Ask Pastor Paul Paul: Spiritual Advice for the Real World.
Have a spiritual question, ethical dilemma or religious curiosity? Don't be shy! People of all backgrounds, ages and creeds are encouraged to submit questions to askpastorpaul@huffingtonpost.com.
Dear Pastor Paul,
Is there such a thing as karma? Have we lived in a previous life?
Dear Friend,
You've asked a couple of questions that are related but not the same. Living a previous life, or lives, involves re-incarnation, or re-birth; and while karma does apply to re-incarnation it can also be an operating principle within this life. I am not an adherent of a tradition that holds to these beliefs, but I know I have been spiritually enriched by learning about them!
An explanation of karma and rebirth requires a subtlety of knowledge I don't possess -- but we are in luck! Two friends, one Buddhist and one Hindu, have agreed to be our teachers and have offered some beautiful insight into your question.
Zesho Susan O'Connell, of the San Francisco Zen Center, explains re-incarnation, or as her tradition describes it, re-birth:
There is a range of understanding about re-incarnation -- from a concrete idea of some "personality" or "self" being sustained from one life and one body to a new body, to a more subtle idea of being re-born in every moment, to a more radical belief in which we understand that nothing is born and nothing dies.
Karma, is a natural law, like the law of gravity. What goes up must come down. In the Holy Bible it is taught, 'As ye sow, so shall ye reap.' 'For every action' Newton's third law of motion states, 'there is an equal corresponding reaction.' Or as you often hear said, 'What goes around comes around.'
If I cause pain to others, a corresponding pain will come back to me in due course. If I show compassion to others, resultant good fortune is inevitable. Although the principle of how the law of karma works is simple, the details of how it is working are often too intricate to comprehend. Eastern traditions teach that the soul (or living force within us) is eternal and returns in physical bodies according to our karma. However, acts in devotion to God liberate us from all karma.
The purpose of this knowledge is to urge us to take responsibility for the choices we make. There is little value in mere theoretical understanding or discussion unless we apply the spirit of the law to our lives. Just having a good map doesn't get us anywhere. We have to apply it. The essential purpose of all spiritual truths is to lead us into the joys of compassion and devotion. Proper understanding will soften the heart, not make it callous.
Dear Pastor Paul,
Afterlife -- Why do we need one?
Dear Friend,
There may be a psychological component in our "need" for the afterlife. Some people who are disempowered in this life, and suffer hardship at the hands of the greedy and cruel may feel a "need" for the afterlife in hopes that it might create a reversal of fortunes that have plagued them here on earth and provide judgement on those who have oppressed them. The opposite could also be true - that one could be so in love with family or spouse that we cannot live with the thought of being forever cut off from them forever.
One hopes that as much as we are able, that we can create equanimity, equality and love on this life, so that people do not have to defer their dreams to the next.
However, for most people, the afterlife is not understood as a need, but rather as a conviction. Nobody can say for certain if there is or isn't an afterlife. So, ultimately, the question comes down to whether or not you believe that there is some continuation of any part of you after you die.
I happen to believe in an afterlife, yet I admit I do not have any clear notion of what that that after life will be. My belief and prayer is that I will be with God. But whether that "I" will be in a discrete self-aware form, or if I return, like a drop of water into a welcoming ocean, is something that will be revealed in time -- and hopefully not too soon.
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You act (non-action is an act, if it were possible) whether or not you want to or not in this life, which is an illusion created by the process which is named for convenience consciousness coinciding for a time (time itself is a perceived relationship, an illusion) with those processes named for convenience the body. It "re-incarnates" every millisecond based on the previous moment's experience and action. The continuity is illusory by inevitable: like the movement of a film is in fact a sequence of discrete frames. The processes will separate at some time and move on, cause creating effect ad infinitum. Our current bodies were all once stardust. The complexities of the many interactions is beyond ordinary understanding. In the face of this understanding, kindness and compassion arise naturally.
When you act in life in ways you think are wrong, or bad, it affects how you feel about yourself. It affects how you think people would regard you if they knew who you really are. When you act in ways that you regard as good, or righteous, it has an opposite effect.
We're not really individuals, but rather social animals, and we respond to our positions in society, and we are very much affected by how we think people would regard us if they knew who we really are, and what we've really done. We know who we are, and we carry it with us into all our interactions with others. Hell is being cut off from the fellowship of others by our own internal judgements. Karma exists even if your personal reincarnation doesn't.
As far as re-birth, in Nichiren Buddhism, it is not the idea that I was once Cleopatra floating donw the Nile but one of an endless chain of causes from one life to the next passed along in the molicules that make up our bodies.
It suggests every lifeforce enters the earth as, what I call, the first life type continuing to incarnate as it until it has had done to it by lifeforces of other life types it will do to them as that life before incarnating as the next life, and then next until becoming man. As man, after many incarnations, we finally incarnate as one to become "spiritually born" (John 3:1-8) obtaining everlasting life and "sow to the spirit" (Galatians 6:8) which suggests we become an angel and do for others following our sequence of incarnations what angels did for us. Life is cyclic (Genesis 1:14 Ecclesiastes 1:9).
As angels the concept of "After Life" ceases because we have a continuing life without discarnating, we metamorphose into our different roles, as far as I've been revealed, until we have ended "everlasting life" when we began another sequence of incarnations.
http://www.reversespins.com/proofofreincarnation.html
www.iisis.net
http://napoleonlive.info/see-the-evidence/see-the-evidence-photographs/
Tho one which I subscribe is that karma is a lesson or a teaching....
And yes, some lessons are horrible.
Thus (to paraphrase) Consider all sounds, all sights and all sensations the words of your guru (teacher).
There is a checks and balance system in place that forces you to contemplate idealizing where extensions might be. I'm sorry I have a medical issue that Doctors can't explain so I have had to learn to do research to make my life somewhat live able.
http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/585/Dungeon+Master.html
http://dmweb.free.fr/?q=taxonomy/term/42
These are the dungeon master theological files to follow my example. I meant resurrect instead of ressucitation. But if you don't game or work with application software my conversation is hard to follow.
This idea is fundamentally flawed and incorrect.
" Nobody can say for certain if there is or isn't an afterlife. So, ultimately, the question comes down to whether or not you believe that there is some continuation of any part of you after you die."
There are those who know for certain that a part of you does live on when the body is not present.
The Gnostic tradition is steeped in the culture of going beyond “belief” which they feel is a juvenile approach to understanding who ones self truly is in the context of religion. You don’t have to just believe.
Here is a free lecture on the topic.
http://bcrecordings.net/store/index.php?main_page=page_4
(3) Jesus said, "If those who lead you say to you, 'See, the kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty."
http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/gthlamb.html
No, there is just one life, and multiple births-and-deaths within that one life.