I usually develop ideas for this blog at odd moments throughout the day, and try to jot a line or two down on paper before I forget what inspired me. Later on I find some time to further develop that initial thought, usually while sitting in front of a keyboard and wanting to type something. Once I actually start typing, I start thinking more and more, and then more ideas come out. Thus, many of my blog entries start with short notions but become fairly long essays.
However, tonight I am going to avoid long essays and just put out a bit of the raw, untreated mental effluent that often becomes the feedstock for this blog. This is going to be quite Twitter-like, but that’s what the youth of America seem to want today. OK, here goes.
1.) So what about karma? Many if not most Buddhists believe that the goodness or badness of what you do in this life will affect some future person who will “reincarnate” something of your former being (even if they don’t have any memory of it). So, if you’re a bad person but have a lot of good luck and fortune, your Karma-predecessor must have done something good in a past life. Or vice versa.
But really now, how does all this work? Just what is out there in the Universe to keep track of our goods and bads, and to store them up as to apply them to someone, many years in the future, after we’re long gone? What process makes these decisions, where are they stored, and how are they then applied to some future person?
The Buddhists deny any profession of a God, but in certain ways, Karma seems like the supernatural notion that Christians, Jews and Muslims assert regarding an all-knowing God. Karma certainly seems to have some sort of intelligence to it and maybe even a personality something like ours, in order to judge what is good or bad for us. So are Buddhists really “atheistic”? Or do they just think “out of the box” with regard to God?
2.) Who brings out the best in you? And why? Does anyone? Are you in a close relationship with some one? Do they bring out the best in you?
To be honest, right now I’m not in a close relationship; and I’m not sure exactly what the people around me bring out of me. I’m not sure if it’s “the best”, or even close. But then again, I do have a few good friends, and they help me to find some silver linings amidst all the dross and rubble of my life.
3.) The USA didn’t do so well back in the 1960s and 1970s in trying to get the nation of Vietnam to buy into the American way. Today, we don’t seem to be doing so well in Afghanistan. Are there any parallels here with the history of the Roman Empire? Recall that Rome grew and grew in the early centuries partly because it was able to conquer different people, but mainly because it convinced them that they would be better off as part of the Empire.
Later on in Roman history, more and more peoples and tribes decided not to take Rome up on its offer to conquer and civilize them. E.g., the Visigoths, Vandals, Suaves, Franks, Berbers, etc. Over time, these groups multiplied, and even groups that had been contently within the Roman fold started mutinying. For whatever reason, Rome could no longer convince the world that it offered a good deal to those who pledged loyalty. And things deteriorated, eventually fading away. Is America entering a process like that in the world of today?
4.) In 2007, there were 26.4 million blogs started, and there were 22.6 million active bloggers (sorry, I lost the source on this stat). Well, I guess that helps to explain why my blog hardly attracts any attention anymore. I’m “one in a million”; the odds against a potentially interested reader finding this blog are more than “a million to one”.
5.) What if Christianity stopped asserting Jesus as Christ, i.e. gave up on the idea that he is part of a Trinity of divinity? Stop elevating Jesus to God-Man status; perhaps then Jews and Muslims would have more reason to encounter and appreciate what Jesus did and said and preached as a man. You know, like the beatitudes, blessed are the meek, that sort of stuff. Jesus, if I’m reading him right, wanted humankind to come closer to God (and God’s Kingdom) through non-violent means that included kindness and caring and avoiding rude judgment. So what if Christianity could get the other Abrahamic faiths to take that notion very seriously?
OK, but first, Christians would themselves have to take that notion more seriously. Really now, should we all assert that Jesus is God and then pray to him (God) to forgive us for our violent natures? Or take what he said as a human being seriously? It would be harder, but more true to the real Jesus, to actually respond to what he said about putting a lid on our violent natures and run the world thru loving kindness.
Whoops, this entry was still pretty long, way beyond Twitter limits. Oh well.
Jim, I do like your version of Twittering. Though provoking. I am too exhausted right now to respond intelligently but I wanted to tell you that your points above resonate with me and my thoughts are now jostling around inside my head like loose pieces of a jigsaw puzzle waiting to find their proper places to form coherency. ;-) Just one immediate response: yes, believing in Karma does indeed indicate a belief in a ‘someone’ who dictates good and bad, and that ‘someone’ must share our own human moral valuation system.
Comment by spunkykitty — September 25, 2010 @ 8:05 am
Jim, An excellent question about how karma works. After reading your questions I realize I have little if no knowledge of how karma is supposed to work. However, I’ve always had my own version of how I think it works, i.e., the person him/herself who in the afterlife, upon reflection on his/her life realizes the mistakes, errors, downright bad things one did and thus, to “repair” (is that an appropriate word?) such inadequacies, chooses a life in which he/she can remedy such errors.
Therefore, as I see it, the “judge” in all this would be the individual him/herself. Actually, I kind of like my own version of how karma works. But then again, who am I?
And if one looks at the other religions and the development of doctrine, it becomes clear that it is people themselves who developed such doctrines as that of the Trinity–actually any of the doctrines the religions hold. If one really follows the development of doctrine, one finds that someone gets an idea (to perhaps put it too simply), other people think about it, dispute it, someone decides this is how it’s going to be, this is what the doctrine will be. And thus we have so many doctrines.
Often this is called “revelation from God” and maybe it is. However, a lot of the development of doctrine actually works just the way I described it.
I am aware that this is heresy, but I think that too often not enough real real attention is given to the development of doctrine; too much (in all the religions) is attributed to God’s revelation. I’m willing to consider that it may be God who is working through people’s ideas, but then again I find myself wondering if a lot of the “revelations from God” don’t work this way. Perhaps God initiates the idea, but the development of the idea basically comes from people themselves.
And I must say I agree about the non-violent means, people actually PRACTICING the Beautitudes. Now wouldn’t that make the world a different place.
My random tho’ts on your random tho’ts. MCS
Comment by MCS — September 27, 2010 @ 9:58 am