What role does God play in morals? Is there such a thing as

[anders]

Alaric,

You wrote "Why do you care about karma?" I have asked myself that question, but perhaps from another point of view. It should be noted that I think that mainly try to interpret the Old School (Theravada) teachings, not the Mahayana of EnGyo.

My question: If we are just a collection of Aggregates, and are not reborn as ourselves but in another form (there is no "self"), why should "I" bother about karma, when the new existence, arising because of the fruits of my karma, has no connection with "my" present "me"?

I would like to see ít as a matter of compassion. If I accumulate a lot of bad karma, there will be a miserable being after me, perhaps an animal. If I accumulate good karma, perhaps the resulting being will have a better chance of reaching nirvana. Accumulating bad karma cannot benefit anybody, now or later.

"Would you sacrifice your afterlife to help people now, or not?"

Again, it is not my afterlife, so I will not sacrifice anything for myself. If I help people, there is an accumulation of good karma, so the being eventually resulting fom the fruits of my karma will probably stand a better chance of reaching nirvana.

A person who has reached the Arhant stage, like the Buddha after his Enlightenment, does not accumulate any karma any more, so (s)he is free to act, and will act to help people.

 

[Runt]

Anders--

My question: If we are just a collection of Aggregates, and are not reborn as ourselves but in another form (there is no "self"), why should "I" bother about karma, when the new existence, arising because of the fruits of my karma, has no connection with "my" present "me"?

I would like to see ít as a matter of compassion. If I accumulate a lot of bad karma, there will be a miserable being after me, perhaps an animal. If I accumulate good karma, perhaps the resulting being will have a better chance of reaching nirvana. Accumulating bad karma cannot benefit anybody, now or later.

If I believed in rebirth the same way you do (I don't think karma carries over but the rest is similar) then I would think of that new being in terms of being like a child I could give birth to in this life...

My child is the result of my actions... sex and love (though some say sex more than love). That child contains a little bit of "me" (my genetic information), and no, my "self", my consciousness, is not in this child; I will not feel what she feels, or see through her eyes. She may contain a little bit of "me", but we are seperate and the consequences of my actions do not directly affect "me" when they affect her.

However the poor choices I make in my life can carry over to her: If I have unprotected sex and get AIDS, if I do drugs and there are mutations, if I smoke or drink alcohol or do drugs while pregnant, the consequences of these actions could carry over to HER. She could be born with AIDS. She could be born retarded, have fetal alcohol syndrome, or be born addicted to crack.

Now, these things do not directly affect me... but they do affect her, and if I am compassionate I will think not only of the consequences of my actions for myself, but also for the consequences of my actions on the being that comes after me... whether this being is a child of my body or a child of my spirit...

 

[anders]

Well, Runt,

I tried to make clear that those are not my beliefs but my interpretations... I do not believe in any rebirth, not once as Christians do, not many times as in Hinduism and Buddhism. But I think that Buddhism is a fascinating religion, and my philosophy of life is probably heavily influenced by it. (I should perhaps have written "the Buddhisms" etc.)

Anyway, according to most karma theories, I think there is a consensus on that the fruits of karma are not operating in this life. In our present lives, there is the normal cause-and-effect when you act: kicking somebody will cause pain; feeding somebody will cause satisfaction. Another cause-and-effect chain is that our actions create good or bad karma, and the fruits of the accumulated karma will determine the situation of some future being.

 

[Alaric]

Those are interesting ways of looking at it, Runt & Anders - then karma would be about compassion after all, although it would be focused more on that one future form rather than those around you now. I've often wondered about how good traditional 'good' deeds are in the long run, one thing economics teaches you is that (theoretically) compassion can be a bad thing for everyone - well-meaning gestures that do more harm than good.

But in economics you are talking about the whole society, and mostly in terms of efficiency; your way of viewing rebirth talks about focusing on your future form; and today's garden variety morality focuses more on the here and now. But they are quite different: forward-looking (or vertical?)morality might mean that you forego pleasures in this life in anticipation of the next (which is a bummer if you're wrong!), which slows the economy and may make us all less rich and progress slower; a more common 'horizontal' type focuses on alleviating suffering now, perhaps denying that there can be value in suffering; while a more 'total' outlook may create the greatest aggregate good but at the expense of the individual - perhaps it causes unacceptable suffering to a few for the good of the many.

We can probably have a mix of them, but we still need to establish our priorities - social/human progress, individual progress, or the defeat of suffering? Hegel might have gone for the first, Nietzsche for the second, and Buddha the third. All have different but interesting views on which is best.

 

[harold e. rice]

What role does God play in morals? Is there such a thing as "sin"?

One of the earliest moral codes found is history is the Hammurabi Code (written around 1780 BC) now located in the British Museum in London England.
The Hebrew scribes learned of it while they were exiled in Babylon (modern day Iraq) and decided to present the code as new laws from God with consequences for breaking the law. Failure to obey these new laws from God was rendered a sin and they also made-up the punishment and said it came from god. The Hebrew scribes decided what would be considered a sin and also the punishment for the sin.

Eight of the Ten Commandments were also borrowed from the Egyptian Book of the Dead (THE 42 COMMANDMENTS OF ANCIENT EGYPT).
Moses never received stone tablets on a mountain with rule written by God himself.

Man created the concept of sin.
613 Laws plus the Ten Commandments.