fallenangel

Do you believe in karma?To one extent or another, or at least acknowledge the thought line of basically what goes around comes around? Part of me thinks (because i believe in reincarnation to an extent) that i must have done something stupid or bad in a past lifetime to deserve the terrible luck and events that are going through my life right now. It could be a lot worse i know that, but it's like a constant kick in the shins figuratively speaking...

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all I wanna do is - give the best of me to you

TheShadow

Good question. I know you might call this coincidence, but this one time, a short while after a certain hockey player, namely Steve Sullivan, had been hit by a puck in the head, he had another hockey game. At this certain hockey entertainment event, a fan pointed to his head [shown on the cameras] to make fun of Sullivan's injury. Later in the game, a wild puck flew into the crowd, and lo and behold, it hit the Same fan, in the face, the one who had insulted the aforementioned Sullivan! If that's not karma I don't know what is.

PS Excuse the annoying storylike way of my writing, but I'm just in the mood where I write in this way.

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You know that song that goes like...

tecoyah

I think instant karma is rare , but in the context of a lifetime.....I honestly believe it to be an active force.

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Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha

sexymama

Absolutely -- and not always from previous lives, but fromt his life as well. However, I don't believe all our "bad" luck is our "fault." It may mean that we need to go through certain struggles in order to gain the wisdom needed for personal growth and/or for future events.

fallenangel, hang in there, life is full of ups and downs; and it is true what they say, "no pain, no gain."

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If you can go deeply into lovemaking, the ego disappears. That is the beauty of lovemaking, that it is another source of a glimpse of god

It's not about being perfect; it's about developing some skill at managing imperfection.

:::OshnSoul:::

Maybe not in the Taoist sense, but as far as experience and consequences, yes.
For you know to experience that of which you do to others, that experience will come back to you so that you may experience first-hand.
You reap what you sow.

Bobaphat

I don't believe in Karma as a in determined by fate, but I do believe that if you are a Dick to people and do stupid things, people will be less likely to help you in your time of need. (As said above, you reap what you sow). I don't think that my kicking a pigeon is going to get me run over by a truck 10 years down the road though. If I happen to get run over by a truck, then that's just what that circumstance dictacted. I could be Mother Theresa, but if I am in front of that truck, I am getting squashed.

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--size matters not-- yoda

SSJTWIZTA

Hell yeah I believe in karma. I was hanging out at my friends house playing some music about 4 years ago. My friend (josh) had an old autococker paintballgun sitting in his shed, aired up and everything. One of the bitch asses watching us practice decided to shoot me in the balls while I was minding my own business socializing, people around here do stupid shit like that. The next day that asshole ball bruiser gets drunk and shoots himself in the foot with his .22 rifle.

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First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the communists and I did not speak out because I was not a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for me And there was no one left to speak out for me.
-Pastor Martin Niemoller

KellyC

Ok..Last year, on July 4th, me and a couple of friends went down to the indian reservation to buy some fireworks. After about an hour of walking around to find some good last minute deals. We saw a stand with two sucker kids. They were around 12 or 13 so we decided if we can fool them. Needless to say, we got a really good bargain. And one of my friend (the booze hound from the other post) managed to steal a big bag of firecrackers. Then 10 minutes later, we got to another stand, looking for some M-100s and this guy claims he got it. It was a bag with about 100 count of M-100s and he want 20 bucks for it. We didn't wanna pay that much for the bag but we really wanted some good stuff so we bought it after 5 minutes of nowhere negotiating.

Well, we weren't allowed to test some of those M-100s any where near fireworks market so we headed to the beach to try them out. Turns out those so called M-100s are fake. They were just a big shell with fucking weak ass black cats inside. Now, I dont' want to believe in this Karma thing, but I can't help thinking about it that summer. And again...now....

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Him: Ok, I have to ask, what do you believe?
Me: Shit happens.

Thagrastay

I do not believe in Karma, but Meschiach said we will reap what we sow. Cause and effect- all of that. It has been my experience that it is very true. We do reap what we sow.

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"That's it! They've got the cuffs on him, he's IN the car!"

CSflim

13 yes vs. 4 no.

I find the results of this poll very disturbing, to say the least.

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lordjeebus

Karma does not necessarily imply some sort of supernatural force.

In much Asian philosophy, Karma is much as you describe "cause and effect."

All our actions have causes and effects. Those effects can be causes for actions by others. Our actions are interconnected and can return to us via the network of causes and effects.

Kostya

If Karma exists...

Will somebody explain George Bush to me?

Unless that dude is Gandhi reincarnated I think the cosmos has a lot to answer for...

CSflim

Of course not. That's not how mysticism works.

You are only allowed to consider positive 'evidence'. Any points where things deviate from the 'theory' are not entertained in the slightest.

Do you know that I have incredible powers of telekenesis? I can "will" a rolled dice to come up 6. It works 100% of the time as long as you don't take into consideration the times when it comes up 1-5.

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lurkette

Exactly.

An example from my own life:

My father was a horrible father, especially to my brother. When my brother died last year, my dad had the hardest time dealing with it of anybody in our family. He has done and said things that he will now never be able to clean up with my brother. He will have to live with that for the rest of his life.

That is karma.

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"If ten million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."

- Anatole France

blossom

And here I thought I escaped this crap on the politics board

Now to the question at hand. Karma is a myth, its nothing more then guilt and wishful thinking.

Take for example that I decide to cheat on my wife.

That same night I'm not home she meets someone who she decides is her soul mate and runs off with all my money.

Now I feel guilty about cheating on my wife and can blame Karma for it. Its also BS, I blame it because I connect the cause and effect.

Had I been out at a soup kitchen and the same thing happened that night, no one would think 'ah Karma'.

Its trying to find an answer to random events in life that gives some sort of cosmic meaning.

People do bad things and people do good things and good things happen to people and bad things happen to people but there is no cosmic accountant making sure everyone gets their share of both.

Edit: Wooopsy, forgot I was on my wifes computer, used her account

Ustwo

Stare At The Sun

I believe more in

"You reap what you sow" As, if you're an ass to everyone, most people will hate you, and it's a small world.

However, if you're nice, that too can help you out.

Ace_O_Spades

No, I don't believe in Karma... I believe in cause and effect (causality as it were)... As someone mentioned above, if you're a jerk, people hate you. If you're nice, people like you. But I can't picture me stepping on a bug when I'm six years old, or doing something wrong in a "past life" being responsible for me getting into a car accident or worse.... Everything has its cause and effect.

My ex girlfriend hated the fact that I didn't believe in mysticism or spirituality, especially in Karma/Astrology/Reincarnation.... but it just seems so bogus and without backing that i simply cannot.

The Scientific Method has taken all the fun out of life it seems. oh well

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Feh.

fallenangel

Maybe your ex girlfriend didn't hate the the fact that you didn't believe in something, just perhaps that you might have looked down upon her beliefs because they couldn't be backed up with hard scientific proof.

Personally, I believe Karma comes in all forms, from extreme cases to very small instances in every day life. If you do good things for other people, good things shall happen to you. There are greater things in life that i cannot begin to understand or try to explain, it's just a feeling, a vibe. Maybe that sounds silly to some people, but i just posted it on here to see what some other people thought.

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all I wanna do is - give the best of me to you

Ace_O_Spades

its hard NOT to look down on something that in some cases people have come straight out and said that it was bogus.

I never hated the fact that she believed in it... i just hated when she would try to bring it into situations between us... Or read a horoscope that "Described her life in such great detail it was uncanny..." It was a little too much for me to take seriously

especially when 90% of horoscopes sound identical.

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Feh.

fallenangel

She may not have tried to bring it into situations between the two of you, maybe she just noticed some similarities... regardless, it's her own beliefs, and one would assume that provided she just wanted you to respect that and not push it on you, you still shouldn't look down upon her for it.

Best to agree to disagree... only if in agreeing to disagree you don't still consider her foolish because it's not what you believe. *shrugs*

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all I wanna do is - give the best of me to you

Ace_O_Spades

Hahaha is this nicole? if not then its someone who knows her... because this is waaaaaay too creepy to be a coincidence

NOBODY knows that much about someone out of the blue

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Feh.

Eclipse26

Exactly what I believe. I think that sometimes "bad" things happen over and over because there is a lesson to be learned. Once I learn it...I get past that.

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What the damn

:::OshnSoul:::

^^^ yes to both of you.
things that we label as bad are what we truly grow from. Not necessarily lessons to be learned, but opportunities for us to see and decide Who We Are. We truly get more out of the more difficult experiences than we do the easier ones.

StormBerlin

Karma is so much more than "What goes around, comes around." and "You reap what you sow." Karma's main shtick is that fact that you are experiencing these things because you NEED to experience them. You don't experience them just because you laughed at some guy because he got hit in the head with a hockey puck. I think that was more of a coincidence, not so much Karma. I just wrote an eight page paper on this last week (talk about a tough assignment) and Karma is such a deep topic it's not even describeable.
Anywho, I do believe in Karma. And similarly I believe in Fate.

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"if anal sex could get a girl pregnant i'd be tits deep in child support" Arcane

ngdawg

I think fate and karma are intertwined. I also think that people come into our lives just when they are supposed to. Choices are like forks in a road and each one leads to yet another. We learn from those choices and move ahead to the next and for me, at least, it seems each choice leads me to something that affected my life greatly. I don't mean what we choose to wear or eat; rather what job we chose or town to live in. Sometimes even the choice to go out or stay home can affect our lives in a major way. Is it predestined? I think some of it is. Karma is not mystical payback as in the case of the hockey fan getting beaned. It may be, though, the coming together of choice and fate.

qtpye4u84

I told a lady that I liked her necklace and then like 2 days later a girl told me she liked mine and I have had this necklace for like 3 years and no one has ever told me they liked it or even comitted on it.
I believe in karma.

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The QTpie

Demiurge

I don't believe that there is the "Karma". I think karma is just the result of long term cosality. And it isn't a perfect balance at all. I mean look at starving children... I don't exactly recall them being evil bastards before. Born, hungry, sick, cry, die... finito. Just a bleak on and off.

tisonlyi

Karma is a very misunderstood and misused term.

It is nothing to do with mysticism, nothing to do with past lives, unless that fits into your world view - there is no _need_ to believe in reincarnation for Karma to make sense.

Karma in the East is Causality in the West. Plain, simple cause and effect.

The reason it starts to take on a mystical character in our minds is due to the scale of the beast contemplated. When chains of cause and effect are linked together and traced back it can be quite overwhelming, not to say humbling.

Generally, in our humdrum, mundane existences, we think of cause and effect in isolation. one shot deals. I let go of the plate, it smashes on the floor.

But, if you think about, well, anything, any single thing, action, whatever. Start thinking about it's lines of cause and effect - that anything you see or do now is an 'effect' which has causes, and those causes themselves are 'effects' which have causes, and so on - and pretty soon, you'll start to see that is absolutely everything (or, if you like, everyone) in this universe (world) is dependent on everything (everyone) else.

Do it.

When you have, is it hard to say that there is an incredible weight of Karma pushing you and your life around? When you see it, you can change your part in it and try to cut a lot of the bad Karma out.

Bad Karma, like... oooh, ummm....

ustwo.

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"I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place." - Winston Churchill, 1937 --{ORLY?}--

John Henry

Yeah, now I get it. So you go up to some guy in a dark alleyway in London, mug him, take his shoes, wallet, credit cards and mobile phone and get away with it scot-free (because the vast majority of muggers in London never get caught).

Then you get all his stuff, use the money to go and buy some crack, beat someone up for kicks, etc and the guy you mugged gets to walk home barefoot and poor.

Because that's karma, folks.

Actions and consequences.

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"No one was behaving from very Buddhist motives. Then, thought Pigsy, he was hardly a Buddha, nor was he a monkey. Presently, he was a pig spirit changed into a little girl pretending to be a little boy to be offered to a water monster. It was all very simple to a pig spirit."

ngdawg

Is this Karma? I think so...A dear young friend passed away this week. He was a director of a car club we belong to and during the first event he organized, it rained the entire weekend. Second event, it rained. It got to be so we would tease that if there were a drought, his events would end it. The day of his wake started out nice and sunny and, not wanting to wear heavy clothes all day, I decided to grab a tshirt from a pile. Now, I can't see what the shirts are the way they are folded-I grabbed the top one, unfolded it-it was the shirt from his very first event. I believe in cosmic connections, but that freaked me out. Also, a couple of hours before we were all to go to the wake, it started to rain. I remarked to my husband, even in death, the guy can't keep us from going to one of his events in the rain....Nice going, Bob-rest in peace.

Xell101

I believe in karma, I view it as causality and a much grander scale.

To toss in a tale of Instant Karma, some guy was beating his dog with the butt end of a -loaded- weapon and accidentally shot himself in the gut. When the paramedics got there, I think he was already dead, he a gunshot wound the belly and lots of little bite marks from the little dog that didn't have it coming.

Stompy

I don't believe in Karma. It's hard to believe that the universe has this natural will to "punish" people who are bad when in reality it doesn't matter. Once mankind is erased, what does it matter? What is "bad"? Stars explode all the time, is that the universal equvalent to walking up to a random person and kicking them in the shin?

To me, it's just another man-made tool used to keep people in check and well behaved for fear that something more damning could happen to them, like religion.

If you practice and live by it, more power to you (and I'm not knockin anyone who does it), but in the end all these things were just thought up by man (philosophers).

Yeah, there's a slight possibility that a monk had a spiritual connection with an actual divine being of sorts who explained this, but I'm leaning more toward the "keep order by fear of punishment".

Besides, life is all just a series of experiences. If you're a Christian, then technically it doesn't matter since Christ died for everyone's sins. If that's true, then Karma is irrelevant. If Karma is true, then Christ's actions were pointless and irrelevant. Contradictions between man-made religions. See? (Unless I'm missing something and someone can fill me in with the correct info)

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I love lamp.

TheKak

I'm with the sceptics on this one, there is no proof of Karma, only isolated coincidences. The universe doesn't care about you or anything you do. Changing the definition to "causality" only takes away the mysticism and is giving another name to something that already exists.

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Roses are red, violets are blue, I'm a schizophrenic and so am I.

John Henry

This tale is a perfect example of why the whole idea of karma is a load of self-deceiving bull. Yeah it's karma if you only take into account what happened to the guy, but what about the dog. As you say yourself, he didn't have it coming. Was that karma?

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"No one was behaving from very Buddhist motives. Then, thought Pigsy, he was hardly a Buddha, nor was he a monkey. Presently, he was a pig spirit changed into a little girl pretending to be a little boy to be offered to a water monster. It was all very simple to a pig spirit."

Gortexfogg

Karma to me, unless I am choosing the wrong word, is the complete opposite of fate. All the things that happen to me are direct results of my actions. I ran into a professor of mine yesterday, not by chance, but because I choose to go down a certain hall. Even though I didn't know he was going to be there, it was still my actions that got me there. For example, say I lived over a secret military base that I didn't know about and my town got nuked. Not my fault? No, it would be my fault. I choose to live in that town and should have researched it more to see if there may have been a secret military base there.

I'm not 100% sold on karma, or at least my idea of what it is, but it is a very interesting thing to think about.

tisonlyi

yeah, it was your choice to go down that corridor, but it was also his choice.

And the choice of 200 other students not to get in the way of you.

Karma is a collective of everyones personal choices, as well as natural processes.

Your life is _NOT_ entirely in your own hands.

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"I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place." - Winston Churchill, 1937 --{ORLY?}--