Kamma ⏳
- yin yang
- Every action creates counter-actions as unavoidable movements within manifestations of the Monad. Thus proper moral dicipline variously involves accepting, conforming to, or working with these natural developments, or “aligning your will with God.”
- Every action interferes with the balance of the universe, and in finding balance, our actions rebound upon us. The Christian’s used the metaphor of judgement to describe this process
Kamma is a universal law that connects our actions with a paticular realm of rebirth that corresponds to our actions and also determines the relations between our actions and the quality of our experience within the paricular realm we have been reborn.
The word Kamma translates literally to “action”, but it specifically refers to volitional action. As the Buddha states: “It is volition that I call kamma; for having willed, one acts by body, speech, and mind.” Kamma thus denotes that deeds originate from volition. Such volition may remain purley mental generating mental kamma that occurs as thoughts, plans, and desires; or it may externalize as bodily and verbal actions.
Now It may seem that our deeds, once performed, perish and vanish without leaving behind any traces apart from their immediate visible impact on other people and the enviroment. But we tend to overestimate the importance of one defining moment and underestimate the effect of small actions on a daily basis. Breakthrough moments are the result of the compounding of incremental actions, and it is the same for ethical actions. According to the doctrine of Kamma, all volitional actions create a potential to bring forth results, or “fruits”, that correspond to the ethical quality of that action. This links Buddhist ethics both consequentialist and virtue ethics. This capacity of our deeds to produce the morally appropriate results is what is meant by kamma. Our deeds generate kamma, a potential to produce fruits that correspond to their own intrinsic tendencies.
Then, when the internal and external conditions are suitable, the Kamma ripens and produces the appropriate fruits. in ripening, the kamma rebounds upon us for good or for harm depending on the ethical quality of the original action. i believe is what is what is being referred to as “judgement.” In Christianity. This may happen either later in the same life in which the action is done, in the next life, or in some distant future life. One could also call this process “devine retribution” from a pantheistic respective, in that this is not a process directed by an diety external to the universe, but is a process inherent in the universe itself. On the basis of ethical quality Kamma may be distinguished into two categories: wholesome kamma and unwholesome kamma.
References
- Bodhi, Bhikkhu. (2005). In The Buddha’s Words An Anthology of Discorces from the Pali Canon Chapter V. THE WAY TO A FORTUNATE REBIRTH (Location 2586) Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications.
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Type:🔵 Tags: Philosophy / Ethics Status:⛅