How to come to terms with injustice and suffering?

[Fadious]

People are inflicting terrible forms of suffering on each other. 

To my shallow understanding of enlightenment, it is God inflicting suffering on God, and it is all imaginary.

From a survival paradigm, there are consequences to these actions.
But are there any spiritual repercussions to this? 

Is direct experience of infinite Love the only way to accept all the cruelty in the world in all its forms ?

I would appreciate your thoughts on that. 
Thank you.

 

[Guest Tobia]

Cruelty originates within each of us, me and you, each time we divide the world, each time we judge, each time we reject and push away, each time we identify with our little family, religion, country and so on.

Those divisions create conflict which always comes with cruelty, in many forms.

As for justice, does such thing even exist?

Lets say that you are born in a wealthy family in Sweden, loving parents, you are intelligent and beautiful, your life is full of opportunities and loving friends.

 I, on the other hand, am born in a slum in Nigeria, can barely eat, my father is an alcoholic and beats my mother in front of me every day, I have a brain retardation, I have an ugly and scary face, nobody wants me and i eventually end up in prison.

Where is justice?  Does it even exist?

Compassion can be found. Love can be found. Justice cannot.

[Ora]

This is why I think Buddhism has the most complete understanding of life. Ultimately there is no self. It's just a conglomeration of separate mind moments held together by karma, giving rise to the illusion of a continuous consciousness, or the self. Karma is the only thing that is "real." The only thing that stays with "you" after death. Why are some born pretty, smart, and wealthy? Why are some born ugly, dumb, and poor? This is the result of karma that you have accumulated in previous lives giving fruit in this one. There are still unripe karma that have not born fruit, so in the future you may find yourself in an even worse situation, or conversely in a much better situation. 

No one can know the full scope of how karma functions because it is too vast to know every working, but we can try to make sure not to create any new unwholesome karma, which results in suffering in the future. We can do this by keeping our thoughts, speech, and actions pure. We can generate wholesome karma by thinking, speaking, and doing wholesome actions. In Buddhism, when you give offerings or do something wholesome, know that it generates wholesome karma, in this way when the karma ripens it will be stronger than if you did those actions without knowledge of karma. Meditation is a wholesome action. If you can attain jhanas, these states are very high states that produce much wholesome karma because they are devoid of unwholesome mind states. 

But exist is to have suffering so we strive to end this suffering, this existence, once and for all. The notion of "justice" is only a form of hatred and greed. Good things and bad things happen to us because of our karma. It does not matter what happens to others, only our identification with it makes us seek justice. If someone does unwholesome things, they will suffer the fruit of karma in the future. There is no need for us to wish bad on someone, this only causes ourself to incur more unwholesome karma. Do not make someone else's karma your own. We should instead have compassion, because those who understand karma know that those who do unwholesome actions will suffer when their karma bears fruit, and it is because of their ignorance they inflict suffering on themselves.

Edited May 21, 2021 by Ora

[Fadious]

1 hour ago, Tobia said:

Compassion can be found. Love can be found. Justice cannot.

Agreed. Justice always comes from morality, relying on having right and wrong, good and evil as a distinction to maintain self-preservation. 

 

@Ora

So the concept of karma creates a system to reward conscious and wholesome behavior, while punishing selfish actions?
If so how is the reward/ punishment decided? 
In your post you mentioned:

25 minutes ago, Ora said:

Karma is the only thing that is "real." The only thing that stays with "you" after death. Why are some born pretty, smart, and wealthy? Why are some born ugly, dumb, and poor? This is the result of karma that you have accumulated in previous lives giving fruit in this one. There are still unripe karma that have not born fruit, so in the future you may find yourself in an even worse situation, or conversely in a much better situation.

Does that mean that pretty, smart, and wealthy people were more wholesome and conscious in their previous lives? If so, why do many pretty, smart, wealthy people act selfishly now when they previously had good karma?

I hope I understood correctly.

[Leo Nordin]

2 hours ago, Fadious said:

People are inflicting terrible forms of suffering on each other. 

To my shallow understanding of enlightenment, it is God inflicting suffering on God, and it is all imaginary.

From a survival paradigm, there are consequences to these actions.
But are there any spiritual repercussions to this? 

Is direct experience of infinite Love the only way to accept all the cruelty in the world in all its forms ?

I would appreciate your thoughts on that. 
Thank you.

 

You know you can only bring suffering in yourself, it's never someone elses making, duh. Also suffering is just because your don't live your life the way you wabt to and that is yours problem and no one elses. 

Why thfk would one accept anything in this world, just look at everything and make a call. Infinite love seems like a dream, like laughing and having fun and sex and girls and kisses and joy and peace and kids. That's most often, almost always an escape and you will figure it out soon enough I hope. 

Just do the things you want to do, say the things you want to do. I dont know why we should care so much about this. We all have made ourselves so so so important that transformation of the mind is difficult. Hey that's even more potent in children, have you seen how difficult it is to take away their brainwsshed beliefs, the ego is so insanely large and some might like to say that children are more exuberant and happy then us though they are no better off. Still living within the same framework where you can't live your life the best way sadly. 

[Ora]

@Fadious we tend to think of it as "punishment and reward" but for karma, it's just a natural law of reality. There's no judgement with what it brings. Like gravity, what goes up comes down, there's no better or worse, it is just what happens. Applying heat to an object makes fire, applying cold makes ice. No good or bad, just natural actions and reactions. If you do wholesome things, wholesome things will bear fruit. If you do unwholesome things, unwholesome things bear fruit. That is all. Judging it as good or bad is only from your subjective viewpoint. So if we don't want to suffer bad feelings in the future, we make sure not do do anything that creates bad karma. It just so happens what creates bad karma is unwholesome thoughts, speech, and actions.

On 5/21/2021 at 4:30 PM, Fadious said:

Does that mean that pretty, smart, and wealthy people were more wholesome and conscious in their previous lives? If so, why do many pretty, smart, wealthy people act selfishly now when they previously had good karma?

Yes this is true. Those who can achieve success easily in this life time is because past life wholesome karma now bearing fruit in this life. For example two people of equal caliber can work in an industry, but one person just never seems to "make it" no matter how hard they try while the other gets presented opportunities, that if they use it wisely, will bring back much success. This is because of karma. It creates the conditions necessary for success if you take it. 

I'm sure there are many pretty, smart, and wealthy people who do much good too. You just don't hear about them because they don't do it to show off and most sensational news is from hatred not love. As we now know, bad news sells more than good news. Controversy creates more notoriety. But true, there are those who have everything and yet do unwholesome things. This could be because of many things, from how they were raised or perhaps the success has let them think it is ok to act in such a way without consequence. But know that their actions will bear their respective fruits in the future. Whether this life or the next. This is why karma is the great equalizer. We just don't have the foresight to see it because we think there is only this one life. But if you retained your memories of each life, you would see clearly the action and reaction of your life choices.