--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "curtisdeltablues" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Turq, > > This is a deep topic and let me start my saying that I don't have a > clue concerning such deep questions as freedom vs determinism. I > definitely don't take your sharing your view of this as an attempt > to > convince me. I appreciate your making that explicit. I think we can > both be advocates of our positions and still go have a glass of wine > afterwards, even in the face of a rather puritanical wind blowing > through the group recently!
Off can sit another table and drink Perrier with the other party poopers and they can badrap all the people they doesn't like, while we have a good old time and have fun. :-) > I'm not sure that explanations are necessary or that the concept of > "fair" is useful when discussing bad things happening to innocent > people. If infant AIDs is supposed to be a "lesson" then the > teacher should be fired. I think we have societally moved beyond > the type of justice that is based on retribution and suffering. But retribution and suffering is not the only way one can see the situation of infant AIDS. That's a Judeo-Christian concept, based on the vision of a universe that is basically "powered by" guilt. :-) > For example we don't torture prisoners directly for crimes, we > just incarcerate them. Just as some are incarcerated in bodies that don't work as well as bodies are intended to. > Our ambiguity on the topic of retribution in punishment is > reflected in our lack of concern that our prisons tacitly > condone rape. Some people snicker at this barbaric reality > thinking that it is what the prisoner "deserves". I agree that this is a hypocritical situation. But IMO the word "deserves" does not enter into any discussion of karma. It's not *about* "deserves." It's just about what happens. "Deserving" things is a human concept based on ideas of good and evil and doing what they imagine some God wants them to. Karma's about action and reaction, with no "good" or "evil" tied to those actions, or their reactions. (As I see karma, that is.) > But I don't think that thoughtful judges are ready to look > someone in the eye and sentence them to anal rape. They put the reality out of their minds, and focus on the "ideal," just as so many others do. > I remember my course in political science at MIU in the > philosophy major. What is accepted at face value as "karmic > law" would be viewed as an antiquated view of crime and > punishment, unnecessarily cruel and ineffective. Only when viewed by people who cannot escape the conditioning of their Judeo-Christian heritage, which taught them to view all things as the inter- play of good and evil, sin and "paying" for that sin. There are other ways of seeing things. > It makes us all barbarians to participate in such a judicial > system, so why should we ascribe those primitive values to > "God"? When we see Shira law practiced where they cut the > hand off thieves, we are offended in the West. But when it > is explained that God's universe is set up to have a baby > born with no arms we consider it as divine justice? I certainly don't consider *anything* as "God's will" or "divine justice." I don't believe either exists. > Of course my lack of belief in past or future lives > simplifies my need for explanation. In the materialistic > world I live in, I hope that medicine can advance to help > avoid genetic defects and that corrective surgery and > medicines can assist the suffering of those born with > defects or disease. That would involve the practice of free will. Someone who believed in a (IMO) false reading of karma as determinism would never even *try* to come up with technologies to ease the suffering of those born with birth defects; they'd think somehow that the kids "deserved" them. The "deserves" thang is mainly Western, and not of the East. All the confusion about karma, IMO, comes from trying to combine the idea of retribution and "paying for one's sins" with a system that doesn't even allow for the existence of sin. > I don't need any explanations of why it happened, just > what we can do once we notice it. Here we are completely agreed. That's my approach, too. > I think I agree with your point of view as it applies to > the actions we do in this life and their effects on us. > I just can't make the leap about past lives, which if > true, would be my own limitation. My own subjective experiences and memories kinda force me to accept reincarnation as a reality. There is always the possibility that they are "false" memories, but they're mine, and I'm gonna go with them. > I don't think feeling like a victim is always bad. Wallowing > in it as an escape from dealing with it would be. I think it's possible to deal with it without ever feeling like a victim. > But recognizing that you got nailed and it wasn't your fault > can be a good place for healing to begin. I like the phrase > "Life is 10% what happens to us, and 90% what we do with it." Yup. > Ever see Gong Li's move "To Live"? Nope. > In it a Chinese family has terrible things happen to them > which turn out to save their lives a few scenes later. > That tempers my view of my own victimhood. I never know > when sucky things will turn out to be valuable to my life. It's exactly the same when one believes in karma. Pass the wine. :-)
