Karma

[Rowan]

My take on Karma has never been spiritual, but systematic. If you do a good deed that inspires somone to also do a good deed, that would possibly end up benefiting your situation down the line by the same means utilizing some sort of domino effect. Having said that, you are not the one who needs to perform the good deed in order to be rewarded by 'Karma'. The deed can be performed by anyone, but the effect it has must be successful on the person who ends up returning your lost wallet instead of keeping it. This makes the most sense to me.

I can see Karma working on a personal/direct level too. Perhaps doing favors for those in the workplace could give you a good reputation, lead to promotions etc. But that might be falling astray from the idea of karma since karma seems to be the logic that 'no good deed goes unrewarded' and normally works on a spiritual stopwatch on an undirect level.

What are your thoughts on Karma and do you believe you have benefit directly from the results of a good deed you have performed? Do you encourage others to the idea of Karma because you take it seriously or because you wish to encourage people to uphold values and morals?

[RamesesII]

My take on Karma has never been spiritual, but systematic. If you do a good deed that inspires somone to also do a good deed, that would possibly end up benefiting your situation down the line by the same means utilizing some sort of domino effect. Having said that, you are not the one who needs to perform the good deed in order to be rewarded by 'Karma'. The deed can be performed by anyone, but the effect it has must be successful on the person who ends up returning your lost wallet instead of keeping it. This makes the most sense to me.

I can see Karma working on a personal/direct level too. Perhaps doing favors for those in the workplace could give you a good reputation, lead to promotions etc. But that might be falling astray from the idea of karma since karma seems to be the logic that 'no good deed goes unrewarded' and normally works on a spiritual stopwatch on an undirect level.

What are your thoughts on Karma and do you believe you have benefit directly from the results of a good deed you have performed? Do you encourage others to the idea of Karma because you take it seriously or because you wish to encourage people to uphold values and morals?

Sort of like the movie 'Pay it forward' where the little boy helps three people and in turn each of hose people help three others, but the motive to that was that everyone would be cured of their troubles not about good karma return to him.

Actually as stupid as it sounds I watched The Key or The Secret, or a documentary on it and it talks about the possibility of everything being connected by positive and negative energy, therefore if you think positive then you will attractive other positive forms of energy and so forth with negative thoughts.

They go further to say that instead of a 'God' that there exists not an entity but a pool of energy that everything in the world draws from. I am not saying I believe every word of it but I agree with the principle that they portray.

[Heartless Angel]

I don't believe in 'Karma' per se, but I believe in causality. Sometimes causality does something nice for us, sometimes not. I do not believe that the intent or 'spirit' of our deeds has any direct effect on the outcomes. At least not always. It can, in some cases. Particularly in person to person relationships, you do something nice for someone who knows you, word will probably get around, and someone even if they aren't remebring hearing about that exact deed, may just have the though at the back of their mind, that's a good guy, I'll go out of my way to do something nice for him. I don't know if I'd call this Karma though, this seems more like simply making friends by being nice. When I hear the word Karma, it usually comes with the connotation that good things will happen to those who do good things, where the good things happening to you generally do NOT have any direct causal link with whatever good you did initially. That somehow doing good, leaves a good 'energy' attached to you, which in turn attracts good things to you. I don't believe this happens in any way.

People who believe in Karma and look for it in life tend to fall victim to the same thing many people do when looking to confirm an idea. Humans have a natural tendency when trying to observe something to test a hypothesis to only see Hits, while ignoring the Misses. In other words, You do something extremely nice, you start LOOKING for something good to happen to you, and when it does, think, oh yeah, there it is, hypothesis confirmed! Well of course something good was going to happen to you eventually. My friend years ago got into a car accident, totalled his birthday present. Was talkin to him on the phone that night, and he said something to the effect that he got what was coming to him for breaking it off with his girlfriend after a fight or some shit the other day, I don't even remember. Negative Karma, right? If you're looking to prove there's a such thing you might think that. But really, what does Karma have to do with anything here? Would NOT breaking up with his girlfriend somehow have made the moron who hit him a better driver? More alert? Probably not. SO he was gonna get his car ****ed up that morning anyways. Had he not broken up with his girlfiriend, probably would've jsut though, "Well, shitty luck. Ah well.", but since he did, "OH NOEZ BAD KARMAZ!!11!!!one!!11!"

Karma comes more from a person's nature to want to blame problems on something rather than accept that he just has shitty luck, or was at the wrong place at the wrong time. And a person's desire to feel as though he's been rewarded for going out of his way to do something good. In some cases even ones subconcious desire to be punished for something we think we deserve to be punished for. The 'feeling' of Karma comes simply from the mood your own actions put you in. If you do something bad enough to where it bothers you, and you're actually thinking about it, knowing it was bad, you're going to be expecting cansequences first of all, and are going to be seeing the negative in everything because you're in a negative mood. Secondly, your negative mood is going to influence people around you negatively and may actually lead to negative results. Similarly, if you did something so awesome, everyone knows how awesome you are, and you're feeling good about yourself, you're going to be more optimistic, see more good in things, and your good mood will in some way influence those around you, likely leading to positive interactions with people.

I see no magic involved, just simple causality.

[Pete]

I'm gonna have to go and agree with Heartless on this one. I think karma, on the small, day to day scale, is much moreso a way that we can justify both our good actions and the bad things that happen to us. I don't really look at it as a kind of deus ex machina, where if we would have helped that old lady across the street, it would have prevented us from getting into a car crash years down the line. That's far too cosmic and arbitrary for my tastes. It would also raise questions like why do good things happen to assholes, and why do kids get cancer.

At the same time, I do believe that people will remember the good things that you do for them, especially in their time of need, and conversely, people will remember those who screwed others over in their time of need.

If we're treating people badly to begin with, or doing "negative" things towards others, chances are it's because we're in a bad mood, or there's something going on that's not part of our daily lives. When something bad happens to us after that, we always tend to say things like "I guess I had that coming."

On the other hand, I think that it's much more a cause and effect type of deal. It's not so much karma that good work and a little bit of ass kissing gets a promotion; it's moreso that your good work ethic made you noticed and your merits alone got you that promotion.

I suppose I believe in karma in the sense of balance. If I screw something up, and I feel badly for it, I'll try to make it up to that person by trying to be better or to rectify the situation. That being said, I also believe in a Karmic sort of afterlife, where your good and bad are weighed to determine where you stand.

[Mystyrion]

Your guys intellectual discussions on this site blow me away. Not that I can't keep up with the text, its just whenever I try to reply to something it comes out very simple and basic. I'm unable to post something of that quality. I guess I'm short, blunt, and just like laymans terms I guess.

Onto the topic at hand.
I don't know if its just Utah, but the Karma word gets thrown out quite a bit. Most of the girls in the northern part of the state believe its some cosmic event given from God to punish the wicked and bless the righteous. Which I could actually see how people would get that relation. Because that oddly does seem very close to what people who believe in karma without God. Its some cosmic event that somewhere down the road that is going to "bite you in the ass".

But whenever someone asks me my thoughts on the subject this is what I tell them.

Karma exist on an extremely basic level that doesn't always apply.
When you are nice or do nice things, people are obviously going to tend to be nicer towards you and good things are bound to happen. But that doesn't mean that they are always going to happen. Like returning someones wallet. They could reward you, they could thank you, or they could just flat out take it and shut the door in your face. All possibilities are possible, but the more likely result will be good if you are doing good things.

Same goes for being bad. Lets pick something a little harder this time like a drug dealer. Drug dealers get fished out all the time and end up in jail. Does that mean its going to happen to all of them, no. I have seen a few of my friends deal for a couple of years, make loads of money, just to stop one day and go on living with their happy lives.

Any result is possible, its just more likely that good things will happen when you do good things and visa versa.