Love how you articulate and express your thoughts on Karma. There are too many moving particles within this concept that confining it to a single line would never do justice. Also each individual being responsible for their own karma maybe true, but theirs's a side of collective karma as well. That is we as a species.

@PeterBolland

3 жыл бұрын

Thank you Santosh. Exactly.

I hope you know I am so deeply grateful for you wisdom, insight, and gift of teaching. My life has been blessed by you. Thank you so much for facilitating growth in my life

@PeterBolland

Жыл бұрын

Thank you Nyah for taking the time to express your kind support for my work. I appreciate it so much. 🙏🏼

Youre awesome. I will teach my kids with these videos. Thank you! 🎉🎉🎉

@PeterBolland

6 ай бұрын

Wow, high praise indeed! Thank you for watching and sharing these videos.

I love this excerpt from Seane Corn's book on karma... " Life doesn't happen TO us, it happens FOR us, and it is the cause and effect of all our past karmas. In other words, karma reflects back to us where we have not made skillful, conscious choices and gives us the opportunity to try again, to heal any suffering we've caused others or ourselves. If we don't get it right the 1st time, that experience will keep manifesting over and over again (often in different guises) until we do." How true is this? And I love looking at karma from a positive perspective. It's here to help us, not hurt us. It is here to teach us lessons that we need to master in order for us to transcend this life. LOVE IT!!!

@karthi1834

Жыл бұрын

My experience too. As in Groundhog movie

Karma is something that goes around comes around, but something beyond karma is more important. karma is action, but action is preceded by desire, and sanskara or residual imprint is also an effect. Samskara is like an inclination or a habitual imprint of compulsive behaviour, which generates the tendencies of emotional and physical actions, which is carried with us through many births, and hence, generates similar situations as the past. If you want to change your karma, you have to change or delete these tendencies. These tendencies define with whom we hang with, our likes and dislikes, and our choice of surroundings. For example, A drunkard likes to spend his time at a bar or pub rather than at a spiritual discourses. And the resulting action generates more of similar karma or action. Bhagavad gita has beautiful verse. "Dhyayato vishaya..." 2:62,63. Samkhya yoga.

I like what you say and suggest here; if the conditions of our genetic birth traits and conditioned personality are such that we become aware of less than ideal characteristics, we have an obligation to up-level our experience and projections through action more in keeping with the ideal; the cosmic pond; voting with our dollar; we may not be able to choose what we are given to work with, but/and we can choose how we work with it. Thank you again for these beautiful videos.

@PeterBolland

2 жыл бұрын

I always appreciate your thoughtful engagement Robert.

@breandadavis3168

2 жыл бұрын

I've always had very strong convictions but the environment I grew up in wasn't in alignment with my values and I became a product of my surroundings, even though,to varying degrees throughout life, whether it was a subtle longing or a feeling that would build up and send me into despair, on some level I knew these aren't the habits I wanted to practice and this isn't the life I wanted to live. 2 years ago I got diagnosed with ADHD combined presenting, 3 months ago I was finally able to get medicine for it. And ever since that day, like someone flipped a light switch, I have had such clarity and focus on how to accomplish my goals, I have been able to be totally consistent, things I was just never able to do in the past no matter how hard I tried. From eating healthy, to going above and beyond at work, to hitting the gym almost every day, and doing yoga, and meditating! I started a recycling program at my job! (because it's a retail store and we see so much waste come through here). I'm FINALLY living with intention.

جميل جدا

This makes me want to watch star wars again

Another great video - loving this series! One thing that didn't follow logically for me though was the argument that because lots of things that happen to us in life have causes that were completely outside our control, and therefore the causes were not related to our volitions or actions, there must be free will. This seems a non-sequiter to me. The chains of cause and effect that imact us could still be completely pre-determined and "mechanistic" under these conditions, even if some relate to our previous volitoins and actions and some don't. You went on to say that we can choose volitions and actions that in response to these conditions that arise and impact us. I agree that this seems to imply free will - we have to be free to choose our response, at least within the boundaries that outside conditions provide us (though I personally would argue otherwise at an "ultimate reality" level, but I see the argument). But the first point that relates outside conditions over which we have no control to necessitating free will I don't understand. Feel free to clarify or not as you wish!

@PeterBolland

4 ай бұрын

Great question. It's complicated isn't it. I'm not here to settle the age-old "free will vs. determinism" debate. My sense of Hinduism is that it strikes a middle path between these two positions. In these very brief videos I'm trying as best I can to introduce my beginning students into the basic issues at stake.

@willmosse3684

4 ай бұрын

@@PeterBolland Thank you for the response! Yes, it is complicated. I have engaged with this question somewhat through a modern “Western” philosophical lens, though the writings of the likes of determinist Sam Harris and compatiblist Dan Dennet - Dennet representing a kind of middle path himself (pretty much all secular scholars seem to reject libertarian free will). But it is interesting to come to this question from a dharmic perspective. I have discussed it very briefly with a couple of Buddhist dharma teachers, though not in depth, and not at all from a Hindu/Vedanta perspective. But the idea of different levels of reality from the dharmic traditions (also paralleled in the modern scientific paradigm, though perhaps not highlighted so centrally) has come to influence my view on the topic of free will. I used to be fairly solidly in the deterministic camp, thinking that compatiblists were just arguing backwards from the conclusion they wanted to find (that free will does exist), and that what they were describing as existing is not actually free will at all. Though I saw acting as if we have free will as necessary to operate in the world, so came up with the idea that free will is “a necessary illusion”. That’s still pretty much what I think, but now I would use the concept of levels of reality to describe it. At the level of conventional reality, at the human day-to-day level, free will certainly exists. We have will, for sure, and we have to manifest that will to act in the world - we have to choose courses of action all the time. And they feel like real choices, and often hard choices. Though I agree with Harris that if you really look, for instance in meditation, even those apparent elements of will and those choices just pop into your mind by themselves - there is no actual place for choosing; so at the level of ultimate reality, there is no free will - everything is either determined, or possibly sometimes random. And just logically, there is no space for a real choice to actually enter a chain of cause and effect - any choice is itself the effect of prior causes - or to be part of something that is eternal, unconditioned and therefore unchanging - the making of any choice by that thing would amount to a change in that thing. Anyway - you probably didn’t want my whole essay on that 😂. But your video was very interesting and got me thinking about that. If there is some way that Vedanta practitioners have argued for this middle way of partial free will within the framework of dharma, and cause and effect more broadly, I would certainly be interested to read or hear about it! Many thanks 🙏🏻

I would say karma is a mixture of free-will and determinism. We all operate with a certain blueprint. Your passion to dissect and understand world religions is not something in this lifetime. It's a product of past lifetime(s). Let me give an example, I went to mandir the other day and I was looking for tissue. I turned back and folded nicely in a corner was a piece of tissue waiting for me. I of course picked it up because it is my internal programming or my karmic need but in terms of free will, I could have just left it as well. So, we all do have a choice (free will). Hope my example was clear.

@PeterBolland

Жыл бұрын

I agree Reshmy that we are a combination of free will and determinism, and one can hold that view without relying on past-life experiences. Our innate tendencies might be more genetic/energy system/environment/conditioning related. Thanks for watching and commenting.

What IF YOU RAISED YOUR HAND in HEAVEN 2 A SCRIPTED LIFE 4 SAY with free Will... just think if GOD SAID WHO WANTS 2 GO HEAR and YOU SAID I do I do AND BAM lol.. just asking lol

@gvk3385

2 жыл бұрын

That's not how karma works..Karma shapes the soul / atman.. And soul deals with accidental challanges through only the past karma. people think they have "own will".but No You'll action is based on your capabilities which are shaped & reshaped by previous circumstances "Karma shapes the soul , you have no option except acting through it"

How do you know you didn't choose how to reincarnate

Why are you only emphasizing the negative effects of the industrialized food industry? You seem to think the only positive is that you personally can eat cereal. You're missing a huge part of the picture and following narrative.

@breandadavis3168

2 жыл бұрын

...? he didn't only talk about the negatives though. he said that when people said, "hey I want cage free eggs" the companies did a 180° and made the changes the customers requested. he talked about McDonald's pledging to make the switch to cage free (I looked it up, they are at about 33% and it's a 10 yr plan til they reach 100%). he also talked about how when a company like McDonald's, the biggest purchaser of eggs, beef, etc. makes an alteration like that, not only do agriculture businesses follow suite, it influences other restaurants to do the same. I'm not exactly sure why what he said was such a problem. even if he did only say negative stuff, this is about karma and he's just using analogies.