[QUOTE=Serenity;59185]I believe we’re kind of like dust in the wind. The direction being the decisions we make, the wind being free will, dust being us.
I don’t think our lives are pre-determined. I think that we determine what happens. We’re all just the same eye looking at different patterns in a kaleidescope… What we get is partially a result of karma generated from our past lives that (in my belief) if learned from (the results of our bad karma) if we make a good decision with what we were handed, the bad karma will be righted and we’ll be that much cleaner and have generated more good karma.
Another part of what decides our lives is our minds, the way we perceive things will change our fate and what life brings us. It’s said in the Tao Te Ching, something along the lines of: one who follows the way encounters no tigers or wild ox. I may have butchered it but I believe I conveyed the meaning.
I don’t really believe in “concrete” anything in terms of physical existence, happenings, or something pre-determined.
It seems to me that if our lives were predetermined and not just dust blowing haphazardly, it would imply that “God” has an attachment to the idea of how our life should be, which, would be sin. And I don’t believe God would have an attachment since it’s produced by our weak, human perceptions.
A mistake that’s commonly made with religious philosophy, though I’m not saying it was made here, is the attempted application of human nature, logic, and perception. People trying to make sense of it in a logical way instead of seeing how it unfolds like letting a flower bloom in your mind instead of forcing the petals apart.
That’s just the way i currently see things. I think the Universe is forgiving like a parent, a Buddha, or anybody that loves another should be forgiving. That’s why I don’t think negative karma can stick for too long if you right your wrongs.[/QUOTE]
This is the one that approached my take the most. Similarly, I am also inclined see human life as a sand in an hour glass; it flows without notice, but it doesn’t disappear altogether, It changes place.
What is karma anyway? I mean, it’s such an odd thing. You can’t see it, you can’t touch it, but you can feel it. I guess it has something to do with vibrations and all that kind of thing - for me it is an in between thing. Just like music.
I believe in fate but not in a superficial sense as it is imposed via biblical texts. Imagine this analogy: you are earth and it is your dharma to effect masses smaller than you. It seems like a control. But go outside a little, and you’ll see that it is the Sun which effects how the earth behaves. And if you go even further outside, it is a certain cluster of star systems in a nebula that determines how Solar system will behave. And go even further outside, there is Milkyway galaxy, the doom of all ends. In that way, the earth has five movements:
- It rotates around its own axis,
- It rotates around sun, as it rotates around its own axis.
- It rotates with the solar system, as it rotates with the sun.
- It rotates with the galaxy, as the solar system rotates with the galaxy.
- It rotates with the cluster of galaxies, as it rotates with the galaxy.
In this macrocosmic setup, everything is dependent on one another. Similarly, human life might seem to have a free will in its own microcosmos, but when taken as part of larger cosmos, its activities are predetermined. But we can’t measure this because our perception of time is faster than of larger cosmos’.
So Karma is predetermined in my view insofar as it could be measured. In this lifetime, as me, I have had many difficulties which were not supposed to happen but happened anyway. My entire life is a pradoxical existence, yet I still live. Something is holding me together, but it occurs to me that, certain things were predetermined about me. To be more clear, as an example, I was born in a country to which I have felt no emotional affiliation whatsoever. Ever since from my childhood, I always felt like an alien within the culture I was born. And this is my major problem in this lifetime, that is, homelessness, and the painful process in search of a home. Even though I found one, life did not allow me to have it at this minute. So, it’s all about karma, but alas, very very complex to explain how I ended up like that.
Did I choose my parents or did I not? Did I choose the culture or did I not? It seems to me that these are very superficial issues. I don’t think karma has anything to do with culture or sort, since cultures are temporary constructs on a seemingly permanent platform. You can change your culture as you live, however, social conditions in our world do not really facilitate such change, but in fact make things harder for you, e.g. one cannot go anywhere without getting a visa, and it is often a very long, tiresome process. On the other side, I am inclined to the idea that karma has something to do with your mental state, which again could be influenced by environmental circumstances. Just as Quetzalcoatl wrote elsewhere, what makes bad or good people are rather environmental circumstances. Although, I do not agree that these are arbitrary - again, macrocosmic reality determines your doom.
Still, the rational choice is also one that has value. If one could set his/her mind to something and works hard on that, he/she will attain the goal. Cause and effect, however, in a microcosmic reality. But if you go outside of this microcosmic (daily) perception, and see things through a macrocosmic perception, one could realize that this is only a segment of entirety.
In a sense, for me, Karma has a lot to do with place. And place-consciousness, that is, sets free one from the burdens of Karma. The more conscious one is about the place, the freer one’s mental faculties become. That’s why I do not agree with many religious theories about attaining enlightenment and reaching God and sort. My take of Karma is rather Shamanic and Heideggerian: place is a priori to one’s capability of action-in-the-world.
