Do you believe in karma?

I've had the misfortune of meeting people in my life that were complete @zzholes to others and me for that matter and karma didn't make it to their homes yet, it seems. One of them even won the lottery, so dear karma, wake up and get busy.

Good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people. There is no relation between your actions towards others and your own fortune.

No, I don't believe in karma.

However...

I should note that this isn't really a hundred percent true either. There is no spiritual or whatever force influencing your luck, but your actions towards others can influence your future. You never know when or where being considerate, decent, and friendly will benefit you, and there's rarely a reason to directly push conflict.

Karma the mystical scorecard that decides where you end up reincarnated as like a bug or a mighty eagle depending on how you score? No

Karma some kind of abstract rule taht says bad things happen to bad people and good things happen to good people? Also no.

But there are a lot of colloquial definitions of Karma out there. Are we talking Hindu faith of My Name is Earl?

I only believe in karma when it is within the confines of a John Lennon song:

Other than that, I don't believe in any supernatural systems of cause and effect, whether they be karma, prayer, or whatever. The environment I was raised in was not especially pushy in regards to what I should believe in spiritually and/or superstitions, fwiw.

@bisonhero: Oh yeah, well I only believe in Karma in Chameleon form!

Not in the traditional sense. I don't think that doing good will guarantee good will happen to you, and same with bad. There isn't a karmic justice system that balances things out as you go. I do think that you should just generally try to be a good person though, and you never know when your good deeds might result in good things later on for you down the road. If nothing else, I'd say it's a good result to be remembered as a person who was generally good rather than generally bad.

I can say with absolute certainty that karma, in the Western sense of the word, does not exist. Way too many awful things happen to awesome people, and vice versa for Karma to be a real thing. However, with regard to karma in the reincarnation sense. there's really no way to prove or disprove it, so who knows.

I dont believe in anything.

In a way. Not in the "good things happen to good people" sense, but more in a "life (or at least my life) is in a persistent state of balance." If something good happens then something bad is likely around the corner to balance it out, and vice versa.

I'm not a particularly religious or spiritual person, but after many years I've come to notice that just seems to be how my life always plays out.

I'm half-asian, but generally no, I don't think karma as a metaphysical thing has much merit to it.

I think there may be something to the idea that both negativity and positivity can perpetuate forward and reflect back, but that's more a psychological effect than cosmic forces at work. I bet it also assumes you have a decent idea of right and wrong rather than being sociopathic.

No I don't. But I firmly believe in the Golden Rule, which means I treat people well and have no qualms going out of my way to assist someone, often in a compulsive manner.

I don't necessarily believe that karma always applies to people since my grandparents are total jerks to me and my parents (like "we're all waiting till their dead" jerks). But I will say that my immediate family has always been insanely lucky with close calls and I guess karma might apply there as we always try to go out of our way to be kind to others.

No, I believe in cause and effect!

No, but you can affect your odds of good outcomes in general by being nice to people.

Checking in as an Asian who doesn't believe in karma. Having faith that the universe has any kind of inherent inclination towards justice seems like a poor world view.

I believe if you are a bad person, you will be treated badly. If you do bad things, people will probably find out and you'll be punished. Does that mean a cosmic force exists to keep the balance? Depends on your perception of things. You could argue societies reaction towards bad things and bad people IS the cosmic force. I would say karma exists, but a higher power isn't the gatekeeper: we are.

All those children that die during birth must have done some bad stuff in the womb. Karma is the desire to make us think our actions matter when they matter very little. Too many innocents die to truly believe in karma.

In a non mystical sense, there are reasons to believe being good to people will encouraged others to be good to you and vice versa but that's all.

Yeah this is pretty much how I feel. Society is the real karma, IMO.

I do, particularly the chicken variety. Love Indian food.

No, but I REALLY want it to be true...

I think you make your own Karma. Honesty and kindness has generally helped me get pleasant returns with other people, so I try to live around a modified Karma code of my own.

I don't believe whatever the official meaning of the word is. Most interpretations require some kind of reincarnation? I like to believe it's better to focus on your current life rather than worrying about what comes after. So reincarnation doesn't really even enter the equation whether it exists or not.

Well, life has a funny way of sneaking up on you when you think everything's okay and everything's going right.

And life has a funny way of helping you out when you think everything's gone wrong and everything blows up in your face.

@liquiddragon I think you'll find most westerners to be a depressing group of nihilistic hedonists in the dictionary sense (not the insult sense). Hell, hedonism is built into the American way: "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Utilitarianism seems to me to be the prevailing philosophy these days. We care about the here and now.

In that context, Karma (in the sense of some external universal force punishing evil and rewarding good) is a romantic but unscientific idea. Now you might could make an argument for a societal form of Karma (treat people badly and you will receive bad treatment), but that would be due to human psychology and not from an external divine source. It's also pretty far from the original Hindu meaning, as I understand it.

Nope. Like religion, I feel it's a concept created by humankind to explain why things beyond our control affect us in certain ways.

Nope. Empirical evidence and science 5ever.

There is a difference between actually believing in karma, and taking comfort in karma when convenient. I certainly fall into the latter.

I believe in it.

Just in case...

Yes. Instant Karma!

When you believe in things that you don't understand,

Then you suffer,

Superstition ain't the way

@memu:

I believe in karma in the sense that I think it was originally meant to be taken. The popularization of the concept as bad things happen to bad people is obviously not the case. However I think the original intent of the concept of karma is that doing bad actions will make you a bad person and this is bad for you. This interpretation of the concept bears out.

I used to not really believe in this stuff. But honestly my life always seems to go in patterns. The more I do, the more proactive and supportive and helpful I am, the more it "seems" things in my life work out more. Where when I"m more depressed and not involved, and thus less helpful I am the more it seems things in general don't work out. To me that feels like something similar to karma.

I don't think it's universal though. But I do think there is an element of you get out of life some of what you put in, maybe not all the time...but sometimes.

One of those things that I don't believe in but would like to be real. Like Half-life 3.

I like the idea of it but don't believe in it.

No because it doesn't exist.

In a way, I suppose. It's a coping mechanism I utilize when I make choices to do the right thing even when it doesn't benefit me (or comes at my expense) and have to watch others cut corners morally/ethically with zero consequence (or worse, benefit). I lie to myself that it will catch up to them or me down the road. In reality, I do the right thing because it's the right thing to do, not because I think I'll get something back in return from the universe (although that would be nice). I cling to what little intrinsic satisfaction I get from knowing who I am, but it often pales in comparison with my disappointment in people and the generally lacking karmic "justice" (positively or negatively) that I observe.

If you're talking about just the instant/eventual cosmic justice thing, then no.

If you're talking about the reincarnation thing, then also no.

I believe it is simply a religious idea, that was based off of a very basic social rule that has applied to us and our ancestors for a very long time: In a social sense, if you treat others with respect, kindness, and help when needed, you are significantly more likely to get the same treatment back.

It has nothing to do with absolute justice or spiritual judgement, as far as we know or probably can ever prove. However, I don't think it even is that black/white even in the religious Buddhism (etc) sense... in the "generalized" organized-religious karmic systems we have today that I know of, it's not black and white either... as in, "God" (nature, social structure, luck, whatever) works in mysterious ways... Quite often, in life, bad things happen to you, or others, that seem horrible at the time. But then the person in question grows in some very important way, or receives more in return because of some unexpected benefit later on that they didn't perceive would happen initially. It certainly happens, but is not guaranteed, of course (as far as we know or probably ever will know).

So yes, in a basic sense, we KNOW that Karma is true in a social sense (to a certain extent), and that is simply the basis for the religious belief in the same.

I find it odd how many people in the thread just dismiss it outright, which is the same as believing in it absolutely. We can't prove it either way, so don't speak in absolutes when the idea being discussed cannot be proven either way - true or not. Even if you think it unlikely, which I believe is short-sighted in this case - being that Karma essentially DOES exist in a social sense, and that is easily "proven."

No. There are ebbs and flows to life in general and if you do dirt or get involved with bad things bad things happen eventually, usually. Sometimes it works out great! There's no reason behind it all.

I think if you tend to be positive in different ways you open yourself up to good things. That's basically it.

No I dont think the universe gives a shit about what we do.

Also are we talking reincarnation karma? Or white girl karma?

Shout out to any pastafarians in the house!!

I believe in karma. Well more if a want to believe in karma. If you're a band person who treats others like shit I hope you get run over by a bus or something. But then I get in the paradox of most religions like Christianity of being good to go to heaven. Are people being good because of the carrot on the stick or because they should treat their brothers and sisters well as a trait of humanity and understanding. I dunno.

No, no magic. It's up to the society to establish a surrogate system.

Not at all. If there was any sort of balancing force children wouldn't die of cancer.

I'm a zen student and Buddhism seems to regard the concept of karma somewhat differently than Hinduism, since Buddhism posits neither a god nor a soul. So karma, from what I've learned, isn't at all seen as some sort of system for meting out reward or punishment but simply a recognition that every action (and in Buddhism thoughts are also seen as actions) produces ripples, some immediately recognizable and some much less so, and in that sense karma creates your environment. While the specific effects can't be mapped exactly, it does seem true to my experience that trying to genuinely act out of kindness and compassion creates a very different environment than acting out of fear, hatred, paranoia, selfishness, etc. So I do believe in karma in that sense.

Nope, otherwise we would all be dead, were all guilty of something.

No, but I feel like there is large misunderstanding of what karma actually is, at least in the Buddhist sense. I believe karma is more like something that adds up by not doing necessarily good things, but having "good intentions". The more good intentions you have, the better place you secure in the after life. It has no effect on your current life or those around you.

That being said, no I don't believe in karma because living your life on just good intentions seems like a very convenient escape for doing something horribly wrong and not admitting to it.

No, but I believe in schadenfreude, and anything that looks like karma and ends in that is divine by me.

There are too many examples of karma not existing for it to exist. There are countless people who lead corporations or entire countries who are garbage people, but live long and happy lives and die of old age.
No karma.
Try to be a good person anyways though.

I could talk regarding my faith (not gonna), but I will say I believe that eventually people's action will be dealt back to them in turn: whether good or bad. And whether or not you believe there is a divine, cosmic, spiritual, etc. source at the heart of it, we all know that our actions have consequences. If you wanna call that karma, then be my guest.

I believe in an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Do something wrong, you pay the consequences for it.