Question on traditional Karmic Law

[Hermes]

I am asking this from our learned Buddhist friends mainly but Hindus and all others welcome to chime in. The basic premise of the dilemma is how much karmic consequence incurs for those who are mentally challenged. I know that karma looks at actions but my understanding is that intentions are perhaps part of it. My training is of esoteric western school (Agni Yoga) and I think(if I remember properly) in the Teaching(AY) intentions are mitigated. In other words if one is a bad father or son based on your predisposition and emotional baggage(mental illness) who is this factor into the karmic balance? On the other hand every negative act could be explained and psychoanalyzed.

 

[Devils' Advocate]

I'm speaking from the 'other' camp. There is a problem for me with the wording of your question - clarification please.

Specifically this part "...if one is a bad father or son based on your predisposition and emotional baggage(mental illness)..." You seem to be equating emotional baggage and bad predisposition with mental illness. I see no correlation at all. Mental illnesses, nowadays, are considered any medical conditions that often result in a diminished capacity for coping with the ordinary demands of life. It includes the gambit from depression to a psychopath.

The definition is too broad to my way of thinking. There are mental issues that make it hard to cope with daily life. And then there are mental illnesses where people are so deeply disturbed as to be a danger to themselves and others on an ongoing basis. These two types should not be grouped together. The first type are more aware of their problems, and shouldn't get much of a karmic pass.

The second type gives me more of a knotty problem. Are these people karmically responsible for their actions when they have little to no ability to control what they do?

To which group are you primarily aiming your question?

 

[Hermes]

I am talking about the milder version. Fore example, my former teacher claimed that the worst karmic act was betrayal (not murder as most would assume). Abandonment, impulsive behavior are caused by some personality or mood disorders. I am not asking about the totally insane whose brain has some sort of a seizure putting him into a fit. Betrayal, being a bad father can both be caused some personality disorder, or just being a selfish, vile person. I do not believe that all selfish, vile people are ill (in a clinical sense).

 

[Devils' Advocate]

Gotcha. Thanks. When dealing with 'milder' forms of personality disorder (milder in quotes because even mild disorders can be very debilitating!) my tendency is to be rather harsh. I'm big into personal responsibility, and not too lenient on excuses to excuse it. At the same time, there has to be some leniency for severe issues.

For example, someone who is depressed, that is no reason to excuse abusive behavior. But someone suffering from chronic severe depression, that is different and some, I say some, exclusion should be made for that. These comments would be my answer for any karmic associations.

Another issue to annoys the Crom out of me is this concept that we are somehow not able to control our emotions and ourselves. Pure poppy cock. Whose emotions are they? Yours, of course. If you generate them, you can control them.

 

[Hermes]

Yes, but some personality disorders can cause the person to be a liar, for example. Is that the same karmic weight as a "normal" person who lies for a malicious reason (just to turn back to the philosophical/spiritual mindset....)

 

[Devils' Advocate]

It depends here on just how we are defining our terms. Does a personality disorder mean that a person has no control over it. Take your case of lying. Someone who has a disorder that causes (?) them to lie - is that truly beyond their ability to control? If they are not responsible for the issue, I do not see how it would negatively affect their karma.

Rather it seems to me that perhaps this is a karmic trait they were born with - perhaps because of some reason in a previous life? I must admit that I am on very shaky ground here as my understanding of Karma is not very deep.

 

[Hermes]

Yes, but it is a constant flux. We learn and we change evolve or some perhaps devolve , brain chemistry is funny, not only external stimulus but internal (food, alcohol, drugs) can constantly change it. How much impulse control you have when you are in the clear, diagnosed or when still in denial, living in darkness? To me these are all mitigating factors, thus the karmic record-keeping (akasha) has to do some post supercomputer, matrix like balancing and re-balancing. I was curious of various doctrines that believe in karma, would chime in. And yes, the fact that we are born with this is the other side of the coin as you astutely pointed out, just ads to the complexity.

It depends here on just how we are defining our terms. Does a personality disorder mean that a person has no control over it. Take your case of lying. Someone who has a disorder that causes (?) them to lie - is that truly beyond their ability to control? If they are not responsible for the issue, I do not see how it would negatively affect their karma.

Rather it seems to me that perhaps this is a karmic trait they were born with - perhaps because of some reason in a previous life? I must admit that I am on very shaky ground here as my understanding of Karma is not very deep.

 

[Nick the Pilot]

Hermes,

Karma, good as well as bad, is spread around, with each person receiving their fair share of good/bad karma for the good deeds that happen. If a father is mean to his child and raises his child to be a bad person, and that son then goes out and commits a crime, both the father and the son will receive bad karma from the committing of the crime.

You said,

"…some personality disorders can cause the person to be a liar, for example. Is that the same karmic weight as a "normal" person who lies for a malicious reason (just to turn back to the philosophical/spiritual mindset....)"

--> Yes, all of these things are separated out into mitigating circumstances. To the extent that a person is helplessly motivated by a bad upbringing, he/she does not receive the total amount of bad karma from doing a bad thing. But if the person has a sense or right and wrong, they will receive an amount of bad karma relative to how well they should have tried to prevent themselves from doing the bad thing. It is all relative, and bad karma is dished out in a relative way.

"…these are all mitigating factors, thus the karmic record-keeping (akasha) has to do some post supercomputer, matrix like balancing and re-balancing…"

--> Yes, that’s right. Just recently, in the news, I heard about a young man who went to a school and killed several people. But from hearing more details about the case, I am quite sure the father is guilty of having raised his son in a very bad way, and I am convinced the father will receive some of the bad karma from the killings. American civil law does not hold the parents of such criminals accountable (which it should) but karma does.

 

[Thomas]

The basic premise of the dilemma is how much karmic consequence incurs for those who are mentally challenged.

Interesting! As you know I have 'problems' with western notions of karma, and this question sits right in the zone.

Take a psychopath. In the UK the definition is 'a persistent disorder or disability of mind (whether or not including significant impairment of intelligence) which results in abnormally aggressive or seriously irresponsible conduct on the part of the person concerned' ... and 'disorder' and 'disability' means the person cannot be held any more culpable for their mental condition than if they were born deaf or lame.

The 'excuse' that the disability is itself the product of karma from previous incarnations is 'convenient' to say the least (and again in my mind poor metaphysics: the confusing of the universal and the particular). And I assume the same excuse applies to the victims of the psychopath, in that the victims of psychopathy brought their fate upon themselves... Much the same way it is assumed that women, when raped, were probably dressing or acting in such a way as to invite attack ...

 

[Hermes]

Do you believe then the Eastern notions of Karma? Which is different how?

Interesting! As you know I have 'problems' with western notions of karma, and this question sits right in the zone.

Take a psychopath. In the UK the definition is 'a persistent disorder or disability of mind (whether or not including significant impairment of intelligence) which results in abnormally aggressive or seriously irresponsible conduct on the part of the person concerned' ... and 'disorder' and 'disability' means the person cannot be held any more culpable for their mental condition than if they were born deaf or lame.

The 'excuse' that the disability is itself the product of karma from previous incarnations is 'convenient' to say the least (and again in my mind poor metaphysics: the confusing of the universal and the particular). And I assume the same excuse applies to the victims of the psychopath, in that the victims of psychopathy brought their fate upon themselves... Much the same way it is assumed that women, when raped, were probably dressing or acting in such a way as to invite attack ...

 

[Nick the Pilot]

Yes, I do. I do not believe in the Christian idea of the forgiveness of sins because it removes the person from the responsibilities of what they have done.

It has been said that, when a person does a bad thing, it throws the entire universe out of balance, and only by having the person "burn off the bad karma" can the universe be put back into balance. This idea really resonates with me. (Does it resonate with you?)

All of the "Eastern notions of Karma" are basically the same.

 

[Thomas]

Do you believe then the Eastern notions of Karma?

I agree with Marco Pallis, a Tibetan Buddhist, writing on karma:

... karma has been explained, more often than not, in terms of moral sanction, as reward for good deeds and punishment for ill deeds, and this is how the matter is regarded, almost always, by the popular mind.

This is the kind of karma I tend to reject.

Now such a view is not in itself false ... (but) A full awareness of the implications of karma will carry one outside the circle of moral alternatives (and of the attachments which a personally biased view inevitably will foster in the long run); but nevertheless, for the common run of mortals, the view of karma as immanent justice, in the moral sense, is not unwholesome, since it inclines a man at least to take the lessons of karma seriously and apply them in his day-to-day life.

Thus it's the popular and exoteric view of karma I have problems with, or rather the explanations of doctrine founded on personal bias rather than metaphysical truth.

A classic example is here with Nick's idea of the 'rightness' of karma as opposed to the 'wrongness' of his view of 'the Christian idea of forgiveness' which is itself wrong, as well Nick knows, or should do by now, but he won't have it any other way.

So I reject the doctrine of karma founded on a 'personally biased view' that says more about the need of the satisfaction of sanction – that justice be seen to be done – than it does about the universe.

 

[Aupmanyav]

The 'excuse' that the disability is itself the product of karma from previous incarnations is 'convenient' to say the least (and again in my mind poor metaphysics: the confusing of the universal and the particular). And I assume the same excuse applies to the victims of the psychopath, in that the victims of psychopathy brought their fate upon themselves... Much the same way it is assumed that women, when raped, were probably dressing or acting in such a way as to invite attack ...

It is not an excuse. If one accepts the karma theory (I don't, being an atheist), then a previous life and a future life (in most cases) also have to be accepted. Something like if one leaves money on the road purposely to entice and someone takes it, then perhaps both are at fault.

Why have Gods or the law of the universe (in Buddhist view) instituted karma? It is for smooth functioning of the society.

 

[Thomas]

It is not an excuse. If one accepts the karma theory (I don't, being an atheist), then a previous life and a future life (in most cases) also have to be accepted.

I think that's an aspect, not the all, and an aspect that's over-blown because of the failure to grasp the whole doctrine, or rather the whole metaphysic behind the doctrine. It 'works', nonetheless, it's an upaya, but again I'm with Pallis and the Sophia Perennis generally in saying there's more to it than most suppose, and the West has largely got it wrong.

Why have Gods or the law of the universe (in Buddhist view) instituted karma? It is for smooth functioning of the society.

That's certainly a definition. It's just not one I work to.

Don't let this side-track Hermes' very good point: How does one determine the karmic value of the actions of those who are, for one treason or another, held to be not culpable for their actions?

 

[Senthil]

is how much karmic consequence incurs for those who are mentally challenged.

From my Hindu POV, the effects of karma are increased the more wisdom you have. So a small child hitting his sister suffers less karmic effects than the father would, assuming the father has internalised some of life's humanity lessons. So the mentally challenged individual accrues less.

 

[Thomas]

An instance of how popularised interpretations can lead to a certain amount of doctrinal distortion is provided by current beliefs in Buddhist countries concerning the possibility of "rebirth as a man". People all too readily assume that a human rebirth, provided they keep leading fairly ethical lives (often at a lowish level) is there for the asking.

Human rebirth is, in the West, assumed as a given, that the point and purpose of karma is to provide an infinite number of chances until one 'get's it right.'

They forget the common dictum about "human birth hard to obtain" or the Buddha's parable about the purblind turtle swimming in a vast ocean where there is also a piece of floating wood with a hole in it. He estimated any particular being's chances of obtaining a human birth as about equal to the likelihood of that turtle pushing its head through that hole!

By this far-fetched parable he evidently wished to impress on people the extreme precariousness of the human chance, warning them thus against the folly of wasting a precious opportunity in trivial pursuits. In a world that likes to think of itself as "progressive" how many people, I wonder, make even a slight attempt to follow this advice?

Let alone are aware of it?

 

[Hermes]

In my view, karma is the Universal law such as gravity and other laws. Simply said; karma is the law of cause<->effect, it is not an invention from a personal god, nor there is a personal god that manages the big account on some abacus . Wherever a universe exists (in case of multiverses) at the formation of the Universe, part of the "package" - karma(akasha) gets "formed" as stars, planets start revolving around each other and matter gets "formed", etc.
P.S.
As for Thomas' point - How on Earth could karma and Jesus' forgiveness coexist?

Why have Gods or the law of the universe (in Buddhist view) instituted karma? It is for smooth functioning of the society.

 

[wil]

My first introduction to Karmic rebirth was in elementary...another kid stepped on an ant, and was informed by a Hindu girl that he would come back as an ant in a future life for his disregard for life in this life. Karma/Sin, methods to control the masses.

 

[A Cup Of Tea]

Karma/Sin, methods to control the masses.

By saying it like this, you are saying that it's can't be more then that. It CAN be a tool to control the masses, but is it all it is?

 

[Devils' Advocate]

Absolutely not all that it is. Absolutely part of all that it is. Control of the masses has been an integral part of most religions. For centuries the great Christian religions have taught the have-nots to be satisfied with their lot. Why? Because they would reap their rewards in heaven. Classic case of the haves manipulating the have-nots to accept that their station in life is justified. And although my example is from Christian doctrine, I am not singling them out. Most religions have such built in manipulation methods.

Karma can also be used, as in the example mentioned by Wil. It is a very limited view of all that Karma is; there is so much more. I like Hermes concept of Karma as a law of nature, like gravity. I'm not sure I can accept that as genuine - the concept appeals to me though!

Getting back to the original question, what Hermes is really asking, from my point of view, is this - is Karma 'fair'. All of the examples mentioned thus far seem to point to that conclusion. The karmic damage one gains is equivalent to the level of ability to choose the damage one does. Whether this is traditional karmic law or not; I'm not sure anyone with enough knowledge of the subject has spoken to that yet.