what I do unto me I do unto all others. Ahem in Machadinha's reading. I mean the focus on personal karma and lifecycles is a sign of being far removed from moksha if that's what you want to call it.

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abracax

Arbeit macht frei.

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India Edge

on predetermination: Our future in the stars? Why look out when we've only to look within? "God" is open 24 hrs a day, no cover charge, no dress code, no secret password. We (humans) seem to like to complicate things, always looking for the key to the lock while the door stands open before us. On the othe other hand, a friend always sees an astrologist when he goes to India, and it seems to work for him. So maybe we're each just building our own reality as we go...

on karma: Most of us who've made it to middle age have learned (sometimes painfully) that karma ("as you sow, so shall you reap" etc) is a fact and not just a theory or a belief, but figuring out the mechanism of its functioning seems to lie in the sphere of religious conjecture and mysticism. And with that in mind, I wonder if perhaps karma functions not only simply as a reward or punishment for past actions but also puts in place what we NEED for spiritual progression.

Finally, these types of discussions are like a merry-go-round to me - great fun, I don't get anywhere, and they make me dizzy.

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dharmasoul

Mmmmmmm .......... yer can't beat the smell of a juicey discussion in the mornings!!!!!!

NIRVANA:

With deep respect to your point of view –

No, I don't think you're wrong at all about your first point, but my opinion differs with regard to your second - I could not doubt the possibility of someone who is poor materially having the ability to die in a positive state - I have known many materially 'poor' people who are extremely kind hearted and generous despite their situation and as a result are practicing virtue (and more likely to get to death with a positive mind). And others who have great contentment despite their material inadequacies. As a result, I think it is possible to have a postive state of mind at death and this is not necessarily reliant on your material situation.

I also would like to mention that many people who do NOT have to think about "basic needs" (which I take as meaning as those who are materially afluent) do NOT practice a good heart or kindness as much as others as they have a fear of losing their status or wealth (or they think of either/both as their happiness).

May I also differ in that “when basic needs are not met (which I take as you mean from a material point of view) none of the philosophical theories make sense” - Granted, we are talking philosophy here, but I don’t think one’s material status has any bearing on your state of mind. It only has bearing on the quality of your actions from previous lives. What I would like to highlight in the hope it may be useful to you is that – despite the philosophy – the theory of cause and effect is a great one to consider as viable. I agree wholeheartly with:

I think one has to be careful of one’s actions because of the consequences. As is mentioned – since all is interconnected, there are definite consequences to any action. But the plus point …… …… is that they correspond – positive to positive, negative to negative.

And yep, I would like to totally agree that these sort of discussions make me very dizzy too ....... the merry-go-round always made me throw up as a kid!!! ........., but I do find it wonderful to consider it all from so many points of view. I find mira4bai4’s points very interesting, even though I have to confess I understand so very little of it. I’ll study it some more.

So, I wanna get back to androidmarv’s points, but I’m afraid I talk too much and have run out of time. Hopefully, I can come back to it ……. I’ll try and stay on the points next time

I submit my view with respect to your points NIRVANA, and please forgive me if I appeared dismissive.