"If you meet Buddha on the way - then kill him!"
[Roshi saying]
Everyone has heard the term karma at some point and will certainly have found one or the other explanation for it. So this is just a reminder:
The term karma comes from Asian religions, Hinduism and Buddhism. Etymologically, karma (or kamma) can be traced back to the Sanskrit root "kr" meaning "to do". So karma means the "deed", but does not only describe the law of cause and effect of deeds, as is often wrongly assumed in western culture, but rather it is about the effect of premeditated will. This intentional will is called karma and, according to religious teaching, carries within it the power to move the smallest components of the creation and decay of the world, the dharmas, imaginable as energy impulses that take their name from the Buddha's teaching called "Dharma". (See also Anagarika Govinda, Tradition of Abhidharma, Vienna 1980)
The concept of will is of course interesting for magic, especially the Thelemites will sit up and take notice (Thelema = Greek for will). For karma is created by samskara, one of the five skandhas of Abidharma theory. Samskara means all volitional movements, more than fifty are named individually. Buddha says in the Anguttara Nikaya: "Willing, O monks, that is what I call doing." What Buddha means by this is: Every act of intentional will stores energy, i.e. creates karma. And of course life with it. As long as man has a will, he does something, as long as he lives. If his karma is used up, the person dies.
In summary, this means: All life movements are stored as energy reservoirs, i.e. they generate karma, which sets new energy processes in motion that are based on impulse-like vibrations, the dharmas, whose complex structure creates the illusion of solid matter, i.e. our world, through momentary compression in which we move, accumulating new karma for future developments according to the workings of the skandhas, while using up the old karma. The following applies: "...what someone does, he is reborn, and when he is reborn, then the corresponding touches touch him" (Glasenapp). To put it simply: those who have caused suffering must endure suffering, those who have helped will be helped.
The following applies to magic: magicians accumulate karma in unimagined amounts, generate an above-average amount of life energy and store this energy. However, the dynamic view of life in magic seems to be in direct contradiction to the more anti-life and death-oriented hereafter teachings of the above-mentioned religions and their interpretations of karma.
Without esotericism, without the Theosophical Society around Helena Blavatsky, we would know little about karma anyway. Western esotericism has created a rather pietistic interpretation of the concept of karma, where one expects to be rewarded in life for good spiritual deeds and virtues and vice versa, if one inflicts damage on others, this damage is "repaid" in the form of misfortunes (Wiccan: The Law of Triple Return).
It has already been pointed out elsewhere that, since the karma theory assumes a very (self-) rightous world law, there can be no involuntary suffering there. Anyone who suffered in war or in a concentration camp, who is ill, has only themselves to blame because they accumulated "bad" karma in a previous life. This misanthropic worldview may be symptomatic of large circles of self-righteous do-gooders from esotericism and light-and-love scenes, such views are alien to magic and are therefore referred to the area of religions and esotericism by magicians.
Furthermore, the karma doctrine separates the soul very strongly from the physical and from the emotional world, which is also typical of religions. As a result, people are divided. A holistic view of the human being is no longer possible. But now the whole, the holistic, is the goal of magic! Karma theory is not compatible with magic on this point either.
Finally, the theory of karma is based on the principle of causality as a conceptual model, but magic is less interested in direct causalities, such as Newton's mechanics. We are happy to leave that to the mechanical engineering students. Seriously: magic transcends borders! Instead of being pinned down by religious karma causalities, we have turned to synchronicities, preferring to pursue biological, cybernetic, systemic and chaotic approaches.
The mechanics of karma - and with that I would like to end this short excursion into the magically off-topic areas of esotericism and religion here - recently got a disastrous brother: the doctrine of reincarnation. This emanates from a cosmic force that punishes flawed (sic!) people. Therefore, according to reincarnation therapists, people must have the chance to start a second and third attempt at an allegedly more successful life. Since such complicated actions as reincarnation should not be left to chance, who would have thought it, of course, helpers who have to paid a fee, help to make it possible to jump from one body to the next. A further comment on this is probably superfluous, I think.
[Roshi saying]
Everyone has heard the term karma at some point and will certainly have found one or the other explanation for it. So this is just a reminder:
The term karma comes from Asian religions, Hinduism and Buddhism. Etymologically, karma (or kamma) can be traced back to the Sanskrit root "kr" meaning "to do". So karma means the "deed", but does not only describe the law of cause and effect of deeds, as is often wrongly assumed in western culture, but rather it is about the effect of premeditated will. This intentional will is called karma and, according to religious teaching, carries within it the power to move the smallest components of the creation and decay of the world, the dharmas, imaginable as energy impulses that take their name from the Buddha's teaching called "Dharma". (See also Anagarika Govinda, Tradition of Abhidharma, Vienna 1980)
The concept of will is of course interesting for magic, especially the Thelemites will sit up and take notice (Thelema = Greek for will). For karma is created by samskara, one of the five skandhas of Abidharma theory. Samskara means all volitional movements, more than fifty are named individually. Buddha says in the Anguttara Nikaya: "Willing, O monks, that is what I call doing." What Buddha means by this is: Every act of intentional will stores energy, i.e. creates karma. And of course life with it. As long as man has a will, he does something, as long as he lives. If his karma is used up, the person dies.
In summary, this means: All life movements are stored as energy reservoirs, i.e. they generate karma, which sets new energy processes in motion that are based on impulse-like vibrations, the dharmas, whose complex structure creates the illusion of solid matter, i.e. our world, through momentary compression in which we move, accumulating new karma for future developments according to the workings of the skandhas, while using up the old karma. The following applies: "...what someone does, he is reborn, and when he is reborn, then the corresponding touches touch him" (Glasenapp). To put it simply: those who have caused suffering must endure suffering, those who have helped will be helped.
The following applies to magic: magicians accumulate karma in unimagined amounts, generate an above-average amount of life energy and store this energy. However, the dynamic view of life in magic seems to be in direct contradiction to the more anti-life and death-oriented hereafter teachings of the above-mentioned religions and their interpretations of karma.
Without esotericism, without the Theosophical Society around Helena Blavatsky, we would know little about karma anyway. Western esotericism has created a rather pietistic interpretation of the concept of karma, where one expects to be rewarded in life for good spiritual deeds and virtues and vice versa, if one inflicts damage on others, this damage is "repaid" in the form of misfortunes (Wiccan: The Law of Triple Return).
It has already been pointed out elsewhere that, since the karma theory assumes a very (self-) rightous world law, there can be no involuntary suffering there. Anyone who suffered in war or in a concentration camp, who is ill, has only themselves to blame because they accumulated "bad" karma in a previous life. This misanthropic worldview may be symptomatic of large circles of self-righteous do-gooders from esotericism and light-and-love scenes, such views are alien to magic and are therefore referred to the area of religions and esotericism by magicians.
Furthermore, the karma doctrine separates the soul very strongly from the physical and from the emotional world, which is also typical of religions. As a result, people are divided. A holistic view of the human being is no longer possible. But now the whole, the holistic, is the goal of magic! Karma theory is not compatible with magic on this point either.
Finally, the theory of karma is based on the principle of causality as a conceptual model, but magic is less interested in direct causalities, such as Newton's mechanics. We are happy to leave that to the mechanical engineering students. Seriously: magic transcends borders! Instead of being pinned down by religious karma causalities, we have turned to synchronicities, preferring to pursue biological, cybernetic, systemic and chaotic approaches.
The mechanics of karma - and with that I would like to end this short excursion into the magically off-topic areas of esotericism and religion here - recently got a disastrous brother: the doctrine of reincarnation. This emanates from a cosmic force that punishes flawed (sic!) people. Therefore, according to reincarnation therapists, people must have the chance to start a second and third attempt at an allegedly more successful life. Since such complicated actions as reincarnation should not be left to chance, who would have thought it, of course, helpers who have to paid a fee, help to make it possible to jump from one body to the next. A further comment on this is probably superfluous, I think.
