Karma
Paul Burton writes the following on Karma in his book
"What is Karma?" (this is a translation from a translation and not
the original text):
"It [Karma] is simply the law that holds each one
of us responsible for his own actions and places us in a position to accept its
consequences. We could call it the 'law of own responsibility'. [...] The
literal translation of Karma is 'acting'; in practice this means that Karma is
one's own acting. We have made ourselves to what we are now, by our actions -
the original term Karma also covers mental actions. Karma is the power of the
Universal Spirit to bring about settlement and compensation, to restore
balance. In the sphere of human behavior this will lead to the fact that one
way or the other, that what we do at some moment in time will return to us. No
single action stands on itself: the fruits of every action will in the end
inexorably return to the one who has done the action. Karma is a
self-moving power. No-one, human or superhuman, has to manage it."
The consequences of your actions will always return to
you, but maybe so only in the form of thoughts, conscience, feelings or dreams.
You will remember what you have done, and this will influence your mind and
your life from that moment on.
The Universal Spirit could be read as the system of
the universe as a whole, not necessarily as a self-conscience super-being.
Karma is the guide for a respectful morality, because
responsibility is a central item. A Buddhist society therefore is always a
society with respectful ethics.
An important aspect of Karma as explained here is
conscience, since immoral actions have a tendency to come back to you in
the form of a bad conscience, which could be a heavy burden on your shoulders.
So conscience actually is the key to finding rational reasons not to steal, to
murder or to do other immoral acts.
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The precise form of this behavior is formed by culture and by reason.
But the potential of the conscience is probably already there genetically.
Those people that don't have a conscience are in psychiatry typed as
sociopathic of psychopathic. During the social development we have as a child,
this conscience develops itself. In this phase confusion can cause an
underdeveloped conscience, or an underdeveloped mindset to be in touch with
your conscience.
Charles
Darwin
It prevented our ape-like ancestors from murdering, or
mistreating others and being expelled from the group. But with the expansion of
humanity, and the complexity of modern society, lots of people are raised not
being in touch with it. But most of the times, this is not a good thing for
these people who will often be put to prison and lead an unhappy life. So
actually the function of our conscience is to prevent us from behaving asocial,
to prevent ourselves from being rejected from society. Most criminals will,
when they think again what they have done, experience a bad conscience.
It also happens that criminals do have a conscience,
but it doesn't trigger during or after the crime they have committed. This is
because in some cases the criminals don't recognize the victim as being a
fellow man, a member of the same group. This happens for instance to soccer
hooligans, war criminals, people causing racial conflicts and people who feel
that they are an enemy of society.
It depends on culture and reason who is regarded as
belonging to your group. I would say it would be rational to regard the whole
of humanity to one and the same group. This would, if followed up, lead to a
world of peace and freedom, in which people would have better chances to be
happy (because of not being a victim of a war or other conflict between members
of different groups). But unfortunately there are subcultures who have
other feelings about this issue.
The rules for conscience are formed during our
childhood by reason and by culture. Based on both rationality and human
feelings, I would say that human rights and property rights should play a major
role in this process. And probably it needs more attention from parents and
teachers than it mostly gets nowadays.
Sometimes people comment on this with: "I understand from this that
respect for other people is a good thing, but why define property rights and
have respect for that as well?"
Not going into much detail, I could just add the following example: I wait
until you leave your house, room or whatever place you live in, and I burn it
down. Next I follow you and steal your wallet from you when you don't watch
your back. Next I hack into all banking systems (supposing I'm a brilliant
hacker) and take care that you have not any access to money.
I would say that this example would make it clear that
without treating your body disrespectful, I could do a lot of other immoral
things to you that are all related to property rights. It doesn't answer yet
which property rights. Do we have a right on our own properties just like that?
Or do we have a right to what we need (and how or by who is that defined)? The
answers depend on culture and rationality.
It is popular in philosophy and science, to make
claims that the laws of nature as we know them, and especially the law of cause
and effect, would be untrue, could not be known, or would be questionable.
These kind of claims I see as attempts to escape from the concept of
responsibility, which the law of cause and effect is implying. I added three
articles to this site to defend the nature of reality as an independent
reality, of which we can obtain scientific and objective knowledge, and in
which the law of cause and effect is the key factor.
There is also an article added on politics from the perspective of responsibility.