Those who believe in karma,which put very simply(as it appears to be slightly more complicated than this) is that which you do unto another, the other does back to you.,is believed by most Buddhists.Of all the Buddhist beliefs this one has been picked up by the west with a passion; maybe because, deep down, we know that it is true.
When karma is talked about, past lives are usually mentioned.Some say, such as Jung,that we all share a collective memory of mankind,and we can therefore easily imagine(because we share the collective memory) being almost anybody in the past.
Such people claim that we don't have past lives and are simply tuning into mankinds shared memory.A neat argument.I think though we can have both past lives and a collective memory.Having a common memory,doesn't mean we can't have past lives as well.
As there is no such thing as time, any past life that we imagine we lived must be taking place right now.If you were a farm worker in 1790, that means you being a farm worker in 1790 is happening while you are living this life.
It gets complicated. If you believe,as Buddhists believe, that we have probably lived 10,000 past lives.This complication arises because, using my argument that past lives are happening now,it must mean that all 10,000 of our past lives are taking place while our present life here is being lived.
This is quite a staggering thought; 10,000 yous all living 10,000 lives right now!!
What is interesting about the writings on karma found in Buddhist literature,I have yet to find any mention of future lives, apart from the occasional warning that you may come back in a lowly form in your next life.I hasten to add that I certainly have not read all Buddhist literature,so it is possible it is mentioned in detail somewhere.
Any future life you live must also,because time does not exist, be happening now. So you might have another ten lives before you gett off the wheel.
Any future life is determined by the previous ones.But wait-there isn't any previous,because there isn't any time.You might think that this itself totally destroys the concept of karma.The cause and effect idea is of course based on a serial,moving time.I do A on monday, and pay the price for it on tuesday.
Everything happening in the now though doesn't destroy the karma philosophy.
We view life through space and 'moving'time, because it is the only way we think we can understand it.If everything is really happening now though, you can still cause someone suffering now,and be repaid for it in the same now, though to us the payback time appears to take place in the future.
A bit tricky to grasp as we do not look at life in this way.
If people mention future lives they talk about them as if they haven't yet lived them.But, they must be happening now as well as your present life and past lives are, if you accept that there is only now.
So does this mean that all our lives are already lived, and it is all fate?
Yes and no and no and yes, I suspect is the nearest to a possible answer.
If we have free will, how can fate be true? Difficult questions I know..
How about this as a possible explanation?
All our lives, future, past and present are lived now, but if ,in the present moment you make a life changing choice,all your so called future lives change.So, am I saying that one action taken by you in this life would change all your lives in the so called future, even though those lives are now taking place? Yes.
Well, that's a different way of looking at things I must admit.Welcome to the brick wall.
This post was really written to shake the mind up a bit, to take it off its normal, past,present and future matrix, or should I say, past , future obsession.And it illustrates how thought reaches a brick wall when presented with questions it cannot really answer to its entire satisfaction.
Admit it, like me, you are not really satisfied with my possible explanation.Try and meditate on it, and you might come up with some interesting mental gymnastics.
I wonder what a Zen Master would say, if I asked him."What about karma, and past present and future lives all taking place now?"
I have no idea what he would say, but it might be something like this;
"The garden is overgrown; pull up the weeds".
Mike Selley.
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