CHRISTIANS have their infantile visions of a "heaven" where dead
people continue living just as if nothing happened. JEWS cleave to
4,000-year-old fables thought to have relevance in the 21st century.
MUSLIMS believe in a messenger of "god" who seems to approve of honor
killings and other cruelties to women.
But Hindus and Buddhists have KARMA to explain things. And crazy as
it seems, karma appears to pose no potential threats to other beliefs,
other deities.
None of that idiotic-but-bloody Sunni-****ite crap.
Karma just provides armchair "reasons" for why **** happens.
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"Did Bad Karma Cause Cyclone?"
"Burma's People Say Rulers' Crackdown On Monks to Blame"
By Daniel Burke
Religion News Service
Saturday, May 17, 2008; B09
After a natural disaster strikes in the United States, the question
almost immediately arises: Where was God? Or, did God allow this to
happen?
Half a world away, as Burma digs out from a devastating cyclone that
experts say could claim 100,000 lives or more, the question -- and
answer -- are quite different.
About 80 percent of Burma's estimated 52 million people are Buddhist,
and many there rely on the principle of karma to explain the storm,
scholars say.
Specifically, many of Burma's people believe Cyclone Nargis is a
karmic consequence of military rulers' brutal crackdown on Buddhist
monks last fall, said Ingrid Jordt, an anthropology professor at the
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who was once a Buddhist nun in Burma
and maintains ties there.
"The immediate explanation was: This is retribution for killing
monks," Jordt said. "In any cataclysm, human beings seek to make sense
of something that completely destroys the continuity of life. It's an
attempt to bring the world back into harmony."
The word "karma" is often misunderstood by Westerners as one's
inescapable destiny, scholars say. In Sanskrit, the word means
"action" and refers to the act that creates one's fate, not fate
itself. For Buddhists, particularly those in Southeast Asia, karma
regulates morality as firmly as Newton's law rules motion: To every
action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Karma extends to other Buddhist traditions as well. The Dalai Lama has
re****tedly said that Tibet's loss of sovereignty in the 1950s can be
at least partially attributed to his country's feudal past. A
spokesman for the exiled spiritual leader could not be reached to
clarify his comments.
Hindus also believe in karma. Gandhi claimed that a 1934 earthquake
was punishment for India's harsh treatment of its perpetually lower-
class "untouchables," Indian author Arvind Sharma has written.
A distant echo of such ideas can perhaps be heard in Christian leaders
who tied the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and Hurricane Katrina to ***ual
immorality in New York City and New Orleans.
American Zen Buddhist and author Brad Warner said blaming Burma's
cyclone on bad karma hews uncomfortably close to those ideas.
"To me it sounds like we're just substituting karma for God," he said.
And with so many innocent victims, karma seems a harsh and
indiscriminate explanation, Warner said.
But in Burma, weather is tied to rulers' behavior, Jordt said.
Forecasts in the country's state-run papers almost always read, "The
weather is fair throughout the land." It's a way of saying everything
is fine, karmawise, Jordt said.
But last fall the military junta imprisoned or killed dozens of
Buddhist monks who took to the streets to protest rapid inflation.
Monks are revered in Burma, and violence against them is thought to
send one to hell.
After that, Jordt said, "people knew something was going to happen."
http://www.wa****ngtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/16/AR2008051603347.html
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