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Old 04-25-2011, 10:42 AM   #22 (permalink)
Baraka_Guru
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Plan9 View Post
All this zen horseshit is killing me. Bad things don't necessarily happen to bad people. Good things don't necessarily happen to good people. As far as I see it, it's just random chance and you're either prepared or you're not. Shit happens.
This is true, and karma plays a role in this. How you respond to shit happens will be based on your current karmic state, and the outcomes will affect this state either positively or negatively. Sometimes you make your own shit happen, which will also have an effect on karma.

Quote:
I'm a lowbrow. I need tangible examples of this karma thing in action. I need some kind of proof that, uh, David Koresh was loaded with bad karma. Is this all good vs. evil? Suggesting that good/evil exist is like suggesting that one of Baraka's D12s is an acceptable way to decide whether or not your child is going to be an astronaut when they grow up.
At the risk of oversimplifying, karma is essentially an umbrella term for all of the psychological processes that go on in our minds. There is no real direct translation for the word, and it's packed with all kinds of aspects. Good and evil can be reduced to "good" and "bad" actions. While much of that might be relative to the thinker, there are many good and bad actions that are universally known. In a general sense, causing someone misery is bad, and reducing their misery is good. There's no simpler way of putting it.

So to summarize: karma isn't the shit that happens to you; it's the shit you do.
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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
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Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot
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