Questions on Karma

Thank you for posting. Yes, karma is happening constantly right now. How many of us can say that we are truly acting through our lives spontaneously? Can anybody claim to be acting out of pure creation without an event that preceded it? Is it indeed possible? Can we make a distinction between what we believe and what we know? Buddha communicated by example, that we can transcend karma into enlightenment whilst still in this physical body. Before his enlightenment, his life was subject to cause and effect (karma) the same as everyone else, yet just by sitting and stilling his mind, he could see the the cause of all suffering and teach, again by example the path to liberation from karma. Buddha, Jesus and all great teachers taught this :-)

Well I do actually live my life as if the next second, minute is a spontaneous one. I always live my life and try to do good all the time. I feel that you are going through a spiritual crisis. I am just letting you know that life is full of spontaneous actions. I believe that when you die, you will be held accountable for all your actions whether they be good or bad. I don't believe the actions in your previous life will bring you back as another being or thing. I believe when you die, you die. I am not a big believer in reincarnation.

Thank you again for sharing. Yes, I suppose you could say I am going through a spiritual crisis, that is what being a Zen practitioner is about. Always questioning and looking beyond the "reasonable" through the "crisis" that I experience, and aspiring to higher states of awareness, which can be very liberating. But to me, it is of no value to stay there, I go back into my zazen (Zen meditation) and "listen" some more. Yes, I have seen my life is full of spontaneous actions, but also I see a lot of automatic reactions coming from my conditioning. These reactions are valuable too, in a way that I can observe how they are structured and as a result aim to transcend once again. Sometimes it is one after another coming into consciousness, but that is a learning process. If I do not acknowledge that events of the world can have an effect on me, I will slip into denial and never grow at all. No I don't believe in reincarnation either, but would not deny that it *may* be a fact. I just do not know as I do not have an awareness of being here in a life before this one, only in dreams or imagination. I guess you could say I am focused more on what I can experience here and now, and do not foster beliefs of what is going to be, or what was, as that takes my mind out of the present moment:-)

Thank you for posting... I don't see that God is unjust because we are so much more than the physical body and a discursive, analytical mind. I see life with all its trials and tribulations as lessons for the soul. If we can be right here, right now, recognising that past is no more and future is not yet, we can catch a glimpse of the "eternal now" and if we just witness this, we can transcend our karma - but the discursive mind cannot be so disciplined and thus karma is created immediately like long "chains" of thoughts (action and reaction). I don't see karma as anything bad, just the function of the world of opposites in which our souls are having experience. Karma becomes bad only if we consider it to be so, for the world is just the world. If our souls are eternal, then whatever we experience in this world is transient.:-) Derek

The past exists in memory. Memory may be distorted sometimes, If we are not willing for the negative past to be gone, it will stay with us. But it won't stay in "reality" but in the mind. We don't have to live in the past to use it's lessons.