Quote:
Originally Posted by lastcardcharlie
I know little of Buddhism, but I'm pretty sure a basic tenet is that you have had previous lifes and that your predicament in this one is a consequence of your previous actions.
*Note that the paragraphs below represent my current understanding of the answer to the question posed, as I interpret it, and are subject to change according to the will of the random fluctuations of life*
Partially grunching this quote, but the above quote is not necessarily true. Westerners always misunderstand Buddhism because they try to apply the methods of conceptual thinking derived from the ancient days of Greece in order to analyze it.
Buddhism is not a philosophical system analogous to the western philosophies we are so indoctrinated to. Buddhism acknowledges that all systems of thought are subject to impermanence and subjectivity, and thus it does not make any declarative, definite facts known as "Truths". Buddhism realizes the limitations of language and uses it as pointers to guide a conceptual mind into realizing the unconceptual ( This is the main purpose of
Kōans in Zen ).
The Buddha was wise enough to preach his teachings through the philosophical view point of the time, which was one of karma. People back then believed in accumulative karma, meaning that they gained positive karmic points for good behavior and bad points for bad behavior. The Buddha realized that this view of karma was false. Instead, one should view karma as a result of
Dependent Origination. The brilliant point of Buddhism was to bracket all "free willing" actions ( thus refuting Descartes' cogito as the basis of phenomenal experience ) into just
another category of experience. When one realizes that the actions he does is just originated from previous conditions, one begins to see to realize that there is no self doing anything at all! Indeed, one realizes that what they refer to as the self is just a label given to a localized point of temporal being that is the result of casual processes ( this does not mean that the reality is deterministic, read up on some chaos theory ).
Thus, there is karma through volitional actions, but once realizes that these actions are not really "their's" they stop creating karma. But of course they were never creating it in the first place, but by understanding that they are not the volitional representations which they mistake themselves for, karma ceases being created and thus they realize the one true unconditioned i.e. Enlightenment.
The way I usually think to understand this is to see that the world as you know it was created through all karmic actions ( previous lives ) of previous beings ( obviously trivially true ). Thus one's localized temporal experience is thrown into the world ( a la Heidegger ), created by other's actions, thus one continues the manifestation of karma as long as one views oneself as a separate entity acting on the world, but once one is able to truly recognize that the self is a just a label to a whirlwind of experiences one is able to stop the karmic process.
Here's a post from another forum that I practically agree with.
Again this is just my view on the subject. The Buddhist idea of karma can be sourced and interpreted to fit one's viewpoint as needed, I am just humbling offering my interpretation since I think that the viewing Buddhism through a Western prism does not do it the justice it deserves. Actually be applied to Eastern philosophy in general, I wonder why that is?