proy wrote:Hi Jan, I asked the very same question myself when I first went to classes. It is such a glaring contradiction. Time is an endlessly repeating 5,000 year cycle, which is identical each time. So surely if I do something, either good or bad, it is not my responsibility. Therefore to worry about karma is useless. I am going to do again exactly what I did at this time 5,000 years ago. There is nothing I can do about it if I have no free will.
Yes, those who made efforts 5,000 years ago will hear The Knowledge and transform themselves through various efforts. The ones who say that The Knowledge of repetition means it doesn't matter what they do won't make such efforts, will die regretting their missed opportunities, and that will be their fate, cycle after cycle.
My current inquiry is into the disjunction between spoken words (including all justifications and philosophies) and acts. So that for example, politicians speak in a language of collective decisionmaking for the benefit of all. Where does that connect to real actions? Can any laws provide any real assurance of anything. I think it is the other way: any law, any statement can be retracted, circumvented to allow any act, and any act can be served by the spawning of new laws.
What is an act? A release of energy, whether of a man (or woman) hammering a piece of iron, or a key turning in the ignition or a car, a foot depressing accelerator or brake pedal, the dispatching of an army, the finger on a nuclear button, poison in the hand of an assassin.
Actions are where strength is. Speech, too, is a kind of act using the muscles to create sound. There is magic in speech in the form of prayer, incantations, spells, sutras. There is magic in music and song. It is a kind of magic, yet rarely stops wars, bullets, bulldozers.
How are the acts of a religious group distinct from its "unique" beliefs? A religious group survives by the resources it receives and by applying these resources to expand and duplicate itself. The religions that do not ask for resources, do not spread themselves, such religions may exist, but they are rare, hidden, ignored. Even the Balinese gods survive on the basis of ritual offerings. There can be room in the world for miracles (in my opinion) however a car generally needs fuel to run and people with cars and trucks and guns to defend them can build machines and pump oil to fuel more cars. Religions flower as they receive some infusion of resources from industry. I doubt they can liberate humanity from the attraction to the benefit of a machine that mows grass, or conveniently blows a hole in a person with the delicate pull of a trigger.
The behavior of electrons was better understood when physicists began describing their orbits as probability clouds. Human behavior, too, is more fully described when we accept the uncertainty and variability. If they are cars, some people will drive them into trees and walls. If there are guns, some people will pull the trigger, even with the guns loaded and pointed at family members.
It's not that children can misbehave because they don't know right and wrong and that adults
can be trusted. Adults seem predictable, seem mature, but anyone can do anything.
So in formulating my own opinions, I see that the behavior of machines is more predictable than that of people. The only thing predictable about people (one of the only things) is that they are attracted to the advantage that comes from a machine. So they use machines. When the person is riding - say a jet-ski or motorboat - many aren't going to be conscious of the marine life that is being traumatised by their propeller action or by the waves they raise. Drivers aren't aware of how their vehicles carry weed seeds. Merchant shippers fill and empty their ballast tanks without thinking they may be transporting harmful organisms.
Certain myths help me to interpret the human condition. One is of Prometheus. How fire--which is the ability to release energies greater than that of our own metabolism--transforms man into the equal of the gods. Another is of Pandora. How human curiosity is responsible for myriad potent creation that bring ill, and like the genie (think nuclear technology) once released cannot be returned to the bottle.
Religious groups believe that their magical belief and magical speech will transform the world. It does transform their experience of the world: speech has that power. But it will have a hard time changing the physics of the world where a steel hatchet cuts better than a stone hatchet, and where people are drawn toward the advantage that comes from tools, machines, industry, government, authority and war.
That is my rant of this morning.