India, a creator acting through his laws
The Asian
sub continent develops a complete new set of religions: Karmic religions. Karmic religion includes the most famuous Buddhism
which spread all over Asian to Japan, Mongolia,
Viet Nam. Janism is with 15 millions rich
faithful an important north Indian religion and most Hinduism since 500 BC.
According
to http://wikipedia.org
Mechanism of Karma
Karmas
are often wrongly interpreted as a method for reward and punishment of a soul for its good and bad deeds. In Jainism, there
is no question of there being any reward or punishment, as each soul is the master of its own destiny. The karmas can be said
to represent a sum total of all unfulfilled desires of a soul. They enable the soul to experience the various themes of the
lives that it desires to experience.[1] They ultimately mature when the necessary supportive conditions required for maturity are fulfilled.[4] Hence a soul may transmigrate from one life form to another for countless of years, taking with it the karmas that
it has earned, until it finds conditions that bring about the fruits. Similarly, heavens and hells are often viewed as places
for eternal happiness or eternal damnation for good and bad deeds. But according to Jainism and some other Dharmic religions, they, including earth, are simply the places which allow the soul to temporarily
experience its unfulfilled desires.
For example, a person who is good and virtuous all his life indicates a latent desire to experience good and virtuous
themes of life. Therefore, he attracts karmas that will ensure that his future births allow him to experience and manifest
his virtues and good feelings unhindered. In this case, he may take birth in heaven or in a prosperous and virtuous human
family. A person who has always indulged in immoral deeds with a cruel disposition indicates a latent desire to experience
cruel themes of life. As a natural consequence, he will attract karmas which will ensure that he is reincarnated in hell to
enable him to experience the cruel themes of life unhindered, as the environment in hell is conducive of such life. There
is no retribution, judgment or reward involved.
Hence
whatever suffering or pleasure that a soul may be experiencing now is on account of choices that it has made in past. That
is why Jainism stresses pure thinking and moral behavior. Apart from Buddhism, Jainism may be the only religion that does not invoke the fear of God as a reason
for moral behavior.
[edit] Karmic process
A soul is in bondage with karma since beginingless time. It is not thought that soul was originally pure and that
at certain point of time it lost purity by attracting karma. As such Jainism is not concerned with the fall of man. The soul
is in association with the karmas by continuous attraction and disintegration of karmic particles. The entire karmic process
can be understood by understanding as to what causes the karmic bondage, what is the nature and duration of karmic bonds,
how the karmas bear fruit, how the karmas can be modified and how one can attain release from the karmas.
[edit] Causes of karmic bondage
Karmas are attracted by the activity of mind, speech and body influenced by various passions.
Irrationality (mithyatva), non-restraint (avirati), carelessness (pramada), passions (kashaya) and activities of mind, speech and body (yoga) result in karmic bondage.[4] The influx of karmas is called asrava and the resultant bondage is called bandha. According to Jainism, even the mental disposition of a person results
in the karmic bondage. For example, an intense desire to kill also attracts the karmic particles and results in the karmic
bondage even if no one is actually killed. Hence, Jains attach a lot of importance to purity of thought.
The Tattvartha Sutra identifies the following elements in the process of attachment of karmas:
- Activity (yoga) attracts the karmic matter to our consciousness[5]
- Negative emotions like anger, pride, greed and deceit cause the bondage between the karma and our consciousness.[4]
- The nature and intensity of our emotions determine the strength of these bonds i.e. nature, duration
and quantity of the karmas so attracted.[4]
The karmas are attracted to the consciousness of the soul by combination of the following four factors[4]:
1. The instrumentality of our actions. We act by either through
a. body i.e. physical action,
b. speech i.e. verbal action, or
c. mind i.e. thoughts
2. The process of action. This includes whether we
a. only decide or plan to act,
b. make preparations for the act e.g. like collecting necessary materials, or
c. actually begin the action
3. The modality of our action, including if we
a. we ourselves carry out the act,
b. we instigate others to carry out the act, or
c. we give our silent approval for the act
4. The motivation for action. This includes which of the following negative emotions that actions is motivated
by.
a. Anger
b. Greed
c. Pride
d. Manipulation or deceit
Thus a karma is attached to a soul in a combination of any one element of the above four factors. Due to this,
there are 108 ways with which the karmas are attracted.
The theory
of the law of karma is important because it starts a completely different approach to the religion than the biblical religions
based on the belief of the active of guiding god sending messenger (prophet) to guide the human kind. For the follower of
Karma, there should be a creator, but the creator is not a god. He is rather a programmer, the programmer of the law of Karma
which has created us as well as secondary divinities.
As the
creator programmer is absent and possibly ignorant of our existence, it is irrelevant to mention it to justify the will of
the creator to orient our collective political action. Our duty is to learn about our karma through the meditation and the
experimentation. The meditation process is a kind of self introspection in order to awaken our knowledge of ourselves. In
a psychoanalyst view, the purpose of meditation is be conscious of our subconscious to get a full understanding and control
of our ego (personality or soul). The second part of the process: experimentation in order to understand the karmic laws of
causes and effect did not have a strong success in the sub Asian continent but it has in the north Asia China and lead to
the philosophical justification of the scientific experimentation. In order to act right according to the karmic law, human
being should do their best to know the laws and so they should be knowledgeable about the scientific research to avoid to
act by ignorance of the karmic law and to commit a karmic sin. This view point explains the keen interest of karmic believer
to scientific study all over Asia and the extremely high percentage of Asian engineer. The law of physics and evolution are the modern version of the law of Karma. There
is a strong religious incentive to understand the basic mechanism of those laws to avoid living sinfully according to the
creator views. Christian Catholics and musulmans do not have this religious obligation and got a simpler way to different
sin to good deed: The writing law of god in the Bible and the Koran.
The view
point of the research of the law through experimentation developed far more in the Greek Classic world than in the Asian World
and bears the name philosophy but according to politics, there is very little reason to differentiate religious beliefs and
philosophy. Religious beliefs are always teaching under the framework of a philosophy. They both aimed to reduce the sinful
acts commited by human and increase the number of good deed to increase the welfare of future generation. The philosophical
approach is based on the idea of a god progammers not involved in the development of his creation but the creator had choosen
the law of Karma in order that we are there with an initial intention for us to be there. In a major theological point, there
is not really the belief of an humanity created by accident or hazards. Our present has been decided and programmed by our
creator and our duty is to learn through scientific research and philosophy the way to not behave by ignorance against those
laws.
The biblical
theological model is radically different than the Karmic/philosophical theological model. The creator has created a unique
single world on the center of universe from Clay. The creation necessitates a lot of work and so it is very precious to him.
Unfortunately, groups of demons want to take advantage of his hard creative work and starts to corrupt the humankind. In the antic Jews/Christians, those demons are in fact the very active pagan gods
which lead pagans to act sinfully. For example, Beelzebub (Matthew 12.24,27 and Luke 11.15,18–19) is the philistine god Baal and an adversary of the hebrew god.
Their purpose is to abuse and corrupt the heart of the creation and so the creator had to send messenger prophets with a writing
law to help human to escape from those demons. Those prophets are named Moses, Jesus or Mohammed and the writing law is the
Bible, gospels or Koran. The failure to learn this law made humans impossible to understand sins and to escape from the ceasure
of pagan demons. The biblical view lead to hostile view of the law of nature as the nature is full of demons which are trying
to corrupt the humankind.
On the
opposite, Karmic and philosophical religion force human to see the study nature as the way to understand the laws and the
unique real source of widow. Human being are full of negative emotions like anger, pride, greed and deceit. Those emotion
strengthen his ego and made him losing any sens of wisdow. The remedy is the isolation in the nature and forest. The meditation
process which is focused on the emptiness of the thought, will help me to cure him of all mental impurieties and save him
from the madness that he quarried from the society. The nature will be his teachers and will provide him a real understanding
and a true wisdom that no book or teacher will ever give him.
The
birth of Buddhism
Buddhism,
probably the most successful of the Karmic starts with the live of Sidhartha Gautama around 450 BC which teaches in north
India at the same time than Mahavira,
the founder of the jain religion, the most philosophical of the Karmic religion.
Buddhism
was adopted by Asoka Maurya, the founder of the biggest Indian empire
in 260 BC, 50 years after the Alexander the great conquest. Asoka has a lot of parellele with Constantine the Great (500 years
later). Buddhism doctrine is based on compassion and enlightment and like Jainism rejects violence as a mean to solve conflicts. Buddhism spread like Christians in the same historical circumstance. The fascist competitive
logic marked an end and the two others competitive logic: Mendicacy and productivism. As it will point later, Christian Catholicism
rejects the productivism competitive logic as well as the facist competitive developed his doctrine around the logos: the
verb incarnated.
Buddhism has a complete
biased against all form of competitive logic which indirectly favor the productivist competitive logic as it is the most natural
one. The political power belongs to the one who has something to give and not to the one who is in position to be listened.
The difference can be traced back to the difference of social status of Jesus and Buddha. Jesus is the “elligimate”
son of a carpenter, who should normally endure the hard job of Carpenters but prefers to do a religious and political campaign
in favor of a new interpretation of the Jewish law in order to create a new moral world. Jesus had a campaign lasting 3 years
and is stopped prematurely with the move of Jesus toward Jerusalem.
The roman government Ponce Pilate arrests Jesus under the accusation to campaign for the title of Jews and crucify him like
any other rebels against the fascist roman order.
On the contrary, Buddha
is a prince and an heir of Kingdom of the Shakya nation. He
deliberately gave up with the high social status of prince to live like a meditative saddhu in the forest during 6 years to
achieve perfect enlighten at the age of 35. Due to his high social status, he then has no difficulty to teach his doctrine.
Gautama is also said to be a man extremely good looking with a very attractive physical aspect. For Buddha, it was so extremely
easy to have converted to his doctrine and be invited by most kings of India
to teach his wisdom and to explain the truth. A prince choosing the life of a mendicant was a marked of an exceptional personality
and a man that every one wants to meet and hear.
By contrast,
Jesus is exactly the opposite. His social status made him rejected by everybody including his parents Joseph and Mary (Mark
1-24, Matthew 1-28, Marc 3-22, Mark 8-11, Matthew 12.38, Luc 11.16, Luc 12-54, Mark 8.34-35, Matthew 8.34-35, Mt 21.23-27,
Mc 11.27-33)
Matthew
13.54
[54] And when he was come
into his own country, he taught them in their synagogue, insomuch that they were astonished, and said, Whence hath this man
this wisdom, and these mighty works?
[55] Is not this the carpenter's son? is not his mother called Mary? and his
brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas?
[56] And his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence then hath
this man all these things?
[57] And they were offended in him. But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without
honour, save in his own country, and in his own house.
[58] And he did not many mighty works there because of their
unbelief.
We can summarize the
electoral campaign that Jesus to be recognized as the Messie-Savor of the Israel
by:
- opposing to the one who doubts in him, and threaten those who refuse to listen to him,
- criticize the interpretation of the law of the Pharisees,
- oppose to the possession of riches,
- denounce social and moral discrimination toward women,
- insisted oppressed individuals (prostitute, poor, sick and so impure …) to a social rebellion against
the discrimination that they support
Jesus rarely argues
his claim and prefers to justify them by showing his mastering of Magic. He did
not develop any convincing doctrine like Gautana based on logics and a deep understanding of the law of nature.
His campaign is extremely vigorous and energetic and should be the source of the aggressive
marketing that Christian civilization is used to. In contrast, the Asian Buddhist world sees such marketing has a lack of
humility and manifestation of ego. The Buddhism doctrine had rather a psychoanalytic
approach as the Christian doctrine can be seen as a social approach.
- The Four Noble Truths: that suffering is an inherent part of existence; that the origin of suffering is ignorance
and the main symptoms of that ignorance are attachment and craving; that attachment and craving can be ceased; and that following
the Noble Eightfold Path will lead to the cessation of attachment and craving and therefore suffering.
- The Noble Eightfold Path: right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood,
right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.
- Dependent origination: that any phenomenon 'exists' only because of the ‘existence’ of other phenomena
in a complex web of cause and effect covering time past, present and future. Because all things are thus conditioned and transient
(anicca), they have no real independent identity (anatta).
- Anicca (Sanskrit: anitya):
That all things are impermanent.
- Anatta (Sanskrit: anātman):
That the perception of a constant "self" is an illusion.
- Dukkha (Sanskrit: duḥkha): That all beings suffer
from all situations due to unclear mind.
Buddhism tries to fight violence fascist competitive logic by understanding of oneself. The
approach is comparable to the one used by psychoanalyst. Christian sees it as a fight against demons that source of fascism.
They develop an offensive proselytism in order to be large number in order to win the war against badness.
On the long run, however criticized the Christian civilization lead to a remarkable civilization
and the Buddhism paralyze itself like the Islamic civilization to the stage of social development of the appearance of the
doctrine.
One reason is that Buddhist focus an adapting oneself to the reality instead of changing
its. With this strategy, you do effectively do not change anything and learn to stay happy by controlling the positivity of
oneself thought.
In Christianity, it is exactly the opposite. The aggressive marketing toward a Kingdom of
god who might exist in the future, become an aggressive marketing toward everything who might exist in future.
The Buddhist world does not worry about what might exist in the future because the state
of mind of an entrepreneur will not be an acceptable peaceful mind. In the Christian world, the state of mind of an Entrepreneur
campaigner for funds is hardly different to the one of Jesus. Western entreprener sell product who can maybe exist but in
many case never exist. They had to follow an aggressive campaign for funds to finance their innovative ideas and lead their
society on the path of innovation.
After his conversion to Budhism, the emperor Asoka
extends