Karma: Encyclopedia II - Karma - Western interpretation

Karma - Western interpretation

An academic and religious definition was mentioned above. Millions of people believe in it and is a part of many cultures and the psyches of millions of people. Others without religious backgrounds, especially in western cultures or with Christian upbringings, become convinced of the existence of Karma. For some, karma is a more reasonable concept than eternal damnation for the wicked. Spirituality or a belief that virtue is rewarded and sin creates suffering eventually leads to a belief in Karma.

According to Karma, performance of positive action results with the reaction of a good conditioning in one's experience, whereas a negative action results in a reaction of a bad response. This may be an immediate result following the act, or a delayed result occurring either in the present life or the next. Thus, meritorious acts may create rebirth into a higher station, such as a superior human being or a godlike being, while evil acts result in rebirth as a human living in less desirable circumstances, or as a lower animal. Some observers have compared the action of karma to Western notions of sin and judgment by God or gods, while others understand karma as an inherent principle of the Universe without the intervention of any supernatural Being. In Hinduism, God does play a role and is seen as a dispenser of karma; see Karma in Hinduism for more details. The latter understanding is accurate with regard to Buddhism and Jainism.

Most teachings say that for common mortals, having an involvement with Karma is an unavoidable part of day-to-day living. However, in light of the Hindu philosophical school of Vedanta, as well as Gautama Buddha's teachings, one is advised to either avoid, control or become mindful of the effects of desires and aversions as a way to moderate or change one's karma (or, more accurately, one's karmic results).

Karma - New Age and Theosophy

The idea of karma was popularized in the West through the work of the Theosophical Society. Kardecist and Western New Age reinterpretations of karma frequently cast it as a sort of luck which is associated with virtue: if one does good or spiritually valuable acts, one deserves and can expect good luck; conversely, if one does harmful things, one can expect bad luck or unfortunate happenings. In this conception, karma is affiliated with the Neopagan law of return or Threefold Law, the idea that the beneficial or harmful effects one has on the world will return to oneself.

There is also the metaphysical idea that, because karma is a force of nature and not a sentient creature capable of making value judgments, karma isn't about good and evil deeds, since applying those labels would require those judgments, but about positive and negative energy, where negative energy can include things not seen as "being bad" like sadness and fear, and positive energy can be caused by being creative and solving problems as well as by exuding love and doing virtuous acts. This conception of karma handles the big problem with the more traditional view, because it explains why bad things happen to people who've done nothing "wrong"; it is due to the sort of energy they have sent into the universe with their thoughts and feelings, which exert as much power as actual actions. This view of karma centers around the idea that all things are made of karmic energy and thus able to affect each other. It is referred to as "omniverse karma" or "omni-karma" because it requires the existence of an omniverse, (a space which contains all the universes) as portrayed by superstring theory, with which it closely agrees, and includes concepts such as souls, psychic energy, synchronicity (a concept originally from Carl Jung, which says that things that happen at the same time are related), and ideas from quantum and theoretical physics (such as that time doesn't exist as we think it does).

Karma - Psychology

Psychologist Melvin Lerner showed experimentally that people have a cognitive bias that predisposes them to think that innocent victims deserve their suffering and beneficiaries of good fortune their windfall. This just-world phenomenon bears striking resemblance to the principle of karma, and is hypothesized to be caused by the need for people to see the world as a just and orderly place in order to avoid cognitive dissonance.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Western interpretation", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki