bobo0100 wrote:
I didn't know Karma differentiated between "natural" and "supernatural?" phenomena. Does Karma have a solid definition of what counts as a "natural" event? Or did you mean inevitable?
yes the implied meaning was inevitable.
bobo0100 wrote:
In this you trivialise death. Do you think that all methods of death are equally innocent of being bad? Surely you can see the difference between someone who has lived a long and fulfilling life, and than passed away peacefully in there sleep, and an child facing nothing but misery due to some server defect at there birth that eventually leads to a very early death in there childhood.
you think i am trivializing death, i think you are giving too much importance
let me attempt this one, the examples you have choose are very extreme(which i suppose is to amplify your point, which is good), but you are not seeing the whole theory,
karma did not stopped with your this life only
(now you may say but you don't believe in reincarnation itself,so how can I give you an explanation based on it,so my answer will be look I DON"T KNOW EVERYTHING, i am myself trying to understand these things, so i can tell you whatever i know, which is very limited, and in no sense i claim this is the only truth, for me this is a possibility and i am exploring it, so if you are cool with it then read below otherwise there is no point further,
like if you want concrete proves for reincarnation,right now i don't have any, but i also don't see any reason to believe that consciousness just ends with death, and this also be discussed further, why i don't think so, but that is another topic )
now that the example of that kid only, now the child has a severe defect and it is suffering very much, would it not be good for him actually to die and have a new life rather than suffer in that life only(ok these all are logical argument, don't take it literally ),
again the old man lived a fulfilling life, too much of imagination, no one has lived a life which is devoid of suffering, everyone has their own causes of it, but everybody has it, now you/anyone might think by looking some other(say rich)person that his suffering is much less, but the point is even he will look at someone and think the same, there is no one living a perfect life,
suffering was/is/will be, you/anyone can not escape it
now suppose that child was in Syria right now, so would it be any less bad(his death), if after he is born in any other country ?
west think very -ve about death which it is not, lets see suppose a tribe lives in a jungle alone and there are man eating tigers in the jungle, so in night there is very strong chance that the tiger might kill someone and eat them, now at the time of sun set it's natural that the tribe will be fearful and assign negative emotions like death to evening/night, but was the evening/night really had any negativity associated with them, i mean evening is just like morning , it's a transition period, and it has no special meaning (with respect to morning,afternoon,evening,night), it is the tribe that is giving it any meaning
karma is also like this, it just is, it is neither for you or against you, like sun it is basically indifferent to individuals
and no one wants to die, it's not that the old man would mind less if he die, we all wants to live in whatever miserable situation we may be,everyone(exceptions are)just wants to continue living(for satisfying which we have made notions of heaven)
for a moment believe in reincarnation(many people do, Hindus,Buddhist,Jains etc), so how much time you would spend mourning for those whom you have lost when you came in this life, you must had a wife, a mother, a dad, friends, siblings, job many other things, but now does any of that matters? now you might say but i don't believe in reincarnation, ok, but other groups do, do you think these other groups mourn for their past lives and past relations, anything of this world will never touch the real you(we call it Atman, similar to soul), are these people bad ? i am not saying here because many people believe so it must be true but the point is that this suffering that you/we give so much of importance is very subjective in it's nature
like remember the 1st time you had a true love(if you had), now at that time doesn't it seem that the other person is the whole world for you, and if the person breaks your heart, it's almost like world is meaningless then,at that point nothing can really compare to the pain you/anyone goes through, but then again when you'll be 40 and think about the same incident you will have very different feeling about it(so can you in hindsight say ok it was not that big of a deal, which at that point of time looked like everything )
so the whole point is, if you look events in their entirety then this notion that theory of karma does not hold up because it dons not explain everything that child's death, is not so
anyway i did stretch the argument a bit too much
bobo0100 wrote:You mean like, you go for a run and you roll your ankle. My point is, there are just as many counter examples as there are examples, and even then as you have admitted these situations could go ether way. Its almost as if the universe was not matching your good deeds to good results. You are trying very hard to make your karma un-falsifiable, although this may allow you to go on believing, it makes your claims hold NO weight argumentatively.
the theory does not address individual action reactions, and does not give any information how/where will the karma come back, so if you want this to be addressed, then it's just not there.
any physical thing that happens in this universe has a reason behind it,i mean there is cause and effect
like sun,start,planets,
solar system(gravitational force)
earthquake(tectonic movement of plates)
wind(pressure difference)
we(evolution)
in the same way theory of karma tries to explain what it deals with, now if it does then have it, if it doesn't then discard it,
but we should judge it on it's terms, and should not apply our own bias and try to discard it without even understanding it
that is my point of view
anyway one more point, from what i understand, science does not pay any attention to observer,it only deals with what is being observed
but consciousness is what observes anything, and we know nothing about it, not mentioning here to suggest yo to believe in what i believe in
but like if you/anyone are for physical sciences then they should also try to understand it(consciousness) by their own methods
because knowing/understanding the true nature of it is important from whichever method/source you understand it
bobo0100 wrote:Would you be able to recommend any good resources that will allow me to better understand Karma?
not really, sorry.
i study about these things in my spare time, and right now im into concept of god(like what it is)
but ill share with you if i come across anything
and Srimad Bhagavad Gita, is the most popular book for Karma, but it's a very big also,you can actually see which chapters deals with karma and read those if you want, it is a very good book