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What is Karma? Karma is one of the most misunderstood concepts in Buddhism. The misunderstandings are unfortunate because the principle of karma is crucially important for our understanding of why we practice and what happens when we practice. The aim of this article is to correct a number of these misconceptions. The first misconception […]
Article
[…] contemporary Buddhist thinking disturbs me deeply. Although many may disagree with me, I feel that current interpretations of forgiveness in the Buddhist community undermine the teachings of karma, encourage the cult of victimhood, weaken human relationships, and obfuscate the practice of purification. In contemporary Buddhist settings, forgiveness is interpreted in several ways. One is […]
Article
[…] blue pill, you do not look at your own reactivity. You attribute any adverse effects of your counsel or actions to the ripening of the injured party’s karma, as purification, or as a mystery beyond ordinary comprehension. The patterns of self and self-cherishing have taken over the experience of mind nature and are only […]
Article
[…] and other religious traditions. Within Buddhism itself, there is also a wide variety of methods: simple attention to the breath, contemplation of specific subjects (change, compassion, or karma, for example), complex visualizations of symbolic forms in the Tibetan tradition, koan practice in Zen, “contentless” meditation, and many others. Broadly speaking, we can distinguish between […]
Article
[…] effect, not statements about reality. What, then, do we make of all the teachings of various spiritual traditions and other forms of human knowledge? For me, God, karma, rebirth, emptiness, Brahma, Atman, heaven, hell, all of these are stories that people use to understand, explain, or give direction to their lives. The same holds […]
