Why I am a Buddhist (In theory)
I was trying to explain this to my wife today. I believe the Buddhists got a few things right for a few simple reasons. I feel as though Karma makes sense. To me, Buddhism is all about recycling, re-appropriating, reusing, and renegotiating energy. There is some positive and some negative energy in the world. But for the most part, none of this energy is ever lost, it is only moved around being reshaped through different forms.
So, what I do in this life, the conscious choices I make, instilling positive values into my daughter for instance, will eventually create a ripple effect that will negotiate these different types of energy throughout her entire social field, having a small effect upon her world.
Everyone I have contact with will have an impact on me, and me on them, and this trickles down to my daughter, who grows up, goes out into the world, and moves energy through her actions. So my understanding of Karma is this... building good merit (as the Buddhists call it) is about actively engaging in producing effects in this life, that will move energy around, to result in a flow of energy that will meet and greet you when you return to this planet in the next life.
So Karma is something like this... if you live the life of Adolf Hitler, and create a world based on fascist scare-mongering, which has sadly become a political model widely accepted throughout many parts of the world, then you will have to reincarnate into this paranoid world in your next life. So beware! Your actions will follow you.
I was thinking, I like Buddhist karma better than the Christian concept of Heaven and Hell. Why? Because in Christianity you get a mere lifetime to either do Good or do Evil, and then you pay off your debt to God for all of eternity! That seems really excessive. I like Buddhist reincarnation better. If Adolf Hitler kills 6 million Jews, he can live the life of someone experiencing genocide in Darfur... he can feel the terror first hand. No energy is lost. So he can go from being the producer of paranoia, to the consumer of paranoia, and learn his lesson, thereby recycling energy into the next life, making the universe richer, more complex.
It all made sense to me while trying to decipher Foucault's theory of the episteme in The Order of Things last night. The Post-Structuralists are always talking in Heideggerian language about "Appropriation" this, and "Power dynamics" that...perhaps this type of malleable creation and recycling of energy flows through an infinite plenitude of possible forms is precisely what they mean by history! By flows and by Power. Nothing is lost. Only recycled, re-appropriated, reworked, and reformed. I like that idea. Makes sense to me. I just think that people need to be made more conscious of how this positive and negative energy flows through each of us on a micro-political level each and every day.
So, what I do in this life, the conscious choices I make, instilling positive values into my daughter for instance, will eventually create a ripple effect that will negotiate these different types of energy throughout her entire social field, having a small effect upon her world.
Everyone I have contact with will have an impact on me, and me on them, and this trickles down to my daughter, who grows up, goes out into the world, and moves energy through her actions. So my understanding of Karma is this... building good merit (as the Buddhists call it) is about actively engaging in producing effects in this life, that will move energy around, to result in a flow of energy that will meet and greet you when you return to this planet in the next life.
So Karma is something like this... if you live the life of Adolf Hitler, and create a world based on fascist scare-mongering, which has sadly become a political model widely accepted throughout many parts of the world, then you will have to reincarnate into this paranoid world in your next life. So beware! Your actions will follow you.
I was thinking, I like Buddhist karma better than the Christian concept of Heaven and Hell. Why? Because in Christianity you get a mere lifetime to either do Good or do Evil, and then you pay off your debt to God for all of eternity! That seems really excessive. I like Buddhist reincarnation better. If Adolf Hitler kills 6 million Jews, he can live the life of someone experiencing genocide in Darfur... he can feel the terror first hand. No energy is lost. So he can go from being the producer of paranoia, to the consumer of paranoia, and learn his lesson, thereby recycling energy into the next life, making the universe richer, more complex.
It all made sense to me while trying to decipher Foucault's theory of the episteme in The Order of Things last night. The Post-Structuralists are always talking in Heideggerian language about "Appropriation" this, and "Power dynamics" that...perhaps this type of malleable creation and recycling of energy flows through an infinite plenitude of possible forms is precisely what they mean by history! By flows and by Power. Nothing is lost. Only recycled, re-appropriated, reworked, and reformed. I like that idea. Makes sense to me. I just think that people need to be made more conscious of how this positive and negative energy flows through each of us on a micro-political level each and every day.