Nathan,
To fully understand karma, you must understand that this ethics system, unlike many in today’s society, is based on the idea that universal rights and wrongs exist. Furthermore, it is important to observe how karma defines what is right and what is wrong. According to the law of karma, the right choice is that which will bring happiness, pleasure, or fulfillment. This is where a major inconsistency in the law of karma occurs. The law states that a universal (absolute) standard of morality exists. Yet, it also conjectures that the morality of choices is determined by the happiness these decisions produce. Happiness, however, is a subjective means of measurement. What makes each individual happy and what they interpret to equivocate to happiness varies from person to person. In this way, the law of karma contradicts itself by stating that morality is both absolute and subjective to human opinion.
In addition, karma cannot answer the commonly asked question: Why do bad things happen to good people? Because the law of karma states that everything that occurs in life is a result of past choices, karmic ethics has a difficult time justifying unexplainably unfortunate events that plague morally upright people. Beyond not being able to answer this question, the law of karma cannot even make sense of it. First, the question itself is contradictory to the idea of karma. Most importantly, the way in which karmic ethics would define “bad things” and “good people” is subjective to the choices that make each individual happy.
In this way, karmic ethics is in fact a very self-centered belief system which has simply been disguised in universal absolutes.
Nathan, I hope that you will consider both what you know about karma and the information that I have recently shared with you in order to make an educated decision of your belief in the existence of the law of karma. I hope that you now understand the play as a whole a bit better.
In Him,
Madeleine St. John
No comments:
Post a Comment