[Buddha-l] Re. karma and consequences

[Robert Ellis]

Dear Vicente,

I am not very clear about what your argument is here. You seem to be constantly equivocating between absolute karma and relative consequences, which is the very distinction I started off by making, and which I think it is important to make to avoid the kind of intellectual dishonesty I think I have often observed Buddhists getting stuck in. You do not seem to be offering any argument? to show that consequences in our experience are actually absolute karma, but only analogies based on the assumption that they are actually the same. 


You wrote >>On the contrary. In those examples the kamma is accomplished in the same moment that you explain this is the result. It seems what you miss in kamma is justice, not causality.<<

I thought that karma involves both justice and causality? If karma was true, it would thus be reasonable to expect both. I expect causality of some type (and I agree with Kant that causality is probably a conceptual scheme that we use to understand the world), but karma asserts the universal existence of a particular type of causality. It does not help to constantly insist that karma is nothing more than ordinary causality: if it were, why do Buddhists bother to talk about karma (rather than just causality) at all?

I do not understand how your analogy of billiards and remarks about skilfulness do anything to support absolute karma. Skilfulness (kusala), as I understand it, involves addressing conditions adequately. The notion of skilfulness is thus morally helpful, but it has nothing to do with absolute karma, only with addressing the conditions we find in our experience.

>>The rational character of kamma teaching is implicit, and this can be checked all the time while one don't exceed the reach of his understanding. Because quickly many third factor are involved, and the failure is when we are extending our imagination believing it is our understanding. Our mental images only are able to predict a "logical result" in the short distance (i.e: 1 + 1 = 2). Beyond these poor distances, these images are only imaginations with uncertain degrees of probability.<<

I agree with all that you say here about the limitations of our understanding and reason. But surely the implication of this is that we should not make absolute claims that go far beyond our experience?

I wonder if your understanding of causal relationships is actually Platonic? If I am not misunderstanding you, you seem to be implying that our limited experience, despite its limitations, nevertheless?provides rational access to essential truths about the universe. This view seems to me to take insufficient account of our degree of ignorance about the universe. The law of karma is something expounded by human beings, and we do not have direct and unequivocal access to God to check it out for us.
Best wishes,
Robert

Robert Ellis

website: www.moralobjectivity.net