Do you believe in karma, and why?

Karma, "the Golden Rule", what you reap is what you sow... I believe in it. I think that it happens, but most of the time it is not instantaneous.

I don't necessarily believe that a specific force is out to even the score with you for things that you've done, but I do believe that the seeds you sow decide what kind of fruits you reap come harvesting. That's just common sense.

Nystyle709 wrote:I agree.

Nystyle709 wrote:I agree.

Babygirl, this is for your own good....

I absolutely do.

I think that yes, in many cases it does happen - reaping what you sow, but not always.

^^^^I would say always, eventually.

Definitely. Everything is circular with no beginning or ending, and whatever energy you put out there eventually comes back around to you.

My understanding is that you don't have to believe in karma for it to bite you on the ass.

^^^^Kind of like you don't have to believe in God to make him real?

I think karma as a force is a load. What we perceive as "karma" is really just the consequences resulting from our choices. In a sense karma is real but I think people overstate just what it is.

There's nothing to "believe in" here. Worrying about whether or not one should believe in karma misses the whole point: what there is to do is observe your own life.

People who take on the discipline of observation without judgment come to notice certain things, and one of the things they notice is that actions have effects that are complex. The "systems" of cause and effect reveal subtle and deep connections between phenomena.

This isn't about some sort of metaphysical or mystical register on which the gods keep track of your merit points, it's about the cumulative effect of your actions in determining the conditions of your future -- through ordinary cause and effect in an utterly commonplace, science-compatible way.

What makes it SEEM mystical is simply the sheer complexity of causes and effects: because there are so many interconnections between things, life is unpredictable: we can't "precalculate" what is going to happen. But we can OBSERVE that in general, doing lots of good tends to come back around to us, as does doing lots of evil. And we can *see* -- at least intuitively and experientially -- why this happens.

That doesn't mean that bad things never happen to good people or vice-versa. There's no magical free ride here, life includes risk and uncertainty. And ultimately, the best reasons for doing good instead of evil aren't rooted in personal rewards or consequences at all. Good deeds are simply the expression of a whole person in action, while evil deeds are the expression of a distorted, confused, separate, and selfish mind.

@NYLook on the bright side, you'd be safe from me.