[Buddha-l] RE: Problems with karma

[Bob Zeuschner]

Lance --
I believe you might have misinterpreted what I intended. Maybe not.
Let me try again.

L.S. Cousins wrote:
> Bob,
> 
>> For me, the big problem with the "law of karma" (besides the fact that 
>> it is not empirical) is that it ensures that there is justice no 
>> matter what.
>> If you rape and kill people and don't get caught, we don't have to 
>> worry. You will pay for it in your next life.
>> If you start a war where hundreds of thousands die needlessly, we 
>> don't have to worry. You will pay for it in your next life.
>> We don't need courts, or police.
>> If I am shot while driving on the L.A. freeway, it was my karma and I 
>> deserved it. Why bother to look after the shooter?
> 
> This is like saying that because everything that happens is willed by an 
> omnipotent deity therefore there is no need for courts or police.
> 
> It simply misunderstands totally the proper application of the law of 
> kamma.
> 
> Also, the results of kamma occur in this life as well as the next.

I think it is true that for both karma and omnibenevolent deities, no 
one can ever escape justice. No one can ever "get away with" any evil 
act, whether courts or police catch it or not.

For karma and deities, inescapable justice is built into the universe, 
independently of any human social justice.
Thus human justice is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things; you and 
I might feel better if the murderer is caught and imprisoned, but it 
makes no difference (in several ways).
The criminal will pay for the crime, either in this life or the next life.
If the murderer kills someone again, the murderer is merely acting out 
the requirements of the victim's bad karma (if it is true that 
everything that happens to us is the fruition of our own past karmic 
choices).

I realize that there are several interpretations of karma and that one 
interpretation will NOT generate that consequence I refer to above.

Here is my attempt at a tentative definition of karma:
I understand karma as claiming that everything you and I do has 
consequences, and moral actions generate consequences that rebound back 
upon the agent, and the consequences resemble the action. The 
consequences are inescapable, achieving fruition in this life or a next 
life.

One can interpret this as:
(a) Everything that happens to us is the (just) result of OUR prior 
karma (thus everything including starvation or slavery is deserved and 
there is no escaping the evil consequences of any immoral choice).

(b) There are things that happen to us which are caused 
(pratityasamutpada) but are NOT the karmic result of our prior choices 
(this life or a previous life) -- thus karmic consequences are a subset 
of the range of consequences. David Kalupahana argues for this 
interpretation in his book on Causality.


Choice (a) is the one that I was interpreting from the remarks of 
Tibetan lamas and other teachers who were quoted.

Choice (b) is the one that I prefer, but I still hold that there is no 
testable evidence to support the theory of karma.

Bob