Do you believe you have ever gained a Karmic reward?

Is there anything god that has happened to you that made you think, wow, this must be karma coming back to me in a good way?

No. I don't think we can justify at all (let alone as strongly as a "must be") the idea that some universal spirit of fairness exists and has the power to alter events in or against our favour based on its own judgement of the moral character of said events and our own deeds that just so happens to coincide with our own sensibilities on the matter. To be sure, it is not necessary to picture karma as an acting willful agent like this; the utter lack of a proposed mechanism by which nature would ensure it automatically yields no more promising reasons to believe any such thing.


One could go on to say that it would be rather self-centered to think of the universe as revolving about our personal moral worries to any extent at all, or how disgusting one might find the implication that, say, every victim of any heinous crime or grave tragedy "must have had it coming", but at the end of the day I think whether something like this is believable should be decided by the available evidence and not by whether or not it is a comfortable idea. And in terms of evidence, it would seem for karma we have none.

In Sanskrit, Karma, simply means action. Actions tend to have consequences. We, then, tend to judge whether those consequences are good or bad.

Much like Gisteron outlined, there’s no need to evoke a universal moral bank, paying dividends or charging interest to account for this across multiple incarnations. If that myth helps anyone, then fine, but as with any myth, it probably shouldn’t be taken literally.

The story of Job in the Bible, and the Quran can be viewed as a warning that Karma can work in extremely mysterious ways. That’s a polite way of saying that we can’t expect our actions to have the outcomes that we want! That it is impossible to control all the variables!

Worse than that even, we’re pretty terrible at knowing what good or bad looks like. That’s what the folk tales of Aladdin and the Lamp, or more explicitly, The Taoist Farmer, teach us

https://www.newventureswest.com/real-lesson-taoist-farmer-story/

Loudzoo wrote: In Sanskrit, Karma, simply means action. Actions tend to have consequences. We, then, tend to judge whether those consequences are good or bad.

Much like Gisteron outlined, there’s no need to evoke a universal moral bank, paying dividends or charging interest to account for this across multiple incarnations. If that myth helps anyone, then fine, but as with any myth, it probably shouldn’t be taken literally.

The story of Job in the Bible, and the Quran can be viewed as a warning that Karma can work in extremely mysterious ways. That’s a polite way of saying that we can’t expect our actions to have the outcomes that we want! That it is impossible to control all the variables!

Worse than that even, we’re pretty terrible at knowing what good or bad looks like. That’s what the folk tales of Aladdin and the Lamp, or more explicitly, The Taoist Farmer, teach us

https://www.newventureswest.com/real-lesson-taoist-farmer-story/

Let me just point out that I never said anything about a universal spirit or 'bank'. We exist because of actions vs reactions spread across many equations. Actions in your youth can affect results in your old age. You can alter the trajectory of your whole life by making different decisions. So does there have to be a clear tether between an action and a consequence for it to be considered karma?

Well if you don't mean by karma some kind of balance-keeping force but rather just something along the lines of "things happen and affect each other to some unspecified extent", then what is even the question at that point? "Wow, this must be karma coming back to me in a good way" under such a non-committal interpretation of karma is no more than to say "Wow, this must be a thing I happen to deem good for me that may or may not have happened as a consequence of some or all past events I and others did and did not make choices in". I mean, yes, that's trivial to agree with, but also - in my humble opinion - kind of wholly devoid of meaningful content. Surely a good conversationalist wouldn't risk to invoke all the connotation and baggabe that comes with "karma" if events influencing one another really was all they meant to say. Karma the way the term is most commonly currently used is not just "things affect each other". And while it may not be much like some spirit of justice with a sword in one hand and some scales in the other, a rock dropping to the ground upon being released isn't what any of us would consider a strictly karmic event (I daresay), but a fleeing thief slipping as he races into a corner, all to suffer a similar fate as that rock's just might be.

ZealotX wrote:

Loudzoo wrote: In Sanskrit, Karma, simply means action. Actions tend to have consequences. We, then, tend to judge whether those consequences are good or bad.

Much like Gisteron outlined, there’s no need to evoke a universal moral bank, paying dividends or charging interest to account for this across multiple incarnations. If that myth helps anyone, then fine, but as with any myth, it probably shouldn’t be taken literally.

The story of Job in the Bible, and the Quran can be viewed as a warning that Karma can work in extremely mysterious ways. That’s a polite way of saying that we can’t expect our actions to have the outcomes that we want! That it is impossible to control all the variables!

Worse than that even, we’re pretty terrible at knowing what good or bad looks like. That’s what the folk tales of Aladdin and the Lamp, or more explicitly, The Taoist Farmer, teach us

https://www.newventureswest.com/real-lesson-taoist-farmer-story/

Let me just point out that I never said anything about a universal spirit or 'bank'. We exist because of actions vs reactions spread across many equations. Actions in your youth can affect results in your old age. You can alter the trajectory of your whole life by making different decisions. So does there have to be a clear tether between an action and a consequence for it to be considered karma?

You didn't say anything about a universal spirit or 'bank' - I agree, but lots of people think it is something like that. Sometimes there is a clear tether, often there isn't. I don't believe that a severely 'disabled' child did anything to deserve their situation and neither do I believe that a lottery winner did anything special to deserve their win. To my second point some disabled children are able to lead joyful lives, and some lottery winners find their lives destroyed by their so-called good fortune.

To answer your OP I don't ever think of Karma as coming back to me in a good way. I do question why I'm sometimes insanely lucky, and at other times, why I've been such an idiot! Others have said as much, and I like the poker analogy. A joyful life is like wining at poker, it's less about the cards you're dealt, more about how you play your hand.

Difficult to say. I've certainly had 'unusual' good and bad luck.... being unusual in both time and nature of events; eg things that don't usually happen at exact times that don't usually happen.
But in my experience those sorts of things seem to be more like 'events creating events' rather than the spiritual bank withdrawing or depositing funds into my account - and in that regard as 'eventing events' they tend to be good or bad depending on other factors. Which begs the question what makes something an event...... and so if interested in that sort of thing it tends to be easier to work with the spiritual bank model generally speaking