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Karma in Buddhism relates to will, volition, intention
December 15th, 2012 (December 16th, 2012)
illustration

illustration (attribution, if any possible, is at the end of the article)

Karma in Buddhism relates to will, volition, intention… It relates to habits and mental fabrications, the so-called 'knowledge,' 'references,' 'education,' 'values,' 'beliefs,' "long-lasting feelings"… i.e. karma is 'reasons': reasons as explanations (looking to the past), and reasons as goals (looking to the future)!

Karmic continuation (news)

Americans just faced their #karma  again, with the death of 20 children and 7 adults in a school…
Karma (in Buddhism) is not a retribution mechanism, it is in facing the suffering resulting from what one puts in place. It is in facing causality: if you keep repeating something, one day the conditions will be ripe for you to see the consequences (and again and again, until you get rid of the habit at hand).
When facing acute suffering, karma and retribution/justice look the same to an outsider, but they are not: their respective antidotes are not the same! The antidote to a retributive law is to pay for the past, then start with a 'clean' slate (and do it again, trying not to get caught this time round?). The antidote to Buddhist unwholesome karma is to change one's habits for the future, or get free from habits altogether.

Whether the result of this school massacre will be to promote easier, less-controlled access to weapons (in the name of self-protection) and more violence (in the name of self-protection: kill in 'self-defence' rather than disarm or limit freedom to own weapons), or the result will be to break the cycle, is up to the Americans. That's the personal nature of karma: one faces the consequences of what one put in place or simply accepted, thus made one's own (see image attached, then tell me Americans did not 'accept' this situation long before the last killing of 27!).

Fear and clinging and thought habits ("automatic responses") are likely to push Americans to continue the cycle though: always more weapons (in the name of protection), always more violence (in the name of protection, or justice), and… always more suffering!

It takes great courage to break such a cycle! It takes one real step toward Awakening, no less: not nirvāṇa, but a real step toward freedom from past conditionings, beliefs and foundational myths!

So I won't pray for the dead victims today. I will pray for all the other victims, the survivors, the people afraid for their offspring or for themselves, the people angered… i.e. the people who will let naïve "like/dislike" feelings take over reason, and the people with mental habits that hurt them but who keep perpetuating these very habits nonetheless (out of ignorance, out of not seeing the causality, out of not knowing any other path, out of conditioned lack of courage to try something different).
I pray for them to find the courage to break away from cyclic suffering, not by the hands of a God, but by each one's own efforts to change habits and beliefs. These include the belief that violence may be a solution (be it in the name of protection, or self-defence); these include the belief that a self-centric "what if it was me, or my children?" is anything more than a misguiding emotional film in one's head to perpetuate a clinging to security, i.e. a clinging to what one 'knows,' i.e. a clinging to habits…


How many Americans will go back to "business as usual" soon? It seems to help with the anguish, doesn't it? It helps by making one think about something else, doesn't it? Meanwhile 10,000+ killed by handguns per annum will continue. Accepting these statistics is condoning them, making them one's own; it is setting this situation as one's 'norm.' Does this habit still help?


#Buddhism   #buddhistcircle   #Dharma  
"Karmic continuation" (IV) was on "arms race." It is possible to read it as applying between groups (or countries), but also between legal violence (police) and illegal violence… Maybe worth re-reading? http://gplus.wallez.name/ZmNDupECQJ7