There's no such thing as karma

[DragonsOnRoof]

AIBU to feel there's no such thing as 'karma' or 'fate'?

My DM is always saying "Oh it wasn't/was meant to be..." and it irritates me. (I don't let it show, I just nod). Life is just a serious of thousands of small and big decisions, random events, coincidences and sheer luck (good or bad).

I think if you're a shit, selfish person you'll soon run out of friends but that's just consequence, not karma.

I know many amazing, kind people who have had really awful and unfair things happen to them or their family, why do we put so much faith in karma? There's no inherent earthly balance of good/bad we are all bound to.

Often, bastards get away with being bastards and good guys really do finish last.

rant over, as you were

Thank you DragonsOnRoof . The injustice of it all is souldestroying but its life sadly. Karma does not exist as is proven on this thread. 😐

@ParkheadParadise that's beyond awful.

My abuser (family member) walked free, is very happy, and recently had a £50,000 windfall. I can't begin to understand the trauma and pain you've been though but I understand on some level what it's like to hate someone.

Agree with you OP
Karma in the populist sense does not exist

It's a smug Western concept.

I have Family from around the World and Friends from African Countries. The stories i get told brings me to the conclusion that Karma can't exist.

Look at every major tragic event, War crimes, Famines, Floods, Holocausts etc, i can't accept that those tjat suffered the most did something bad enough to warrant that. Likewise many Nazi Officers went on to live happy lives.

As for it carrying on into the next life, well we are back there with the concept tjat disabled/abused etc children did something bad enough to cause it.

I do believe the saying about people taking their own poison, though.

It's a smug Western concept.

That sums it up perfectly.

Conflicted

"I prefer the Wiccan rule of 3. (What you send out will come back 3 times over).

Act out of jealousy and you will be drinking the poison type of thing."

Interesting. Is there a Wiccan type of rule where you can protect yourself from another person's jealousy, neediness and pushiness? I seem to attract this type of person ... or am I in fact sending jealous, needy pushy vibes and getting these back?

I think the idea of karma is something people cling to to keep themselves sane when others treat them badly.

Karma means nothing without the belief of reincarnation. So waiting for people to 'get theirs' is useless, because it probably won't happen.

It's perhaps something for people to believe in in the absence of a religious faith system?

It's a smug Western concept

That came from India.. Karma is an Eastern concept in origin.

"I do believe the saying about people taking their own poison, though."

What does this mean? Is it about 'drinking your own medicine'?

I think its meaning has changed, people use it nowadays as a synonym for "he'll get his comeuppance", "pride goeth before a fall", etc. Often just the natural consequences of being a prick ie. if you're a workplace bully eventually it catches up with you or nasty people lose their friends. I don't think I've often heard it be used about disability (which would just be cruel), natural disasters out of people's control or about next lives.

It's perhaps something for people to believe in in the absence of a religious faith system?

Karma is very much part of a religious faith system. In fact its part of more than one Eastern based religion.

Tom, yes if you are jealous of someone and send hateful thoughts, the idea is that you are allowing your own jealousy to consume you and therefore drinking you’re own poison.

Likewise, you can only hurt someone with your comments or thoughts, if they allow themselves to be hurt by you. We accept what emotions we will indulge in. No-one can do that for us.

From a Wiccan perspective there are certainly some protection rituals that you can do. I am not actually Wiccan although I follow with great interest but there is a lot to be said from shifting your own perspective into a positive active mindset from a negative passive one.

I dont believe in karma but I do believe in fate. Not to say that everything that happens is "meant to happen", because shit things happen for no good reason. But I do think that life has a way of bringing you to what is right for you eventually.

Karma isn’t a western tradition, it’s Buddhist and Hindu.
As Christians, we believe that humans have free will to perform good or evil actions. But we are all individually responsible for our actions, and if we don’t genuinely repent the bad ones and try to make amends, then we are answerable to God. Not in this life, where injustice often seems to go unpunished, and illness and suffering befall good people, but after our death.
I sometimes think evil people enjoy wealth etc in this life because it’s all they’re going to get - they’ve sacrificed their immortal soul for it.

I’ve had some serious s**t happen to me that I know I in no way deserved so no, I don’t believe in any of that stuff.

Bad things and good things happen at random.

I do firmly believe that being a nice human being to other human beings will make your life better than if you weren’t though.

If karma is real, I can wait outside the post office and mug an old lady coming out, and steal her pension money, safe in the knowledge that the wicked old bat had it coming.

It always makes me laugh, that when someone does something bad to you, we say "karma will get them". Totally overlooking the fact that if something bad has been done to us, karma says it must be pay back for something bad we did to someone else.

So, had your car stolen.......good......you deserved it.

No such thing as Karma in my experience. It seems to be more 'The Devil looks after his own' and 'No good deed goes unpunished' in my experience.
I don't think I've ever once seen a truly horrible person get their comeuppance. Plenty of crap seems to happen to nice people though.

If someone thinks that awful things happen to people who have been nasty to them don't understand what the concept of Karma is or the meaning of it.

When I was growing up we had a neighbour who was convinced another neighbour's husband died of cancer because that neighbour had reported the first neighbour for some minor illegality. Do people really think the 'universe' or 'fate' is going to make things like that happen?

Anyone who thinks that's how Karma works must have a massively over inflated idea of their own importance in the wider scheme of things.

You can rant at me all you like, but it's not going to change my beliefs

How about evidence? Does that change your beliefs. Plenty of evidence on this thread that there is no "universal balance". If evidence doesn't change your beliefs, then they are not beliefs, they're a dogma.

I believe in a giant earth sized karma, rather than individual karmic consequences. How we behave as individuals affects our planet, our population and our children’s children.

If people stop looking for reasons an individual gets a rotten hand in life and look at the big picture, it makes more sense.

Be curious to know what the OP thinks karma is, before any decision can be made on whether it exists or not. Pretty certain when I was ublocking my chakras in the 80s, it wasn't a synonym for "tit for tat". Although I probably wasn't paying attention.

I agree. There is no such thing as karma. Sometimes people get what they deserve (be that good or bad) and sometimes they don’t. It’s random. All life is random.

Religion, faith, spirituality, they have all been used to control. We can’t have people just running round seeking revenge on anyone who has done them wrong, it would be chaos. So we are conditioned to put our belief in a “higher power” to punish them for us. Of course it doesn’t happen but for the sake of societal harmony we ignore that fact.

Even “morals” are a made up concept. Most of us don’t commit murder, not because of the punishment we’d get, but because we inherently believe it’s wrong. But that’s because we have been raised that way and the penalties imposed by society reflect that. But really again it’s about controlling the masses so society functions. So if I went and murdered someone today, yes society would punish me, but there would be no punishment from some mythical “higher power”.

I class myself as neither good or bad. I can be very kind, and I can also be very horrible (to those I feel deserve it!). I am not governed by any kind of belief system. I don’t break the law because I don’t want to go to prison. But, in all honesty, I have become more selfish the older I get because I simply don’t believe in anything outside of the life we live now.

Be curious to know what the OP thinks karma is, before any decision can be made on whether it exists or not.

I suspect what most western people think of when discussing karma is a supernatural force that punished evil and rewards good. That's clearly utter nonsense.

But everyday consequences of your actions, if you are a drug dealer you are more likely to be shot in the face that if you are a librarian, is true.