Karma and Rebirth in Theravada Buddhism - Part 7

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1. I practice aquatic toxicology. Nothing is wasted if we dispose of our food waste in water goes to the living experience. Please be careful quoting the Buddha. Most we are told is hearsay. However, Gil Fronsdal has issued an excellent and new translation of the Dhammapada. I suggest the reading on "Aging" to get a glimpse of the man who happened to be named Siddartha. It is an ugly system into which we are born, and I truly wish we could support ourselves like bristle cone pines, but we can't.
2. I strongly disagree Brian. There is no way of you truly and honestly knowing these details about the historical Buddha. He lived many years as an ascetic and I doubt he truly had any need for animal flesh as food. He would however eat whatever was given by the lay people, without choosing, without attachment or desires. Many Monks in western countries don't do alms round and 'choose' to eat meat. If you can't even commit to be vegetarian how serious can you be about liberation? Control the EGO!
3. Get a knife and stab a cabbage repeated times cutting it into pieces. Watch what happens. Then, get the same knife and stab a cow, or a chicken repeated times and compare the reactions. The cabbage will nor scream of pain and try to run away while bleeding to death. THAT IS HOW YOU KNOW WHAT IS RIGHT AND WHAT IS WRONG! The buddha DID say that you should not allow an animal to be killed only for you, he told the monks that they should eat anything people would put on their plates on alms rounds.
4. interesting but if there's no permanent subsisting self, what is it that goes into ghost realm or deva realm or even rebirth to human realm?
5. plants can regenerate. an animal can not. that's the difference. fruit is meant to be eaten. animals who eat the fruit swallow the seeds as well & in due course out come the seeds with the animal's waste. that's how some plants are propagated, & are spread far & wide. & most plants can regrow their leaves. the whole plant doesn't necessarily die. but a whole animal consumed by another animal does die. so it's not always "at some living thing's expense" - it depends.
6. "Karma is not a cosmic system of justice and retribution. There is no unseen judge pulling the strings of karma to punish wrongdoers. Karma is as impersonal as gravity. What goes up does come down; what you do is what happens to you.Karma is not the only force that causes things to happen in the world. Unfortunate events can happen to anybody, even the most righteous.That said, karma is a strong force that can result in a generally happy life or a generally miserable one." Thats a quote.. 
7. if some 1 murders a bunch of ppl & then be come a buddhist monk, and "thinks right", would this lighten his karmic debt in his next life, or would he still suffer the full consequences of his murderous actions? like, do you get "time off 4 good behavior"?
8. You're right wadok1942, We survive at the expense of other beings, even vegetarians. It doesn't seem fair that people should have bad karma just for surviving. The Buddha made it clear that there is no bad karma from eating, even eating meat. The Buddha wasn't a vegetarian and it's important that people not feel guilty about eating meat. There's no bad karma there at all.
9. In fact, we do not eat without killing something. Every meal is taken at the expense of some other living organism. Therefore, if there is sin in eating flesh, there is sin in eating anything. Cabbage or cow, we go on at some living thing's expense.
10. Also, the system is not indifferent because people experience widely different results. I have conviction in the dhamma even tough I have not been to hell or heaven in this life. I believe the Buddha. But I also believe the evidence by Dr. Ian Stevenson at the University of Virginia. Thanks for asking baze128. I have posted here on my site for a while. I'm back! Brian Ruhe
11. Hi baze128, The doctrine of no self is a separate teaching as we have no self in this lifetime right now. It means no permanent identity. There can be justice even if you don't remember the past because you experience the results of past actions that you don't remember. It shouldn't be indifferent to you if you will experience the good results of all the hard work you've done in this life. Why would you be indifferent to that?
12. Certain ideas of Buddhism are quite clear and coherent but I'm not sure about rebirth. Since there is supposedly no self that survives death that would have a memory of past actions, is there even a point talking about justice? Such system seems quite indifferent to me. Plus, I have to ask: How can you make such bold claims with absolutely no support? Have you been to hell? Have you met devas? What makes you believe and talk about this stuff with such certainity?
13. The actions rooted in conditioned mind (the judgments made on sensory stimuli based on the wrong notion of "self" - Atta) creates Kamma. The intensity of mind in doing that action (the Kamma) determines the speed at which it comes to fruition, the duration of the impact and the strength of the impact. that's how i understand. Stalin's killing was an action rooted in that conditioned mind. Please read about the tiger and the deer, the Brahmans and the goats from Dhammapada.
14. I don't agree with that idea. That's like saying the Jews who were murdered in the holocaust had it coming to them because of negative past karma. You stated that karma is very difficult to understand because of all the contributing causes. I think it is a gross error to claim that "people could not be murdered if they did not create a karmic cause in the past." That sounds a lot like blaming the victim (i.e. they had it coming to them.)
15. Hi Prajna8, There is hope for the boy who died. His death in a way was accidental without the full negative karma of suicide but if it was suicide, that is the karma of killing a human being, which is bad. But his rebirth is dependent on his karma from his whole life, and past lives. If he was a good person all his life, he could still go on to a good rebirth after committing suicide, so there is hope for him, yes! Suicide is just one unwholesome act but he had many wholesome acts in his life.
16. Hi Supergopi, Stalin's karma was that he chose to kill 30 to 40 million people. The law of karma states that he is responsible for that and will feel the effects in hell, even though the people killed could not have been murdered if they did not create a karmic cause in the past. They experience this ripening but it does not absolve Stalin of responsibility. So this just goes around and around. We need to break the cycle of ignorance and aversion with the Buddha's noble eightfold path.
17. now i got a question... if some one get killed...its because of their karma. then why does Stalin has to spend time in hell? isn't he just doing the karma's inevitable plan? i think in fact Stalin should be rewarded for dispensing millions of other people's bad karma, taking all the blame from earthly people ! i am sorry sir, i remain unconvinced by your story of karma.