Question asked by Eric w.
I have a question about karma and absolute reality.
Let's say for example my friend is murdered
Would it be his karma to murdered
And would that be the perpetrator karma to be murder someone
Like if some one just randomly hits you whose karma is it?
Is it the person karma to hit you
Who receives the karma for it which brings me
To the question of absolute reality as I see it if everything is emptiness than in like in the heart sutra nothing is happening everything is as emptiness or an expression of Brahman as my Hindu understanding of it.how in whose responsible for the intiail karma in the convential
The reason I m asking is for the injustices of the world like the nazi holocaust
If you were an ss soldier and you killed Jews
Whose actually doing this whose karma is it
Is it the as soldiers to kill Jews or is it the Jews karma
This is part of karma I don't understand.
Thank you
Dear Eric,
Thank you for your very interesting question. Karma and reality according to Buddhist philosophy is a very deep subject, and one that requires some amount of study to understand. Therefore, I would just like to being by saying that whatever I write here will not do it justice because the space is very limited. If I may, I would like to suggest that you read the sections on Karma in Pabongka Rinpoche’s text called Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand. Pabongka Rinpoche’s explanation is much more comprehensive, and later on in the same book, the subject of emptiness is dealt with. That text will provide you with a much better understanding of this. There is also an excellent teaching on karma given by His Eminence the 25th Tsem Rinpoche available here: https://www.tsemrinpoche.com/tsem-tulku-rinpoche/buddhas-dharma/discovering-yourself-a-teaching-on-karma-mindstream.html. It describes how we actually can live by the law of karma in our daily lives to better ourselves.
To start off, in the case of murder, the one who is murdered themselves created the karma to be murdered in previously lives. Perhaps they killed someone themselves. But this karma needed a trigger to be opened, and that is the situation that arose that led them to be murdered. If the situation was different, then obviously they would not have been murdered. Now the murderer, him or herself created the karmic propensity to murder people, so perhaps in many previously lifetimes they killed people again and again. This left what is known as a negative imprint in the mindstream, which is to murder someone. So you see karma is not so straightforward as most people believe. If there are two people involved, then it is actually the karma and imprints of both of these people that leads to the outcome.
In the case of someone randomly hitting you. You have the karma to be randomly hit, which comes from previous lives, but the person who hit you also has the karma and karmic imprints of violence within their mindstream so that they are violent enough to hit a complete stranger.
In regards to reality, there is what is known as conventional reality, which is what we live through due to our karma and delusions, but there is also an ultimate reality. Pabongka Rinpoche’s explanation of this in the text I mentioned before will provide a better understanding of this for you.
So you see, karma is multifaceted and not simply a 1-for-1 rule. In any situation, it depends on all the people/beings involved, as well as the situation, and the karma and imprints from previous lives. I do apologise if this explanation does not make too much sense, but it is hard to explain all of this in such a short space. The text Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand will provide you a much better understanding. You can find this book at bookshops that have a large section on Buddhism or you can also order it online here: https://www.vajrasecrets.com/lamrim-liberation-in-the-palm-of-your-hand.
I hope this helps you. Thank you.