perfectbite

I don't think that you are wrong in claiming the middle path but making rational, intelligent, moral decisions would seem to be an unaviodable part of living and my original question was to what extent does a group or community incur karma and if such karma has an effect on the innocents for either better or worse would that karma then qualify as a separate category of karma?

I like Barefoot Bree's idea of the community having a common high ethical standard.

I am a Western Buddhist and one of the things I do like about this forum is that there are many well thought out honest opinions. I know Lion City's websites well, the old one and the new one. Lion City's Theravadan and Mahayanist Buddhisms are an entrenched Archipelagean Buddhism that doesn't do well with thinking outside of the box and would sooner tell how Buddhism should be interpreted for the best effect (the non-accrual of negative karma) and they have taken the study of the Suttas and Sutras to an art form and for them it is 'quote chapter and verse', there are probably 7,000 commentaries on that one gatha and they know them all. They don't or can't do the 'sense' of a text.

Buddhism has its 'fluffy bunny' set too and a lot of the Lion City forum posters are of the addlepated 'fluffy bunny', take ourselves very, very seriously and fastidiously avoid 'bad' karma Zen persuasion. In essence they tend to be fractal images of Archipelagean Buddhism. I see that kind of Lion City Buddhist thinking as opinionated, ready to wear, scholaristical shackles based on a not very worldly agrarian sensitivity that demands their way or the highway and when it doesn't go their way they get flip like Lenrek telling us that we Westerners could not be Buddhists, we could only be admirers of Buddhism. I was in an e-mail conversation with someone from Lion City who said flat out that Tibetan Buddhism had it all wrong too.

badger3k

I think we're operating on different ideas of Karma. I don't see anything like the "positive/negative" idea. To me, karma is simply cause and effect - that anything, from ideas to actions (and inactions) have consequences. To me, the actions of the community as a community (highlighted for emphasis) would probably have larger-reaching consequences than for that of an individual. If one person throws their trash into the street, the consequences for the whole community will be less than if the whole population did the same action. That's simple reasoning - the more people do the action, the greater effect it has.

In the same way, I can't see separating karma into different forms, such as personal or communal - I thought one of the ideas of Buddhism was to get beyond such things, and simplify. Karma is karma, whether due to one or 1000 people. I see no need to make such a disctinction.

If you are of the more "cosmic scales" idea of karma, then my views may not translate exactly, since to me the positive and negative are merely a product of our attachment and subjective viewpoints. To me, that seems to be what you are implying with "communities incurring karma".

Hadn't looked at the idea that communities have a higher ethical standard, but in real life that hasn't worked out too well. I'd agree that a community should have a higher standard in theory, since the affects of a communities action are typically greater than one individual, but the community is made up of individuals. How can a community be held to a higher standard than the individual members that make up that community?

Let me explore that a bit further - if a community has karma, is it separate from the individual? I can't see how - since the community is the individual. So what affects the community affects the individual. If the community has karma of it's own, then does that lessen individual karma, or individual responsibility? Not that I can see - since each person is responsible for themselves, and their influence/effects on others. Thus, no matter what the situation, some people would be more responsible for some karma than others. That's simple reasoning by my book. Of course, if the community does something that is considered negative, then all the individuals in that community have to bear the cost, even if they did not contribute to the action. More interdependance.

I don't know - on the one hand, I don't see any reason to think of communities as separate or distinct in some way, but as a social unit composed of individuals, I think it important to remember that the actions of a community can have greater effect, and thus more/greater karma (which all the individuals in the community have to bear).

Sorry if that doesn't help you with your ideas, just trying to explain what I think about the subject. If any of that does not make sense, let me know.

Answerer

Ahemm, thats quite of a big generalization.

At least I, as an inhabitant of that Lion city, never quote chapters, verses or texts when discussing about Buddhism in this fourm. Although I read several sutras, I don't think I can remember all the commentaries word by word. Even if I can, I think the essence of the verses are more important than its literal form.

Anyway, since I seldom know or get in touch with the buddhists locally, I can't really say that majority of them behave differently from what you had said. But I do know to some extent, not all of them are that conservative or radical.

Actually, thats not a surprising thing. Some people tend to be extreme and heavily biased. Four years ago, I had arguments with a western Buddhist who think that Mahayana and Vajravana are heretic. Another time with a western Buddhist who believe that all meat industries should be eliminated and all people should be "Plant eaters".

And one more time with a Lion city inhabitant (As you said) who think that being extreme with Buddhism is much better than allowing different religions (He thinks that most of them wrong) to co-exist, side by side.

Answerer

Bite, you question about the existence of Communal Karma. In actual fact, you already got the answer and if you are observant enough, you probably would have gotten the answer long ago already.

For instance, the negative actions of my countrymen had created a poor impression/image upon you. And in turn, you become biased against them and responsed by spreading your negative views on them. And those negative views, to some extent, have bad effects on me who, despite having no relationship with them or responsible for their actions, have to share burden of being criticize and prejudice from someone (in this example, you) whom I had not offended.

Such is the indirect evidence of communal Karma at work, there is no way that I could have predicted such effects from my actions alone........


I hope I'm clear enough. Just using your experience as an example, hope you don't mind. :thumbs:

perfectbite

Answerer, I wasn't referring to you. From reading your posts it seems to me that it is important to you to have and keep an open mind which, in my opinion, is as it should be for all true seekers. That nonsense of a rigidly dismissive, defamatory of another's harmless, sincere understanding, in other words 'Our school rules!!!!!' view seems to permeate Lion City's Buddhist orthodoxy and they are so convinced of their position that it is extremely difficult to sensibly talk to them. Others are heretical. They could never be according to them. Eventually Buddhism proper will take hold in the West but if it ever degenerates into that kind of 'we are right. period!' thinking, that will be a great loss.

May you always be clear of them and their authoritative clinging ways.

Thomas II

Any time you form a part of a community you get it's communal karma, even if it is temporary...For example, lets say that you were a passenger on the TITANIC...The communal karma for the passengers of that ship is that the ship sank...That event happened to ALL the passengers. Then some survived and some died. Since you survived, that was your communal karma with the group of survivors of that ship. Others who died had the communal karma of all those who died...
Your nationality puts you into the communal karma of all those people who have your nationality.
If you go to a certain school, work in a certain company, follow a certain god,
belong to a certain club,etc,etc...
You have your individual karma within those other communal karmas.

perfectbite

Not too many folks have viewed this thread and its OP which is good because I don't want to be a chicken little type alarmist, but to me anyway, this situation qualifies as a distinct example of 'possible' wide spread, far ranging karma in action.

The new, more powerful than anything preceding it, cyclotron or atom smasher that is being built in Europe (CERN) will be used to create microscopic 'black holes' that will evaporate within micro or pico seconds. That is the plan. That's what they think will happen. It is all theory. The incredibly tiny black holes will evaporate. An accident or miscalculation with this would make Chernobyl look like a pleasant dream because it could mean a singularity taking up residence in the Earth's core. Come to that it could go flying off into space and take up residence in the sun's core or go and bother someone else light years away.

This would be one scientific experiment that one definitely would not like to hear the word 'Oops.'

The idea of personally incurred karma, cause and effect, pleasant or unpleasant, is understandable but my question is at what point does the committe that decided to spend the money and go ahead with such experimentation subject the planet itself to destruction and is the idea of individual or community karma even applicable to such overwhelming hubris?

Such a decision involving the world is not without precedent. At the first test of the WWII 'A' bomb it wasn't known if the chain reaction would cause the Earth's atmosphere to 'flash'. I even heard of the horror story, a few decades ago, said to be true, of a nuclear sub's reactor being lit off in port by a very drunken member of the sub's engineering crew just to show he could light it off drunk as he was.

I am not talking about the end of a Kali yuga here. At some point one of these heavily funded cutting edge physics experiments or their applications will go awkwardly, horribly wrong and there won't be a place for a Kali yuga to exist and questions of communal karma will have no meaning because there won't be an existent community of any kind.

Because someone else's thirst for theoretical knowledge could rob you of your meditations, don't be an indolent procrastinator. Go for the Gold.

perfectbite

(At the Harland and Wolf shipyard in N. Ireland where the Titanic was built, someone had painted on the side of the dock at its launching 'Even God couldn't sink this ship'. So much for that statement.)

Would being born into a community be considered inheriting that community's karma or would that be an example of the working of individual karma to be born into a community or to be a part of a community as the ship sank? It isn't clear to me.

The reason I bring this question up is to try to look at karma in such a way as to preclude needless mentation on and about karma through the eyes of the Buddhist laity. (Members of the Buddha's Sangha have, in effect, removed themselves from complex karma ideally allowing them to think more clearly.) Karma in its simplest form is apparently readily understood but in its more complex form is truly a mystery and I think that karma simple and karma complex are both mysteries and we only get to see the 1/10 of the iceberg that is evidence of simple karma but some Buddhist based beliefs have, it seems to me, taken simple karma as a guide for living which may be alright for monks and nuns but for the worldly is a gross simplification of karma (like saying we know there are more numbers but we only count up to 20 because that's how many fingers and toes we have and we don't need any more than 20 numbers) and such a view is only partially, simplistically true of reality and doesn't account for our possible responsibility to that greater reality in an age of democracy away from monarchic autocracy.

I suppose my question is directed specifically at the worldly:

If knowledge is power then does awareness incur active responsibility?

If active responsibility implies action (or work as Dharma puts it) then is the accrual of pleasant or unpleasant karma necessary to living a moral life?

hinduwoman

Communal karma would be difficult because it would indicate that the individual is not responsible for his sins only, since he inherited the karma of his community. But from what I understand that is not how karma is supposed to work in an individual's life.

An example would be the belief that India suffered under the British invasion because it allowed untouchability.

Even the belief that Islamic states are a mess because they do not follow allah's words is an example of communal karma.

Dharma

actually communal Karma is a part of Indian thought. Ramayana is an example...under a righteous king of Dharma who provides good leadership, the people are happy and prosperous as well and everyone performs his/her duty, everyone is nice to one another, earns money, eats well and is well off -- noone is poor or destitute -- everyone is learned and respectful to one another.

So one would say that untouchability occurred due to bad kings which led to bad people and divisions and Adharma, which allowed foreigners to easily overtake India.